Bell Textron Inc., a Textron Inc. company, announced today it has entered into a teaming agreement with Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), a global aerospace and national security company, for Bell’s High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) aircraft. As part of the collaboration, SNC will specifically support the design and development of mission systems for HSVTOL variants. Bell’s HSVTOL vehicles blend the hover capability of a helicopter with the speed, range and survivability features of fighter aircraft, with low downwash hover capability and jet-like speeds of more than 400 kts. This family of scalable aircraft concepts is designed to carry out USAF and USSOCOM missions across the full spectrum of conflict and political scenarios, including personnel recovery, contested logistics and ISR/Strike.
“SNC is delighted to join the Bell’s HSVTOL development team, and we are already hard at work to deliver the visionary mission systems that Bell demands for their visionary aircraft. Our nation’s warfighters will benefit from this HSVTOL program’s ground-breaking operational capabilities,” says Derek Hess, vice president, strategic program business development at SNC.
“In an effort to advance technical maturity and deliver HSVTOL capability to warfighters sooner, Bell is assembling a team of industry-leading partners. We’re thrilled to have SNC onboard. We’ve made significant progress in Bell’s HSVTOL technology development in 2022, and we look forward to showing this progress in the upcoming year,” said Jason Hurst, vice president, Innovation, Bell.
Similar to Bell’s innovation development, SNC continues to leverage its mission systems expertise to explore dynamic new opportunities. SNC also supports Bell with additional mission systems expertise for the development of the Bell 360 Invictus for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) competition. Best known for its unique mission applications, SNC creates customized solutions for the world’s most pressing technology challenges in the fields of aviation, national security space, electronic warfare, command and control, mission systems and inline cybersecurity. Bell is currently executing its HSVTOL risk reduction effort and participating in the AFWERX HSVTOL Concept Challenge, a crowdsourcing effort for the United States Air Force (USAF) and United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). Bell is one of 11 companies from more than 200 challenge entrants selected to receive market research investments aimed at advancing HSVTOL technology.
Bell is an American aerospace manufacturer headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. The company was founded on July 10, 1935, as Bell Aircraft Corporation by Lawrence Dale Bell in Buffalo, New York. The company focused on the designing and building of fighter aircraft. Textron purchased Bell Aerospace in 1960. Bell Aerospace was composed of three divisions of Bell Aircraft Corporation, including its helicopter division, which had become its only division still producing complete aircraft. The helicopter division was renamed Bell Helicopter Company and in a few years, with the success of the UH-1 Huey during the Vietnam War, it had established itself as the largest division of Textron. In January 1976, Textron changed the division’s name to Bell Helicopter Textron. A subsidiary of Textron, Bell manufactures military rotorcraft at facilities in Fort Worth, and Amarillo, Texas, as well as commercial helicopters in Mirabel, Quebec, Canada.
