The results? Sikorsky’s MOSA has enabled third parties to independently integrate capability into the system, cut the effort to introduce these capabilities by almost 75 percent and increase software development productivity by 50 percent, compared to traditional methods. These efforts will save the Army time, money and complexity in an effort to outpace threats.

FARA finalists must demonstrate that their designs meet the Army’s MOSA standards. Much like the way apps can be easily installed or updated on smart phones, MOSA enables the government to rapidly integrate system capability and component upgrades in a vendor-neutral way to meet new and evolving threats. This also streamlines maintenance and sustainment.

“MOSA is about ensuring the Army efficiently evolves with the pace of change for technology and battlefield dynamics,” said Kirk Avery, mission systems Senior Fellow at Sikorsky. “MOSA enables service members to perform their missions.”

RAIDER X is Built on MOSA

Sikorsky is offering RAIDER X® for the Army’s FARA program. RAIDER X is designed and built from the ground up to meet the Army’s exacting MOSA requirements and standards utilizing a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach.

RAIDER X aligns with nose-to-tail standards for the Weapon System components, interfaces and network infrastructure. These standards comprise hundreds of system requirements that are met through a comprehensive model-based architecture description and associated architecture analysis. MOSA performance is assessed through technical performance measures evaluating the modeled architecture and program demonstration events.

“The Army is not physically on an aircraft following every wire to every component to validate our adaptability,” said Matt Oehler, Future Vertical Lift systems engineering director at Sikorsky. “That is why it’s so important that the architecture standards are met. The Army must rely on the architecture’s description within the system model to evaluate our solution.”

Proving MOSA

During the Sikorsky-funded verification events, Army scenarios – based on MOSA-use cases – run the RAIDER X architecture through its paces. Both large defense contractors and small businesses introduce new capabilities and validate MOSA adaptability.

The RAIDER X digital backbone is proving it can quickly and efficiently integrate with third-party hardware and software meeting the Army goals.

In one recent exercise, Sikorsky and third-party integrators demonstrated the introduction of third-party avionics with the RAIDER X’s digital backbone and third-party software to communicate with the new avionics. The helicopter crew was able to display and manage the sensor information in the cockpit seamlessly.

Sikorsky’s other third-party verification efforts are proving just as successful, integrating lessons learned to greatly improving capability.

“We don’t expect or want the exercises to run perfectly,” said Avery. “We want to find areas to improve and increase efficiency. We want to demonstrate for the Army that MOSA is foundational in everything we do – in every decision, every trade – and it’s inherent in our architecture. “We’re continuously evolving our solution so we can provide the Army what they need for their solutions and warfighter missions.”

Leveraging Best Practices

Lockheed Martin has long been an industry leader in partnering with the government to advance open architecture solutions. This expertise enables RAIDER X to bring to bear the full strength of the Corporation for its MOSA solution including model-based architecture.

In particular, Lockheed Martin helped to establish – and co-leads – the Object Management Group (OMG) Model Based Acquisition (MBAcq) user group. Through OMG MBAcq, Lockheed Martin and companies across the industry are working with the Department of Defense to share best practices and guidance to successfully deploy a common set of MBAcq standards that support MOSA objectives throughout all acquisition phases.

In addition to Lockheed Martin’s leadership in OMG MBAcq, Lockheed Martin Sikorsky has maintained active participation in a number of military open-standards consortiums including the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA), Open Mission Systems (OMS) Architecture Collaboration Working Group (ACWG) and the Interface Control Working Group (ICWG).

This familiarity led Sikorsky to incorporate MOSA solutions following open standards into projects such as:

• Combat Rescue Helicopter’s tactical mission kit
• Sikorsky Open Architecture Cockpit
• MH-60R

For the Army, MOSA is critical to encouraging competitive acquisitions, improving affordability, increasing readiness and reducing the timeline for fielding new capabilities, and Sikorsky is making MOSA a reality for FARA with RAIDER X.

RAIDER X® is a registered trademark of the Lockheed Martin Corporation

While the service continues to look at different courses of action with the program, it has continued its testing program. The Army had already installed the General Electric-designed engine, designed to replace all the engines in both UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters, into a Black Hawk at Sikorsky’s facility in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The aircraft first flew in May with the new engine and has since been tested in forward flight at up to 4,000 feet, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army program executive officer for aviation told Defense News in a recent interview.

