PROGRAMME UPDATE No surprises W hen the story of the Pentagon’s replacement of its current fleet of rotorcraft comes to be written, it is unclear what significance future historians might place on one development in August 2014. In a move that came as a surprise to precisely no one in the industry, the US Army announced on 12 August that it had chosen Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky-Boeing to build demonstrators for the Joint Multi-Role – Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) programme. The former company is offering its V-280 Valor, which it describes as a third-generation tiltrotor, while the latter team is extolling the virtues of its SB>1 Defiant co-axial design. The two contenders will now manufacture and prepare their aircraft for a first flight in 2017, in what is the opening round of the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programme tasked 10 with eventually replacing all types of military helicopter currently in the US inventory. A number of unknowns about the future direction of the project remain, however. ACQUISITION UNCERTAINTY The JMR-TD is not a ‘fly-off’ in the traditional sense, and only aims to better inform any future FVL decision, of which acquisition activity beyond this point is yet to be funded. In addition, programme managers stress that the competition will remain open to other bidders beyond 2017, seemingly leaving the door open for the likes of AgustaWestland and Airbus Helicopters. At the time of writing, it was also unclear about the future role of the other two competitors for JMR-TD Phase 1 – AVX Aircraft and Karem Aircraft. Defence Helicopter | September/October 2014 | Volume 33 Number 5 DH_SepOct14_p10-12_Future_of_VTOL.indd 10 With Bell Helicopter and SikorskyBoeing being downselected for the US Army’s Joint Multi-Role – Technology Demonstrator programme, focus is now on how the two companies are going to approach this head-on battle. Tony Skinner sizes up the two offerings. This latest decision was described by Bailey as a ‘descope’ of the programme rather than a traditional downselect, and under the technology investments agreements signed with all four teams in 2013, AVX and Karem may yet be contracted to further develop their designs, depending on programme funds left. Nevertheless, for those competitors targeting future involvement in FVL, the stakes could hardly be higher – the army envisages a common and joint solution that can be scaled across the light, medium and heavy class of rotorcraft in a project that could be worth upwards of $100 billion, according to some analysts. FVL will not only completely reshape the helicopter industrial base in the US, it will also likely alter how the army conducts future operations depending on the final aircraft configuration fielded. www.rotorhub.com 20/08/2014 10:45:50 PROGRAMME UPDATE 2014. ‘We are not buying an aircraft under JMR – it is not a prototype effort; they are not aircraft that can turn into a FVL; we are not pre-disposing a decision for FVL. ‘I have heard it said many times that they are prototype aircraft – they are not, they are Frankenstein aircraft that will attempt to demonstrate new and critical technologies that enable new designs that will give us the capabilities that we desire for the future.’ With today’s helicopters largely based on designs from the 1960s and 1970s, the Pentagon is increasingly identifying capability gaps with the current fleet, especially following the high operational tempo of the past decade. Bell Helicopter and its V-280 Valor tiltrotor has been selected for the next stage of the JMR-TD programme. (Image: Bell Helicopter) CAPABILITY GAPS ‘There was a capability assessment done at a joint level that identified about 55 critical gaps in our current fleet, and it also identified that you cannot efficiently satisfy those gaps with the current fleet designs… The environment we are going to be fighting in the future, our current fleet is not optimised for,’ Bailey explained. ‘Hanging behind our heads is a timeline because we have an ageing fleet. The most significant of which at this point is in the medium-class, and that is in the H-60 fleet in both the army and navy. ‘Somewhere around [the 2030 timeframe] we have to deal with an ageing H-60 fleet across the DoD. That is hanging over our head to get after this pretty quick. But, we do not want to lose the opportunity or water down the opportunity to conduct the real analysis that a new designed aircraft will allow for.’ Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky-Boeing can now begin to prepare their candidate aircraft for a first flight in 2017, in what is shaping up to be a protracted battle of tiltrotor versus co-axial compound configurations. Robert Hastings, senior VP and chief of staff at Bell Helicopter, said in designing the V-280 Valor, the company’s objective from the beginning was to deliver next-generation tiltrotor performance at a fraction of the cost through the use of modern technology and engineering. In an attempt to fight the impression that Sikorsky-Boeing is the ‘incumbent’, Bell has assembled a team that includes Lockheed Martin, Moog and GKN. ‘We looked at the drivers of our cost and designed ways to remove or minimise them, while also reducing weight and complexity,’ he said ‘First, the army does not need the expensive folding mechanisms that are required for carrier operations. This aircraft utilises the latest state-ofthe-art composites to reduce weight – and cost – throughout, and incorporates innovative manufacturing techniques that reduce labour and production costs.’ For example, the design of the V-280 wing box will provide around 30% savings against the V-22, but at about the same size due to a reduction in parts, tool count, weight and detailed components.  