The Army is asking industry to help it choose a contracting schedule for the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, for which the service has narrowed down to two options, and whether the Army should award a hybrid fixed-price type contract after executing the initial portion under other transaction authority.
Vertical Flight
May 1, 2020
The Air Force's fiscal year 2022 budget proposal will commit funding to Agility Prime -- a new effort to accelerate and adopt technology in the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) industry, according to service acquisition executive Will Roper.
April 17, 2020
A government watchdog in a new report is cautioning the Navy about possible risks to the new presidential helicopter program's acquisition timeline.
March 25, 2020
The Army has chosen Sikorsky and Bell Flight to build prototypes for the competitive flight test phase of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, the service announced today.
March 13, 2020
Though the Navy lowered its fiscal year 2021 request for the Marine Corps' new heavy-lift helicopter because of concerns over numerous deficiencies, the service is now ready to speed up production.
March 10, 2020
ORLANDO, FL -- The Air Force is striving to complete developmental testing for its new search-and-rescue helicopter, the HH-60W Jolly Green, by its original deadline of October -- even though the service won't be able to fully test all the aircraft's systems by then.
February 26, 2020
The Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation is looking for capabilities to support multidomain operations for future force modernization, including the future vertical lift modernization priority.
February 26, 2020
The Air Force has established an "innovative capabilities opening" to assess the transformative vertical flight market with the goal of accelerating certification and evaluating the potential for early adoption and fielding.
February 20, 2020
West Palm Beach, FL -- Boeing and Sikorsky today flew their proposal for the Army's Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program, the SB-1 Defiant, for the first time publicly.
February 19, 2020
The president's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal gives the first peek into the Air Force's acquisition plans for new utility helicopters that will patrol the military's intercontinental ballistic missile silos -- showing an anticipated expenditure of $1.9 billion on 54 MH-139 Grey Wolf aircraft across the future years defense program.
February 14, 2020
The Navy's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal would trim the procurement cost of a new training helicopter to $912 million down from $1.1 billion, a revised price tag that reflects the service's January contract award to Leonardo Helicopters.
February 12, 2020
The Air Force is investing $1.6 billion more than expected in its HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter acquisition program over the next four years to buy the Sikorsky-built aircraft on a faster schedule, according to the service’s latest budget documents.
February 11, 2020
The Army is once again asking Congress to cut funding for the Chinook Block II upgrade for the active component after lawmakers restored funding for the program in the fiscal year 2020 budget.
February 4, 2020
The Navy will not fix all of the technical issues plaguing the Marine Corps' new heavy-lift helicopter in time for the initial operational test and evaluation stage of the program.
February 4, 2020
Boeing will accelerate its CH-47 Block II flight testing after a second aircraft enters flight tests "as early as next week," according to a company official.
January 31, 2020
One year after the Combat Rescue Helicopter program received a searing review from the Pentagon’s chief weapons evaluator, more testing has exposed new technical constraints and performance issues in degraded visual and live-fire environments.
January 15, 2020
The Government Accountability Office has noticed the Defense Department's increased emphasis on accelerating its notoriously slow acquisition system, but the watchdog agency is concerned weapon system reliability might be sacrificed at the expense of speed.
January 9, 2020
ARLINGTON, TX -- Bell Flight demonstrated its V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft’s autonomous flying capabilities on Jan. 8 during a demonstration here at the company’s flight research center.
December 19, 2019
The Army has hired artificial intelligence company C3.ai to apply "predictive maintenance" to the service's Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, as the Defense Innovation Unit recently struck a production deal with the Silicon Valley firm to potentially scale the technology across the Defense Department’s aircraft fleets to reduce unscheduled maintenance.
December 19, 2019
Air Force Global Strike Command activated Detachment 7 on Wednesday to ensure a fast developmental and operational testing schedule for the service’s four new MH-139As -- the Huey replacement helicopters that will provide security and transportation for the service's intercontinental ballistic missile mission.