Helicopter-Makers Line Up For U.S. Army Rotorcraft Training Refresh

Defense primes are courting helicopter manufacturers to prepare for a potential refresh of the U.S. Army’s rotary-wing training system.

Airframers from Fort Worth-based Schweizer, with just 20 people, to major players such as Bell, are in active discussions with partners about how to meet the Army’s Flight School Next ambitions.

• New aircraft will have single-pilot IFR avionics 
• Concerns about the Lakota in training spurred launch of the Flight School Next program

First announced last October, the initiative could evolve into a major program to replace the Airbus-made UH-72 Lakota Light Utility Helicopters that are used now for Initial Entry Rotary Wing (IERW) flight training at the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama.

Bell, Enstrom, Leonardo Helicopters, MD Helicopters, Robinson Helicopter Co. and Schweizer are among the airframers that have told Aviation Week they hope to bid for the contract.

And the potential prize is lucrative. The Army is expected to need 200-225 helicopters to be delivered within 4-5 years, along with an integrated training system and support lasting two decades.

Some 40 companies submitted white papers with initial proposals at the end of last year in response to a request for information. The next major step is an Army-organized industry day, planned for August, followed by a request for proposals.

For some of these OEMs—particularly Enstrom, MD Helicopters and Schweizer—Flight School Next could be transformative, as they have spent several difficult years rebuilding their businesses post-pandemic, post-bankruptcy—or in the case of Schweizer, restarting from scratch after its sale by Sikorsky in 2019. For Leonardo, securing the program could mean its helicopters would dominate U.S. military rotary-wing training for years to come. Its proposed AW119Kx single-engine light helicopter—already flown by the U.S. Navy as the TH-73 Thrasher—is used to tutor Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard crews now at NAS Whiting Field, Florida.

The Army launched Flight School Next due to concerns about the twin-engine Lakota’s operational costs, availability and quality of training. Some 221 are in use at Fort Novosel, supported by four disparate contracted logistics support, maintenance, training and simulation contracts that industry officials say are not synchronized well. The request for information calls for reducing costs, gaining efficiency and maintaining or increasing training quality.

Army officials recently have suggested that learning to fly with such complex aircraft could lead to a loss of basic flying skills among new pilots. At the International Military Helicopter conference in London in February, they said an investigation into a series of incidents involving a loss of tail rotor effectiveness and authority found pilots had not countered the torque with the pedals. Army leaders say part of the problem is that the pilots had become used to the Lakota’s systems doing the hard work for them.

The service had pushed the UH-72 into the training role after the 2015 Aviation Restructuring Initiative removed all single-engine helicopters from the inventory. Given the complexity of the Army’s fleets of Boeing AH-64 Apaches, Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks and CH-47 Chinooks, service leaders, backed by consultants, concluded that student pilots were better off being trained as system managers, and starting on a more advanced aircraft made more sense (AW&ST April 17-30, 2017, p. 69). Critics at the time argued that adopting the Lakota could erode basic flight skills.

Ahead of the upcoming industry day, the Army has begun exploring alternative training systems to compare their output to that of Fort Novosel. In February, Crew Training International (CTI) announced it had secured a contract to train a cadre of Army pilots in Marianna, Florida, through the civilian training pipeline. CTI’s program will train on Robinson R66s, providing students with private pilot, rotorcraft helicopter and instrument helicopter certifications before they return to learning basic warfighting skills.

Rotorcraft industry officials say the Army has outlined a wish list for the training aircraft, including an FAA-certified turbine-powered rotorcraft that will be able to fly around 600 hr. per year and have a single-pilot instrument flight rules (IFR) cockpit. IFR avionics on single-engine rotorcraft have become more commonplace, with several manufacturers developing supplemental type-certificated IFR cockpits in response to the Navy’s rotary-wing training requirement. That technology is now informing smaller rotorcraft. Using these IFR avionics will help introduce Army pilots to complex systems.

Bidders are expected to be asked whether they prefer a contractor-owned, contractor-operated (CO-CO) or a government-owned, contractor-operated (GO-CO) model for the fleets.

