Textron’s Bell Helicopter unit is pushing on with the development of its third-generation tiltrotor, the V-280 Valor, following an official program award from the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) last year. The agreement is part of the Department of Defense’s broader Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative. While Bell prepares the V-280 for first flight in 2017, Textron sister company TRU Simulation + Training is providing a cockpit “marketing simulator” that aviators are expected to be able to access at the Army Aviation Association of America (Quad-A) conference later this month (March 29-31) in Nashville.

“We’re going to show Army pilots the profile of how you fly a tiltrotor, especially the transition from hover to cruise mode,” said Keith Flail, Bell’s director of future vertical lift. “It’s a pretty sporty timeline we are on right now as we are developing our control laws [for the fly-by-wire flight controls] to get that embedded within the simulator. We think that is going to be very informative to the Army community and give them a greater understanding of how tiltrotors fly.”

The V-280 is designed to carry 11 fully outfitted troops, fly up to 800 nm at a maximum speed of 280 knots and satisfy the Army’s requirement for aircraft operations at up to 6,000 feet elevation at 95 deg F. Estimated mtow of the V-280 is approximately 30,000 pounds and the aircraft will be configured for utility and attack missions. The V-280 features six-foot-wide sliding side doors and a V-tail.

It differs significantly from the Bell/Boeing V-22 tiltrotor in several respects. On the V-22, the engines, gearboxes and prop-rotors all have to rotate as thrust direction is changed; on the V-280 only the gearboxes and prop-rotors rotate. The V-280 also eschews the forward wing sweep of the V-22. Going to a straight wing on the V-280 eliminates the need for a mid-wing gearbox and makes the wing easier to manufacture, according to Bell.

Flail said there will be distinct handling differences between the current-production Bell/Boeing V-22 and the V-280. “The V-22 is a great aircraft but it was designed in the 1980s with a lot of 1980s technology. We get to look back at lessons learned in terms of maintenance and handling. The V-22 is a very agile platform, but the V-280 is going to be even more so. The Army wants to focus on low-speed agility, so the V-280 will have about 50 percent more flapping capability in its rotor system than the V-22. That’s going to enable an even greater level of agility in all axes–pitch, roll, and yaw–so that you have that sports-car type of helicopter performance in the landing zones and objective areas. That’s a focus for the Army customer.”

The program is proceeding at a quick pace, with more than 200 Bell employees dedicated to it full-time and many others brought in part-time, as well as about 100 supplier employees on the team, Flail said. “This is a very exciting year for us. Right now we are heavily into detail design and releasing engineering [drawings] so we can make or buy the appropriate parts. This year we also will have critical design review for all of our subsystems as well as the air vehicle critical design reviews this summer, which is tied closely to the final design and risk report that is due this summer to the government. Then we will start manufacturing and fabricating, which will allow us to start build and assembly in Amarillo [Texas] this summer. We will be building the wing, fuselage and nacelle structure this summer and deliver those and hydraulic, fuel cell and drive components this fall as well. So there is a lot of activity this year.” 

Bell has numerous supplier partners on the V-280. In 2013 it announced it would team with Lockheed Martin on the aircraft with the latter providing integrated avionics, sensors and weapons. Other partners include TRU (marketing simulator and desktop maintenance trainer), Moog (flight controls), GE Aviation (T64-GE-419 engines), GKN (tail), Spirit AeroSystems (composite fuselage), Eaton (hydraulics and power generation), Astronics Advanced Electronic Systems (power distribution systems) and Israel Aerospace Industries (nacelles).

One of the supplier technologies the V-280 team is excited about is the Lockheed Martin so-called “smart helmets” coupled to the pilotage distributed aperture system (PDAS), similar to the system on the F-35. PDAS uses a series of sensors on the aircraft linked to computer processors to generate images and stitch them together to provide the pilot with a real-time, 360-degree field of view outside the aircraft. “We’re going to demonstrate that on this phase of the JMR-TD,” Flail said. “I think this is a critical demonstration given all the focus that has been put on operations in a degraded visual environment.”

Bell is competing in the JMR-TD phase of FVL against a Sikorsky-Boeing team that is fielding the SB-1 Defiant, a medium-lift compound helicopter that will have contra-rotating rigid main rotor blades, a pusher propeller and fly-by-wire flight controls.

The potential spoils of the eventual winner of the JMR-TD could be as many as 4,000 aircraft by the year 2030 under FVL. The Army eventually wants FVL aircraft to be fitted with future advanced turbine engines that will post a 35-percent reduction in specific fuel consumption, an 80-percent improvement in power-to-weight ratio, a 20-percent improvement in design life (to more than 6,000 hours) and a 45-percent reduction in production/maintenance costs. The technologies for those engines remain under development and are not scheduled to be demonstrated until 2016. Those engines and some other forward-looking technologies will not fly on phase one JMR-TD aircraft in 2017 but could fly on phase two or Model Performance Specification (MPS) aircraft in 2019.

Flail said Bell is reducing technical risk on the V-280 by incorporating select aspects of the Bell 525 Relentless super-medium twin conventional helicopter that is expected to make its first flight this spring. They include parts of the fuselage design and components from the aircraft’s fly-by-wire control system. “The 525 is a great design and we really didn’t need to re-invent the wheel there,” he said. “The challenge every day is pushing the envelope on technology to reduce future risks, but staying on track with schedule, cost and performance objectives.

“Looking around the world today, there are more military missions that need revolutionary change in terms of the types of [air] assets that are required in terms of speed and range. The needs of these missions render legacy helicopters almost irrelevant,” Flail said.