US Army Extends JHL Concept Studies

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Work to refine con­cepts for a large cargo rotor­craft is mov­ing ahead under the U.S. Army-​​led Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) tech­nol­ogy effort.

JHL is the ver­ti­cal take-​​off and land­ing can­di­date for the U.S. Air Force/​Army Joint Future Theater Lift (JFTL) requirement.The first of three con­tracts to extend pre­vi­ous con­cept def­i­n­i­tion and analy­sis (CDA) work for another two years has been awarded, with the oth­ers to fol­low over the next week or two, says the Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD).

Contracts are being awarded to Bell-​​Boeing for the Quad Tilt Rotor, Karem Aircraft/​Lockheed Martin for the Optimum Speed Tilt Rotor and Sikorsky for the coaxial-​​rotor X2 High Speed Lifter. The teams will update their designs to meet the new JHL model per­for­mance spec­i­fi­ca­tion (MPS), which includes sev­eral new mis­sion pro­files that drive dif­fer­ent aspects of the design.

The con­trac­tors ”have a require­ment to pro­vide an imme­di­ate assess­ment of the impact of the new MPS within 30 days of con­tract award,” says Bruce Tenney, AATD asso­ciate direc­tor for tech­nol­ogy. ”The gov­ern­ment is going to do a gut check on the MPS changes and decide if a near-​​term update is needed for com­ple­tion of the CDA.“

Previous CDA stud­ies assumed a pay­load of 20 tons and a C-​​130-​​size cargo box, but growth in the weight of Army Future Combat Systems vehi­cles has pushed the require­ment closer to 30 tons and an A400M-​​size cargo box. The merger of JHL with the Air Force’s Advanced Joint Air Combat System require­ment under JFTL has also placed a greater empha­sis on speed.

Work under the CDA exten­sions will help decide whether JHL needs two or four engines and whether fold­ing will be required for seabas­ing oper­a­tions. AATD also plans to demon­strate flight con­trol laws that could reduce air­frame loads and lower empty weight. These will be tested in the Army/​NASA Rascal fly­ing lab­o­ra­tory, a mod­i­fied UH-​​60 Black Hawk helicopter.

Read the rest of this story, an inter­est­ing piece on cloud seed­ing, an after action report on FCS so far and a take a look at the new USS America from our friends at Aviation Week on Military​.com.

– Christian

July 2nd, 2008 | Av Week Extra | 39344 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/07/02/us-army-extends-jhl-concept-studies/US+Army+Extends+JHL+Concept+Studies2008-07-02+17%3A26%3A50Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.