Originally Posted by
JohnDixson
Having been “ fairly close “ to both the Army UTTAS and the Comanche Programs, it is important to note the effects of two absolutely different approaches taken by the Army in their management of the two:
1. In the case of UTTAS, the Army took great pains to produce a Material Needs document which then became a detailed specification, which was then an integral part of the Request for Proposal, and which remained unchanged throughout the selection and fly-off competition. This was hardly the case with Comanche, where the goal posts were changed frequently esp.with regard to systems.
2. There was a competitive fly-off, involving competitive evaluations both in engineering at their Engineering Flight Activity at Edwards AFB, a Service Evaluation at Ft. Rucker and an Operational Evaluation at Ft. Campbell, wherein the Army determined the degree to which the competitors met or did not meet their predetermined requirements.
One produced a vehicle that met their requirements, in a timely fashion, and for far, far less investment than the second. Some of us are still wondering why the example set by UTTAS wasn’t followed again for the RAH program.
This is an excellent point and I'm sure the success of UTTAS and AAH helped convince the Army to pursue competitive demonstrators and actively iterate on the requirements of a final FLRAA program to make sure it is not technically over specified and achievable. Gives me some hope that this will be the first successful, completely new Army rotary wing platform in generations.