The US Army expects to issue a request for proposals (RFP) related to its Flight School Next helicopter trainer programme “as soon as this fall”, according to the service’s aviation chief.
Although billed as a quest to return to stick-and-pedal flying with single-engined helicopters in place of the current Airbus Helicopters UH-72 Lakota twins, Brigadier General Matt Braman, director of US Army Aviation, says the service is approaching the forthcoming contest with an open mind.
“They will be pretty broad proposals. We have left it exceptionally broad because we don’t want to limit ourselves,” said Braman, speaking as part of Bell-organised roundtable at the Paris air show on 17 June.
Driving the army’s reappraisal of its training system is a belief that learning in helicopters with a high degree of automated safety features is not providing pilots with the basic skills to prevent dangerous situations “developing into something catastrophic”.
At present, the army is conducting a trial in Florida that sees novice flight crews receive civil training on the Robinson R66 light-single to qualify as Federal Aviation Administration-certificated private pilots.
It will then compare the results of that programme against the output from its own training system at nearby Fort Novosel, Alabama “to see if the concept is worth pursuing,” says Braman.
This activity should complete by the end of July, leading to the release of the RFP “as soon as this fall”.
Under the current set-up, the training helicopters are owned and operated by the US government, but Braman says the army is open to all ownership and operational models in the future.
The army’s plans have attracted interest from a broad swathe of the rotorcraft industry including Bell, Enstrom, Leonardo Helicopters, Lockheed Martin, MD Helicopters and Robinson.
But, says Braman, the door is still open for the incumbent, Airbus, to demonstrate how it would meet the US Army’s requirements to improve the current system.
In addition, proposals could include the use of a more complex rotorcraft to bridge between basic instruction and flights on the highly complex helicopters in the frontline fleet like the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and Boeing AH-64E Apache.
“We want experts and the industry to come back and show us a better way of doing things,” says Braman.
Elsewhere, the army hopes to conclude an agreement shortly with the US Marine Corps (USMC) to embed its crews with the squadrons of its sister service operating the Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey.
This will allow army pilots and rear crew “to build tiltrotor experience” ahead of the arrival towards the end of the decade of its first Bell MV-75s.
Lead pilots from the 101st Airborne – the first division to receive the new tiltrotor type – have already received “executive level” training on a MV-22 simulator, says Braman, “and we want to follow that with a full qualification”.
He says the USMC is “very excited by the opportunity” and is hopeful the training of army crews can begin “within the next year”.
