Next Generation Military Helicopter Cockpits: Touchscreens and Digital Transformation

Several U.S. and international military helicopter avionics upgrade and research and development programs are demonstrating the way smarter displays, smaller computers, and more intuitive navigation systems will become standard in the next generation of vertical lift platforms. Here, Avionics International highlights new avionics technologies being developed for existing and future military helicopters by some of the largest airframe manufacturers and systems suppliers in the world.

U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift Avionics

The Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative has two main programs: Future Attack Recon Aircraft (FARA) and Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). The Army describes FARA as a “knife fighter” helicopter that will fill the gap left by the retired the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. In contrast, the competitive demonstration effort for FLRAA is intended to deliver an initial concept design for the helicopter that will ultimately supplement the Army's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleet for fast assault medical evacuation roles and, in the long-term, to replace the Black Hawk. Overall, the FVL program will produce replacements for the Apache, Black Hawk, and Kiowa Warrior.

Mike Hirschberg is the Vertical Flight Society’s (VFS) executive director and a consultant to the FVL program that he calls “One of the most exciting things to ever happen in the military helicopter world.” The new air vehicle architecture is seen as enabling leap-ahead technology advances. And while the faster speeds are helpful, to Hirschberg the most notable advancements are “the dramatic improvements in range, maintainability/supportability, fly-by-wire (FBW) flight controls, and advanced avionics architecture.”

Bell’s Invictus 360 FVL/FARA contender provides an example of where military helicopter cockpits are going in the future. The Invictus, with its low-drag tandem cockpit design, draws from a lot of the development Bell has put into the 525 Relentless, a super-medium utility aircraft it hopes will be the first fly-by-wire rotorcraft certified for the civil market.

Lee Anderson, Bell’s FARA program manager, covered some prime virtues in an interview with Avionics. Invictus features large area displays and adaptive touchscreens to maximize flexibility while adapting to different operational scenarios and employing many capabilities. Some are destined to be required when dangers suddenly arise in combat theaters and Information-sharing with friendlies is crucial. Then, strong tactical data links and system interfaces will let the helicopter connect “seamlessly with both tactical forces and [Command and Control] nodes.”

Some observers of the FVL program are concerned that given the FARA and FLRAA winners’ fielding is a decade hence, and foes’ capabilities are largely unknown, developers must try to prepare to meet and ideally outpace them. Anderson believes that the use of open architecture design with rapid upgrade capabilities is the key to overcoming that reality: “The key challenge for avionics is the cost and time required to develop, qualify, train and field new capabilities; our Modular Open Approach [MOSA] … enables rapid integration of new capabilities from different vendors.”

According to Anderson, the configurable flight displays on Invictus let crews maximize the limited space available in the cockpit as new capabilities are added to the aircraft. The trend in downscaling computers and other flight deck resources is also expected to help. “More processing power in the same space and weight enables more data fusion, better situational awareness, and more autonomous capabilities," Anderson says. Flying Invictus will grow more manageable, Anderson believes, so that operators can focus on employing its disparate weapon systems.

Other unknowns are challenges implicit in the extended reach of instruments, comms, radar, fire control, and other tools under combat conditions. “Increased speed and range requires improvements in sensor and communications performance,” Anderson says. Increased standoff distances, too, improve survivability as threat systems also become more capable.

Those systems include the electronic attack and countermeasures (ECM) arena, where several reports published in 2021 suggest China and Russia are making daunting progress. Anderson said, “The Bell 360 will be equipped with a suite of defensive systems designed to improve combat survivability. As with other aircraft systems, MOSA allows those systems to evolve rapidly to keep pace with potential dangers.”

H160M Guépard: A Generational Leap in Military Helicopter Cockpit Avionics

The French Armament General Directorate (DGA) signed a contract with Airbus Helicopters announced on Dec. 22 for the development and procurement of the H160M in the frame of the Light Joint Helicopter program (HIL), deemed the Guépard by the French armed forces.

The contract includes the development of several prototypes and the delivery of a first batch of 30 aircraft (21 for the army, eight for the navy, and one for the air force). The French Ministry for the Armed Forces plans to order a total of 169 H160M helicopters.

With deliveries of the first batch of Guépard rotorcraft scheduled to begin in 2027, the communication, navigation, and surveillance systems being developed for it represent a glimpse into the military helicopter avionics of the next generation.

That's where the Thales FlytX cloud-native cockpit system comes in: the modular touchscreen-centric system was first unveiled by the Toulouse-based avionics maker in 2019, built on the concept of virtualizing communications, navigation, and surveillance systems by giving them native or embedded data sharing access to cloud- and ground-based aviation systems.

