Bell Unveils Sleek, Stealthy New Attack-Recon Helicopter

Video Above: Top Army Weapons Buyer Details Future Attack Technology

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Laser-guided Hydra 70 rockets, RF-driven Hellfire missiles, Spike NLOS weapons, the emerging Joint Air to Ground Missile and even unanticipated, yet-to-exist weapons will all fire from Bell’s new 360 Invictus, a stealthy, high-speed attack helicopter being offered for the Army’s Future Assault Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).

Bell’s 360 Invictus

The new helicopter, now shown in a series of just-released, sleek-looking photographs, is designed with a smooth, stealthy, rounded fuselage, single rotor, back tail rotor and internal weapons bay, intended to reduce radar signature, increase speed and agility, introduce new paradigms for sensing and targeting and fire a new generation of long-range, precise air-attack weapons.

The aircraft is now 90-percent built, developers explain, as Bell engineers await the anticipated arrival of the helicopter’s new engine, the highly-efficient, new Improved Turbine Engine (ITE), or T901-GE-900 (T901). Once the engine arrives, the attack helicopter will essentially be ready to fly. The Bell approach, which seeks to accommodate, anticipate and potentially help advance Army requirements for the new aircraft, which will fly alongside and potentially replace some upgraded Apache attack helicopters. Bell’s Invictus 360 is now being evaluated by the Army alongside Lockheed-Sikorsky’s Raider X FARA offering.

Future Assault Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA)

“The FARA program for us with the United States Army is really two baselines. One is the competitive prototype. We are over 90% built. Essentially, we’re waiting on the engine, which will be released from GE to the Army here later this year. But we’re also developing the Increment One weapon system. So I’ve got a lot of engineers that are doing weapons system development,” Chris Gehler, Vice President and Program Director Bell 360, Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft, told Warrior in an interview.

Clearly the Invictus 360 helicopter is built with an ability to fire Hellfire, JAGM and other existing cutting edge weapons systems, yet key elements of its future arsenal remain an open question. This may in large measure be by design, given that emerging technologies are presenting new weapons options rapidly such as lasers, EW systems, AI-enabled in flight course correcting and longer-range, more precise targeting. Therefore, it would make sense that engineers would seek to build the aircraft with a specific mind to upgradeability.