The Army’s urgently developing new air-launched drones, long-range missiles, and electronic architecture to go on the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft that Bell and Sikorsky are vying to build.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Integrating commercial off-the-shelf computing on military platforms and how to make it work
The systems may be off-the-shelf, but the packaging for integration on vehicles and ships provides cradle-to-grave resiliency.
After two years of intensive digital engineering, in 2022 the Army will pick either a Bell tiltrotor or a Sikorsky-Boeing compound helicopter to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Sikorsky says their Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft design will fly faster, with bigger weapons, than archrival Bell’s. Bell says theirs will be cheaper and more reliable.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Flying sideways, backwards, in pirouettes, and in a markedly quiet stealth mode, the hybrid helicopter-turboprop demonstrated the maneuverability the Army considers essential to survive high-tech future battles with Russia or China.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The company is confident that there is no inherent flaw in the design. Instead, they say, there was a software error that would have hamstrung any aircraft — and that error won’t happen again.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Dark horse design house AVX has never built a complete aircraft. The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft competition just might change that.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Awards for Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft designs went to Bell, Boeing, Karem, Sikorsky, and a partnership of AVX and L-3.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Advancing military training with VR and simulators
Our latest eBook offers a glimpse into cutting-edge VR, simulators & military training tech showcased at I/ITSEC 2024 in Orlando.
The Sikorsky-Boeing super-copter has just over an hour of flight time, but the Army says it has all the data it needs to accelerate the program. How?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Bell’s prototype tiltrotor keeps pulling ahead of rivals — but the race to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk is far from over.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The thing that delayed Defiant, it turns out, is the same thing that makes it really attractive to the Army.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
After years of secrecy and CGI, we’re finally getting to see the Sikorsky-Boeing dream team’s SB>1 Defiant ultra-high-speed helicopter in real life. Now they just have to prove it works.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
While Bell’s rival V-280 uses tiltrotor technology, proven in widespread service on the V-22 Osprey since 2007, the Defiant uses Sikorsky’s revolutionary compound helicopter technology, which promises superior agility — but which has only actually flown in two experimental aircraft, the X2 and S-97 Raider, both of which are much smaller than Defiant.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“It’s much more like a fighter aircraft than a helicopter,” Sikorsky’s test pilot tells me in the video as he maneuvers gleefully.
“Whoa, warn me next time!” I say after a particularly nifty/nauseating roll.
The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) must have enough artificial intelligence to fly unmanned at least part of the time, a secure network to control drones, and combination of speed and range that’s impossible for traditional helicopters.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
