The U.S. Army is ending its latest effort to construct a brand new armed scout helicopter, generally known as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, an abrupt change of direction that marks one among the department’s most vital program cancellations of the last decade.
The service had already spent no less than $2 billion on this system and had requested one other $5 billion for the following five years, in accordance with budget documents.
The helicopter program arrived in 2018 with lofty expectations. Army leaders hoped it will function a model for brand spanking new acquisition approaches for its most complex and costliest weapon systems. Prototypes from Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky were expected to fly later this 12 months. And, perhaps most significantly, the aircraft was slated to offer a long-needed armed scout solution after a long time of starts and stops.
But Thursday, the Army’s top acquisition officials described a brand new vision and major aviation overhaul. Along with ending FARA, the Army plans to do away with its entire Shadow and Raven unmanned aircraft fleets, said Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief.
It can also stop fielding its recent substitute for UH-60 Lima-model Black Hawk utility helicopter — the Victor-model — to the Army National Guard and as an alternative field UH-60 Mike-models, the most recent variant utilized in the lively force, Bush said.
Finally, the service will delay procurement of its next-generation helicopter engine, which was set to be utilized in all UH-60s, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters in addition to to power FARA.
As an alternative, Bush said the Army will spend the newly available money on Black Hawks, the most recent variant of the CH-47F Block II Chinook cargo helicopter, the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft and research and development efforts to speed up its unmanned aerial reconnaissance capability.
Gen. James Rainey, an acquisition leader overseeing this system, said he doesn’t view the cancellation “as a failure” for Army Futures Command, the Austin, Texas-based office heading the service’s modernization efforts.
“We’re making great progress, now we have momentum, the overwhelming majority of our signature modernization efforts are either on time or ahead of schedule and are beginning to translate into capabilities,” he told reporters Thursday.
Top priority
The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, was meant to fill Army aviation’s No. 1 mission gap: armed reconnaissance. For the last 10 years, following the retirement of the Vietnam-era OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter, which long performed that mission, the service has relied on the costlier AH-64E Apache attack helicopter paired with the Shadow unmanned aircraft system.
The Army has already twice canceled potential substitute efforts for the armed scout. In 2004, it terminated the Comanche program after spending $9 billion to provide two prototypes.
4 years later, it canceled the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter.
Within the last attempt before FARA, the service asked industry to bring business off-the-shelf aircraft to a “fly-off” to fill the armed scout mission, however the Army walked away from the trouble in 2013, finding nothing that met all of its requirements.
Five years ago, the service unveiled Army Futures Command, a brand new command meant to enhance the service’s modernization program track record. FARA quickly became a signature effort of the command, which was tasked with outfitting a totally modernized force by 2030.
At the identical time, the Army has been advancing a second helicopter program, the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft. Bell Textron won the contract to offer its V-280 tiltrotor aircraft for this system at the tip of 2022.
Skeptics have wondered if the Army can successfully procure two aircraft concurrently, but service leaders have said they don’t have any selection.
Asked which program he’d select if future budgets didn’t allow for each, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, then director of AFC’s Future Vertical Lift cross-functional team, said the efforts are “not a ‘need to have,’ it’s an imperative.”
“Modernization is an imperative, so so long as that continues to be the Army priority, which I imagine it is going to, then we’re going to proceed to search out ways to execute these programs,” he told Defense News in 2021. “I don’t see it as a selection.”
Vision for vertical lift
Army officials said the service still needs armed reconnaissance — however the technology has modified. The service will now not depend on a manned helicopter to execute nearly all of armed scout missions and can as an alternative look to unmanned aircraft and sensors to conduct those missions.
“The longer term goes to be about who can properly integrate humans and machines effectively, how do you optimize those two things,” Rainey said.
In a press release, Army Chief of Staff Randy George said the service was influenced by the battlefield in Ukraine. It has seen there “that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally modified.”
