2 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Karem, Northrop, Raytheon team for Army’s future attack recon helo competition

By:

WASHINGTON — Karem Aircraft has forged a team with Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to compete in the Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) competition, according to a July 1 company statement.

Karem was one of five companies awarded a prototyping development contract in April.

While details are scant as to how each company will contribute to the overall design, due in January or February of 2020, the teaming announcement says the three companies together “will apply decades of combined knowledge, skills and abilities to bring the best of vehicle and systems technologies and processes to the first aircraft within the Future Vertical Lift family of systems.”

Karem is bringing its “unique active variable speed rotor technologies,” which have been developed over the last 10 years through collaboration with the Army, to the teaming effort.

The company's experience “will be augmented with Northrop Grumman's manned and autonomous military aircraft development, system integration, production and support expertise and Raytheon's systems architecture, mission equipment and weapons capabilities,” the company statement adds.

While Karem competed to be one of two teams selected to build a flying aircraft for the Army's Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR TD), it was not selected. Instead, the Army awarded it a smaller technology development contract to continue to refine its unique technology.

The JMR TD program will inform a Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program of record to replace UH-60 Black Hawks and AH-64 Apache helicopters. The JMR TD program is not a head-to-head competition between the Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant coaxial helicopter and the Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft, but will inform the FLRAA program.

Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team have each built a JMR TD aircraft which is flying in that program. AVX Aircraft Co. also received a smaller technology development contract similar to Karem's award.

The Karem-Northrop-Raytheon team will compete with an AVX-L-3 Communications Integrated Systems team, Bell, Boeing and Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky to provide design plans to the Army for FARA. The Army will choose just two teams to advance to build a flyable prototype, much like it did for the JMR TD program — except this time, one of those aircraft will be chosen for production.

The Army has set an ambitious schedule for FARA, with plans to fly prototypes in 2023. A production decision could happen in 2028, but the service is looking at any way possible to speed up that timeline.

Truncating the timelines for both FLRAA and FARA has been on the table for many years and the service continues to assess any way possible to bring the aircraft online faster.

With the advent of the new Army Futures Command — focused on six major modernization priorities, of which FVL is third — the service is moving faster on prototyping capability to ultimately procure major weapon systems at a somewhat unprecedented speed. Through the AFC and the use of contracting mechanisms like OTAs, the Army has found a way to compress parts of the acquisition process that previously took three-to-five years into periods of time often amounting to less than a year.

FARA is intended to fill a critical capability gap currently being addressed by the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter 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.

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/07/01/karem-northrop-raytheon-forge-team-for-armys-future-attack-recon-helo-competition/

Sur le même sujet

  • The US Navy’s ‘Manhattan Project’ has its leader

    16 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

    The US Navy’s ‘Manhattan Project’ has its leader

    David B. Larter WASHINGTON – The US Navy's top officer has tasked a former surface warfare officer turned engineering duty officer to create a powerful, all-connecting network service leaders believe they will need to fight and win against a high-end foe such as China. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday tasked Rear Adm. Douglas Small to lead an effort that will “develop networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics that support the operational and developmental environment that will enable our sustained maritime dominance.” Calling the effort “Project Overmatch,” Gilday called it the Navy's top priority after the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. “Beyond recapitalizing our undersea deterrent, there is no higher developmental priority in the U.S. Navy,” Gilday said. “All other efforts are supporting you. Your goal is to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and non-lethal effects from near-and-far, every axis, and every domain.” In the past, Gilday has referred to the effort to field a powerful network as its “Manhattan Project,” harkening back to the rapid development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. The urgency behind the effort to create this network highlights the growing sense of unease the Navy has around its position in the world as China builds towards its goal of achieving first-rate military power status by 2049. “The Navy's ability to establish and sustain sea control in the future is at risk," Gilday said in his letter. “I am confident that closing this risk is dependent on enhancing Distributed Maritime Operations through a teamed manned/unmanned force that exploits artificial intelligence and machine learning. I am not confident we are building the Naval Operational Architecture connecting and enabling this future force as quickly as we must.” The network is to connect with the Air Force's Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort, which the services are all lining up behind. Breaking Defense first reported the memo. Small started his career as a surface warfare officer but became an engineering duty officer in 1997. He has a background in electronic warfare and above-water sensors, as well as work at the Missile Defense Agency. In the Oct. 1 memo, Gilday has tasked him to report after 60 days, then every 90 days after that. In a separate memo to Vice Adm. James Kilby, the Navy's top warfighting requirements officer, Gilday said he wanted the Navy to develop both a concept of operations and a coherent kill chain based on an “any-sensor, any-shooter,” construct, an idea that would mean that any track obtained by any sensor can be passed to any ship or platform with a missile with which to kill it, something that would be enabled by Small's network. ‘We don't have and adequate net' In comments last year, Gilday said the Navy needed to move out with urgency to create a powerful network. “The biggest challenge for us is to join all the main command and control,” Gilday said. “We're building netted weapons, netted platforms, and netted [command-and-control] nodes, but we don't have an adequate net, and that's a critical piece.” The Navy has been working toward a concept of operations that links its ships, aircraft and unmanned platforms by way of communications relay nodes — such as small drones — or whole ships — such as the future frigate or high-tech aircraft like the E-2D Hawkeye. The idea is to spread the force out over a wide area, as opposed to clustered around a carrier, to put a maximum burden on Chinese intelligence and reconnaissance assets. This spread-out, networked force would connect the various shooters so that if any individual node in the network sees something to kill, any Navy or Air Force asset with weapons within range can kill it. This has led to a push for ever-longer-range missiles. But to make it work, all the pieces must be linked on a reliable communications network. The current architecture, according to the Navy, is insufficient for the job, given Chinese and Russian investments in electronic warfare that can interfere with communications. https://www.c4isrnet.com/naval/2020/10/14/the-us-navys-manhattan-project-has-its-leader/

  • Arms industry eyes boost as Europe looks to bolster defences

    8 mars 2022 | International, Terrestre

    Arms industry eyes boost as Europe looks to bolster defences

    Russia's invasion of Ukraine has catapulted defence spending up the political agenda in Europe and could herald a new era of purchases led by Germany, according to weapons makers gathering at an arms fair in Saudi Arabia this week.

  • Army Awards Laser Weapon Contract To Boeing, General Atomics Team

    29 octobre 2021 | International, Terrestre

    Army Awards Laser Weapon Contract To Boeing, General Atomics Team

    The Army wants to demonstrate a 300 kilowatt laser weapon in fiscal 2022.

Toutes les nouvelles