“The aircraft and the engine are performing as advertised,” he said.

The Army is building off of this performance and is using funding already in the program line to execute testing on the Black Hawk and in ground chambers, Phillips noted. There is also the possibility Congress may provide additional funding for the test program in the fiscal 2026 budget.

If that funding is applied, “we’re going to continue the effort to get the engine qualified on the Black Hawk,” Phillips said.

The engine’s future is uncertain following the release of an Army directive in May outlining sweeping changes to the service. Dubbed the Army Transformation Initiative, the effort seeks to cut programs to make way for the pursuit of what it sees as higher priorities.

The ITEP program kicked off in a competition 15 years ago, but the engine effort has been plagued by various delays across its life as the service wrestled with funding, development strategies and a protest from the Advanced Turbine Engine Company — a Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney team, which competed against General Electric’s aerospace division to build the engine for the Army.

More recently, the engine was hit with more delays due to technical issues as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused supply chain problems.

When GE won the contract, it touted a plan to move more quickly, but that window to accelerate closed and the Army subsequently predicted a two-year delay getting the T901 engine into the UH-60 Black Hawk, the first aircraft in the current fleet to receive the new tech.

The Army was able to garner some important data when it chose to integrate the ITEP onto two competitive prototypes for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. The companies in that competition – Bell and Sikorsky – had both received the engines and were installing them when the service decided to cancel the FARA program early last year.

When the service canceled the FARA pursuit, it also delayed a production decision for the ITEP engine by three years.

The Army is also focused on other key improvements for the Black Hawk and Apache including common cockpit architecture, launched effects integration, next-generation command-and-control and other sustainment efforts that will keep the aircraft flying affordably into the future, according to Phillips.

Additionally, the Apache has airframe improvement efforts ongoing such as the improved tail rotor blade program.

The service “is making sure that we can interoperate that airspace,” Phillips said, “with the best manned and unmanned team solutions that we can field, so with all those efforts going on with the Black Hawk and Apache, it’s really brought into clear focus the thing that we need to focus on to be able to keep them lethal on the battlefield.”

The CH-47 Block II Chinook is an extended-range version of the aircraft that is used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Special Operations Command. Japan is the fourth customer for the new variant.

Germany purchased 60 of the helicopters in a $4 billion deal in 2022, and the U.K. finalized its deal for 14 Chinooks in early 2024.

The CH-47s will be co-produced by Boeing and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. The Japanese company similarly provided elements for the CH-47 JA helicopters.

The helicopters purchased for the Japan Self-Defense Forces will replace some of its CH-47 JA aircraft, which were purchased in the 1980s and delivered by the early 2000s. The helicopters have been used, for example, to respond to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, with special lead plates attached to the floor to protect the crew from radiation exposure. The aircraft collected ocean water and dropped it over hot spots.

“This award strengthens our decades-long relationship with [Kawasaki Heavy Industries] and provides critical capability improvements that will keep the Japan Self-Defense Forces operating heavy-lift aircraft for decades to come,” Heather McBryan, vice president and program manager for Boeing cargo programs, said in a statement. “The Block II configuration and digital flight controls will modernize and significantly improve Japan’s helicopter transport capabilities by improving aircraft stability, safety, and efficiency.”

The U.S. Army decided in 2019 that it would not procure the CH-47F Block II for the active fleet so it could begin making heavier investments in its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, and the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, that it wanted to field in the early 2030s. The service decided it would build 69 of the latest Chinook variant for special operations in the form of the MH-47 “G” model and stop there.

But the Block II had a comeback after several years of uncertainty when the Army decided to return funding to build the variant for the active force following pressure from Congress. And as the result of the service’s decision to cancel its FARA program in 2024, $465.2 million in fiscal 2025 funding became available to enable a Block II production start for the regular Army.

The version incorporates a new fuel system, electrical system and stronger airframe to increase lift capability. The Block II version of the Chinook featured new rotor blades, but the Army abandoned the effort in 2022 due to excessive rotor blade vibrations that, according to the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, posed a flight risk.

