![Breaking Defense HII Spotlight Enterprise Training 2024 Featured Image](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2024/06/Breaking-Defense-HII-Spotlight-Enterprise-Training-2024-Featured-Image-350x188.png)
![Uncertainty & Anxiety About Army’s New Scout Aircraft](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/05/Sikorsky-S-97-first-flight--225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: After months of hints, the Army announced Friday it wants competing prototypes of a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft flying by 2023. But there’s a deal of uncertainty — even anxiety — about what the Army wants. “Industry can develop whatever the government tells them what they want, if it sticks to the requirements and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.![UK Eyes Joint Multirole, Talks With US](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2016/05/Prince-Harry-in-Griffin-helciopter-225x150.jpg)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.: The United Kingdom is following the U.S. Joint Multirole Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) project with “great interest” and might either get involved at some point or buy future aircraft the effort spawns, says a top British Defence Ministry rotorcraft engineer. “It’s a perfectly feasible outcome,” Bryan Finlay, the senior engineer at the…
By Richard Whittle![Army Aviation Budget Plunges Earthward](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2013/01/oh-58d-kiowa-warrior-crash-081108-a-0000m-001-lg-225x150.jpg)
Aviation, always the Army’s largest modernization account, goes into a nosedive in the fiscal 2017 budget, plunging from $5.9 billion to $3.6 billion. The $2.3 billion cut more than makes up for a $1.3 billion cut to total Army spending that helps fund readiness, operations and maintenance. But with aviation accounting for 25 percent of the…
By Richard Whittle![DARPA’s Adaptive Landing Gear Is Cool But…](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/10/Adaptive-Landing-Gear-helicopter-225x150.jpg)
There’s been some breathless coverage of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment with what look like mechanical insect legs to replace the usual wheels or skids helicopters land on. One article called the Adaptive Landing Gear nothing short of “incredible.” The video DARPA publicized is certainly fun to watch (see above), but there’s a lot less utility…
By Richard Whittle![Buy A New Helo Engine? The Army Thinks It Can, Thinks It Can…](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/09/t700_2-GE-Aviation-photo-225x150.jpg)
After more than seven years of designing and testing how to make new, more powerful, and incredibly fuel efficient engines for its AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and UH-60 Black Hawk utility birds, the Army has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP). The Army’s “top aviation priority” thus takes a baby step closer to becoming a…
By Richard Whittle![Lockheed Bids $9B For Sikorsky; May Spin Off IT, Tech Services](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/07/Black-Hawk-helicopters-in-formation-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin’s planned purchase of Sikorsky Aircraft, the biggest U.S. helicopter manufacturer, is a natural fit that will mean a lot more to buyer Lockheed and seller United Technologies Corp. than it will for the military rotorcraft industry, present or future. Here’s why. First, the two companies have worked together on military helicopter programs for decades.…
By Richard Whittle![V-280 Valor: Bell Starts Building Joint Multi-Role Prototype](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2014/06/Bell-V-280-Valor-Future-Vertical-Lift-225x150.jpg)
Somebody’s finally doing something tangible about the future of Army aviation. Bell Helicopter subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., has started assembling the composite fuselage for the first prototype V-280 Valor, Bell’s new military tiltrotor. The Valor is sleeker, smaller, and, by design, more Army-friendly than the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, which was built to fit…
By Richard Whittle![Grey Eagle-Apache Run Shows Tech’s Not Enough; Ya Gotta Have Doctrine](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/05/AH-64E-with-Gray-eagle-225x150.jpg)
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: Manned-Unmanned Teaming, when manned aircraft crews control drones from their cockpit, is a child of the drone revolution still in its infancy. So maybe it’s no surprise that Army Apache helicopter units with new AH-64Es equipped to control MQ-1C Grey Eagle armed drones have gotten off to a crawl rather than a run using…
By Richard Whittle![“It’s Unbelievable What We Go Through,” Laments Army Helo Program Manager](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/05/Maj.-Gen.-Michael-Lundy-Army-Aviation-225x150.jpg)
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: You’re the Army and you really, really want a new, more powerful and efficient engine for most of your helicopter fleet. It’s really urgent. But you’re not going to get those engines for your UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters for at least another 11 years. What’s the reason? Good old…
By Richard Whittle![Marine One, Take 2: No New Bright Ideas!](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/05/Sikorsky-VH-92-Presidential-Helicopter-NAVAIR-2014-442.1-225x150.jpg)
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: The new presidential helicopter made its first flight in December, the Marine Corps colonel in charge of the program revealed this morning. That was only seven months after contract award, a stark contrast to the multi-year delays that killed the previous program, the VH-71. But don’t get too excited. No miracles are…
By Richard Whittle![It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! No, It’s Aircraft That Fly Like A Bird!](https://sites.breakingmedia.com/uploads/sites/3/2015/01/Sikorsky-VTOL-X-Plane-Concept-DARPA-225x150.jpg)
In the 1934 film “It Happened One Night,” fictional slime ball “King” Westley shows off by floating to a landing on the lawn of his fiancée’s daddy’s estate in a newfangled autogiro – an airplane with a rotor to enable short take offs and landings. Today, two Defense Department programs are striving to meet the…
By Richard Whittle