For US Army aviation, the future is spelled FVL, as in Future Vertical Lift, and it is being explored by bold prototype models: Bell V-280 Valor, Karem ATR36, Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant. To power that future, the service and industry are grappling with another Herculean project, ITEP – the improved turbine engine programme, to replace the GE T700 engine that powers the Boeing AH-64 Apache and Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky UH-60.
But while FVL and ITEP might transform the army’s rotorcraft fleet, neither is coming soon or cheap. So the army is looking for a quicker, less costly, bridge to that future. To wit, Redstone Defense Systems and Northrop Grumman have been charged with delivering a digital cockpit upgrade for the army’s Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters, creating a new variant, the UH-60V.
Northrop’s upgrades are expected to add another 10 years to the life of the legacy Lima-model Black Hawks and the army has heralded the UH-60V programme as a recapitalisation coup for a service faced with ever-tightening fiscal belts.
Lt Col Andrew Duus, product manager for the UH-60V programme, tells FlightGlobal: “The army had to go with the UH-60V from a cost savings perspective. It just makes a lot of sense to pursue the 60V cockpit upgrade which allows us to spend more of our aviation funding on future vertical lift and ITEP.”
The US Army’s iconic Black Hawk has had several makeovers since it premiered in 1979 as the replacement for the single-engine Bell UH-1 Huey. Sikorsky had designed the helicopter to carry four crew members and 11 troops or an equivalent load of up to 4,082kg (9,000lb). The company churned out Alpha models until the introduction in 1988 of the UH-60L, powered by General Electric’s 1,445kW (1,940shp)-rated T700-701C, increasing power by 24% over the UH-60A.
Full-rate production of the next iteration, UH-60M, began in 2007. Features included a digital update of the 60A’s “boiler gauge” cockpit. The Mike version also got an improved T700-GE-701D engine and wide-chord main rotor blades.
As of February 2016, the army planned to convert 110 UH-60As to UH-60Ls and upgrade 142 UH-60Ls to UH-60Vs. The UH-60V upgrades would be carried out over a four-year period from fiscal year 2018 to 2021, and the army has targeted 760 UH-60Ls for conversion to V-models by fiscal year 2034.
Several iterations of Sikorsky's UH-60 have been a mainstay of worldwide operations since the 1980s
In the Lima to Victor transition, the helicopter would receive a digital cockpit makeover, replacing a legacy analogue cockpit with state-of-the-art multifunction displays that allow the pilot to fuse all of the aircraft’s data into one location, increasing situational awareness and mission focus.
“By fusing all the data into one multifunction display, the aviator has to be less concerned with all the other instrumentation in the aircraft,” says Duus. In the analogue cockpit, clearly built and adapted over time rather than designed, gauges are split between the centre console and leg-level displays.
Under a 2014 contract, Northrop Grumman replaced the analogue gauges on Lima models with electronic instrument displays. The programme completed critical design review in October 2015 and moved on to build three prototype aircraft. One prototype flew earlier this year and the next two are being built at the prototype integration facility at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Meridianville, Alabama. The prime contractor for the UH-60V programme, Redstone Defense Systems, is responsible for the installation of prototype kits and components. Northrop serves as Redstone’s subcontractor, developing the software and main electrical components in the cockpit, such as the multifunction displays, Duus says.
By the third quarter of FY18, the army will cease converting UH-60As into UH-60Ls, and will convert only UH-60Ls into UH-60Vs, Duus says. The army will reconstruct the Limas using an existing production line at Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas, where the service is already recapitalising the UH-60A today. By adopting the same recapitalisation model for the Victor, the army estimates it will save about $1.5 million per aircraft, Duus says.
“One of the advantages of doing that is that we leverage a lot of activity going on at the depot level,” he says. “We’re already investing a lot of money in tearing down the aircraft and putting it back together with new components or rebuilt components. So from a cost savings perspective it just makes sense to do as many depot-level upgrades at that time as we can.”
The Victor’s displays include an integrated moving map capability similar to the Mike model’s, centred in one location. Harris FliteScene Digital Map software supports the moving map by providing the base picture for the pilot’s overlays and other situational awareness icons. Harris’s software is operated on airborne platforms across the US services, including the army’s Apache and Chinook. FliteScene integrates with ViaSat’s Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT2), a shared US army and Marine Corps network that supplies situational awareness of friendly and enemy forces. The enhanced BFT2 provides instant messaging and real-time location updates to air and ground platforms, according to ViaSat.
Northrop has advertised that its UH-60V package incorporates its redundant multi-core processor FlightPro Gen III mission computers, which promise excess processing power for future growth. However, the army states that flight safety requirements restrict the UH-60V to single-core processing.
“There is processing growth capability should we ever qualify multi-core processing in the UH-60V. However there is no plan to use more than one core in the near future,” an army spokesman says in an email to FlightGlobal. "Because not all software functionality has been completed, we do not know the amount of excess processing power that we will have. However we do not anticipate any processing power issues under the current design."
While the UH-60V cockpit will be capable of processing video from a FLIR or other attachment, the capability is not part of the 60V baseline and the army is not now planning to add any additional functionality outside of the UH-60V baseline requirement.
Northrop’s upgrades will also help the UH-60V meet Global Air Traffic Management (FATM) requirements.
“The UH60V will be able to perform most GPS approaches which previously had not been a capability in the UH-60L aircraft,” Duus says. “This is really critical for all of our aviation forces, but particularly a lot of older navigation aids are no longer being maintained.”
The integrated avionics suite on the UH-60V maintains an interface that is almost identical to the M model. Northrop has also designed the digital cockpit in accordance with the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) standards, an open architecture initiative led by the US Navy which supports the integration of off-the-shelf hardware and common software across aviation platforms. The decision to comply with the Navy’s FACE standards could also leave the door open for future integration on to the FVL platform, which the army, navy and USMC will develop jointly.
Along with the digital cockpit improvements, the UH-60V will also receive line-replaceable units that are common with the UH-60M. The redesigned Improved Data Modem will provide network access to exchange data on allied and adversary locations, and will be less expensive than its commercial predecessor, according to the US Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center. The LRU upgrade also includes Raytheon’s ARC-231 MultiMode Aviation Radio System, which is also fielded on the army’s AH-64 Apaches, UH-72A Lakotas and special operations MH-47G Chinooks.
On 19 January, Northrop and the army flew a set of flight exercises with the UH-60V engineering and development model, testing the V-model cockpit take-off, hover and tracking capabilities.
“The experimental test pilots from the Redstone test centre who were flying the aircraft were so confident in the capabilities that after they brought it up to a hover, they took off and flew a traffic pattern at Meridianville, Alabama,” Duus says. “So far we’ve had no major complications or issues associated with the digital cockpit upgrade.”
He says the army is on track to accomplish the UH-60V’s limited user test in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 and initial operational test and evaluation by fiscal 2019. During the limited user test, army aviators will take two aircraft through a set of basic missions and assess whether the cockpit needs further modifications before low-rate initial production. Production should kick off that same year, with a first unit equipped in fiscal 2021.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
