US Army Driving Toward FVL Production in 2030

[eddo36 16]

 

Defense News â€” For those who know defense acquisition, it’s never a surprise when timelines to bring revolutionary weapon systems to life slip to the right, but the US Army’s new program office to manage the acquisition of a Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft is laser-focused on getting to low-rate production by its goal of 2030.

 

Over the past several years, Army leaders and analysts have discussed varying timelines for the program, often with more pessimistic estimates of when the helicopters could come online, such as 2040 or even as late as 2045.

 

But according to Richard Kretzschmar, who leads the Army’s new Improved Turbine Engine and Future Vertical Lift program office, if things go well, FVL could reach low-rate initial production even earlier than 2030.

 

Considering the type of efforts to develop a new helicopter from scratch — from both industry and government perspectives — the schedule is a “sporty†one, a “low- to medium-risk approach to acquisition,†Kretzschmar said Monday at a rotorcraft conference at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition. “We are doing what we can to explore moving that to the left and shortening that timeline, we are certainly leveraging the [Joint Multi-Role, or JMR] tech demonstrator.â€

 

The JMR technology demonstration is a science and technology effort to study what is in the realm of the possible for a future helicopter â€” one that can fly twice as far, twice as fast, with low maintenance needs at an affordable cost. Boeing and Sikorsky are building one air vehicle demonstrator and Bell Helicopter, partnered with Lockheed Martin, is building another. Both will undergo flight tests starting in fiscal 2017 through 2019.

 

The demonstration will feed into the FVL program of record and help the Army define its requirements for the helicopter.

 

The Army could move its timeline up, Kretzschmar said, if the established FVL requirements line up with the requirements of the JMR program. “If they are drastically different, then obviously there is more development on the industry side required in the early part of the program, so really our ability to do that is going to hinge on how far the technology has matured under the JMR [technology demonstrator],†he said.

 

Keith Flail, Bell Helicopter’s program director for future vertical lift, said at the same conference, “There is an opportunity to bring the program to the left. ... I would argue a lot of what you’d typically do in a [technology-maturation and risk-reduction] phase ... JMR is doing a lot of those activities.â€

 

Bell Helicopter and the Boeing Sikorsky team, are burning down risk through the JMR program, not just by test-flying air demonstrators but also by “fabricating parts, we are showing this intense focus on design for manufacturing, design for affordability, gathering a lot of data, actuals, that they can provide to the costing community,†Flail said.

 

Yet even if the program is able to enter low-rate production earlier, it would only be by a margin of one or two years, Kretzschmar said in an interview with Defense News at the conference. “2030 is really what we are driving toward," he said. "I think it’s going to be driven really more by resources from the Army perspective in when we can fit FVL into the portfolio.â€

 

The establishment of Kretzschmar’s program office in May — that will oversee FVL acquisition as well as the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program within the Army’s Program Executive Office Aviation — can be seen as a symbolic gesture that the service is getting serious about making its development projects a reality.

 

At the same time, Army Training and Doctrine Command stood up a capability manager for the two programs, he added.

 

Kretzschmar is focused on reaching a materiel development decision in October 2016, which will trigger the start of an analysis of alternatives. The Army hasn't stated publicly which type of aircraft it may choose to develop first. Among the options is a smaller helicopter, he said, potentially a “special ops, street fighter-type aircraft.â€

 

Ultimately, the Army will develop a family of future vertical lift helicopters to replace the current fleet of utility, armed reconnaissance, attack and heavy-lift helicopters, but that development won’t happen concurrently.

 

The Army expects to enter into a five-year technology-maturation and risk-reduction phase in 2019 then another five-year engineering and manufacturing development phase in 2024 or 2025 leading up to low-rate production in 2030.

[nodunit 397]

But why do we need this exactly?

[drebin052 323]

But why do we need this exactly?

 

To feed your MIC of course.  ;)

 

Sarcasm aside, the Blackhawk/Chinook tag team will eventually have to be replaced eventually due to sheer age and attrition.

 

Don't forget that by the time FVL-Medium and FVL-Heavy rolls around most of these choppers will be more than half a century old; in the Chinook's case it'll be exactly a century. Interim upgrades can retrofit the main components of these choppers but they don't replace the actual airframe itself, so it would eventually end up costing more to maintain an older fleet of Blackhawks and Chinooks, not to mention having to purchase replacements for any lost aircraft. Seeing as how these choppers are the main workhorses of the countries that use them, they face a higher risk of failure caused by said attrition rate and especially the age of their airframes.

[spooky lynx 73]

If the platform is quite good to serve well for near the century, why not to resume the production?

[drebin052 323]

Keep in mind that the U.S. Army, being Boeing's largest customer, isn't going to order any more Chinooks. The last Chinook that has been backlogged to date will roll off the line in 2019, and other countries (like 'straya) will get theirs either by 2017 or just after 2018, which means that the Chinook production line in the U.S. will effectively be closed once those orders are done. India might be an exception, but their Chinooks will still be mostly assembled within India itself and not the U.S. if the current agreement gets approved.

