Bell [TXT] announced Monday that Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has joined its team working on the U.S. Air Force and Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) program to make advancements developing new High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) technology.
SNC will specifically support the design and development of mission systems for HSVTOL variants, according to Bell.
“In an effort to advance technical maturity and deliver HSVTOL capability to warfighters sooner, Bell is assembling a team of industry-leading partners. We’re thrilled to have SNC onboard,” Jason Hurst, Bell’s vice president of innovation, said in a statement. “We’ve made significant progress in Bell’s HSVTOL technology development in 2022, and we look forward to showing this progress in the upcoming year.”
Bell is one of 11 firms working on the HSVTOL program led by the Air Force’s AFWERX innovation arm, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and SOCOM, which the organizations have said aims to “permit time critical insertion and extraction of special operations forces and equipment; personnel recovery; aeromedical evacuation; and tactical mobility” (Defense Daily, Feb. 17).
The 11 companies, which were selected from an initial field of 218 entrants, have received market research investments to advance their HSVTOL technology.
“SNC is delighted to join Bell’s HSVTOL development team, and we are already hard at work to deliver the visionary mission systems that Bell demands for their visionary aircraft,” Derek Hess, SNC’s vice president for strategic program business development, said in a statement. “Our nation’s warfighters will benefit from this HSVTOL program’s ground-breaking operational capabilities.”
Bell said its HSVTOL vehicles “blend the hover capability of a helicopter with the speed, range and survivability features of fighter aircraft, with low downwash hover capability and jet-like speeds of more than 400 knots.”
“This family of scalable aircraft concepts is designed to carry out USAF and USSOCOM missions across the full spectrum of conflict and political scenarios, including personnel recovery, contested logistics and ISR/Strike,” Bell wrote in a statement.
Along with Bell, the full list of companies working on HSVTOL includes Jaunt Air Mobility, Valkyrie Systems Aerospace, Jetoptera, Inc., VerdeGoAero, Transcend Air, Piasecki Aircraft, American Aerospace Technologies, Inc., Astro Aerospace Ltd., Continuum Dynamics, Inc. and Whisper Aero (Defense Daily, March 11).
SNC is also serving as the mission systems integrator for Bell’s team offering the 360 Invictus platform for the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (Defense Daily, April 29).
Bell is competing against Sikorsky [LMT] and its Raider X design for the Army’s FARA program, with first flight of the companies’ prototypes scheduled for 2023.