Aerospace And Defense In 2024: What To Watch For

Delays have pushed first flights of important new launch vehicles into 2024, with United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan expected to fly in January and Europe’s Ariane 6 in June-July. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to make a second attempt to launch the H3 in March.

A quarter of a century after the last major fighter competition, the U.S. Air Force plans in 2024 to select between Boeing and Lockheed Martin to develop its Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform. The U.S. Navy’s sixth-generation F/A-XX NGAD is in the design maturation phase.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works will formally roll out NASA’s X-59 Quesst low-boom supersonic flight demonstrator in January after system issues delayed first flight to 2024. As 2023 drew to a close, supersonic airliner startup Boom still hoped to fly its XB-1 demonstrator by year-end.

With first flights of Europe’s Racer high-speed helicopter and Next-Generation Civil Tiltrotor demonstrators slipping and yet another year passing without certification of the fly-by-wire Bell 525 and Leonardo’s tiltrotor AW609, 2024 has become a crucial year for advanced civil rotorcraft.

Boeing anticipates delayed certification of the smallest 737 MAX, the -7, by early 2024, followed by the largest variant, the -10, late in the year. The longest-legged member of Airbus’ rival A320neo family, the 4,700-nm-range A3231XLR, also is planned for certification in 2024.

Competition at the top of the business jet market remains intense, with Dassault planning to fly its range-topping Falcon 10X in 2024. Gulfstream anticipates certification of its flagship 8,000-nm-range G800 by the middle of the year while Bombardier’s Global 8000 is expected to follow in 2025.

Bell and Sikorsky expect to fly their competing prototypes for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program by mid-2024 following delayed delivery of their GE Aerospace T901 turboshaft engines. The downselect to a winning helicopter is now scheduled for 2026.

Startups Archer, Joby, Lilium and Volocopter must all fly conforming prototypes in 2024 if they are to achieve type certification in time to meet their targets to launch service with their electric vertical--takeoff-and-landing air taxis—which for Volocopter is August 2024 at the Paris Olympic Games.

The Airbus-led Eurodrone program plans to begin assembly of the first prototype of European medium-altitude, long-endurance uncrewed aircraft in 2024, while the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. MQ-9B is scheduled to enter service with the UK Royal Air Force as the Protector RG Mk. 1.