The US Army just gave up on its FARA helicopter program. Here’s why.
You may have heard that the US Army decided to pull the plug on its FARA helicopter program last week. FARA stands for Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, and it was supposed to be a new kind of scout helicopter that could fly fast, shoot hard, and spy on the enemy in any situation. The military branch had been working on this project since 2018, and had spent about $2.4 billion on it. But now, they say they don’t need it anymore. What’s going on?
Well, the FARA program was part of a bigger plan called FVL, or Future Vertical Lift. This plan also included FLRAA, which is a new medium-lift helicopter, and FTUAS, which is a new drone. The FARA was meant to replace the old OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, which was a small helicopter that the Army used for scouting and light attack missions. The Kiowa Warrior retired in 2019, and the Army has been looking for a successor ever since.
The Army asked five companies to come up with some designs for the FARA in 2019: AVX, Bell, Boeing, Karem, and Sikorsky. In 2020, the Army picked two finalists: Bell’s 360 Invictus and Sikorsky’s Raider X. Both of these helicopters had a cool feature called coaxial rotors, which means they had two sets of blades spinning in opposite directions. This made them faster and more agile than regular helicopters. The Army wanted to test these prototypes in 2023, and pick a winner by 2028.
But then, on February 8, 2024, the Army said it was canceling the FARA program. They said they had a bunch of reasons for doing this, like saving money, using other technologies, and facing new threats. The Army said they realized they could do the same things that the FARA could do with a mix of existing, unmanned, and space-based assets. They also said they needed to spend more money on keeping the CH-47 Chinook and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, which are very important for the Army’s current and future missions.
Another big reason why the Army canceled the FARA program was that they learned that the FARA’s way of doing things was not very smart or safe in today’s world. The Army saw what happened in the war in Ukraine, where the bad guys had a lot of sensors and weapons that could see and shoot at anything that flew in the sky. The Army also knew that the FARA would be easy to jam, hack, or shoot down, and that it would have to be very stealthy, fast, and far away from the enemy to survive. The Army figured that these things were too hard and too expensive to achieve and maintain, and that they were better off using other methods.
The Army’s decision to scrap the FARA program has made a lot of people happy, sad, or mad. Some people think the Army wasted a lot of time and money on a program that was doomed from the start, and that they failed to deliver a replacement for the Kiowa Warrior, which they retired without a clear plan. Other people think the Army was smart and flexible, and that they focused on the most practical and affordable solutions for their aviation needs. Some people also worry about how the cancellation will affect the Army’s innovation and modernization efforts, and the people and companies that work on them.
The Army says it will keep working on the FVL plan, and that it will speed up the development, buying, and using of new drones, like the FTUAS, the Launched Effects, and the commercial small UAS. The Army also says it will look into other options to improve its attack and reconnaissance capabilities, like upgrading the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, making a new light attack aircraft, or buying a foreign-made scout helicopter. The Army also says it is still committed to the FLRAA program, which is supposed to make a new medium-lift helicopter to replace the UH-60 and the UH-1.
The FARA program was the Army’s latest try to make a new scout helicopter, after they failed with the RAH-66 Comanche, the ARH-70 Arapaho, and the Armed Aerial Scout programs. The Army has been trying to make a FARA-like helicopter for over 40 years, and has spent billions of dollars and tons of work on it. Will the Army ever get its dream scout helicopter? We don’t know, but we do know that the Army’s aviation challenges are not going away, and that the Army will have to find new and creative ways to solve them.