But as the Improved Turbine Engine Program leaps that hurdle toward the finish line, the effort is in jeopardy as the service looks to cut large programs to make way for the pursuit of what it sees as higher priorities amid the need to cut its budget by 8% as directed by the defense secretary.

Army Vice Chief of Staff, Gen. James Mingus told reporters at the Army Aviation Association of America confab here that the service is waiting to see where it lands with the fiscal 2026 budget. Officials are trying to gauge how much flexibility the service has in the budget reconciliation process to fully understand if it can afford to pay for ITEP.

“The future of ITEP is largely going to depend on where all these things land inside the ’26 budget,” Mingus said.

Currently, there is no funding planned to move the program from development into production.

Amid mixed messages on the engine’s fate over the past several weeks, following the release of an Army directive outlining sweeping change to the service dubbed by the service secretary as the Army Transformation Initiative, Army aviation leaders are working on various potential paths for the engine.

Options include outright cancellation, a continuation of the development program followed by its closeout, or a decision to proceed into production.

“We have two weeks, and now there are several programs named, you know, each of them come with a set of courses of action that we have been working on to make sure that we can meet Army senior leaders’ intent,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, told reporters May 15 at the Army Aviation Association of America.

The ITEP program kicked off in a competition 15 years ago to replace the engines in both the UH-60 and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. But the engine effort has been plagued by various delays across its life as the service wrestled with funding, development strategies and a protest from the Advanced Turbine Engine Company – a Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney team, which competed against General Electric’s aerospace division to build the engine for the Army.

More recently, the engine was hit with more delays due to technical issues as well as the coronavirus pandemic, which caused supply chain problems.

When GE won the contract, it touted a plan to move more quickly, but that window to accelerate closed and the Army subsequently predicted a two-year delay getting the T901 engine into the UH-60 Black Hawk, the first aircraft in the current fleet to receive the new tech.

The Army was able to garner some important data when it chose to integrate the ITEP onto two competitive prototypes for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. The companies in that competition – Bell and Sikorsky – had both received the engines and were installing them when the service decided to cancel the FARA program early last year.

When the service canceled the FARA pursuit, it also delayed a production decision for the ITEP engine by three years.

Sikorsky had taken advantage of fiscal 2024 FARA program funding before the Army officially closed the program at the end of the year to run tests of the ITEP in the prototype, ahead of integrating the engine into the UH-60, in order to drive down risk.

The company received the first ITEP engines for the Black Hawk last fall and began ground runs earlier this year.

“We’re currently still under contract to execute the program we were for ITEP,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s head, told Defense News in an interview at the AAAA event. “There’s still budget in 2025 to continue that work. Will there be budget in the future years or not? You know, that’s up to the Army and the [congressional] appropriators,” he said.

“The budget we have today, we’ll get the Black Hawk in the air,” he said in a May 14 interview. “How much flying and how much data we get from that will be up to the Army,” Benton said.

“We’re looking at a path ahead in real time on the options and the options could be finish [integration], because there’s not just the aircraft integration going on, but there’s also the engine qualification testing that is going on in test stands,” Phillips said. “We’ve had engines in test stands now for several years gathering low altitude, high altitude, low performance, high performance data. All of that data is very rich and informing the path ahead.”

Additionally, the Army continues to have discussions with its joint partners regarding their interest in the engine and how they might integrate it onto their aircraft and a potential path forward there, according to Phillips. And foreign partners have also asked the same question about how they could potentially move forward with the ITEP engine as well.

“We’re presenting all those, on how we could get Army senior leaders to meet their intent but get the most out of the dollars that we’ve invested in the program,” he said.

Overall, the Army has spent over an estimated $1.5 billion over the past two decades on ITEP and its precursor development. The service had spent approximately $720 million on the program by 2016. The Army’s contracts to competitors in 2016 totaled $256 million and the service awarded a $517 million contract for the engineering and manufacturing development phase to GE in 2019.

What is under consideration for a different path to modernize the Black Hawk and Apache’s engines, if the Army chooses to end the ITEP program prior to production, is unclear.

“If I had to decide today, hey, if that engine isn’t going to be available in the future, what would I do differently? Integrate a different engine? I would quickly pivot to the engine the [Special Operations forces] flies. The SOF flies with a more powerful engine,” Benton said. “Today it’s been integrated in Black Hawk, it has been demonstrated. It is available today, so there would be commonality that would provide some more capability than I have today, [but] not as much as ITEP.”

