Hello, I'm not a helicopter industry tech or administrator, just a guy who likes reading up on copters. I served in the Army in the late 90s and early 2000s and interested in them, knowing the specs, and also building scale models (Revell-Monogram, Esci, etc).
I also follow the goings on in terms of the upgrade and replacement programs, who's buying what, refurbing what, etc. The current helicopter program is the Flight School Next, which looks to introduce a new single engine type to serve as the Army's trainer helo. I could paste a whole article here, but I won't - i'll drop the link that seems to explain the program clearly.
https://www.megaproject.com/news/fac...aining-refresh The goal is to replace the UH-72 in the training role with about 200 units, and a section of text here says who is partaking,
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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 ** There's a commercial on youtube put out by MD Helos that promotes their MD530. The models would be i'm guessing, the Bell 505, Enstrom's 480, Leo's AW119 (just like the Navy's TH-73), the Robby R44 (already is being shown to Army trainers), and the Schweiser S300. What about Airbus?
One piece of text in the article confuses me;
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Some 40 companies submitted white papers with initial proposals at the end of last year ** ... how can 40 companies be potentially involved; I didn't know there were that many aerospace companies in the USA. Maybe someone can clarify this.
What do you think of this program? Who do you think has a chance at winning?