March 26, 2020 | International, Aerospace

Lockheed and Bell will compete head-to-head to build US Army’s future attack recon aircraft

By: Jen Judson

WASHINGTON — Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin-owned company, and Bell have been selected to build and fly Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) prototypes for the U.S. Army in a head-to-head competition, according to a March 25 Army statement.

The Army is planning to procure both a FARA and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) that will slowly replace the current fleet of Sikorsky-manufactured UH-60 Black Hawks utility helicopters and Boeing-made AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. The service plans to initially field both in the 2030s.

FARA will fill a critical capability gap currently being filled by AH-64E Apache attack helicopters teamed with Shadow unmanned aircraft following the retirement of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.

The service has tried and failed three times to fill the gap with an aircraft.

The Army had selected five teams to provide FARA designs last spring: AVX Aircraft Co. partnered with L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Bell, Boeing, Karem Aircraft and Sikorsky.

The Army laid out a handful of mandatory requirements that the vendors had to meet and also a list of desired requirements for initial designs, Col. Craig Alia, the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team chief of staff, told reporters last year.

The service also looked at the vendors' execution plans and evaluated timing as well as funding profile requirements.

“The ones that were selected were clearly meeting the mandatory requirements and were in the acceptable risk level of the execution plan and the desired requirements," Dan Bailey, who is the FARA competitive prototype program manager, added. The prototype program falls under the purview of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center's Aviation Development Directorate.

Lockheed unveiled its design — Raider X — at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference in October 2019. The company's design uses its Raider X2 coaxial technology with a focus on how it will perform “at the X.”

“One thing that always comes out is the importance of this aircraft at the X,” Tim Malia, Sikorsky's director of future vertical lift light, told Defense News in an interview last fall. “The ‘X' is defined by the Army as the terminal area where they actually have to go do the work, do the reconnaissance, do the attack mission. The operation at the X is really critical for this program and for this platform.”

That's where Raider X comes in. It's a slightly larger version of the Raider coaxial helicopter that Lockheed has been flying for several years at its West Palm Beach, Florida, flight test center.

“Through our mature S-97 RAIDER technology demonstrator, we continue to optimize our FARA solution, which will provide the Army with an integrated weapon system that combines speed, range, maneuverability, survivability and operational flexibility," Andy Adams, Sikorsky's vice president of future vertical lift, said in a March 25 statement. This approach is driving down risk and will result in an aircraft solution that is capable of executing the Army's joint all-domain operations."

Bell revealed its design — the Bell 360 Invictus — which is based on 525 technology. But its design features several key differences, including its size in order to adhere to the Army requirement of 40-foot in diameter rotor blades.

The design includes a single main rotor helicopter in a four-blade configuration, a low-drag tandem cockpit fuselage and transportability in a C-17.

“Bell is proud to continue work on the Bell 360 Invictus as part of the Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft Competitive Prototype competition,” Keith Flail, Bell's vice president of advanced vertical lift systems, told Defense News on March 25.

“We have made significant investment and begun manufacturing in order to preserve the Army's schedule for FARA CP and we are thrilled to continue our work on the Invictus,” he said. “Bell's approach from the beginning has been tailored to deliver the advanced performance required without excessive complexity in order to get critical capability in the hands of the warfighter quickly and affordably.”

The AVX and L3 team was the earliest to unveil its design for the FARA competition at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual summit in Nashville, Tennessee, in April 2019. The design uses AVX's compound coaxial and ducted fans technology. The companies said its single-engine design meets 100 percent of the Army's mandatory requirements and 70 percent of its desired attributes.

Karem announced it would team with Northrop and Raytheon and came out with its design at AUSA — its AR-40 — with a single main rotor, tilting compound wings and a rotating tail rotor.

Boeing was the last to reveal its design, coming out with it March 3. The company's clean-sheet design featured a hingeless, six-bladed, high-solidity main rotor; a four-bladed conventional tail rotor; and a propeller on the back.

