US Army FARA Scout VTOL META Thread

The US Army has been working towards replacing its helicopters. The blanket program has been known as the Future Vertical Lift with the initial demonstrators built under the Joint Multirole Demonstrator Program. Under the JMR, two demonstrator contracts were awarded. Boeing and Sikorsky have been pushing their Defiant tandem rotor and Bell has been flying its tilt rotor. The FVL program was intended to replace the entirety of the US Army's VTOL assets. The USMC and US Navy have been watching with an interest to pick up replacements for their helicopters as well.

It has been expected the first helicopters to be replaced would be the Blackhawks under a program called FLRAA. However, that has changed. The US Army retired the Kiowa scout helicopter without a direct replacement. After attempting to team UAVs with Apaches and then have Apaches do scouting, it was realized the role really did still need a manned VTOL of some kind. As a result, the US Army kickstarted the aggressive FARA program.

This program intends to have two prototypes in a fly-off in 2023. Then to have a downselect and have the production decision no later than 2028. The US Army wants to accelerate the timeline even more if they can.

To that end, the US Army has awarded five contracts to companies to do preliminary design work on their prototypes. Teams led by Sikorsky, Bell, AVX, Karem and Boeing were all awarded. Those will not be the only companies attempting to win the contract though, Global Skyworks (with Scaled Composites), MD Helicopters and Airbus will also be attempting to win the final contract.

From what has been published publicly, Sikorsky and Boeing will offer a derivative of the Raider tandem rotor. This is, tbh, probably the favored aircraft for the competition since the Raider has been flying for some time. The interesting bit is that SIkorsky and Boeing got separate contracts, but I've not heard (please, correct if wrong) of any division in the BoSik team.

Bell, interestingly enough, has elected to NOT offer a tilt rotor. Rather it will offer a derivative of its 525 helicopter. Their intent is aimed at meeting the requirements, but at a cost advantage. It could also be scaling down the Valor might be too tough to meet the FARA requirements.

AVX will, again, offer their ducted fan helicopter tech, but they have teamed with L3 to improve their changes. AVX has yet to put anything into production, so that greatly increases their risks.

Karem is again offering a tilt rotor. Interestingly, Northrop and Raytheon have joined this team. That greatly increases the chances for Karem, but Karem has a long and even sad history of dealing with the US military. They are often the token bidder, tbh, these days.

The teams that did not win contracts have their own offerings as well.

Airbus is offering a derivative of their X3 demonstrator. The design is almost reminiscent of an autogyro, tbh.

MD Helicopters is attempting to get back into the gov business and is offering a winged version of its MD 902. They protested their loss of the design contract, but the GAO rejected that protest.

Finally, afaik, Skyworks Global and Scaled Composites are offering a derivative of their VertiJet. This is derived from work done by Sclaed for DARPA. Their design aesthetic screams Scaled and Rutan. If it were to actually work, it would have the longest range and highest speed of any of the designs presented. I ... have my doubts it will get built though.

I will see about uploading photos later since ATS seems to be having an issue right now.

This thread is the meta thread for the whole program. News, pictures and whatnot ought to be posted here. These META threads are meant to allow us to collect information on certain topics in single threads and not have to hunt through ATS to try to find single, short lived threads for information.

I have 5 minutes:

The Airbus X3 demonstrator:





Some info:

www.verticalmag.com...

a reply to: anzha

It's almost as ugly as that Scaled thing.

a reply to: Zaphod58

For those that don't know, the Skyworks Global/Scaled Composites Vertijet:



www.janes.com...

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: Zaphod58

For those that don't know, the Skyworks Global/Scaled Composites Vertijet:

www.janes.com...

as soon as i saw this ship i was reminded of the carving from ancient Egypt with what appears to be choppers
on it
kind of a wow/bugga me moment

This is the Boeing/Sikorsky Raider.

The AVX-L3 compound coaxial helicopter concept



More info

Warzone Article

The Karem offering

www.karemaircraft.com...

www.defensenews.com...

www.rotorandwing.com...

Stress loads on those wings..Phew...

www.flightglobal.com...

breakingdefense.com...

a reply to: anzha

Hello Comanche my old friend,
What once was old made new again.

a reply to: PhantomTwo

Looks more like a mix of the Comanche and the Cobra, tbh.

However! You are not wrong about all that's old is new again.

The Griffin IFV submitted as the Bradley replacement? That's a tweaked FSCS the Brits carried on with after the US cancelled it.

One of the Mobile Firepower Platforms? The M-8 Buford light tank that was canceled.

I half expect the newer long range cannon being worked on will be a reborn Crusader...

breakingdefense.com...

Karem gets weird like usual:



www.flightglobal.com...

a reply to: anzha

It looks like a buck-toothed bee lol.

a reply to: anzha

Now THAT is a nice looking bird!

originally posted by: pronto

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: Zaphod58

For those that don't know, the Skyworks Global/Scaled Composites Vertijet:

www.janes.com...

as soon as i saw this ship i was reminded of the carving from ancient Egypt with what appears to be choppers
on it
kind of a wow/bugga me moment

Holy cow, you're right. Now I cannot unsee that. Weird, it does look almost exactly like the picture from Egypt.

a reply to: anzha

I really like Invictus.

Interesting that karem changed.

However, now it looks like the X-1 has been turned into a helicopter.