The Army is “always looking at new ways to provide more performance to the aircraft, whether it’s making components lighter, whether it’s adding more power, whether it’s adding additional fuel consumption capabilities,” Phillips said, “We always look at that and I think we’ll continue to look at that regardless of the outcome.”

The drone is a 115-pound, battery-powered twin prop-rotor aircraft that the company said can be scaled larger, “requiring hybrid-electric propulsion.”

The company designed the vertical take-off and landing aircraft to “fly faster and farther than traditional helicopters,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s vice president and general manager, said in a statement.

The drone development took place over the course of a year with the company’s rapid prototyping group – Sikorsky Innovations — moving through preliminary design, simulation and tethered and untethered flight.

In January 2025, Sikorsky Innovations successfully completed more than 40 take-offs and landings with the 10.3-ft composite wingspan aircraft, according to the statement. Sikorsky said the aircraft also performed 30 transitions between helicopter and airplane modes, calling it the “most complex maneuver demanded of the design.”

The drone also reached a top cruise speed of 86 knots.

“Our rotor blown wing has demonstrated the control power and unique handling qualities necessary to transition repeatedly and predictably from a hover to high-speed wing-borne cruise flight, and back again,” Igor Cherepinsky, Sikorsky Innovations director, said. “New control laws were required for this transition maneuver to work seamlessly and efficiently. The data indicates we can operate from pitching ships decks and unprepared ground when scaled to much larger sizes.”

The company envisions future applications for the aircraft in search and rescue, firefighting monitoring, humanitarian response efforts and pipeline surveillance, the statement notes.

Larger versions could perform long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and manned-unmanned teaming.

Sikorsky will incorporate its MATRIX flight autonomy system in all variants of the drone, according the statement.

The company is also developing a 1.2-megawatt hybrid-electric tilt wing demonstrator called HEX that is large enough to carry passengers or cargo on longer-haul flights.

Sikorsky plans to demonstrate HEX’s hover capability in 2027.

Sikorsky’s technological advancements over the last year come on the heels of the U.S. Army’s abrupt cancellation of its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA. The company was competing for the program with a coaxial rotor blade aircraft called Raider X.

The company had, over a year prior to the cancellation, lost the Army’s other future aircraft competition to Bell. Sikorsky and its Boeing teammate had submitted another larger version of Raider X called Defiant.

Since then, Sikorsky hasn’t scrapped the promise of its X2 coaxial helicopter technology and continues to pitch it to other potential customers. The company is pursuing a next-generation helicopter for Italy and the NATO Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capability, among others. Lockheed, Airbus and Leonardo were awarded contracts in July 2024 to help NATO develop a new helicopter.

The delivery signals, “a new phase of Black Hawk helicopter modernization efforts,” the company said in a June 27 statement.

The Improved Turbine Engine Program engine, developed by General Electric’s aerospace division, has experienced a slew of delays related to technology development and supply chain woes. A year ago, the Army predicted a nearly two-year delay getting the T901 engine into the UH-60.

The Black Hawk will be the first to receive the capability, and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter will follow.

The T901 engine will replace the 1970s-era T700 and provide aircraft with a 50% power increase to restore performance. It’s 25% improved fuel consumption reduces energy usage and carbon emissions. The engine is also expected to have more durable components, which will lower life-cycle costs.

While the Army remains committed to the ITEP engine, earlier this year it decided to keep the program in development longer, pushing back plans for procurement and fielding. The service does not yet have a new plan for when fielding will take place.

The Army had planned to use the ITEP engine in its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, but canceled the helicopter program this year after two competing industry teams — Bell and Sikorsky — received the engine for the prototypes they were building.

Sikorsky had taken advantage of fiscal 2024 FARA program funding before the Army officially closed the program at the end of the year to run tests of the ITEP in the prototype, ahead of integrating the engine into the UH-60, in order to drive down risk, Paul Lemmo, Sikorsky’s president, said earlier this year. On April 10, the company conducted its first ground run of the ITEP engine in the FARA prototype, Lemmo added.