The prototype aircraft are expected to start flying in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, and the flight test is expected to run through 2023. The engineering and manufacturing development phase is expect to begin in FY24.

https://www.defensenews.com/smr/army-modernization/2020/03/25/lockheed-and-bell-will-compete-head-to-head-to-build-us-armys-future-attack-recon-aircraft

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January 17, 2020 | International, C4ISR

Four Nations To Be Protected With Lockheed Martins Next Generation Radar
Moorestown, N.J., January 14, 2020 – Through partnerships with the U.S. Government, Spain, Japan, and Canada, Lockheed Martin's (NYSE: LMT) solid state radar (SSR) technology will provide front-line defense to nations around the world with cutting-edge air and missile defense capabilities. These nations are part of a growing SSR family of 24 platforms, ushering in the next generation of maritime and ground-based advanced radar technology. The basis of SSR is the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR), which the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) selected Lockheed Martin to develop in 2015 with an on-track delivery set for 2020. In 2019 Lockheed Martin's SSR for Aegis Ashore Japan was designated by the United States Government as AN/SPY-7(V)1. What is SSR Technology? SPY-7's core technology is derived from the LRDR program, which has been declared Technical Readiness Level 7 by the U.S. Government. 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December 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

Coming off a troubled year
By: Jill Aitoro The strategy for reading tea leaves of the year to come is naturally anchored in the lasting events of the year just passed. So then let us consider 2019. The year was, in many respects, one of messiness. The already tense relationship between Turkey and NATO allies got worse, leading to the decision by the U.S. to kick the country out of the F-35 program. High-profile program struggles plagued some of the largest defense companies in the world. Political turmoil led to leadership shakeups both in the U.S. and across the pond. Instability in the industrial base made advancements in technology by adversaries all the more troubling. But there were also some signs of progress. Modern warfare capabilities — from hypersonics to artificial intelligence — transitioned from a footnote for only some to the everyday vernacular of most. More experimentation emerged in techiques for system development and acquisition. And around the world, countries from various regions grew more earnest in their desires to expand their influence and investment in global defense. What can we predict, then, based upon this, for 2020? Global relations will continue to shift, no longer defined by existing alliances but rather by individual behavior and more self-serving demands. Elections stand to turn the current state of political affairs on its ear, whether it be for better or for worse. And competition will grow more fierce, driven by a shrinking industrial base and the fact that defense companies will need to look beyond the U.S. to find the most sought-after programs with the biggest potential payout. Obviously, there is a lot we don't know. Will NATO flounder or regain its footing? Will election results drive allies closer together or farther apart? Will defense budgets go up or down? And will the increasing use of hybrid tactics reshape both the forces of today and the systems of tomorrow? We asked leaders from around the world to provide their perspective. See what's on their minds here in Outlook 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook/
September 4, 2018 | International, C4ISR

German Cabinet approves new cybersecurity agency
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany – Germany is one step closer to getting its own version of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as officials here seek to bolster the country's cybersecurity posture. The Cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel this week approved the new organization, to be headed jointly by the Defense and Interior ministries. The outfit is slated to get a budget of €200 million ($230 million) between 2019 and 2022. The new “Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity” will eventually have 100 employees. The German parliament, the Bundestag, will debate the proposal in the upcoming months. Once the funding is cleared, analysts will begin their work in earnest next year. While the Pentagon's DARPA served as a model in creating the new organization, the American agency's funding and personnel commitment dwarfs that of new German effort. But the move is still a major step forward here because it shows a political commitment to cyberspace in the context of defense and security that officials said was previously lacking. Notably, one of the explicit goals is to speed up the acquisition cycle for cybersecurity technology. That puts Germany in the same boat as many governments around the world, where officials have found themselves perennially lagging behind sophisticated attack schemes employed by hackers. Full article: https://www.fifthdomain.com/global/europe/2018/08/31/german-cabinet-approves-new-cybersecurity-agency

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