Launching drones at high speeds to track and attack enemies on the move, finding pockets of hostile forces amid uneven, mountainous terrain, unloading chain gun fire down upon concentrations of dispersed enemy fighters and bringing suppressive fire in support of advancing infantry are all missions the Army’s new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft are expected to perform.
The new platform, Army senior leaders tell The National Interest, will bring new dimensions to forward scouting, advanced networking and drone attacks in coming years. In recent years, the Army awarded development deals to Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, and Bell for the platform, which is intended to replace the now-retired Kiowa Warrior helicopter.
Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA)
“The best way to describe the FARA is it is going to replace the Kiowa Warrior—which we retired a few years ago. We took Apaches and put them into the scout role, but Apaches were never designed to be a scout aircraft. This won’t replace the Apaches that are in the fleet, but it will replace the Apaches that are in the scout role,” General John Murray, Commanding General, Army Futures Command, told TNI in an interview.
Naturally a huge emphasis with this program is to achieve truly unprecedented and unparalleled levels of pure operation speed.
FARA: RAIDER X
A FARA offering from Sikorsky called RAIDER X could provide the Army exactly those transformational technologies that it needs in the future fight, should early signs continue to show promise.
The RAIDER X is intended to build upon breakthrough progress made earlier by Sikorsky with its X2 Technology Demonstrator, a high-speed coaxial rotorblade helicopter which set new records by flying more than 250 knots in 2010. Sikorsky’s S-97 Raider helicopter in 2019 hit 207 knots. Sikorsky’s FARA will expand upon and “scale” the S-97 as it develops its RAIDER X prototype.
“The growth that RAIDER X has inherently built into the X2 design, to be able to take increased power, the large weapons bay volume which will increase the amount of ordnance, which will increase situational awareness that these crews will have. It will really deliver an unsurpassed capability to those ground maneuver commanders that are out trying to execute this really tough fight,” Jay Macklin, Sikorsky business development director, Future Vertical Lift, told The National Interest in an interview.
