What is replacing the Black Hawk

These are the two official contenders to replace the Armys Black Hawk fleet

The Army just took a big step toward finally replacing the UH-60 Black Hawk as its long-range assault aircraft of choice.

The service has selectedBell Helicopter's V-280 Valor and Boeing and Sikorsky's SB>1 Defiantto move forward as part of theFuture Long-Range Assault Aircrafts (FLRAA) Competitive Demonstration and Risk Reduction Program (CD&RR) program.

The FLRAA program, formally initiated in 2019, is intended to field a new long-range attack help for the service by fiscal year 2030 as a potential replacement for both theBlack Hawk and, potentially, the service's AH-64 Apaches.

This specific CD&RR effort, which will eventually feed into the formal FLRAA program, was funded to the tune of $76 million in fiscal year 2020 to drive down risk and speed up delivery of potential prototypes, as Defense News reported at the time.

The OTA contracts with Bell and Boeing/Sikorsky, which are usually meant to facilitate rapid prototyping, consist of risk reduction activities that combine government research with input from industry partners to eventually inform the development and procurement of a future FLRAA weapons system, according to a statement from PEO Aviation.

These agreements are an important milestone for FLRAA, Army aviation program executive officerPatrick Mason said in a statement on Monday. The CD&RR continues to transition technologies from the JMR-TD effort to the FLRAA weapons system design.

We will be conducting analysis to refine the requirements, conceptual designs, and acquisition approach, Mason added. Ultimately, this information and industry feedback are vital to understanding the performance, cost, affordability, schedule risks and trades needed to successfully execute the FLRAA program.

Both the V-280 Valor and the SB>1 Defiant came out of the Army'sJoint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration (JMR TD) program that's part of theDepartment of Defenses broad Future Vertical Lift effort.

The V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft has been conducting flights for more than two years.According to Popular Mechanics, the Valor is capable of hauling 23% more troops and 25% more cargo at more than 300 knots, flying twice as fast and operating at twice the range than the versatile Black Hawk.

This is an important milestone in the history of Bell and Army aviation. We are honored to be part of it, Bell vice president for advanced vertical lift systems Keith Flail said in a statement. The next phase is an opportunity for this team to build on the success of the last six years and continue to bring the proof that we can provide transformative capabilities to our Army in line with their stated goal of 2030.

The SB>1 Defiant only took its first flight in March 2019, primarily due to issues in manufacturing challenges regarding its rotor blades, as Defense News reported at the time.With an unusual coaxial twin-blade system, the helo boasts a purported cruising speed of 240 knots and is designed meant to maintain altitude and stability even under hot-and-high conditions.

Defiant is highly maneuverable and will extend the warfighters capabilities on the modern battlefield and fits in the same footprint as a Black Hawk, Bell and Sikorsky said in a statement, noting that the aircraft performed a high-profile flight demonstration for Army leaders in late February.

When Defiant flies, it's the result of so many hours of work to get there, Sikorsky president Dan Schultz said in a statement. We don't get surprised in flight test.

According to Defense News, the CDRR will consist of two phases lasting one year apiece, during which military planners will assess a laundry list of technologies for potential integration into a futureFLRAA.

In the CDRR [competitive demonstration and risk reduction], were really trying to develop a weapons system, not the tech demonstrator,Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen told Defense News. So were trying to take it to the next level.

The Bell V-280 Valor Will Replace the Army's Legendary Black Hawk

On Monday evening, the Army announced Bell as the victor in the longstanding Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition to replace the Army's aging fleet ofBlack Hawk helicopters, marking the branch's largest rotorcraft purchase in more than 30 years.

Following closely behind Friday's unveiling of its newest bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider, the Army announced the contract award to Bell for its tilt-rotor V-280 Valor on Monday evening, continuing the world's glimpse into the future of American airpower.

"This is an exciting time for the US Army, Bell, and Team Valor as we modernize the Army's aviation capabilities for decades to come," Mitch Snyder, president and CEO of Bell, said in a statement published by Breaking Defense.

The FLRAA competition was supposed to conclude in June, but Army leaders announced that they needed more time to review the two competing bids; Bell's V-280 Valor and a joint Sikorsky-Boeing compound helicopter platform dubbed the SB-1Defiant-X. In November, the Army said they'd released their decision by the end of the year, citing "quality control" and "due diligence" as the reason for the delay.

With up to $1.3 billion on the line under the current contract decision, however, it does seem likely that the Sikorsky-Boeing partnership will file a protest, potentially prolonging the timeframe between the contract decision and the program actually moving forward.

"We remain confident DEFIANT X is the transformational aircraft the US Army requires to accomplish its complex missions today and well into the future," read a Boeing-Sikorski statement released on Monday.

"We will evaluate our next steps after reviewing feedback from the Army."

The V-280 Valor Will Eventually Replace the Army's Massive Fleet of Black Hawks

The contract, which includes an initial award of $232 million over the next 19 months and as much as $1.3 billion in total is not to produce a fleet of operational rotorcraft, but rather to continue preliminary design work and eventually deliver "virtual prototypes of a potentially model-based system."

"There are zero aircraft being procured in the initial portion," Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army's Program Executive Officer for Aviation, explained.

