Boeing Sikorsky says it is confident that the US Congress will provide an additional $56 million in funding to enable the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter to step up its flight test programme next year.
Tom Sheehy, director of the Sikorsky Comanche project office, says the investment is needed both to ramp up the frequency and complexity of flights for the first prototype and to ensure that the second aircraft is not grounded. "We're pretty positive that we'll get a decision on that in the near future," he says.
The Comanche team actually requested a total of $108 million in extra money, but the US Army's need to prioritise its requirements means that Congress will be asked to approve just over half that amount.
The Army's 'unfunded requirements list' which goes before Congress will spell out the necessity of extra funding, primarily to keep the two aircraft airborne, but also to carry out detailed demonstration work, including the Northrop Grumman Longbow millimetre-wave radar.
The two prototypes of the armed reconnaissance/attack helicopter have now completed 130 flights, totalling 145 flight hours. The second aircraft will be used to develop the Comanche's mission equipment package (MEP).
"We need that aircraft to take some of the load off of aircraft number one," says Sheehy. "The second prototype completed its first flight at the end of March and near-term we're looking to continue expansion of all four corners of the flight envelope." To date flight testing has enabled the Comanche to achieve airspeeds of 175kts in level flight and 204kts in a dive.
The Comanche programme itself was restructured last year to align with US Army plans for 'digitisation' of the battlefield.
Plans to deliver six early operational capability Comanches in 2002 were scapped in favour of six 'fully capable' pre-production prototypes to be delivered in 2003.
Source: Flight Daily News
