Analysis: US Army FARA-CP selection ‘bookends’ the performance range of offerings

Bell 360 Invictus - aviationtoday.com

Analysis: US Army FARA-CP selection ‘bookends’ the performance range of offerings | Jane's 360

Pat Host, Washington, DC - Jane's Defence Weekly

26 March 2020

Key Points

• The US Army’s two FARA-CP choices were a high-performance aircraft and an affordable platform
• The Sikorsky Raider X and the Bell 360 Invictus will face off for an eventual downselect

The US Army’s selection of the Sikorsky Raider X and the Bell 360 Invictus to move forward in its Future Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft-Competitive Prototype (FARA-CP) procurement bookends the performance range of the five competitors, according to an expert.

Mike Hirschberg, Vertical Flight Society (VFS) executive director, told Jane’s on 25 March that the Raider X was probably the highest-performance of the five designs while 360 Invictus was designed to be as low cost as possible while meeting the US Army’s performance requirements.

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FARA will fill a critical capability gap currently being filled by AH-64E Apache attack helicopters teamed with Shadow unmanned aircraft following the retirement of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

The service has tried and failed three times to fill the gap with an aircraft.

The Army had selected five teams to provide FARA designs last spring: AVX Aircraft Co. partnered with L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Bell, Boeing, Karem Aircraft and Sikorsky.

The Army laid out a handful of mandatory requirements that the vendors had to meet and also a list of desired requirements for initial designs, Col. Craig Alia, the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team chief of staff, told reporters last year.

The service also looked at the vendors’ execution plans and evaluated timing as well as funding profile requirements.

“The ones that were selected were clearly meeting the mandatory requirements and were in the acceptable risk level of the execution plan and the desired requirements," Dan Bailey, who is the FARA competitive prototype program manager, added. The prototype program falls under the purview of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center’s Aviation Development Directorate.

Lockheed unveiled its design — Raider X — at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2019. The company’s design uses its Raider X2 coaxial technology with a focus on how it will perform “at the X.”

“One thing that always comes out is the importance of this aircraft at the X,” Tim Malia, Sikorsky’s director of future vertical lift light, told Defense News in an interview last fall. “The ‘X’ is defined by the Army as the terminal area where they actually have to go do the work, do the reconnaissance, do the attack mission. The operation at the X is really critical for this program and for this platform.”

That’s where Raider X comes in. It’s a slightly larger version of the Raider coaxial helicopter that Lockheed has been flying for several years at its West Palm Beach, Florida, flight test center.

“Through our mature S-97 RAIDER technology demonstrator, we continue to optimize our FARA solution, which will provide the Army with an integrated weapon system that combines speed, range, maneuverability, survivability and operational flexibility," Andy Adams, Sikorsky’s vice president of future vertical lift, said in a March 25 statement. This approach is driving down risk and will result in an aircraft solution that is capable of executing the Army’s joint all-domain operations."

Bell revealed its design — the Bell 360 Invictus — which is based on 525 technology. But its design features several key differences, including its size in order to adhere to the Army requirement of 40-foot in diameter rotor blades.

The design includes a single main rotor helicopter in a four-blade configuration, a low-drag tandem cockpit fuselage and transportability in a C-17.

“Bell is proud to continue work on the Bell 360 Invictus as part of the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft Competitive Prototype competition,” Keith Flail, Bell’s vice president of advanced vertical lift systems, told Defense News on March 25.

“We have made significant investment and begun manufacturing in order to preserve the Army’s schedule for FARA CP and we are thrilled to continue our work on the Invictus,” he said. “Bell’s approach from the beginning has been tailored to deliver the advanced performance required without excessive complexity in order to get critical capability in the hands of the warfighter quickly and affordably.” Source: defensenews.com

Bell 360 Invictus: Details

S-97 Raider: Details