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Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Army aviation charts new course as it grapples with surprise cuts
Army aviation leaders were caught off guard by some of the sweeping changes to the service's overall force structure and are now scrambling to align plans with the top brass' shifting vision, which includes abrupt moves to cancel or scale back key programs like a modernized aircraft engine, spy planes and larger runway-dependent unmanned aircraft. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll issued memos within a day of each other earlier this month announcing major changes to command structure and formations and changes to acquisition and modernization efforts, including canceling programs while boosting others. But, despite the surprise, leaders across the aviation branch said they are embracing change and working to shape the role aviation will play in future operations. The announcement from the top 'was a little abrupt,' Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commander of the Army's Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, told reporters at the Army Aviation Association of America's annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last week. 'Some of the decisions that were made were not exactly what we had proposed, but they were decisions in the context of the folks in the Pentagon who are looking at the entirety of the Army budget, the priority systems which are not all aviation-centric,' Gill said. 'I would even argue that we're not the Army's priority. We're looking at air-and-missile defense, counter-[unmanned aircraft systems], UAS protection,' he said, adding that with a fixed budget, decisions on what to prioritize are tougher. 'It's no surprise that the Army made some tough cuts. Some of them were just maybe deeper than we thought they were going to be,' Gill said. Some portions of the restructuring effort demonstrate how the Army is looking to transform its aviation capability, which begins with divesting old equipment. The service was already deep into that effort, Gill noted. Toward the end of 2023, the Army decided to trim its UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter fleet by 8%. Months later, it canceled its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft competition before selecting a winner to build prototypes. It also divested its Lima and Victor model UH-60s in favor of modernizing the service's most capable variant, the Mike model. The service was already working on ways to end the AH-64 Delta-model Apache attack helicopter fleet and move over to a pure fleet of the most modernized version, the Echo-model. 'All the Army Transformation Initiative did was accelerate,' Gill said. 'They made some very clear decisions that sort of answered a bunch of [requests for information] that we had.' As part of the new cuts, the Army has decided to end procurement of the Gray Eagle UAS for the active force, cancel a competitive effort to replace the Shadow UAS with a new Future Tactical UAS and halve the number of new spy planes it planned to buy as part of the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, program. The Army also said it plans to cease developing the Improved Turbine Engine Program, a decades-long effort to replace the engines in Black Hawks and Apaches. The ITEP engine powered a Black Hawk in a hover for the first time last week. The Army also plans to inactivate one air cavalry squadron per combat aviation brigade in the active component and said it would cancel the planned activation of the 12th CAB, according to an Army execution order obtained by Defense News. Aviation leadership had 'teed up a number of options' related to equipment and formations and had already shared them with Army leadership, Gill said. The branch was supposed to head into an Army Requirements Oversight Council meeting this month with some of those proposals. 'I think with some of those proposals, all this did was accelerate a whole bunch of staff churn and just say, 'Hey, here's where we are,'' he said. Even so, Gill noted 'we only got this two weeks ago, and so we don't know all the details of it,' Gill said. 'I think our job, collectively, as is the case for the rest of the Army, is to do mission analysis on what we were told to do and then provide options to senior leaders, and in some cases, it'll be ways that we can execute exactly what they told us to do. And it might be even like, you know, saying, 'Hey, here are all the consequences. Is that still the order?'' While some decisions may have been surprising, Army aviation leaders said they acknowledge the need for change across the service. 'We need to divest faster, and we need to iterate and procure and probably continue to iterate and procure on newer technologies that we think are emerging, given the context of the operating environment that we see both east and west of us,' Gill said. One of the newer priorities for the Army within the aviation portfolio is to accelerate the service's planned procurement of a Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, which Textron's Bell is building in the prototyping phase. The goal now is to try to deliver some production-level platforms to soldiers by 2028 instead of in 2031. The Army is also planning to focus on developing and rapidly fielding UAS and launched effects across the force to operate at different echelons and across a wide variety of mission sets. As Army aviation becomes a more complex array of manned, unmanned and uncrewed systems, branch leadership is working to design a force that relies more heavily on sending drones forward on the battlefield rather than manned aircraft to do some of the missions manned aircraft used to do, like armed reconnaissance. As part of an initiative begun by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George over a year ago, the service started a 'transformation in contact' initiative where units were given new capabilities and free rein to use them extensively during exercises to see what works and what doesn't and how new equipment might work in various formations. A large focus of the effort was on bringing UAS into the fold at the brigade level. George also pushed for a new, more flexible way to fund UAS procurement rapidly and more often. The aviation branch is 'absolutely changing the ways we've been doing business,' Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army's program executive officer for aviation, said at the Army Aviation Association of America conference last week. 'We're executing in ways that we haven't before by building these tranches of capability a lot faster and that's in every level of UAS space today,' Phillips said. 'We always joke that two things change the outcome of programs … elections and wars,' Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army's G-3/5/7 aviation director, said. 'We just had an election and we'll have another in four years and we'll have a change of Congress in two years. All of those things impact … our ability to do what the Army wants to do and we have to work within that constraint,' he added. 'I think you'll see some of that play out here over the next few months,' Braman noted.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sikorsky proves out ‘rotor blown wing' drone
Through extensive flight tests earlier this year, Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky has proven the capability of a 'rotor blown wing' unmanned aircraft system that can fly like a helicopter or an airplane, the company announced Monday. 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.
