The Boeing Company (BA), Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT): Wheels Up for Textron Inc. (TXT)’s Next-Generation Super Helicopter

What it will take to win
Winning won’t be easy, because the Army has some pretty lofty requirements for its next-generation helicopter. As compared with medium-lift helos such as the Apache and Black Hawk, the Army wants the FVL to:

Fly faster (twice as fast as a Black Hawk would be great).

Fly farther (again, a nice, round 100% increase should suffice).

Lug around a good-sized payload on its flights (say, a dozen fully combat-loaded infantrymen).

Carry its payload to higher altitudes (such as are common in mountainous, Middle Eastern countries such as, say, Afghanistan) and in hotter temperatures (likewise).

Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) thinks it’s found a useful ally in Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT), and it has the aircraft to fill this bill. Then again, so do Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT)/Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)’s competitors, one has to presume.

What happens next
If all goes as planned, the U.S. Army plans this very month to pick two out of the four teams competing on FVL and have them build prototypes of their respective aircraft for evaluation. The Army will then test-fly these craft from 2017 and 2019, with the aim of picking one final winner. Fifteen years later, in 2034, the Army thinks it will be ready to start putting these helos into operation.

That sounds like a long way off — but winning this contract should be worth the wait. The Army alone has more than 2,000 Black Hawks and Apaches in its arsenal, and a couple thousand more helos of other types — and that’s just one of the four branches of the military that will eventually be replacing their aircraft with whatever emerges from FVL. Billions of Pentagon dollars could be at stake as the aircraft goes through development, and tens of billions of dollars once it goes into production.

Who will win all these dollars?

Stay tuned.

The article Wheels Up for Textron’s Next-Generation Super Helicopter originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Rich Smith.

Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Lockheed Martin and Textron.

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