Aviation Giants Enter Final Stretch to Replace Black Hawk.

• Author: Roaten, Meredith

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--As the Army prepares to decide on a replacement for the venerable but aging Black Hawk, competitors are putting the finishing touches on their offerings.

The service is expected to make a decision on its future long-range assault aircraft, or FLRAA, program this fall, a decision so imminent that the Army has entered a "quiet period" on the competition.

Future Vertical Lift--which includes FLRAA and the service's future scout helicopter--is one of the Army's top three major modernization priorities as the service prepares for great power competition with China and Russia. The first Army unit is slated to be equipped with FLRAA by fiscal year 2030.

The rapidly approaching contract decision doesn't mean that both teams haven't been busy. Executives at opposing aerospace teams Boeing-Sikorsky and Bell Textron said they are using the coming months to lower risk for their platforms through additional testing and qualifications and digital manufacturing efforts.

Each team has developed a platform radically different from the Black Hawk, which dates to the 1970s.

One Boeing and one Sikorsky pilot flew the Defiant X--the team's prototype based on the Sikorsky X2 experimental coaxial twin-rotor helicopter--700 nautical miles from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Nashville for the Army Aviation Association of America summit.

While it was a risk to make the trip using the prototype, the confidence the test pilots had in the platform convinced executives to get it airborne, said Paul Lemmo, president of Sikorsky, during a press briefing leading up to the summit.

"We had our engineering and safety teams take a very deep look at sending it ... but the test pilots were confident every step of the way and, really, that's what helped us make the decision," he said.

While the flight itself was risky, he noted other risk reduction techniques the engineering team uses, such as evaluations of the platform and design through a propulsion test bed.

Until the competition decision, Boeing and Sikorsky will continue to fly the Defiant X and run tests that "expand the flight envelope," said Lemmo. Sikorsky and Boeing have already demonstrated the requirements for the Army's joint multi-role demonstration contract, which the companies were awarded in 2020, he noted. The Army awarded the contracts to the companies to develop a prototype for the competition, and both companies entered the second phase of the program in March last year.

"So anything we do...