The Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) yesterday said AVX Aircraft Company, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. [TXT], Karem Aircraft Inc., and Sikorsky Aircraft Co. [UTX] were each awarded Technology Investment Agreements under a Broad Agency Announcement for a Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Technology Demonstrator (TD) Phase 1.
The Army was unable to immediately provide the value of the agreements and team investment.
For the next nine months, the four industry teams will be refining their initial designs and making preparations toward potentially building and flight-testing a demonstrator aircraft late in Fiscal Year 2017, a statement said.
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| Future Vertical Lift Concept: U.S. Army |
With these agreements, the Army has taken a large step toward developing a new family of aircraft referred to as Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Family of Systems.
“This is a critical risk reducing effort for FVL,” Maj. Gen. William Crosby, Program Executive Officer for Aviation, said in a statement. “The operational benefits and changes will depend on the capabilities we can deliver to the warfighter with FVL. Improved speed, range, reliability, and survivability are critical goals that we will target. I am very proud of the accomplishments of our AMRDEC partners and the PEO Aviation team.”
Future Vertical Lift (FVL) is an initiative, not yet a solution, AMRDEC’s statement said. It was in 2009 that the Defense Secretary set the initiative as a joint effort to focus all DoD vertical lift capabilities and technology development by conducting a Capability Based Assessment and developing an Science and Technology (S&T) plan.
Then, in October 2011, the deputy Secretary of Defense issued “The Future Vertical Lift Initiative: A Strategic Plan for United States Department of Defense Vertical Lift Aircraft” (the FVL Strategic Plan) to outline a joint approach for the next generation vertical lift aircraft for all services.
The plan indicates that within the next eight-10 years, 80 percent of decisions will be made for the DoD vertical lift fleet to either extend the life, retire, or replace current aircraft.
The JMR TD program is a S&T demonstration intended to mitigate risk for the FVL development program through the testing of advanced technologies and efficient configurations.
“We must continue to push implementation of the FVL Strategic Plan, which will positively impact Vertical Lift Aviation operations for the next 50+ years,” said William Lewis, director of the AMRDEC’s Aviation Development Directorate. “Absolutely, that is what JMR is all about. As we understand the demonstrated technologies and the opportunities for future technologies, that will feed the desired and reasonable capabilities and requirements for the potential FVL solutions.”
The purpose of the JMR TD is to demonstrate an operationally representative mix of capabilities to investigate realistic design trades and enabling technologies. Emerging results from JMR TD Phase 1 will be used to inform the FVL effort regarding promising vehicle configurations, the maturity of enabling technologies, attainable performance and capabilities, and highlight the affordable technical solutions required to achieve those capabilities. The JMR TD program is not building prototypes of the FVL solution nor a pre-selection program for FVL.
All services participate in the JMR TD program as the knowledge gained will inform any FVL solution. The JMR TD program is not the only S&T effort feeding those future decision points and potential FVL solutions. The Army, with other agencies such as NASA, continues to broadly invest in vertical lift technology and mission systems.
“We are looking to bring transformational vertical lift capabilities across the spectrum of operations,” Lewis said.