Computing and processing for FlytX is embedded directly into the one-to-four display configuration of the system, eliminating the need for separate avionics computers—as the display is now the computer.

"Indeed FlytX is a cloud-native avionics suite. Today, thanks to FlytX, the pilot is able to display and interact with his connected EFB [Electronic Flight Bag] directly on the avionics screen," a representative for Thales said in an emailed statement to Avionics. "In a second step, FlytX will be directly connected in a cyber-secured way to external systems in order to use data from the open world in the cockpit itself."

Thales began flight-testing a single-screen version of FlytX in a modified Cabri helicopter in September, a flight test campaign that will continue over the next 1-2 years. Other features of the H160M Guépard include the Safran Euroflir 410 electro-optical system and AirMaster C radar. H160M pilots will also be able to integrate the helmet-mounted display into the H160M’s fly-by-wire system.

The Guépard helicopter will carry a self-protection suite, a satellite communication system, and tactical data link system. Commenting on the signing of the contract to acquire a fleet of H160M helicopters in December by the French DGA, Bruno Even, CEO of Airbus Helicopters, called the new light helicopter "the result of ten years of close cooperation with the DGA and the French armed forces."

“The H160M will bring new capabilities to the armed forces as it is adapted to modern warfare thanks to its increased connectivity, maneuverability, low acoustic footprint, and a fully integrated support system. Having the French armed forces, a world reference, as our launch customer for the H160M is extremely valuable," Even said.

Black Hawk Upgrades: UH-60V and Remote Piloting

Amid the effort to develop a variety of future vertical lift replacements for it, the U.S. Army is still investing millions into refreshing its current fleet of Black Hawk helicopters. At the timing of Avionics going to print with this article, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is planning its first fully autonomous UH-60 Black Hawk flight with no safety pilots onboard in January, with the Army assessing how it may leverage the technology for its enduring helicopter fleet.

A lead program official for DARPA’s ALIAS program, which has been running for about six years, told reporters during the Project Convergence event held in Yuma, Arizona, in November that he anticipates the technology transitioning to the Army in the near future as the service anticipates potential use cases from aircrew augmentation to potential completely autonomous operations.

During the Project Convergence event, the Army remotely conducted the first autonomous launch of an Air Launched Effects-Small prototype from a Black Hawk using the ALIAS technology.

“It makes common fiscal sense that we’re going to have these very expensive Future Vertical Lift (FVL) assets and there’s going to be missions where you’ll say I don’t need to send in a [very expensive] aircraft when I can send in an automated legacy or enduring aircraft. How the Army decides to use those is something the Army needs to figure out, but at least we have the technology to be able to do it,” Stuart Young, DARPA’s program manager for ALIAS, told reporters during a media briefing held after the Project Convergence experiment.

Drilling further down on the Black Hawk 60V (Victor)—unveiled last year at a National Guard base at a modernizers’ showcase—it’s getting an entirely new cockpit from Northrop Grumman via their OpenLift avionics suite. With a user interface almost identical to earlier iterations’, Black Hawk pilots can easily transition from the M to the V generation.

An overarching challenge for military helo operations is balancing component size and weight with sheer elbowroom. Dennis Neel, Northrop Grumman’s director of integrated digital systems, concurred in an interview, telling Avionics, “Our experience with other aircraft and programs—infrared countermeasure [models] and the H-1 helicopter, as two examples—have given us insight into techniques for reducing OpenLift’s space and weight.”

Apart from a common look with the -M, the -V is to have significantly advanced avionics, such as new mission computers, including a Flite Pro Gen III Mission Computer. The UH-60V also has the same type of localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPV) used by commercial aircraft to help landings in low-visibility conditions and remote locations.

The UH-60V also marks Army Aviation’s first qualification of multicore processing for flight critical functions. In all, OpenLift gives the Black Hawk a digital transformation. Neel explained that four glass screens, for example, supplant the 60V’s analogue gauges. Additionally, Neel says, the OpenLift architecture will allow Black Hawk operators to select “avionics hardware and software from any vendor for future upgrades.”

OpenLift also features the integration of a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) system where a separate control stick and display were previously used.

The first UH-60V Black Hawk helicopter to feature the OpenLift avionics suite entered service with the Pennsylvania National Guard’s unit at Fort Indiantown Gap in August. “We are excited,” concluded Neel, “to continue to support the Army as it modernizes hundreds of UH-60Ls in the future.”