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The SB-1 Defiant technology demonstrator aircraft reached a speed of 230 miles an hour, making it faster than the Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk.
The Defiant is one of two aircraft that will compete to replace the Army’s Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.
The Defiant will likely fly even faster in the near future, with speeds greater than 300 miles an hour projected.
A new helicopter and candidate to replace the Army’s fleet of assault transport helicopters reached a key speed milestone. The Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant helicopter reached 205 knots, or 238 miles an hour. The Defiant is one of two contenders to replace the Black Hawk, using an unorthodox rotor configuration to speed soldiers across the battlefield faster than ever before.

The test flight took place on June 9 at Sikorsky’s West Palm Beach Development Flight Test Center. Sikorsky test pilot Bill Fell and Boeing test pilot Ed Henderscheid pushed the SB-1 to 205 knots, the equivalent to 230 miles an hour. That’s faster than the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, the U.S. Army’s current medium assault transport helicopter, which has a never-exceed speed of 194 knots (223 miles an hour) and a cruise speed of 155 knots (178 miles an hour). The SB-1 Defiant is designed to carry four crew members and up to twelve passengers.
The Defiant is one of two finalists to compete in the Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program. The other candidate is the Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor. FLRAA will pick a medium-sized aircraft platform to replace both the UH-60M Black Hawk assault transport and the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter. FLRAA will kick off in 2022 with an eye toward fielding the new aircraft in the early 2030s.

The Army has flown Black Hawks and Apaches since the early 1980s, and a lot has happened in the world of aviation in the last forty years. The Army’s two main requirements for FLRAA are greater speed and range over existing aircraft. This would translate to attack and transport helicopters capable of ranging farther and faster over the battlefield, responding quickly to new threats and developing situations.
Sikorsky-Boeing and Bell responded by offering clean sheet designs that forsake the traditional main rotor and tail rotor configuration used by most vertical lift aircraft. Sikorsky-Boeing’s SB-1 uses a set of two contra-rotating main rotor blades complemented by a tail-mounted push propeller. Bell’s design is a tiltrotor similar to the V-22 Osprey, capable of rotating its wing and propellers straight up for vertical takeoffs and landings and turning them to face forward in flight.

According to Defense News, the SB-1 hit 205 knots using just half of its propeller power and the test pilots involved are confident the plane will fly even faster. Breaking Defense reports the eventual goal for Defiant is 288 knots, which translates to 331 miles an hour. The U.S. Army operated 2,279 Black Hawk and 744 Apache helicopters in 2019, making the FLRAA program worth about 3,000 aircraft between 2030 and 2050.