Now that Sikorsky has the ITEP engines for Black Hawk integration, it will conduct a fit check with the engine in one of the two modified UH-60s and install one in the helicopter for actual ground runs and test flights, Lemmo said. That process will take roughly a month.

Sikorsky then plans to take about six months to integrate the engine and conduct ground runs prior to a first flight, he noted.

The company said it plans to install the second engine into another UH-60 test aircraft in order to accelerate the test program.

The Army has talked about how unmanned systems and sensors will largely perform such a mission along with the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter when required, but little money is programmed to be spent on the aircraft in the coming years.

While there are plenty of ideas streaming in from industry, the service is still working through technology that will be critical to integrate pilots, drones and soldiers on the ground to fill the mission and has yet to present a clear upgrade plan for the Apache.

And even four-star combatant commanders have questions.

“The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, was to deliver the capability to identify and destroy [anti-access, area denial] bubbles to create advantages for [the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft] to exploit,” Gen. Laura Richardson, U.S. Army Southern Command commander and an Army aviator, said in an April 25 speech at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference here.

“FARA intended to combine our pilots with high end capabilities that unmanned systems provide and create advantages against adversaries. What is going to meet that requirement?” she asked. “What is going to replace the Apache that we’ve taken risk in, in order to field FARA?”

The Army should at least be upgrading and matching sensors to the firepower in the Apache to keep pace with rivals, Richardson said.

“While the Army has not announced any investment in our current attack helicopter, our strategic adversaries are doubling down,” she said.

What’s the plan of attack?

When the Army canceled FARA – citing the changing character of war and observations made in Ukraine – it argued a manned helicopter was no longer survivable against near-peer adversaries in a high-end fight. The Army said it would make investments in other aviation capability and touted the performance of the Apache in the armed scout role.

AH-64s teamed with Shadow unmanned aircraft systems have filled that role since the Army canceled the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter in 2013.

Even so, the initial investment, the Army said at the time it killed FARA, would be to buy more UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopters and CH-47F Block II Chinook cargo helicopters. It’s working toward multiyear contracts for both aircraft, with a goal of minting a new UH-60M deal in fiscal 2027. But neither of those aircraft will fulfill the armed scout mission.

Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, the director of the Army aviation in the G-3/5/7, emphasizing the continued need for manned aviation, told the same audience at AAAA that unmanned aircraft in armed reconnaissance is needed, but “we need them to team with our crewed aviation to be decisive.”

While the Army has stated the Apache will continue to serve in the armed scout role when necessary, it took a risk with the Apache fleet, Rugen noted, and said not only do improvements to Apache need to be made if it will fill in that role, but the service should consider replacing 16 crash damaged aircraft.

Those aircraft are not funded in FY25 or the subsequent four years of the budget cycle, he noted.

Additionally, the Army has three squadrons of Delta-model Apaches that were not going to be bought, “that now we have to look at very closely and see how we fill that in and modernize those three Delta squadrons,” Rugen, whose last job was managing the Army’s Future Vertical Lift efforts including FARA, said.

A year ago, at AAAA in Nashville, Tennessee, Boeing unveiled what it could do for the Apache beyond its latest version. The model on display featured an additional wing pylon, joining the two already there on the current version, to provide additional weapons in a greater variety onboard.

The payloads would count on the additional lift provided by the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP engine, which has long been delayed. The timeline to integrate ITEP in Apache is farther afield than the UH-60, which is scheduled to received engines in the summer for testing. The Army decided, earlier this year, to delay procurement of ITEP and keep it in research and development for now.

Boeing said it has been working with the Army through its conceptual design and modernization efforts “to ensure that we’re meeting the future needs of the fight,” Christina Upah, company vice president in charge of attack helicopters, told Defense News in an interview at AAAA.

The company is focused on ensuring a modular open system architecture environment to enable rapid integration of technology affordably when the time comes, she noted. Boeing showcased at AAAA how launched effects could be deployed with the attack helicopter.

“Even today, the last couple of days at this event, we’ve heard from a number of senior Army leaders who have communicated that this is the attack reconnaissance helicopter for the future,” Upah said.

“There is a tremendous amount of development effort afoot that we’re doing in partnership with the U.S. Army that can be a part of the modernized Apache as well as efforts that we, Boeing, are doing and spending our investment dollars to invest in this future platform along with our industry partners,” she added.

