Army aviation leadership was recently briefed on an extended science-and-technology initiative to build two options for a future vertical-lift aircraft to be used a decade or more in the future.
This Army effort to define a forthcoming vertical-lift capability is intended to culminate with a new aircraft in the fleet in the 2025-2030 timeframe, according to James Snider, director for aviation development at the U.S. Army Aviation Missile Research Development and Engineering Center.
This work simply cannot be done on a short science-and-technology (S&T) cycle of five years, Snider recently said at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) Army Aviation Symposium and Exposition in Arlington, Va.
“So we’re doing a 10-year S&T cycle, where we’re building these various technologies, leap-ahead technologies that will go into two (aircraft) demonstrators that we want to build,” he said. “These demonstrators then will lead to a decision point out in about the (fiscal year) FY ’20 timeframe.”
At that point, he said, officials will decide whether to apply the technologies to a new airframe or to the current fleet.
“What it does is it gives us options for the future,” he said. “This is a very low-cost initiative on the part of the Army.”
Aviation leadership was “just briefed” on this future-vertical-lift initiative, Snider said.
He said this initiative for the Army to try to address the joint multirole challenge will need significant input from industry.
“They’re going to be large part of putting this plan together,” he said about defense firms.
The Aviation Missile Research Development and Engineering Center in Huntsville, Ala., provides research, development, and engineering technology and services for aviation platforms.
Snider chaired a panel at the AUSA conference yesterday on “industry efforts to support future technology for aviation.”