It's nearly impossible to overstate the significance of this award. The U.S. Army alone currently operates a fleet of more than some 2,135 H-60-based helicopters (according to Lockheed Martin, which owns Sikorski), with at least 750 currently undergoing a series of avionics and system upgrades to bring them up to UH-60V standards.

However, the scope of this decision could grow even further, with at least 28 other nations currently operating Black Hawks or modified iterations that will likely follow the U.S. Army's lead. In fact, more than 4,000 H-60s of various sorts have been delivered to customers around the world to date.

What Do We Know About the V-280 Valor? It's FAST.

According to Bell, the V-280 Valor is an extremely capable tiltrotor aircraft that offers a combination of conventionalhelicopterand airplane capability sets. With a claimed top speed as high as 305 knots (originally 280, hence its name), or approximately 350 miles per hour, the Valor beats the Black Hawk's top speed by better than 100 miles per hour, alongside a high sling-load capability and the skill sets you'd expect of a tactical helicopter, like allowing troops carried onboard to fast-rope out of the aircraft while it hovers.

"Every time you hear the Chief or Maj. Gen. Rugen speak, it's about speed, range, and reach," said Frank Lazzara, director of Bell's Advanced Vertical Lift Systems, Sales and Strategy. Lazzara previously flew CV-22 Ospreys for Air Force's Special Operations Command.

"It's about the ability to mass combat force on an objective and close on the enemy as quickly as possible. All these things have been demonstrated by an operational tiltrotor without sacrificing performance at the X."

According to previous statements, the V-280 Valor can achieve these speeds while also carrying up to 25% more cargo or 23% more personnel -- all with a range of 800 nautical miles. For context, the Black Hawk offers an unrefueled range of just 362 miles.

The V-280's tilt-rotor design does create a wider footprint than the UH-60 Black Hawk, but Bell claims it makes up for that by being 20 percent shorter, allowing for a great deal of flexibility when landing. Tilt-rotor aircraft are, by Bell's own admission, more complex than conventional helicopters -- but with that complexity comes added capability, like sustained high speeds. And Bell points out that it has gained a great deal of experience making tilt-rotor platforms robust over 650,000 U.S. military flight hours accumulated operating the V-22 Osprey.

"What Bell did with the V-280 Valor was to evolve the tiltrotor configuration into a fighting machine designed specifically for the Army air assault and utility missions in contested environments and to be maintainable in the field," said Carl Coffman, vice president of Future Vertical Lift Strategy at Bell.

"We proved that this is not going to be a risky configuration for the Army to adopt because there is no component on the V-280 that you can't pull with organic ground-support equipment in an austere environment today."

The exact requirements the U.S. Army wants to see the V-280 Valor meet before it enters service remain classified.

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And Then There Were Two: Which Helo Will Replace the Army's UH-60 Blackhawk

• The Army has picked two companies to compete to replace the services UH-60 Blackhawk transport helicopter.
• The two aircraft differ radically from conventional helicopter designs to offer greater speed.
• The winner of the competition will enter service in 2030.

The U.S. Army has picked two winners, which will face off to replace the UH-60 Blackhawk medium transport helicopter. The Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant (left) will square off against the Bell Textron V-280 Valor (right) in the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program. The winner will enter U.S. Army service with the first units equipped with the aircraft in 2030.

The U.S. Armys UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter first flew in 1974, entering service in 1981. Todays UH-60M, the latest version, is powered by two General Electric T-700 GE-701D engines, allowing it to carry a crew of four and eleven fully equipped combat troops at a cruise speed of 151 knots (173 miles an hour). The UH-60M has a range of 317 miles.

The Blackhawk is a proven, reliable aircraft but after 40 years the design is maxed out. The Army wants a faster, longer range replacement, and the service made it clear to industry it wanted to achieve those objectives using neweven revolutionaryideas in vertical lift.

The two competing aircraft reflect the Armys desire for new tech. The Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant looks like a helicopter but there are important differences. For example, instead of a single, five-bladed main rotor and tail rotor it uses two contra-rotating rotors and a rearward facing push rotor. A medium transport helicopter version of the Defiant would have a crew of four and carry 12 combat troops. It would reach speeds of up to 250 knots (287 miles an hour), more than 100 miles an hour faster than the Blackhawk.

UH-60 Blackhawks of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, 25th Infantry Division at Exercise Talisman Sabre, Australia, 2017.

The Bell Textron V-280 Valor, on the other hand, is a tiltrotor design much like the V-22 Osprey. The V-280 improves on the V-22 concept slightlywhile the Osprey rotated its entire engine nacelle to switch between helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft flight modes, the V-280 merely rotates the forward third of the nacelle where the large, oversized rotors are located. The V-280s top speed exceeds 300 knots (345 miles an hour), making it twice as fast as the UH-60M. Valor will have a combat range of 800 miles, which is more than double the Black Hawks range. Lastly, the V-280 will have a crew of 4 and can carry 14 passengers, three more than the Blackhawk.

All of this means theres a 50/50 chance that the Armys next assault helicopter wont actually be a helicopter. The V-280 Valor is a tiltrotor and technically not a helicopter, which is why the service refers to the Blackhawk replacement as an assault aircraft.

The Army plans to choose one design in 2022, with the first assault helicopter units receiving the new aircraft by 2030.

Source: Military.com

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyles articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.