What’s the limit for UAS?

Army leaders have stressed that unmanned aircraft play an important role in the joint warfighting concept and are taking lessons from the war in Ukraine, which exhibits a change to the character of war.

“The Army plans to increase investment in FTUAS and [launched effects], which is absolutely necessary to fight and win in the air and ground littoral,” Richardson said, “but it may not be sufficient. Unmanned systems provide commanders amazing capabilities but there are limits. UAVs lack situational understanding, situational curiosity and lacks situational agility.”

Manned systems with pilots and crew is “the Army’s asymmetric advantage,” she said.

Rugen agreed. “We have a lot of people confusing swapping UAS at less-than-mortar-round range with some type of decisiveness and it’s not decisive.”

The Army can’t settle on just swarming drone capabilities, it must refine and master the concept of a “wolfpack” of unmanned systems that “goes on the hunt and kills big game,” Rugen said.

“It’s a very complex conversation, we absolutely need [UAS],” Rugen said, but “we need them to team with our crewed aviation to be decisive at the point and time of our choosing.”

The service says it is accelerating procuring modern unmanned aircraft systems like a Future Tactical UAS, launched effects and commercially available small UAS, but clear plans to rapidly get after how an ecosystem of UAS will come together, in some cases, is just beginning to materialize or hasn’t yet.

The Army decided this year to officially retire Shadow, which FTUAS would replace, but according to Rugen there is not enough funding available to accelerate its fielding timetable. The service, instead, is investing some money to buy prototypes and fly them over the next few years with two competing teams.

For UAS to work in the armed reconnaissance role particularly, Rugen said the service needs to get its modular open architecture system established across the current fleet of aircraft, which is a challenge, in order to be able to network and integrate effectively with UAS.

Within the Army’s Future Vertical Lift portfolio, the service is focused heavily on launched effects and is only beginning to flesh out exactly how it will take capability out of the concept and development realm and into fieldable systems.

The service plans to wrap up a prototyping evaluation effort for a medium-range LE in September and will weigh options from rapid fielding to low-rate initial production to more prototyping depending on how things go. The Army is also pursuing a long-range and short-range version, which are farther afield but will begin prototyping soon.

The service plans to also focus heavily on LE at its EDGE aviation demonstration event in the fall. Another focus will be autonomy.

“What has to still evolve is autonomy to completely do a reconnaissance and security mission,” Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, the Army Aviation Center of Excellence Command commander, said at AAAA. “We are still investing in that path to autonomy. Being able to see and surveil something is a component of reconnaissance, but not sufficient to perform the whole thing.”

The Future Vertical Lift cross functional team in charge of bringing modernized aviation capability to the force in the 2030 timeframe, is increasingly focused on autonomy, according to its director, Brig. Gen. Cain Baker.

“Autonomy is a critical aspect of all of this. How do you bridge autonomy across all of these systems,” he said. “How does it get integrated? How does it get shared? How do you do mission command?”

Companies like Shield AI are dedicated to increasing autonomy on a wide variety of air assets. Brandon Tseng, the company’s president, told Defense News in a recent interview it is in the process of integrating its artificial intelligence pilot onto a seven different platforms including quadcopters, Kratos’ MQM-178 Firejet and XQ-58 Valkyrie.

“I think what we’re seeing from the drone industry, from our standpoint, with AI and autonomy, if you think about the problem differently, you can still solve a problem with lots of different small things rather than one large thing,” Tseng said.

The service is closing out its FARA effort at the end of fiscal 2024. Two teams — Textron’s Bell and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky — were competitively building prototypes expected to fly this year.

Jeff Schloesser, Bell’s executive vice president of strategic pursuits, told Defense News at the Army Aviation Association of America’s conference here earlier this month that the company had already installed the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP, engine in its 360 Invictus aircraft prototype when it got word of the cancellation.

Sikorsky was in a similar boat, according to Paul Lemmo, the company’s president. Shortly after hearing about the FARA cancellation, the company began proposing using the ITEP engine in its FARA prototype, known as Raider X, to test it ahead of its installation into the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which the company also makes.

The Army plans to replace all Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache attack helicopter engines with ITEP engines in the coming years, but the program has been delayed due to technical issues as well as supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the Army agreed to the plan, Sikorsky earlier this month used the ITEP engine in its FARA prototype at its West Palm Beach, Florida, test center, Lemmo said.

