The Sikorsky RAIDER X® aggressive prototype (CP) for the U.S. Military’s Future Assault Reconnaissance Plane (FARA) is greater than 85 % full, progressing 50 % quicker via manufacturing and meeting in comparison with legacy applications and leading to an economical, transformational plane. Sikorsky X2™ expertise underpins the RAIDER X design. The compound coaxial expertise of X2 supplies unmatched potential and progress margin for elevated pace, fight radius and payload. This permits a broader vary of plane configurations for particular mission necessities. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin firm, has made vital progress on RAIDER X, which is now weight on wheels on the Sikorsky Growth Flight Heart in West Palm Seaside, Florida. RAIDER X, which Sikorsky has begun powering on, has achieved almost 50 % of required System Acceptance Take a look at procedures.
“The second fuselage has not solely elevated the effectivity of the construct and take a look at of our first CP plane, it offers us the choice to construct it out as a second CP plane, offering us with extra flexibility and higher danger discount,” stated Sikorsky FARA Chief Engineer Pete Germanowski.
Commercial
“Our transformational RAIDER X will ship broad advantages to the Military together with the bottom schedule danger and best technical maturity of the FARA opponents,” stated Sikorsky President Paul Lemmo. “With X2 Know-how, RAIDER X has the power to develop, not like a single-main rotor configuration.”
“The FARA mission requires operational flexibility, and RAIDER X supplies that operational flexibility the Military wants together with pace the place it issues, a big multi-functional weapons bay and unprecedented acceleration and deceleration functionality,” stated Jay Macklin, Sikorsky enterprise improvement director.
As well as, the construct of Sikorsky’s second FARA fuselage is now full. This fuselage is being built-in into Sikorsky’s structural take a look at program and will probably be used to validate the flight and floor hundreds functionality of the airframe. These assessments help the RAIDER X CP flight security program and supply knowledge to optimize and speed up the design for the complete weapons system. RAIDER X options Modular Open System Structure (MOSA)-based avionics and mission methods providing “plug-and-play” choices for computing, sensors, survivability and weapons. X2 compound coaxial expertise supplies unmatched potential and progress margin for elevated pace, fight radius and payload. This permits a broader vary of plane configurations for particular mission necessities.
Established Excessive-Tech Manufacturing Amenities: Lockheed Martin is leveraging a longtime, low-risk manufacturing functionality augmented by a greater than $600 million funding in digital thread and superior manufacturing. This digital surroundings is embedded all through the corporate’s engineering, manufacturing and sustainment workforce. With confirmed world-wide provide chain companions, RAIDER X will leverage superior manufacturing processes presently in use as we speak on the Black Hawk, Fight Rescue Helicopter and CH-53K. Sikorsky S-97 RAIDER: One of many major danger discount efforts is flight take a look at knowledge from the S-97 RAIDER®, which is funded totally by Sikorsky. The S-97 RAIDER is an 80 percent-scale prototype of the RAIDER X design, and the flight take a look at program informs design choices, correlates to a digital prototype and allows Sikorsky to experiment with the distinctive capabilities that X2 expertise supplies.
Digital Thread and Digital Fashions: RAIDER X totally makes use of Sikorsky’s digital thread and digital prototyping instruments to maximise the capabilities RAIDER X supplies to Troopers whereas optimizing the plane’s affordability and sustainability over the life cycle. These digital fashions are extremely dependable, physics-based simulations of our design that present early discovery, reduce redesign and allow future upgrades to be environment friendly and inexpensive. The implementation of such superior processes lowered lead-time for plane elements by over 50 %. Lockheed Martin started manufacturing elements for RAIDER X on manufacturing tooling whereas nonetheless in conceptual design. Then, lower than a 12 months later, accomplished {hardware} elements had been obtainable for buyer evaluate, together with complete plane meeting simulations for all elements.
