GE Aerospace to Develop Digital Architecture, Other Components for Bell’s Army FLRAA Platform

Textron’s Bell subsidiary has chosen GE Aerospace to build data infrastructure components for a new U.S. Army tiltrotor platform called the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft.

The components will form part of an open avionics system to be integrated into the V-280 Valor, which won the FLRAA competition in December last year, GE Aerospace said Thursday.

Bell won the $1.3 billion FLRAA development contract to replace a portion of the service branch’s UH-60 Black Hawk fleet.

The two companies’ deal covers work to develop an open architecture digital backbone, health awareness technology and recorders of flight and voice data.

GE Aerospace will help the Textron subsidiary to install the systems not only on the V-280 Valor, but also on Bell’s 360 Invictus offering to the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program.