The U.S. Army startled industry observers on Thursday when it revealed that it was pulling the plug on its advanced latest Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) scout helicopter program—whilst teams at Sikorsky and Bell were preparing rival prototypes named Raider-X and 360 Invictus for his or her first flights.
The Army’s decision comes as a shock. FARA was a high-profile program six years within the making on which $2.4 billion had already been spent. And in contrast to many other canceled programs, FARA hadn’t entered a death spiral of cost overruns and delays. Until Thursday, the Army’s messaging had been full tilt forward.
But from an extended view, FARA’s ignominious end isn’t all that surprising. That is now the fourth failed attempt by the Army to field a brand new scout helicopter within the last three a long time. That the Army even launched FARA in 2018 raised eyebrows—high-risk tactical aerial reconnaissance, goal designation, and strikes along frontlines saturated with anti-aircraft weapons are almost precisely the missions that armies are using drones to perform today. It looks as if the thought is: higher a drone than a big, expensive aircraft with humans on board.
Two years of high-intensity ground warfare in Ukraine has provided further evidence that drones, not manned helicopters, are essentially the most viable for tactical recon/light attack missions. And indeed, after belatedly conducting an “Evaluation of Alternatives (AOA) for FARA under congressional pressure, the Army concluded that “satellites and small drones” would give you the chance to perform FARA’s mission more affordably.
“We’re learning from the battlefield—especially Ukraine—that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally modified,” Gen. Randy George wrote in a press release. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a wide range of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”
UH-60V cut, ITEP Delayed but Chinook Block 2 is Back
One other program on the chopping block was the UH-60V, which could sound like a hyper-advanced version of the mainstay UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. But, in reality, it’s a retrofit of old UH-60L helicopters, with the ‘glass cockpit’ instrumentation of the present standard UH-60M model.
Despite 70-80 UH-60Vs being delivered by Northrop-Grumman primarily to a few Army National Guard aviation brigades, in 2023, the Army demurred on ordering full production for the planned total of 768 UH-60Vs. The service now cites rising program costs for canceling UH-60V refits, and as a substitute plans to issue multi-year orders for added latest UH-60Ms.
This system to re-engine Army UH-60Ms and AH-64 Apaches with the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) that was also intended for FARA was delayed one other 12 months, having originally been scheduled for fall of 2023. The General Electric T901 turboshaft generates 3,000 shaft horsepower—roughly 50% greater than the present T700 and T701 engines. It’s unclear whether FARA’s cancellation will undermine ITEP, or if it should be procured later.
It’s not all bad news for Army aviation. The service has committed to buying latest Boeing CH-47F Block II Chinook heavy transport helicopters after halting procurement in 2018. These feature 20% more powerful T55-715 engines, latest fuel and rotor actuator systems, and increased power generation. These enable higher performance in hot or high-altitude conditions and the power to hold heavier loads, including JLTV trucks. The first six CH-47F Block IIs procured cost $199 million between them, or $33 million apiece.
The Army’s brigade-level RQ-7 Shadow and company-level RQ-11 drones may even see expedited retirement and get replaced by newer drones that were ushered in from the Army’s FTUAS competition, with flying prototypes and production orders expected by 2025. The service can also be three different “launched effects” drones of various range designed for release by other Army aircraft.
The crown jewel of Army aviation modernization stays secure: the long-range, high-speed tilt-rotor assault transport (FLRAA) based on Bell’s V-280 Valor—now accorded an even bigger pool of cash with FARA’s demise. This design could eventually spawn an armed reconnaissance variant without necessitating the event of a whole latest design. Bell is due to this fact less adversely impacted by FARA’s cancelation than Sikorsky, which has yet to secure a win for its compound-rotor designs.
The Army’s thrice-cursed scout helicopter procurement
The Scout helicopter arose within the Nineteen Fifties and 60s as a more flexible successor to pokey “army cooperation” light planes used during World War II for reconnaissance, officer transport, and spotting targets for air and artillery strikes. Helicopter scouts also led to fielding armed helicopters—initially with machine guns and rocket pods, and later with anti-tank missiles.
Arguably, the Army’s two most significant armed scouts throughout the Vietnam War were the diminutive OH-6 Cayuse ‘flying egg’—which suffered 59% losses—and the larger Minigun-armed OH-58A Kiowa, based on the civilian Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter.
Each saw loads of motion post-Vietnam, with a variant of OH-6 (the MH-6 Little Bird and AH-6) dedicated to special ops attack and insertion roles. Army light attack/reconnaissance units, however, adopted the final word OH-58D Kiowa Warrior model, with its distinctive laser designator mounted atop its rotor and wing stubs for carrying rockets, Hellfire missiles, and guns. The Kiowas soldiered on in the sunshine attack, statement, and goal designating roles—flying roughly half of all attack/reconaissance missions in Iraq and Afgahnistan, with 35 lost to enemy fire and crashes within the 2000s.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, the Army planned to exchange the OH-58 with the sleek, agile, and stealthy RAH-66 Commanche, with attack-helicopter-like characteristics. But Commanche was pricey, and interest in such an elaborate war machine was lacking throughout the counter-insurgency-focused ‘War on Terror’ within the 2000s, resulting in cancelation in 2004 after $7 billion was spent constructing several flying prototypes.