With a number of failed projects behind it, the service is taking a very different and deliberate approach to FVL, looking to firstly reinvigorate the technological base expected to develop the technologies supporting the final solution, and incorporate lessons from other joint programmes such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as well. NO PROTOTYPES While the initial focus is on the medium segment to replace the Black Hawk and Apache fleets sometime from the mid-2030s, defence officials have been at pains to stress that the JMR-TD effort is not going as far as seeking a prototype aircraft for FVL. ‘This is not a downselect, because what we are doing is investing in S&T and knowledge, increasing our tools,’ Dan Bailey, programme director for JMR-TD/FVL, told the press earlier in www.rotorhub.com DH_SepOct14_p10-12_Future_of_VTOL.indd 11 Sikorsky-Boeing believes the co-axial compound design of its SB>1 Defiant offers the best mix of range, speed and tactical manoeuvrability. (Image: Boeing) Volume 33 Number 5 | September/October 2014 | Defence Helicopter 11 20/08/2014 10:45:55 PROGRAMME UPDATE NEED FOR SPEED Hastings also argues that much as the CV/MV-22 was becoming the aircraft of choice for an increasing number of mission types due to its speed and range, the V-280 would help reshape the way the army operates. Bell is confident that 280kts at 6K/95 was ‘easily achievable and easy to exceed’. For its part, Sikorsky-Boeing has placed its faith in the co-axial compound design, which Sikorsky first worked on under the XH-59A Advancing Blade Concept project in the late 1970s, and more recently developed as part of its X2 Technology aircraft. Patrick Donnelly, director of the JMR programme for Sikorsky-Boeing, said the hingeless, stiff rotor system promised the speed and range of a tiltrotor without compromising low-speed manoeuvrability. ‘The aircraft is called the Defiant because we are going to change the way people think about aircraft,’ he said. ‘Unlike the AVX [co-axial design], the Defiant has a large propulsor in the back, but it is unique because it has variable pitch, to the point that we can provide negative thrust – so we can slow down and use it as an air-break, we can accelerate it up, we can actually clutch it so it can stop when it is in the LZ so it is quieter. ‘In addition, with the negative pitch, the aircraft can operate with a nose-down attitude and nose-up attitude for pitch pointing when we are in the attack aircraft.’ The team believes it can demonstrate an aircraft of ‘tactically relevant size’ at more than 230kts. SECOND PHASE Running concurrent to the JMR-TD is Phase 2 of the programme, which is looking to define the mission systems architecture needed for the FVL aircraft. Bailey said the key here was defining a supporting architecture that was flexible enough to incorporate technologies available in the 2020-25 timeframe, when a FVL mission system may be developed. ‘We have made a lot progress down that path – the Future Airborne Capability Environment [FACE] is a standard that attempts to get after that openness,’ he explained. ‘We also have a programme called Joint Common Architecture [JCA] and really that is to wrap up the FACE standard into a larger definition of the architecture. That effort has been ongoing since 2009, funded by the army and developed 12 While AVX Aircraft and Karem Aircraft were unsuccessful for the JMR-TD, both designs may yet receive further funding. (Image: AVX Aircraft) here within the AMRDEC. We and the Joint Multirole [office] are now picking that up. ‘We have a base standard for JCA – we are going to pick that up and demonstrate the validity of that standard to what could become the specification that ultimately we would put on a programme of record for FVL.’ Asked during a panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in July about the prospects of FVL being unmanned or optionally piloted, Bailey said the latter was highly likely. ‘All of the [JMR-TD candidates] are fly-by-wire flight control systems, so the basic aircraft will fly that regardless if there is a pilot in the aircraft or not,’ he said. ‘The interface will be through a flight management computer which will have fully coupled modes – so generally if there is a pilot on board these aircraft in the future the vision is that he will not be flying it very often anyhow,’ he explained. ‘Whether that’s an uploadable autonomous flight profile that gets inputted into the flight management computer and the aircraft goes and flies it; or whether you data-link it to a ground control centre – that’s the operational context that’s not yet defined. But the aircraft will not really know the difference.’ COMMON APPROACHES In terms of the level of commonality envisaged across the weight classes and between variants for the various services, Bailey said the army was working with the JSF office to identify potential issues. ‘You don’t want to force commonality – that is something we learned from the JSF. One of the issues they had is the commonality goals up front forced them to make trades that were not realistic. The requirements were so drastically different in so many areas they could not gain the commonality they wanted and ultimately made them go back and re-develop which increased costs, so we are learning their lessons. Defence Helicopter | September/October 2014 | Volume 33 Number 5 DH_SepOct14_p10-12_Future_of_VTOL.indd 12 ‘A natural inertia that we have to overcome is that our requirements are not necessarily the same. Navy requirements are not speed-centric, they are endurance-centric. The army wants longer legs, but also speed because we want the element of surprise and operational flexibility in manoeuvre. So you have to think about the optimisation of both of those.’ Bailey also noted that in defining how current aircraft will be replaced, the FVL office was largely taking a payload approach. For example, the navy Seahawks and army Black Hawks are unlikely to need to be replaced by the same platform even though both are based on the H-60. KICK START It is clear that much of the FVL progress to date has been in kick-starting the design capabilities of a rotorcraft industry that has been largely nourished by incremental upgrade funding for the past 20 years, and has therefore been slow to innovate. ‘The industrial base has really been shored up over the past five years,’ Bailey told the CSIS in July. ‘The configuration and trades analysis we have done and the work the team has done in the last year on the designs have put us in a position where we can go to industry today and say, “we want you to alter a particular aspect of your solution”, and they can give us a solution feedback fairly quickly. ‘As a programme of record, what we have done to date is already leaps ahead of where we were five years ago. Building and flight testing something is certainly important, but not the only path for any of these things to continue. And when we get ready to do a source selection for an actual programme of record, having the industry competency and the government team competencies that are in place today are going to be the critical aspect to make sure we have a programme that is solid going forward.’ DH Additional reporting by Tim Fish www.rotorhub.com 20/08/2014 10:45:56