“It performed well,” he said. “This is the first time it’s under a full load in a real aircraft turning rotors. We collected that data at low speed, we’re analyzing it and the Army’s authorized us to now run up to full speed on the ground to collect more data.”

ITEP will go into a Black Hawk for tests later this year, he noted.

Schloesser said the ITEP engine in Bell’s possession has already been sent back to General Electric Aerospace, the engine’s manufacturer.

The termination of the FARA program, he added, means the company has redirected engineers and specialists to the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program.

The Army is pursuing the FLRAA aircraft, expected to be fielded by 2031, to operate across long-distances more quickly. The Army in late 2022 chose Bell to build an aircraft based on its V-280 Valor technology demonstrator, and the program will soon enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

Bell’s manpower shift over to the FLRAA program is allowing the effort to move “a little bit faster than we anticipated,” Schloesser said.

He also said work on a Modular Open System Architecture, or MOSA, in the FARA program will benefit the FLRAA program.

Sikorsky, meanwhile, will seek a home for the X2 coaxial technology it was refining across both the Defiant platform, its failed candidate for the FLRAA competition, and Raider X.

The company is pursuing a next-generation helicopter for Italy and the NATO Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capability, according to Lemmo.

“There’s a few other countries I won’t name that we are involved early in discussions about X2, so we’re going to continue to pursue that and see where that goes,” he said.

The Improved Turbine Engine Program engine, developed by General Electric’s aerospace division, has experienced a slew of delays related to technology development and supply chain woes. A year ago, the Army predicted a nearly two-year delay getting the T901 engine into the UH-60.

The Black Hawk will be the first to receive the capability, and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter will follow.

The T901 engine will replace the 1970s-era T700 and provide aircraft with a 50% power increase to restore performance. It’s 25% improved fuel consumption reduces energy usage and carbon emissions. The engine is also expected to have more durable components, which will lower life-cycle costs.

While the Army remains committed to the ITEP engine, earlier this year it decided to keep the program in development longer, pushing back plans for procurement and fielding. The service does not yet have a new plan for when fielding will take place.

Even so, ITEP engines are scheduled to arrive at Sikorsky’s West Palm Beach, Florida, test center this summer, Paul Lemmo, the company’s president, told reporters at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual summit.

The Army had planned to use the ITEP engine in its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, but canceled the helicopter program this year after two competing industry teams — Bell and Sikorsky — received the engine for the prototypes they were building.

Sikorsky had taken advantage of fiscal 2024 FARA program funding before the Army officially closed the program at the end of the year to run tests of the ITEP in the prototype, ahead of integrating the engine into the UH-60, in order to drive down risk, Lemmo said. On April 10, the company conducted its first ground run of the ITEP engine in the FARA prototype, Lemmo added.

“We lit off the engine and turned rotors for the first time on our FARA [competitive prototype],” Lemmo said. “Obviously watching the rotors turn could be mundane, but it’s pretty exciting to see multiple years’ worth of work that went into that aircraft, but also that engine by our partners General Electric.”

The ITEP engine had previously undergone testing in stands; it was the first time, Lemmo said, that the engine was under a full load, turning rotors.

“We collected that data [at] low speed, and we’re analyzing it,” Lemmo said, noting that “it performed well.”

The Army authorized Sikorsky to run the rotors at full speed to further test ITEP and collect more data, he added.

The ITEP engine, when installed, also fit into the aircraft with no issues, Lemmo noted.

“I think the fact that we proved it on FARA, that the engine fit the first time, it gives us good confidence that it should fit properly, that all the connections should match up when we fit it into the Black Hawk,” Lemmo said.

The Army plans to deliver two ITEP engines to Sikorsky in late May or June, according to Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the service’s program executive officer for aviation, who spoke at the AAAA event.

The company will conduct a fit check with an engine in one of the two modified Black Hawks and install one in the Black Hawk for actual ground runs and flight tests, Lemmo said. Once the company has the engines, it could begin ground runs within a month, he noted.

Then “it’s probably going to take us a good six months to integrate and do the ground runs,” Lemmo said. The aircraft is expected to begin “flying about six months after we get the engine,” he added.

