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Airbus’ proposal appears to draw on the company’s X3 technology, with the pusher propellers fitted mid-wing to make room for weapon pylons.
As NATO sets out to define its next-generation rotorcraft needs, industry is proposing a variety of ambitious ideas from a massive advanced tiltrotor to compound helicopter configurations.
The ideas will inform the upcoming concept design phase of the alliance’s Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capability (NGRC)—planned to begin in July—and will aim to identify a preferred solution from a series of qualified bids from which the NGRC partner nations will select and then potentially take forward into full-scale development.
- NATO rotorcraft project preparing for concept design phase
- Industry partners delivered five next-generation helicopter concepts
- Concept design phase will identify a preferred solution for development
NATO formally launched the NGRC initiative in 2022 following several years of multinational preconcept studies led by the UK. Similar initiatives in the late 1980s were the genesis of what ultimately became the NATO helicopter for the 1990s—the NHIndustries NH90 developed by Airbus, Leonardo and Fokker. What emerges from NGRC could go on to replace about 1,000 helicopters of different types in service with NATO nations other than the U.S., including Airbus Puma-family platforms, Mil Mi-8/17s, Sikorsky UH-60/S-70s, Leonardo AW101s and the NH90.
Bidders in the next phase will create their proposals based on a set of newly refined requirements and concepts of operations that have been developed by the seven—soon to be six partner nations—as well as lessons learned from the five military rotorcraft concepts developed by industry teams from Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo Helicopters and Sikorsky through the NGRC Study 5 launched in the summer of 2024 (AW&ST Aug. 12-Sept. 1, 2024, p. 26).
Although far from fully developed, these concepts—revealed in November by the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), which is running the NGRC initiative on behalf of the nations—provide an insight into how industry envisions military rotorcraft evolving.
Each of the bidders in Study 5 had the option to submit two concepts. The Airbus and Sikorsky teams provided two—one a conventional rotorcraft and the other based on their compound rotorcraft technologies. The Leonardo-Bell team offered a single proposal based on tiltrotor technology.
The Leonardo-Bell team—-which also included General Electric, Hensoldt, Leonardo DRS, MBDA Italy, the Netherlands Aerospace Center, Rolls-Royce, and Safran—proposed a tiltrotor with a 17-metric-ton maximum takeoff weight, V-tail and fixed-engine configuration. It is slated to be tested on Leonardo’s Next-Generation Civil Tiltrotor technology demonstrator aircraft. The tiltrotor also features a rear-entry loading ramp and tricycle landing gear, as opposed to the forward main gear configuration chosen for Bell’s MV-75 Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA).
The Sikorsky team included BAE Systems, Italy’s ELT Group, Germany’s ESG Elektroniksystem-und Logistik, GE Aerospace, Hellenic Aerospace Industry, Norway’s Kongsberg, Liebherr-Aerospace, MAGroup, Safran, Rheinmetall and Denmark’s Terma. That team proposed a compound rotorcraft using its X2 technology that appears to be slightly smaller than its Defiant aircraft bid for the U.S. Army’s FLRAA program. The team’s separate conventional helicopter proposal—which looks rather like an enlarged Sikorsky S-76 commercial helicopter—uses a fuselage similar to that of the compound but with a conventional six-blade tail rotor and five-blade main rotor.
Airbus’ proposals were perhaps the most eye-catching. Working with RTX’s Collins Aerospace and Raytheon businesses as well as European missile manufacturer MBDA, the team appears to have adopted a common airframe with the compound rotorcraft technology developed through its X3 (X-Cubed) and Rapid and Cost-Effective Rotorcraft (Racer) demonstrators. The design features a pusher propeller combined with a conventional tail rotor. The pusher propellers are situated midway along the trailing edge of a large stub wing fitted high mid-fuselage. This enables weapon pylons to be added on the outer section of the wing.
The fuselage of the proposed Airbus rotorcraft appears to take design cues from the company’s new H160 commercial helicopter, albeit much enlarged and with a highly streamlined front fuselage. Airbus’ conventional alternative appears to have removed the stub wings and pusher propellers of the high-speed variant.
“There were no right answers to the concept phase,” says Cyril Heckel, the NGRC program director at NSPA, in part because the responses had to be capable of a wide range of missions and a requirement set that at times deliberately conflicted and contradicted the trade-offs between speed, range and weight.
The NSPA listed 11 tasks and missions of which the new rotorcraft must be capable from the outset. They called for a common airframe for both battlefield and naval operations and a platform with an open system architecture, fly-by-wire controls and technology enabling optional piloting. Crucial requirements include a minimum cruise speed of 180 kt. and a maximum takeoff weight of 10-17 metric tons. Higher speeds boost productivity and increase survivability but also add weight and complexity that increase the physical size of the aircraft. The maximum takeoff weight is driven by deck weight limits on warships (AW&ST March 10-23, p. 41).
“While all the concepts were strong, none of them fully align with our attributes, which were intentionally set to be ambitious,” Heckel told the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 11.
“They do, however, tackle the multidomain integration, open system architecture and some aspects of the speed, range and payload trade-off.”
The concept phase also called on bidders to provide insights into the development cost, in-service support and certification process. Supporting this work are earlier studies performed by industry, including one on future engines by GE Aerospace that stated the future rotorcraft should be powered by a new-generation gas turbine but with some consideration for hybrid-electric augmentation as well. Another study by Lockheed Martin on open system architecture provided analysis of potential architecture, its benefits and trade-offs as well as barriers. The NGRC would feature such a system to make the rotorcraft easier to upgrade.
In the upcoming concept design phase, the NSPA is hitting the “reset button” on who will be able to bid, Heckel says, and the OEMs that were selected for Study 5 may have more competition. Bidders must prequalify and will need to demonstrate experience in development, production and support capabilities, Heckel suggests.
Possible U.S. OEM applications would likely be required to have a prime contractor from any of the participating nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. Greece, the seventh nation, will leave the program by year-end.
At the same time, Heckel’s NSPA team will “solidify” the technical and operational knowledge before writing the formalized requirements to which the concept design phase bidders will respond. The NSPA hopes to have these written by the summer so a request for proposals can be called, with submissions due by September 2027. The writing of requirements will be supported by the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory as well as France’s Defense Technical and Operational Analysis Center (CATOD), a division of French defense materiel agency DGA.
Once bids have been submitted, the NGRC partner nations will select their preferred option.
“It will be a competition again,” Heckel says. “We will apply best-value principles, with emphasis on performance.
“The threshold for qualification will remain ambitious, because we want to foster the market,” he adds. “That is what is best for our partner nations.”
Once selected, the nations will be given time to perform their own analysis of the selected proposal and decide how they want to pursue the program politically and industrially, while the NSPA would prepare a series of derisking activities that could pave the way for an industrial program to begin in 2029-30.
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