Among the types being proposed is Bell’s 505 JetRanger X, which several overseas militaries  have adopted for their rotary-wing training. The OEM’s offer would be “disruptive,” Carl Coffman, Bell’s vice president of military sales and strategy, said at the Verticon rotorcraft industry gathering in Dallas last month, noting that it would provide an “efficient, effective flight training model that capitalizes on advanced learning techniques, simulations and a purpose-built 505.” The 505 uses the running gear of the out-of-production 206L LongRanger and retains the distinctive teetering twin-blade main rotor system the Army used on 206 JetRangers and OH-58 Kiowas before the Lakota.

Coffman said Bell is working on an IFR cockpit for the 505 and expects to secure FAA certification for it this year.

Enstrom plans to offer its 480B turbine helicopter, which it originally developed in the 1980s for an Army training requirement as the TH-28. While that type lost out in the early 1990s New Training Helicopter contest to the Bell JetRanger-based TH-67 Creek, Enstrom managed to sell the aircraft to other militaries, including those in the Czech Republic, Japan and Thailand.

“It has been 34 years since we last attacked something like this,” Enstrom’s Todd Tetzlaff told Aviation Week at Verticon.  “We have a purpose-built, safe, effective trainer . . . that is forgiving and gives the student a little room to learn from any deviations there are.”

Tetzlaff, who was Enstrom CEO at the time but has since been named the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs and global relations, said Enstrom has a “game plan” to install IFR avionics and noted that the 480B could benefit from a simpler installation of such programs because it does not have a hydraulic system.

Lack of hydraulics also benefits MD Helicopters and Schweizer. The latter plans to offer its S-333 1.1-ton rotorcraft, which it developed in the late 1990s. However, Schweizer has not produced an S-333 since it repurchased the type certificate from Sikorsky in 2019.

“We feel like the Triple-Three is a great product, and it is something I think the U.S. Army would really appreciate,” Schweizer CEO David Horton said at Verticon.

Horton said he was working with several unnamed companies on proposals, but Schweizer would not be a prime, as it wasn’t “nearly big enough.” Instead, it would act as a supplier to a prime integrator, providing the ground-based elements of the training system as well as the logistics.

“It’s a flying classroom. That is what is was designed for,” Horton said of the S-333. “All three occupants see the same thing. There are no obstructions.”

Robinson, meanwhile, plans to offer the Army its R66 Turbine, which CEO David Smith has noted can claim operating costs per hour of around $400 compared with the $5,000 associated with a light twin (AW&ST March 10-23, p. 36).

MD Helicopters plans to propose its MD 530F, again with an IFR cockpit, CEO Ryan Weeks said, pointing out that the egg-shaped fuselage makes it ideal for rotary-wing training, it being highly survivable in an accident..

“These are rookie pilots, and they’re going to make mistakes, so we’re going to be saying you need to put them in something that’s very safe,” he added.

The Army is no stranger to the MD 500 family, originally developed by Hughes as the OH-6 Loach for the service’s Light Observation Helicopter program. Some 1,400 were produced, and the more recent MH-6 Little Bird version equips the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Incumbent Airbus hopes to convince the Army to stick with the Lakota. The airframer tells Aviation Week that its response to the request for information proposes keeping the fleet, streamlining existing maintenance contracts and adjusting the program of instruction to address areas of the syllabus that Army commanders have put under the microscope.

Pentagon documentation suggests the Lakota is the safest training helicopter the Army has ever used at Fort Novosel. Reimbursement rates reflecting billed costs per flight hour show the UH-72 has the lowest of any current Army aircraft, at just over $2,100 per hour in fiscal 2025, even cheaper than the single-engine AH/MH-6 and the Navy’s TH-73.

Airbus says it can control those costs because of the size of the fleet. “We are able to manage our supply chain effectively because of the volume of Lakotas the Army has,” one Lakota program official noted. Furthermore, suppliers to the program are based in 22 states across the country.

Airbus argues that adoption of a single-engine aircraft means students are not necessarily equipped to deal with complex dual-engine emergencies, and the service may need an “interim” dual-engine aircraft to ready students for the more complex front-line types. Furthermore, Lakota training still would be required for the numerous active and National Guard units flying the aircraft.

In addition, the company suggests the Army’s push toward a single-engine type goes against the trend of key U.S. allies increasingly adopting twin-engine aircraft for rotary-wing training. Australia, Germany and the UK already do so. Canada will soon join them, using Airbus H135s for the rotary-wing element of its Future Aircrew Training program.