Te future attack reconnaissance aircraft,


or FARA in US Army acquisition parlance, is one of two, and perhaps eventually three, classes of vertical-lift vehicles the army wants to buy over the next 20 years to replace potentially all 4,000 aircraft in its current vertical-lift fleet. In one form or another, army planners and


procurement leaders have been working on the replacement for its rotary fleet since at least 2004, and really since the early 1990s. It has been a frustrating process that has seen the cancellation of at least three different programs amid concerns about costs, funding sources, competition with other large procure- ment programs, and indecision among army leaders over what their future missions and tactics, and thus, what their future equipment requirements will be. Over most of the last five years, the big-


gest—and some of the smaller—US helicopter manufacturers have been working under the assumption that the army most wanted a longer range, faster, more fuel-efficient troop transport and utility helicopter to replace its workhorse fleet of more than 2,000 Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks. But within the last year the army has made it clear that, while the Black Hawk replacement aircraft remains the biggest and most important item on its aviation wish list, the smaller FARA aircraft has been moved to the top of that list because it is most urgently needed. Te Army has been without a true armed


scout aircraft since the last of the Bell OH-58 Kiowa Warriors was retired in mid-2017. Some aspects of the armed scout mission were assumed by Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and some by drones. But that shift always was meant to be temporary, in large part because the Apache is too large, too expensive to acquire, and hugely expensive to operate in the scout role, for which it is not optimized. Te shift to that aircraft also adds


significantly to the already heavy maintenance demands on the Apache fleet and on Apache pilots. So now the army is moving with the kind of development speed not


seen since World War II to determine what kind of vertical-lift vehicle it will need to fill the FARA role. In a tentative timeline laid out last summer, the army hopes to begin fielding that aircraft by the early 2030s, perhaps even a bit earlier. Initial award of preliminary design contracts to as many as six


manufacturers is expected in June 2019. Approximately nine months later, the army plans to award two of those competitors contracts to build and test prototypes. A fly-off is planned to commence in the fall of 2022 (the first quarter of the government’s fiscal 2023). But the selection of a winner to actually build the FARA is not


guaranteed to follow immediately after the fly-off. Te plan leaves room for the army to delay that decision, either to allow for more technology advancement or, more politically, to allow Congress and the adminis- tration more time to wedge the program into the defense budget. However, neither the army’s short-term rush to get to a FARA fly-off


in just four years, nor the political and funding uncertainty surrounding its fast-track FARA development plan, detracts from how impressive the S-97 and its underlying technology already are.


Sikorsky Pursues Two Big Wins Make no mistake, the Raider and the derivative aircraft that’ll be built to win that fly-off will have to be pretty darn impressive for Sikorsky to reach its ultimate goal with its X2 compound helicopter technology, and for Lockheed to get the maximum reward for its decision to buy Sikorsky from United Technologies for nearly $9 billion in 2015. Clearly, Sikorsky and Lockheed leaders are focused on grabbing two big brass rings in the army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft procurement extravaganza, not just one. Te first one, obviously, is defeating the FARA competition—probably


Bell—in the relative short term and converting that technology into an enormous contract to build 400 to 500 units of this nation’s next light observation and attack aircraft. Tat aircraft can be expected to serve deep into the second half of the 21st century. Te second brass ring for which Sikorsky is reaching would be to win the slower moving but already underway competition to build the long-range assault vertical-lift aircraft that eventually would replace the Black Hawk. Te S-97 Raider’s mere existence and the strong flight-test record


it already is building clearly puts Sikorsky in the lead in the FARA competition. But the Raider’s big brother, the Sikorsky/Boeing SB>1 Defiant, is believed by analysts to be at least a year behind rival Bell’s V-280 Valor tilt-rotor entry in the Black Hawk replacement derby. Sikorsky leaders, however, obviously are hoping that an impressive showing in the FARA fly-off competition using the same X2 technology that will also be at the core of the SB>1 Defiant will go a long way toward Sikorsky closing the gap with Bell in the long-range assault aircraft competition. To be sure, the Raider, as configured today, will not be Sikorsky’s


entrant into the FARA sweepstakes. But that entrant won’t be much different: a little larger, perhaps a smidgen faster and, once armed with the weapons and all the high-tech electronic gear the Army wants its new scout attack helicopter to carry, a lot more effective in battle. Tose military upgrades from the current Raider demonstrator will


be worth exploring in minute detail in the years ahead. But even now, as currently constituted without all the radars and communication equipment needed for the scout mission and without the guns and missiles it’ll also carry, the Raider is an impressive vehicle.


WINTER 2019 ROTOR 31


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