Senior Army leaders are now advancing and refining plans to speed up development and delivery of a new faster, more-lethal and high-tech Future Vertical Lift aircraft currently slated to be operational by the 2030s.
FVL is an Army-led joint program to build a family of next-generation aircraft to begin emerging in the 2030s, consisting of attack, utility and heavy-class air assets. Ultimately, the FVL effort seeks to replace the Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook.
“Left on its current path, 2030s is what we are looking at. The Army leadership desires to get this sooner. That is why a Cross-Functional Team is being stood up to figure out what needs to be done,” Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, Director, Program Analysis and Evaluation, G-8, told Warrior Maven in an interview earlier this year.
With technology demonstrations already well-underway, the service is working on Initial Capabilities Documents intended to outline weapons applications and a new tech-demonstrator drone to support the aircraft, senior Army developers said. .. (stay tuned for Warrior Maven detailed reports on this)
The current development strategy, which involves the construction of initial “demonstrator” aircraft from Bell and Boeing-Sikorsky teams, seeks to both leverage the most promising and cutting edge near-term technologies while engineering systems also able to align with longer-term plans. Rapid prototyping and experimentation are fundamental to this evolving process, Ferrari explained.