“No matter what theater we talk about – PACOM, Europe – everything needs to be smaller, lighter [and] very modular, so…we can throw it in the back of a pickup truck,” said Col. Devin Licklider, program manager for MAGTF Command & Control.
Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo said he was particularly impressed by the service’s adoption of the C5ISR Modular Suite of Standards program, a platform that will allow soldiers to plug in cards embedded with networking and EW capabilities
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
A tactical ground station that finds and tracks threats to support long-range precision targeting, TITAN promises to bring together data from ground, air, and space sensors.
The wargame will also test new aircraft weapons — a 20 mm cannon and a multi-payload launcher— and a host of electronics enabled by a plug-and-play open architecture, MOSA.
“I think it's unanimous from all the soldiers involved that we got this one right,” said the Army’s project manager for the Future Tactical Unmanned Aerial System. Manned aircraft, FARA and FLRAA, are also moving out sharply.
The Army has learned from the Comanche scout chopper debacle, where it spent $9 billion in today’s dollars to get just two prototypes. With Future Vertical Lift, $7 billion will get 18 prototype aircraft, counting both the FARA scout and FLRAA transport.
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.
Bell and Sikorsky have started building their competing prototypes for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) ahead of a Final Design Review in November. The vital digital architecture is still in development.
Despite disruptions worldwide, Future Vertical Lift flight tests, virtual industry days, and design reviews are all moving ahead on schedule or mere weeks behind.
After decades of building traditional helicopters in traditional ways, contractors must get ready for the Army’s new high-speed Future Vertical Lift aircraft. Small makers of key parts need help.
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.
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New Future Vertical Lift aircraft are just part of the solution. So are new tactics and technology upgrades for existing helicopters.
"Upfront investments are necessary to break the vicious cycle in which current DOD high-value assets are stuck" to increase space resiliency, the Aerospace Corp. study argues.
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.
To seamlessly share data on everything from target coordinates to engine diagnostics, the Army is developing a standardized Modular Open System Architecture for all its Future Vertical Lift aircraft.