 

Restarting a shut production line takes time and is a very costly process.

 

It's the reason why companies like Lockheed haven't considered restarting the F-22 line, or Tupolev with their Tu-160s. It's simply not worth the cost when you can develop a newer platform that can be improved on from scratch instead of constantly retrofitting legacy platforms which are still bound by their original design. As I mentioned, they will also begin to inevitably cost more to fly over time as the existing airframes become more fatigued and need constant maintenance.

[spooky lynx 73]

AFAIK Tu-160's line will be restarted, although there would be produced an upgraded version. But still upgrade comes mostly to avionics and weapon systems. Airframes will be the same.

 

 

Restarting a shut production line takes time and is a very costly process.

So if there's need to replace aged airframes, best solution is to keep line working. Especially with current R&D costs *cough*F-35*cough*

[JdB 151]

AFAIK Tu-160's line will be restarted, although there would be produced an upgraded version. But still upgrade comes mostly to avionics and weapon systems. Airframes will be the same.

So if there's need to replace aged airframes, best solution is to keep line working. Especially with current R&D costs *cough*F-35*cough*

The problem with that was that most production lines for current aircraft were shut down a long time ago since at the rate back in the Cold War any currently serving aircraft would be considered outdated and up for replacement in a decade or so. Happened with the C-141, F-86, F-4, F-104, F-111 etc. Except for the F-4 all of those only served a short period of time because there were better aircraft to replace them with or they were relegated to niche roles. The replacements of the F-18/16/15/14 took much longer to come into service than their predecessors did unlike expectations back when the procurement process began. It was a completely different world after 1990 for procurement programs.

[drebin052 323]

AFAIK Tu-160's line will be restarted, although there would be produced an upgraded version. But still upgrade comes mostly to avionics and weapon systems. Airframes will be the same.

So if there's need to replace aged airframes, best solution is to keep line working.

 

Modernisation is the key point though.

 

The MoD's plan in 2012 was to have them all upgraded by 2019 with newer systems. Their latest call was for 50 new airframes to be produced but that just isn't going to happen with other programs taking priority (like the PAK FA for instance), especially with the budget getting tighter in the current economic climate. So basically the Tu-160's upgrade program is more or less an interim solution until the PAK DA prototypes see the light of day, which realistically will not happen until the PAK FA enters full production first (so until mid 2020s-early 2030s at the latest).

 

This is basically the same as what's happening to all Chinooks being upgraded to the F-model. This will continue until the 2060s when the Chinook can finally be retired, or at least until FVL-Heavy is complete which can then supplement (before finally replacing) the Chinooks; whichever comes first.

 

Especially with current R&D costs *cough*F-35*cough*

 

Without going too off-topic, most (note that I said most, not all) of the F-35's development costs can be justified in the sense that those technologies are also being used for other platforms, like a derivative of the F135 engine being planned for use on the LRS-B, or the EOTS/HMCS systems being transferred to the F-22. The Raptor's latest APG-77 AESA uses a lot of stuff from the F-35's APG-81, and the more efficient and lower cost RAM coating methods used for the F-35 are similarly being applied to the B-2 and the F-22.

 

Not to mention that these developments in turn benefit the development of other 5th/6th gen programs in the future (like U.S. F/A-XX/F-X, or the Korean KF-X) since the technology base will already be there instead of having to make everything from scratch again.

[negah 26]

So shall we see actual Orca gunships in 2030 :D ?

Some Mammoth tanks would be nice too.

[x3kj 1247]

i just find the naming of this stuff ridiculous... "Future Vertical Lift", "Future Soldier blabla"...   What comes after "Future" then ? And what if the "future" turns out to be not so future after all ?

[drebin052 323]

i just find the naming of this stuff ridiculous... "Future Vertical Lift", "Future Soldier blabla"...   What comes after "Future" then ? And what if the "future" turns out to be not so future after all ?

 

Well the Yanks do have a fondness for naming their hardware with digital-sounding acronyms.  :D

 

At least it's not called something tacky like "F-22 Killer" or "Carrier Killer".

[nodunit 397]

To feed your MIC of course.  ;)

 

Sarcasm aside, the Blackhawk/Chinook tag team will eventually have to be replaced eventually due to sheer age and attrition.

 

Don't forget that by the time FVL-Medium and FVL-Heavy rolls around most of these choppers will be more than half a century old; in the Chinook's case it'll be exactly a century. Interim upgrades can retrofit the main components of these choppers but they don't replace the actual airframe itself, so it would eventually end up costing more to maintain an older fleet of Blackhawks and Chinooks, not to mention having to purchase replacements for any lost aircraft. Seeing as how these choppers are the main workhorses of the countries that use them, they face a higher risk of failure caused by said attrition rate and especially the age of their airframes.

Oh those are some good points, I forgot how aged these airframes would be by now, especially the chinook.