rotary-wing

Israeli Defense Minister Presses For Israeli V-22s

Earlier this year, the purchase of 12 tiltrotors was indefinitely postponed for lack of funds. Now the new defense minister – and prospective prime minister – wants to change that.

V-280 Passes Key Agility Test: Bell

Critics have argued the tiltrotor aircraft could never be as nimble at low speed and low altitude as a helicopter. Bell says it's proven them wrong.

Marines: FVL Intriguing, BUT CH-53K Is Essential

The Marines are hellbent on fielding the troubled CH-53K helicopter to supply the far-flung island outposts they plan on using against China.

Invisible, Essential: Open Architecture For Army Aircraft

The Army will hold five demonstrations this year for the electronic backbone of its future manned aircraft and drones. A forerunner is already entering service.

300, 200, 100: V-280 Valor’s Latest Milestones

Bell's prototype tiltrotor keeps pulling ahead of rivals -- but the race to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk is far from over.

FVL: Army, Marines, SOCOM Release Ambitious Specs For Future Aircraft

The Army wants a lot out of its Black Hawk replacement, at $43 million apiece -- but the Marines and special operators want even more.

Don’t Panic About Apaches: Army Not Junking Gunships

Will the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft "replace" some AH-64 Apache gunships? Sort of, technically -- but that's a misleading slice of a bigger story.

FVL: Next Steps For UH-60 & Shadow Replacements In ‘Weeks’

How can Army accelerate its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft when one leading contender started flight tests just seven days ago?

SB>1 Defiant Takes Flight: Can It Catch Bell?

The thing that delayed Defiant, it turns out, is the same thing that makes it really attractive to the Army.

Army Helicopters Underfunded (Even Worse Than Everything Else): CSIS

Every Breaking Defense reader has a good idea how huge the US military’s modernization backlog is. But it sometimes takes a deep dive to show how big the problem is. In a new study by the Center for Strategic & International Studies — embedded below — scholars Gabriel Coll, Andrew Hunter, and Robert Karlen look […]

GE’s ITEP Win & The Army’s Inch-By-Inch Revolution

Having wasted tens of billions and almost 30 years since the end of the Cold War, the Army is out of time. But after decades of incremental improvements, its existing weapons — including the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that GE’s new engine will upgrade – are overweight, underpowered, and running out of room to grow. Meanwhile, the Army’s attempts at a high-tech great leap forward kept getting cancelled as unaffordable, unfeasible, or both.

Future Vertical Lift: SB>1 Defiant Flight Delayed Until Early 2019

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.

DARPA, Army Test Optionally Manned Helicopter (It’s Not A.I.)

"We also had a non-pilot with all of 45 minutes of training take the aircraft up and operate for almost an hour," said Sikorsky's autonomy director, Igor Cherepinsky.

Army Wants Revolutionary Scout Aircraft For $30 Million, Same As Apache E

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.