Bell’s V-280 Valor Just Won the Most Important Army Helicopter Competition In 40 Years

It’s official. Yesterday, the U.S. Army announced it has selected Bell TextronTXT
Inc. to build its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). Culminating a journey that stretches back over a decade for the Army, the FLRAA selection is vital to the Army and possibly a life-saver for Bell.

The tiltrotor V-280, so called in a nod to the Army’s long held goal of a VTOL troop transport that could reach at least 280 knots (322 mph), beat out Sikorsky-Boeing’s coaxial-rotor Defiant X for the FLRAA program which the Army officially launched in 2019.

Its win sets the table for an initial acquisition worth up to $1.3 billion. According to the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, Major General Rob Barrie, a follow-on low-rate production phase could be worth roughly $7 billion and a fully-realized production run including potential foreign military sales may come to somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 billion.

The Army says the Valor will potentially replace approximately 2,000 Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters and 1,200 Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters around 2030 if it’s acquired in the numbers the Army envisions.

Given that the Army has purchased nearly 3,000 UH-60s over the years, it will not replace the Black Hawks one-for-one and skeptics have long suggested that an eventual FLRAA winner is likely to be built in considerably smaller numbers than the service contends based on simple budgetary pressure.

But for a company that put a huge sum of its own funds into developing the V-280 and which as I recently noted has a paucity of future product in its pipeline, the win is a sorely-needed windfall.

Though the V-280 is envisioned as assuming the highly varied roles that the work-horse Black Hawk serves and adding assault/attack missions, its operational scope may be more limited. The chief purpose for which the Army pursued FLRAA is to get troops and equipment to the battlefield faster at longer ranges than the H-60.

Bell checked the first imperative off in March, 2019 when the V-280 hit 300 knots (345 mph). The V-280’s maximum range remains unclear. The Army called for a notional FLRAA to be able to fly approximately 2,440 nautical miles without refueling. Published figures for the UH-60 place its max range at roughly 1380 NM. How much additional range Bell’s tiltrotor offers beyond UH-60 capability is one of a number of questions that the company told me it cannot comment on right now without clearance from the Army.

Among the other details Bell says it cannot provide are whether the V-280 can successfully operate in engine-out scenarios, when the first production deliveries are anticipated (the Army has said some time in 2030, it expects prototypes for operational testing to be delivered in 2025), and what the unit cost of the Valor will be. A company spokesman also said it cannot presently discuss the factors which clinched its selection for FLRAA. I laid out the competing designs and advantages of the V-280 and Defiant in a 2020 feature.

While a decision was expected by mid-2022, the Army reportedly delayed its announcement until yesterday to ensure its source selection board had thoroughly reviewed the decision with an eye to a possible protest by the losing competitor. A statement issued by Sikorsky-Boeing after the announcement affirmed that the company is evaluating “our next steps after reviewing feedback from the Army.”

If a protest is filed it could further delay what has already been a protracted effort. The Joint Multi Role Technology Demonstration which the Army launched as a prelude to FLRAA began in 2013 and was part of the broader Future Vertical Lift initiative which the Pentagon launched in 2011. While the V-280’s first flight was in 2017, Bell had been at work on the concept and the hardware since the mid-2000s.

Successive phases of competitive development and risk-reduction effort and further delays stemming therefrom were a source of frustration for Bell which essentially idled as the Sikorsky-Boeing team worked toward its smaller-scale Raider demonstration aircraft’s first flight a year later.

The Raider demonstrator crashed on a test flight in August 2017, setting its effort – which combined the coaxial rotor concept for FLRAA and the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) – back with only one remaining Raider prototype available for flight testing. Issues related to manufacturing the eventual Defiant X’s rotor blades also delayed the team.

Bell’s Valor demonstrator flew a total of over 214 hours including test flights with Army test pilots at the controls. Following Raider flight testing, the Defiant X demonstrator was flown 63.9 hours, also by Army test pilots, achieving a top sustained speed of 247 knots (284), marginally within the FLRAA speed goals.

The win may be seen as validation for Bell’s broader tiltrotor approach to vertical lift and a sign of promise for its proposed V-247 Vigilant, a notional unmanned tiltrotor aircraft broadly pitched at roles from ISR and precision strike to aerial refueling and anti-submarine warfare. It’s also a boost for corporate parent, Textron which missed analysts’ Q3 revenue estimates.

Both Jefferies and Morgan StanleyMS
stuck with buy ratings for Textron, despite Bell’s soft performance – 2022 third-quarter revenue was $754 million, down $15 million year-over-year due to lower military revenues of $112M. In mid-day trading, Bell Textron’s shares had risen five percent to $73.48/share.

A tiltrotor will thus be saving transit time for Army soldiers headed to the battlefields of the future and likely saving Bell Textron’s place in the defense aerospace market. The Army’s pending decision on FARA could further boost the company’s prospects.