{"id":15144,"date":"2018-12-12T15:09:44","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T15:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/12\/12\/first-flight-for-defiant-delayed-to-2019\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:28:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:28:04","slug":"first-flight-for-defiant-delayed-to-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2018\/12\/12\/first-flight-for-defiant-delayed-to-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"First flight for Defiant delayed to 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/global-force-symposium\/2018\/03\/26\/army-aviation-at-a-crossroads-as-future-requirements-take-shape\/\" target=_blank>Sikorsky-Boeing Defiant design<\/a> will not have its first flight in 2018, following a technical issue discovered during ground tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rich Koucheravy, Sikorsky director of business development for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/industry\/2017\/10\/24\/armys-future-vertical-lift-you-cannot-use-a-cookie-cutter-acquisition-process\/\" target=_blank>future vertical lift<\/a>, and Randy Rotte, Boeing director of global\u200e sales and marketing for cargo helicopters and FVL, revealed the delay in a call with reporters Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe are going to slip our first flight into early 2019. While it\u2019s not necessarily, I\u2019m sure, what a lot of folks would have liked \u2014 it\u2019s not necessarily what we would have liked \u2014 we continue to build confidence in our configuration,\u201d Koucheravy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa-digital-show-dailies\/2018\/10\/10\/road-to-future-vertical-lift-defiant-preps-for-first-flight-valor-leaves-the-nest\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fvl-defiant-boeing-sikorsky.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Road to Future Vertical Lift: Defiant preps for first flight, Valor leaves the nest<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">The two vertical lift aircraft under development for the U.S. Army are making headway on the road to one day delivering a potential future medium-lift aircraft to the joint forces.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The team initially planned for the system to fly in 2017, but that was delayed following an issue with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/digital-show-dailies\/dsei\/2017\/09\/11\/defiants-delay-due-to-blade-manufacturing-challenges\/\" target=\"_blank\">manufacturing of the system\u2019s blades<\/a>. (The executives said that issue has now been resolved.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For months, the expectation had been that first flight would then come before the end of the year. But while running the power-train systems test bed \u2014 essentially, a full-scale design of the system that is bolted to the ground \u2014 engineers discovered a series of issues that caused them to hit pause on testing the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have had a couple of small things. I won\u2019t get into the exact pieces, but it required some repairs, just some kind of mechanical repairs,\u201d Rotte said when asked for specifics on the issue that caused the delay. \u201cThe latest ones required about two to three weeks of going back in, fixing those pieces, putting them back on the aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s nothing that requires a redesign of major components or any of those pieces. it was just, candidly, some interactions that the models perhaps didn\u2019t all capture,\u201d Rotte said, adding that the ground tests should restart sometime in the next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Sikorsky-Boeing team wants to get 15 hours of flawless test results from the ground-based system before that first flight, and the executives indicated the first flight should happen fairly early in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Defiant is one of two designs competing for the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator effort, which will inform requirements for the U.S. Army\u2019s FVL family of systems, which will come online in the 2030s. Competitor Bell\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2018\/06\/19\/bells-v-280-valor-shows-off-agility-speed-in-first-public-flight-demo\/\">V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft<\/a> has been flying since December 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Jen Judson in Washington contributed to this report<\/i>. <i>This story was updated to clarify the Valor\u2019s first flight<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second competitor in the U.S. Army&#8217;s future vertical lift fight will stay grounded for at least a few more weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"5":{"categories":["your-army","news","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"your-army"}}},"categories":[160,14,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-15144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-land","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"22XWV2PGXBBF3FEV75TZ6FKIHI","arc_canonical_url":"\/land\/2018\/12\/12\/first-flight-for-defiant-delayed-to-2019\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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