DENVER — The Army is planning to reach a first unit equipped milestone for its Bell [TXT]-built Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) in fiscal year 2031, a senior official said, noting that Sikorsky’s [LMT] protest of the program award pushed that date by about a year.
“The protest put us about a year later, but we are working steadily on that. And I would say the team came together this past quarter and did a tremendously detailed plan to look at every aspect of this fielding. And the plan is an incredible road to war,” Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of Army aviation, said during remarks at the Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit here.
Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft was named the winner of the FLRAA competition in December 2022, beating out a Sikorsky and Boeing [BA] team’s Defiant X coaxial rigid rotor helicopter offering for the program to find an eventual UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter replacement (Defense Daily, Dec. 5 2022).
The Army’s initial FLRAA deal to Bell is worth up to $1.3 billion but could total $7 billion if all options are picked up.
Sikorsky unsuccessfully protested the award decision, with the Government Accountability Office having concluded “the Army reasonably evaluated Sikorsky’s proposal as technically unacceptable because Sikorsky failed to provide the level of architectural detail required by the [Request for Proposal]” (Defense Daily, April 6 2023).
Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told reporters at the time of the contract announcement in December 2022 the service had factored a potential protest of the award into its planned program timeline, while Bell was under a ‘stop work’ order until April 2023 when Sikorsky’s protest was denied.
Rugen on Thursday cited a Limited User Test for FLRAA around FY ‘27 to ‘28 as a key milestone for the program in the lead-up to equipping the first units with the new capability.
“I think the First Unit Equipped [date] is not our pacing decision point or our pacing event. We really have to look to the Limited User Test in ‘27-’28. And there captains, majors, first sergeants and [chief warrant officers two and three] that here’s your warning order. You’ll be participating in that with our experimental test pilots to make sure that the operational force sees this capability for what it is, truly transformational, and get the reps and sets needed to make that FUE highly successful,” Rugen said.
Bell is currently going through the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for FLRAA, with a company official noting last month the program is on track for a Milestone B decision this summer to move into the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase (Defense Daily, April 4).
“We’re in the throes right now of working through the preliminary design review. That’s all going well. The Army’s taking us to task, as they should as a customer and we appreciate that. And we have a program team that’s executing very well right now through that PDR process,” Carl Coffman, Bell’s vice president of military sales and strategy, told Defense Daily.
“Fundamentally, what you’re doing [with PDR] is almost like defending a doctoral thesis,” Coffman added. “It’s bringing the proof that you are where you are in the maturity of the program. And that informs the back and forth between the government customer and our team leads and program managers that we are where we say we are. And if we’re not, it [highlights] where we need to shore up. If someone has a question or they’re not quite comfortable with something, there’s a lot of discussion to make sure that we are getting done what we need to get done. So it’s a grueling process, but it’s a process that has to be done.”