Sikorsky [UTX] program officials say they can deliver an armed aerial scout (AAS) for the Army program at $15 million per copy for the 428 aircraft the service potentially would buy to replace the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.
The S-97 Raider design packages mature advanced technology in an affordable new way that gives you twice the capability of a conventional helicopter. Some 70 years after Igor Sikorsky first flew an efficient vertical lift design, the company is using a similar approach–taking existing technologies and optimizing the design.
The S-97 features coaxial main rotors, a clutched pusher propeller and a composite fuselage. Performance improvements include a 150 percent increase in hover altitude, a 100 percent increase in endurance and 100 percent increase in mission speed, according to a company brochure.
“We have been very reluctant to talk about the actual cost of the Raider,” Steve Engebretson, director of armed Aerial Scout for Sikorsky, told Defense Daily yesterday.
“Not one dime” of development money has come from the government, he said. Industry is providing $200 million for Raider development: $150 million from Sikorsky, and another $50 million from 33 suppliers. Those suppliers are not guaranteed any follow-on beyond the two prototypes being built.
Sikorsky has a tradition of spending its own funds on development: $50 million of its own money was spent to bring the X-2 demonstrator to life. Technologies from X-2 and even from a prior development, the Boeing [BA]-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche, have matured and can be found as part of the S-97.
The perception has been that because the S-97 Raider AAS candidate will be able to fly twice as fast as current helicopters and has two sets of rotors, then it must have expensive technology and cost twice as much as other candidates.
“There are a lot of technical experts in government who don’t understand what we are doing,” Engebretson said.
To dispel those notions, the company used an open book approach to share information about the helicopter with some “40 people from nine agencies” who visited Sikorsky to learn about the AAS candidate as its part of Army contractor flight evaluations (Defense Daily, Oct. 23).
Sikorsky and five other companies–Boeing, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS), Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland, Bell Helicopter [TXT] and MD Helicopter provided data and flew representative aircraft for the government.
The Army is considering the next step in the program, and in January said the service has already told the Vice Chief of Staff it wants to move forward and hold a competition, but has not yet determined if it will set off on a new AAS program or continue with and modernize the older OH-58 Kiowa Warriors by Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] (Defense Daily, Jan. 9).
Senior leaders are still reviewing all the AAS options, but until sequestration and the continuing resolution authority situations are resolved, AAS faces the same future budget uncertainties as other Defense Department acquisition programs.
Sikorsky is building two prototype S-97 Raider aircraft, and the first aircraft has completed its critical design review and in six months will be in final assembly. The second prototype, S-97 No. 2, is about six months behind. Components have been arriving and await assembly. First flight is expected in 2014, as the company has said all along. When the helicopters are production ready, technologies will be at Technology Readiness Level 7 or 8.