Phillips predicted that getting in the air would “probably occur next year, just based on the schedule where we’re at today.”

Technology developed through the terminated program will also be applied to a wider variety of platforms, he said.

The service is “planning to set up additional research and development resources for the UH-60M Black Hawks to continue to improve that vital platform,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told lawmakers during a House Armed Services Committee’s Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee hearing on March 6.

The end of the FARA program last month marked an abrupt change of direction in aviation modernization and became one of the service’s most significant program cancellations of the last decade. The Army had already spent at least $2 billion on the program and had requested another $5 billion for the next five years.

At the same time, the service scrapped its Shadow and Raven unmanned aircraft systems developed for the counterinsurgency fight nearly two decades ago and a program – the UH-60V – that upgraded Lima-model Black Hawks with a digital cockpit for the National Guard. The Guard will now get Mike-model UH-60s.

The Army also plans to invest in a new multiyear procurement buy of its UH-60M Black Hawks and purchase CH-47F Block II Chinook cargo helicopters it did not plan to procure for the active component. And it will invest roughly $2.5 billion across the next five years beginning in fiscal 2025 in new unmanned capabilities, according to Bush.

While FARA has come to an end, the Army said it needs the funding budgeted in FY24 to close out the program and wrap up some critical technology development efforts that can be transferred to other programs.

The FY25 budget request will show that the Army has requested funding for UH-60 research and development across its future years development program “that was not there before,” Bush said.

“When we go to that next multiyear, we hope that’s a better Black Hawk aircraft,” he said. “The one we have is great, but we hope that that R&D, cutting across the whole FYDP, that will allow us to have a better aircraft.”

Making Black Hawk better

One of the largest areas of technology development in the FARA program was focused on a modular open systems architecture.

That development will cascade to other aviation platforms from its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft to the current fleet of helicopters and even to other future platforms like the XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle in the design phase now, Gen. James Rainey, Army Futures Command commander, said during the same hearing.

The number one priority for Black Hawk upgrades will be incorporating the open system architecture, Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence commander, testified at the hearing. “The ability for us to turn and be more nimble as we react to changes on the battlefield and put a new piece of kit on a Black Hawk, that open architecture helps us do that very well.”

The Army also “learned numerous things … modeling and simulation that we developed as part of this, the whole Launched Effects ecosystem was one of the main things we’ve benefited over the course of this study,” Rainey added.

Launched Effects will be deployed from both aircraft and ground platforms and will not only be able to perform armed scout-type missions for Army aviation but will be host to a wide variety of sensors and payloads to perform reconnaissance, take out enemy weapons, provide targeting or even extend network connectivity.

More technology that will be transferable includes work on Degraded Visual Environment capabilities, which the Army has been working on for many years, as well as sensor processing and heads-up mounted display advancements, according to McCurry.

Additionally, the service did a lot of work on sensor miniaturization and lightening payloads and sensors that can now be easily transferred to unmanned systems, he added.

And work on additive manufacturing to get away from forgings and castings will increase the Army’s maintenance-free operating periods, McCurry said.

A path for improved engine

The Army plans to spend some of its time closing out the FARA program testing out its Improved Turbine Engine Program engines in the FARA prototypes built in a competition between Lockheed Martin and Bell Textron. Both aircraft had been built and recently received ITEP engines to begin the process toward initial flights by the end of the year, prior to the program’s cancellation.

“We’ve got engines in test stands today. We’ve got engines in the aircraft today that we’re going to run in the FARA aircraft and we will learn from that,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, said during the hearing.

The ITEP engine program experienced technology development and supply chain hurdles, drastically delaying its introduction to the aircraft it will power including the FARA program. ITEP was originally designed to replace the engines in UH-60M and AH-64E Apache attack helicopters, giving the aircraft 3,000 shaft horsepower and increased fuel efficiency.

The Army is delaying procurement of the ITEP engine, a move it announced along with the FARA cancellation, but it is sustaining its research and development efforts, Bush reassured at the hearing.

“We’re going to revisit that in [the program objective memorandum FY]26, to understand based on how things are going with integration on Apache and Black Hawk, when those procurement dollars need to come back into the program,” he said. “The Army remains committed to that program and getting that capability to the fleet.”