News Military
Bell selects Sierra Nevada Corp. for High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing Development Team

Bell Textron entered into a teaming agreement with Sierra Nevada Corporation for Bell’s High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) aircraft. As part of the collaboration, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) will specifically support the design and development of mission systems for HSVTOL variants.

Bell explains its HSVTOL vehicles will 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 spectrum of conflict and political scenarios, including personnel recovery, contested logistics and ISR/Strike.

“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,” said Jason Hurst, vice president, Innovation, Bell. “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.”

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.

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.