“Sensors and weapons mounted on quite a lot of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching, and more inexpensive than ever before,” he added.
The service plans to conclude FARA prototyping activities at the tip of fiscal 2024, which can give the service and industry a probability to wind up technology development transferable to other programs.
While Bush wouldn’t specify exactly how much money can be available to spend on other efforts to strengthen the Army’s aerial tier, he said the Army plans to spend more on reconnaissance UAS which can be more able to surviving high-end fights, including the Future Tactical UAS and launched effects.
The Army’s inventory of small, runway independent UAS includes greater than 575 Shadows and 19,000 Ravens.
The service had long planned to retire a portion of its Shadow fleet, grown in the course of the counterinsurgency years. Raven, a small unmanned aircraft, can be an aging platform and the service considers it now not effective in multidomain operations against near-peer adversaries.
The Army has sought to interchange Shadow with a Future Tactical UAS. In 2022, after a roughly four-year competition, the Army awarded AeroVironment an $8 million contract to offer its Jump 20 system as an interim FTUAS capability for a single brigade.
To purchase more, the Army held a second competition and, a few 12 months ago, selected five firms to advance. It quickly eliminated incumbent AeroVironment. By September 2023, the Army whittled the group to only two firms — Shadow manufacturer Textron and Griffon Aerospace. Each are still constructing prototypes in hopes of winning an FTUAS production contract.
In line with Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for Army aviation, the Army is planning to get FTUAS prototypes into operational users’ hands by FY25.
And the Army is pushing to award a contract for a short-range launched effect in early 2025, he said. The service has plans to accumulate short, medium and long-range launched effects as a part of its modernization push.
The FLRAA program will proceed as planned, Bush said, and the Army will work to remain on the right track to field the primary operational unit by FY30.
Making adjustments
With the absence of a second future vertical lift platform as a part of the Army’s modernization plans, the service will commit extra money to modernizing its current fleet.
The service wants a brand new multiyear contract to acquire UH-60Ms starting in FY26, when the present multiyear involves an end, in accordance with Bush.
After planning not to purchase CH-47F Block II Chinooks for the lively force to liberate funding for FVL efforts in 2018, the Army is now reversing that call and plans to formally enter production resulting in future full-rate production, Bush said.
Meanwhile, the Army says it is going to curb its Victor-model Black Hawk utility helicopters, which feature digital cockpits and were intended to interchange older Lima-model aircraft for the Army National Guard. Bush said this system experienced “significant cost growth.”
The Army has said it considered the V-model technology a stepping stone in its pursuit of a digital backbone for its FVL fleet, which can allow mission systems to seamlessly plug into the architecture of the aircraft.
Redstone Defense Systems won a contract in spring 2014 to take a Northrop Grumman-designed cockpit and integrate the technology into V-model prototypes. The Army then partnered with Corpus Christi Army Depot, Texas, to convert Lima-models into Victor-models at the speed of 48 aircraft per 12 months, which some called too slow, as it will take roughly 15 years for the service to provide all 760 V-model aircraft to interchange the L-models within the Guard.
Phillips said the Army has delivered 60 V-models to the Guard and plans to proceed fielding through fiscal 2024. The service will provide the Guard Mike-model Black Hawks to fill out the fleet requirements as an alternative.
The V-model experienced software reliability issues in its initial operational test and evaluation in 2019, which partly delayed this system. This system was further delayed when the Army was unable to reschedule a brand new operational test and receive certification to fly in national airspace in the course of the early a part of the coronavirus pandemic. The Army wrapped up its second initial operational test and evaluation of the V-model in summer 2022.
Bush said the Army still intends to purchase its next-generation engine, but will delay production for an indefinite period. The hassle, generally known as the Improved Turbine Engine Program, has already been running years behind schedule.
In line with Phillips, there are six ITEP engines in tests, two with the FARA competitors and two more that can go into the primary UH-60s in May for testing.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.