As reported yesterday, the entry into service of the new Bell V-280 tiltrotor aircraft for the United States Army will be delayed by one year, with the new estimated delivery date becoming fiscal year 2031. The reason would seem to lie in the complaint that Lockheed Martin and Boeing, competitors of the program, carried out at the end of 2022 after learning of the selection of the device proposed by Textron-Bell for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program.
The decision is somewhat surprising given the statement by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) that in 2023 dismissed the complaints from Lockheed Martin and Boeing. On that occasion, they had spoken as follows: “In denying the protest, the GAO concluded that the Army reasonably assessed Sikorsky’s proposal as technically unacceptable because Sikorsky did not provide the level of architectural detail required by the [solicitud de propuesta] (…) GAO also denied Sikorsky’s various allegations about the acceptability of Bell’s proposal, including the claim that the agency’s evaluation violated the terms of the solicitation or applicable procurement law or regulation.“.
Despite the delay in the program, General Wally Rugen stated the following during the United States Army Aviation Association summit held between April 24 and 26: “we are constantly working on [el programa]and I will say that the team met last quarter and made a tremendously detailed plan to analyze all aspects of this deployment“.
This confidence in the development of the program, added to the statements of Bell executives, leads to the following schedule: the delivery of 2 simulators in the next 12 months, the delivery of the first aircraft in 2026, while the limited tests of user will take place between the years 2027 and 2028, so that the Bell V-280 can finally enter service no later than 2031. It is worth remembering in this sense that this new aircraft would arrive to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk present since the year 1978 in the inventory of the US Army, in what has been constituted as a potential investment of more than 7,000 million dollars.
For its part, the Bell V-280 passed low-speed agility tests already in 2019, which allows us to account for some of its characteristics: a possible speed of more than 300 knots, a climbing capacity of 4,500 per minute , and a top altitude of 11,500 feet with a maximum range of 3,900 kilometers. Regarding its transport capacity, it is estimated that the potential replacement for the UH-60 Black Hawk can carry up to 14 soldiers plus the 4 crew members, while it would have integrated hooks to transport up to an M777A2 howitzer (4,500 kilos). .
Meanwhile, Textron subsidiary Bell is already working on building test laboratories in Arlington, Texas, with the goal of accelerating the integration of different weapons systems into its current Bell V-280 prototype. In short, the company is simultaneously developing its transmission systems for the aircraft; in this case, at its headquarters in Grand Prairie, Texas. As for the final assembly headquarters, it is public knowledge that it will be located in Armadillo, Texas; The locations of those factories responsible for the production of transmissions and rotor blades have yet to be defined.
*Image credits: Bell Flight
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