Despite the ongoing federal government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Defense is creating new opportunities for defense contractors. Case in point is the Army’s Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Technology Demonstration (TD) program, which, despite its indistinct name, could play a key role in developing replacements for many existing military helicopters.
The Army’s Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) announced Oct. 2 that it has awarded “technology investment agreements” to Bell Helicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft and two smaller companies – AVX Aircraft and Karem Aircraft. The agreements call for the four firms to develop preliminary designs for “transformational vertical-lift” aircraft, AMRDEC said. The Army and the companies will jointly fund the work, though specific dollar amounts were not disclosed. In 2014, the Army plans to ask two of the four companies to build aircraft for the demonstration flights.
“For the next nine months, four industry teams from Bell Helicopter, Karem Aircraft Inc., a Sikorsky-Boeing team, and AVX Aircraft Company will be refining their initial designs and making preparations toward potentially building and flight-testing a demonstrator aircraft late in fiscal year 2017,” AMRDEC said.
JMR TD itself will not field a fleet of new aircraft, but it is intended to develop improved technologies that could be incorporated into eventual successors to the Boeing Apache attack helicopter and the Sikorsky Black Hawk utility helicopter, among others.
“Improved speed, range, reliability and survivability are critical goals that we will target,” said Maj. Gen. William “Tim” Crosby, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation.
The four companies already have concepts in mind. The Bell V-280 and Karem TR36TD offer tilt-rotor configurations similar to the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey currently fielded by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. Tilt rotors allow an aircraft to take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a plane. The AVX JMR and Sikorsky-Boeing X2 helicopters would each feature two main counter-rotating rotors atop the aircraft; the AVX JMR has small wings and ducted fans on the sides, while the X2 has a “pusher propeller” on its tail.