Then, in 2005, the Army awarded Bell a $2.2-3 billion contract for 368 of the cheaper, more Kiowa-like ARH-70 Arapahos, a conversion of the Bell 407 civilian helicopter. But following a series of flight delays, a 70% projected cost increase, and a controlled crash of the prototype, Arapaho was cancelled in 2008.
Next, in 2013, the Army was poised to spend $10 billion for 368 upgraded OH-58Fs (the overwhelming majority remanufactured OH-58Ds), based on a prototype that the Army had built by itself initiative. Intended to serve through 2036, the OH-58F featured latest sensors and cockpit displays, enhanced armor, and improved flight performance from weight savings. A follow-on Block II upgrade would have featured a brand new engine and components from the Bell 407 and 412 helicopters.
Nonetheless, throughout the funding-scarce 2010s, the Army canceled OH-58F and decided to retire its entire Kiowa fleet—concluding that latest AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters teamed up 2:1 with MQ-7B drones could assume the Kiowa’s mission.
Kiowa Warriors were finally fully retired in 2017, with 110 of them purchased by Croatia, Greece, and Tunisia. OH-58Cs used for training retired in 2020.
Once the service actually began using Apaches within the scout role, it concluded that they were a poor substitute, as a consequence of the prices of operating heavy attack helicopters being much higher than the fee of operating the retired Kiowas. That dissatisfaction led to FARA’s inception in 2018, and the down-selection of Bell and Sikorsky in March of 2020.
The Scout Helicopters that Might Have Been: 360 Invictus and Raider-X
The Army’s FARA requirements were for a quick helicopter cruising at over 235 miles per hour using the Army’s latest T-901 turboshaft engine, with 4 rotor blades sufficiently small that it could squeeze in between city blocks (no larger than 12 meters in diameter). It needed a combat radius of 155 miles or more, and the capability to optionally fly without onboard crew. Each individual helicopter was to cost not more than $30 million (roughly the worth of an Apache) and $4,300 per hour flown.
Inside those parameters, Bell and Sikorsky obligingly developed two strongly contrasting designs.
Sikorsky offered up one other compound helicopter called Raider-X (derived from its S-97 Raider), with two rotors stacked on top of one another and a single, rearward-facing pusher propeller. Their 7-ton design featured side-by-side seating for the pilot and co-pilot, and was expected to attain a maximum speed of as much as 290 miles per hour—a staggering 60 percent faster than a Blackhawk or Apache. It also has the spare capability to haul six passengers. (Though armed scouts aren’t intended to move personnel, the OH-58’s ability to hold a pair passengers in a pinch occasionally proved to be a life-saver on the battlefield.)
Bell’s 360 Invictus prototype was a more conventional design—derived from its civilian twin-engine Bell-525 Relentless super-medium lift helicopter, but with a lean Commanche-like profile (including the tandem seating arrangement). It sports a chin turret with a 20-millimeter cannon, optics, a laser rangefinder, and side-retracting missile launchers (to cut back drag).
Unfortunately, delays producing T-901 engines—with the one two delivered in 2023 given to the FARA competitors—had a spillover effect on getting the prototypes into the sky.
Each aircraft appear like impressive designs. Even canceled, they might yet actually fly—or, no less than, see further R&D—as funding won’t technically be cut for FARA until October of 2024 to melt the blow to the industry.
FARA was already arguably an anachronism, given the increasingly mature and diversified capabilities of drones to perform reconnaissance missions, goal designation missions, and targeted precision strikes.
The war in Ukraine, on this regard, has been revelatory. While attack helicopters have gotten their licks in occasionally, they’ve also suffered heavy losses and must release weapons from far back to keep up acceptable survival odds. And no observer of the war could dispute that drones (rangig from small civilian quadcopters and low cost first-person-view kamikazes to larger military fixed-wing surveillance drones) have performed the vast majority of the tactical-level reconnaissance and air strikes within the war by far.
Definitely, while still valuing attack helicopters, neither Russia nor Ukraine is eager to field scout helicopters. Moreover, such short-range helicopters would lack the range to actually take part in a fight on the Pacific Ocean—ostensibly the Pentagon’s current focus.
Admittedly, in comparison with most drones, an armed scout helicopter can mix additional weapons and sensors in a formidable, non-jammable package. But that’s an enormous, expensive package with humans on board. Given modern costs and sensibilities, the Army can’t afford to risk these on the battlefield in the best way it lost tons of of scout helicopters in Vietnam.
Until then, money from FARA can now go to supporting FLRAA and current-generation aircraft with a long time of service ahead—i.e. the Apache, Blackhawk, and Chinook—more robustly. In theory, the Army may even use freed-up funding to field a brand new generation of more cost effective, unmanned reconnaissance and strike aircraft that it might deploy in larger volumes, informed by the revolution in drone warfare observable in Ukraine.