Bring out the choppers: helicopter industry to demonstrate new designs.

AuthorTadjdeh, Yasmin

After years of work, Bell Helicopter and a Boeing-Sikorsky team are preparing for flight trials of the joint multi-role technology demonstrator, a precursor to the Army's highly anticipated future vertical lift program.

The service's FVL program, still in its infancy, is an effort to eventually replace thousands of helicopters in the late 2020s and 2030s with a new vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

For JMR, Bell Helicopter is offering the V-280 Valor and a Boeing-Sikorsky team is offering the SB-1 Defiant. The companies have been working on their platforms since they were chosen in a down select in 2014.

The point of JMR is to help inform requirements for future vertical lift and to mature technology, Leslie Hyatt, the Army's program director for FVL told National Defense.

"It's going to help us understand and see if the technologies that they are developing [can be applied] in a program of record," she said.

Future vertical lift--for which the service hopes to issue a request for proposals in fiscal year 2019-is envisioned as a family of systems that will include light, medium, heavy and ultra-sized variants with commonality in components. JMR is designed to be a medium-lift aircraft.

For Boeing-Sikorsky, the team had originally planned to fly Defiant this fall, but pushed it back to early 2018, said Patrick Donnelly, director of future vertical lift at Boeing.

"The program right now isn't going as quickly as I would like," he said. "We are planning now to fly in early 2018. That being said, we've done a lot of work on our risk reduction plan and we've been able to retire several risk items in our program. So that gives me more confidence that when we do fly, we'll have a successful flight test program."

Donnelly noted that the delay is not because of any mishaps, but rather the process is taking longer than anticipated, he said.

The Defiant's fuselage was recently delivered to the team's West Palm Beach, Florida, facility after undergoing structural testing in Mesa, Arizona, he said. The landing gear has already been installed on the fuselage, and other basic equipment will soon be integrated, he added.

In late 2015, Lockheed Martin completed its acquisition of helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky from United Technologies Corp. That purchase has not negatively affected the JMR program, Donnelly said.

"There have been no problems at all," he said. "Lockheed has come in and embraced the program exactly as we had it laid out."

Bell...

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