{"id":52691,"date":"2020-01-13T20:11:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T20:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/01\/13\/congressional-budget-add-for-armys-long-range-assault-aircraft-aims-to-drive-down-risk\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:45:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:45:51","slug":"congressional-budget-add-for-armys-long-range-assault-aircraft-aims-to-drive-down-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2020\/01\/13\/congressional-budget-add-for-armys-long-range-assault-aircraft-aims-to-drive-down-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress boosts budget for US Army\u2019s long-range assault aircraft to drive down risk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 On a tight timeline but with additional funding, the U.S. Army is attempting to field a new long-range assault aircraft by 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congress has added $76 million in funding to the aircraft program\u2019s top line in fiscal 2020 to drive down technical risk and speed up delivery. The money, which Congress approved as part of its FY20 appropriations bill signed into law last month, will fund what the service is calling a \u201ccompetitive demonstration and risk reduction\u201d effort ahead of the start of its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, program of record.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Army completed its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration, or JMR TD, for which Bell<\/a> and a Sikorsky-Boeing team each built aircraft<\/a> to help the service understand what is possible for a future aircraft \u2014 mainly to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bell has flown its V-280 Valor tilt-rotor demonstrator for two years <\/a>and has logged more than 160 hours of flight time on the experimental aircraft. In December 2019, the company demonstrated the aircraft\u2019s ability to fly autonomously through a preprogrammed flight regime<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sikorsky and Boeing\u2019s SB-1 Defiant coaxial demonstrator had a more difficult time getting off the ground due to issues in manufacturing its rotor blades<\/a>. Its first flight was in March 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Valor has flown for two years, the Defiant started flying in March 2019. Still, the Army has determined it has enough data to move forward on its FLRAA program rather than extend the JMR TD to wait for the Sikorsky-Boeing team to log flight time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service\u2019s future vertical lift modernization efforts, said last spring that because of the data collected through the JMR TD process as a well as additional studies and modeling, the service now thinks it has enough information to move more quickly into a full and open competition for FLRAA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the military deputy to the acquisition chief, said in a Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing around the same time that the Army is presenting an acquisition strategy to the Pentagon\u2019s acquisition chief focusing on a nondevelopmental item approach to procuring FLRAA. That route, Ostrowski said, could lead to a competitive downselect by FY22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a company demonstration of the V-280 in Arlington, Texas, last week, Maj. Gen. Thomas Todd, the program executive officer for Army aviation, told reporters that the Army wasn\u2019t planning on waiting for every competitor to reach the same place, which is a problem the service has had in the past. There will \u201calways be a disparity between where particular vendors are, but that does not mean they\u2019re not ready to compete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only advantage a vendor might have in meeting timelines is that it is able to burn down risk in technology development, Todd noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\t