Next steps for FLRAA MV-75, from the Army and Bell program leaders
Discussing the MV-75 FLRAA program objectives and how they align with the Army's modernization strategy.
Bell will now proceed in DARPA’s Speed and Runway Independent Technologies program, which has eliminated Aurora Flight Sciences from the running.
“Especially from an X2 standpoint, the largest procurement out there is really NGRC. And that recapitalization of the helicopter fleet in Europe is the largest thing we see today at least in the next five or 10 years,” said Sikorsky boss Rich Benton.
The intent, Brig. Gen. David Phillips said, is not to “leave any rigor behind” but to focus on producing a “a safe, suitable, effective platform for the users.”
“A lot of the reasons that we're making decisions are because of political change. That's the reality of our governmental system," said Maj. Gen. Clair Gill. "And so we might be moving down a path for a couple years, and things change. The world changes. Wars happen.”
Soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division will be the first to receive FLRAA, said Gen. James Mingus.
"The Army’s program managers for FLRAA and Aviation looked at PEO-RW’s engineering analysis and considered the weight trades before adding a little bit of weight to the baseline of that aircraft,” A PEO-RW official said.
“We're ceasing investment and procurement into those two programs as part of the army transformation initiative so we can free up those resources and reinvest them,” an Army spokesperson told Breaking Defense today.
“We are unwilling to make commitments that are [not], in our opinion, in the best interest of soldiers...,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said of the fate of a new multi-year UH-60M procurement deal.
"All of these parochial interests and all of these lobbyists that crawl around this building and crawl around Congress, they have succeeded for far too long, and so the first thing is, we are going to start to cut the things we don't want or need," Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told reporters.
An on-the-ground look at the 2025 Avalon Air Show in Australia.
Army aviation is introducing a tiltrotor to its fleet, creating defense industrial base challenges and opportunities.
The program manager for the Future Long Range Attack Aircraft breaks down what the supply chain needs to be doing now for production.