WASHINGTON — Karem Aircraft has forged a team with Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to compete in the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) competition, according to a July 1 company statement.

Karem was one of five companies awarded a prototyping development contract in April.

While details are scant as to how each company will contribute to the overall design, due in January or February of 2020, the teaming announcement says the three companies together “will apply decades of combined knowledge, skills and abilities to bring the best of vehicle and systems technologies and processes to the first aircraft within the Future Vertical Lift family of systems.”

US Army triggers design competition for future attack reconnaissance helicopter The Army took a big step Oct. 3, releasing a solicitation for designs for a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft as part of its Future Vertical Lift modernization efforts.

Karem is bringing its “unique active variable speed rotor technologies,” which have been developed over the last 10 years through collaboration with the Army, to the teaming effort.

The company’s experience “will be augmented with Northrop Grumman’s manned and autonomous military aircraft development, system integration, production and support expertise and Raytheon’s systems architecture, mission equipment and weapons capabilities,” the company statement adds.

While Karem competed to be one of two teams selected to build a flying aircraft for the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR TD), it was not selected. Instead, the Army awarded it a smaller technology development contract to continue to refine its unique technology.

Is the US Army biting off more than it can chew? We ask its future vertical lift modernization boss Defense News sat down with Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen at the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium to talk about progress his team is making on future vertical lift modernization efforts.

× Fear of missing out? Sign up for the Early Bird Brief, the defense industry's most comprehensive news and information, straight to your inbox. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to the Early Bird Brief.

Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team have each built a JMR TD aircraft which is flying in that program. AVX Aircraft Co. also received a smaller technology development contract similar to Karem’s award.

The Karem-Northrop-Raytheon team will compete with an AVX-L-3 Communications Integrated Systems team, Bell, Boeing and Lockheed Martin-owned Sikorsky to provide design plans to the Army for FARA. The Army will choose just two teams to advance to build a flyable prototype, much like it did for the JMR TD program — except this time, one of those aircraft will be chosen for production.

The Army has set an ambitious schedule for FARA, with plans to fly prototypes in 2023. A production decision could happen in 2028, but the service is looking at any way possible to speed up that timeline.

Truncating the timelines for both FLRAA and FARA has been on the table for many years and the service continues to assess any way possible to bring the aircraft online faster.

Can the Army pull off buying two new helicopters back to back? The Army’s track record over the past few decades hasn’t been good when it comes to trying to buy a new helicopter, but now the service wants to buy not one, but two different aircraft.

With the advent of the new Army Futures Command — focused on six major modernization priorities, of which FVL is third — the service is moving faster on prototyping capability to ultimately procure major weapon systems at a somewhat unprecedented speed. Through the AFC and the use of contracting mechanisms like OTAs, the Army has found a way to compress parts of the acquisition process that previously took three-to-five years into periods of time often amounting to less than a year.