Jane Edwards
Nick Lappos, chairman of the Vertical Lift Consortium, has proposed the creation of a team that would focus on the production of common parts for installation on five different aircraft proposed under the Future Vertical Lift program, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. writes the VLC advises the Defense Department on the FVL project, which is meant to replace the military’s outdated helicopters.
Lappos, also a senior technical fellow at Sikorsky Aircraft, believes the creation of a commonality program under the FVL initiative could help reduce the cost and time spent on producing unique components and lessen maintenance costs, Freedberg reports.
The commonality initiative could pave the way for the development of common cockpits, bolts, hydraulics, generator controls and maintenance toolkits for use across different aircraft, Lappos said during an event of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The idea [is] that there would be a program that would produce the fundamentals for the cockpit, a program that would produce the fundamentals for the maintenance and logistics systems, [and] those programs would deliver their products down to the programs that are actually developing the air vehicles,†Lappos told the publication.
