Army Starts Work on Future Attack-Recon Helicopter – After Apache

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

The Army is now crafting early requirements for what is expected to be a new attack helicopter — beyond the Apache — with superior weapons, speed, maneuverability, sensor technology and vastly-improved close-combat attack capability.

“We know that in the future we are going to need to have a lethal capability, which drives us to a future attack reconnaissance platform. The Apache is the world’s greatest but there will come a time when we look at leap ahead technology,“ Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told a small group of reporters.

A future attack-reconnaissance helicopter, now in its conceptual phase, is a key part of a wide-spanning, multi-aircraft Army Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. FVL seeks 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.

Current areas of exploration, McConville elaborated, include examinations of aerodynamics, aircraft configurations, new sensor technology and the physics of advanced attack helicopter flight.

The Army is now working on two Initial Capabilities Documents (ICDs) to lay the conceptual groundwork for new weapons, munitions and a supplemental next-generation drone.

The new attack-recon helicopter is intended to follow the – now much further along – FVL utility helicopter program effort; currently being developed as a Science & Technology demonstrator program, this program now includes built, airborne helicopters.

The concept informing a new attack-recon initiative rests upon the realization that even the most advanced existing Apache helicopter, originally emerging in the 1980s, may ultimately have some limitations as threats evolve in coming years. Although the most current Apache, the AH-64E, contains composite rotorblades, improved avionics and a new 701D engine, a new platform would be expected to introduce a quantum leap forward with respect to attack helicopter technology.