25/12/2022
Snazzy looking!
Textron’s Bell has won the U.S. Army’s competition to build the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), the service’s largest helicopter procurement decision in 40 years. The service wants FLRAA to be capable of traveling roughly 2,440 nautical miles (or 2,810 miles) without refueling, but also to be agile enough to maneuver troops into dangerous hot spots. The deal for the next-generation helicopter is worth up to $1.3 billion and is set to replace roughly 2,000 Black Hawk utility helicopters and eventually, 1,200 Apache attack helos. FLRAA will not serve as a one-for-one replacement and will take over the roles of the Black Hawk, long the workhorse of the Army for getting troops to and around the battlefield, by around 2030. The engineering and manufacturing development and low-rate production phase alone could be worth roughly $7 billion. If the “full complement” of aircraft are purchased across the projected lifetime of the fleet, the program could be worth approximately $70 billion, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, Maj. Gen. Rob Barrie, said during a Dec. 5 media roundtable.
The FLRAA competition pitted two aircraft head to head: Bell’s V-280 Valor, a tiltrotor, and Sikorsky-Boeing’s SB-1 Defiant coaxial helicopter, which lost the competition (shown last). Both aircraft were designed to fit into the same footprint as a Black Hawk.
