US Army finalizing future aircraft design with hopes to field faster
By Jen Judson
Apr 28, 2025, 04:48 PM
The V-280 Valor performs a flight demonstration in Arlington, Texas, Oct. 28, 2020. (Luke J. Allen/U.S. Army)
The U.S. Army is working toward finalizing its design by the end of the year for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft that will ultimately replace the UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter, as the service hopes to speed up its fielding to earlier than 2030, according to the project manager in charge of the effort.
The service has had “unprecedented access to the design [in] real time” of FLRAA through Bell’s rigorous digital engineering, Col. Jeffrey Poquette, the service’s project manager for the program, said in a recent interview. The Army chose the Textron subsidiary at the end of 2022 to build a tiltrotor aircraft that is expected to fly twice as fast and twice as far as a Black Hawk.
Bell beat out a Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky and Boeing team following a competitive technology demonstration phase where each built a flying demonstrator. Sikorsky and Boeing’s Defiant X featured coaxial rotor blades.
The design process for FLRAA, which will culminate in a critical design review either sometime toward the end of this fiscal year or in the beginning of the next, has allowed the Army to move much faster than in previous aircraft development programs, Poquette said.
https://www.militarytimes.com/land/2025/04/28/us-army-finalizing-future-aircraft-design-with-hopes-to-field-faster/
