Leonardo’s Future Programmes Group was established in 2022 as a Centre of Excellence for rising rotorcraft applied sciences, and this innovation hub is already proving to be a game-changer for the way forward for helicopter design and growth. We take a deeper dive into the Future Programmes Group and its imaginative and prescient going ahead, and the way it’s responding to – and informing – the long run necessities of army helicopters.
Leonardo continues to be on the forefront of rotorcraft design, and is regularly new methods to remain forward of the sport and supply best-in-class options to prospects. So when Leonardo established the Future Programmes Group in 2022, it did so with this place in thoughts, setting out to make sure that innovation stays on the coronary heart of all that the corporate does.
By way of the Future Programmes Group, based mostly on the House of British Helicopters in Yeovil, the corporate is exploring progressive applied sciences and approaches to design and manufacture, taking gifted people from throughout Leonardo and selling inventive pondering to garner a brand new method of design and growth.
There are synergies with different innovation hubs throughout Leonardo, all of that are agile teams that concentrate on taking a refreshed have a look at how the corporate carries out design, growth, manufacturing and supply.
With a concentrate on redefining how rotorcraft are developed through the use of a mixture of agile challenge administration approaches and digitalisation, the group is guaranteeing that Leonardo is on the forefront of next-generation army helicopter design.
Proteus – The Way forward for UK Uncrewed Army VTOL
The preliminary focus for the group has been challenge Proteus, the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) Know-how Growth Programme (TDP) into the way forward for army maritime vertical take-off and touchdown (VTOL) programs. Work is being carried out at tempo to ship this collaborative challenge alongside the MOD.
For Proteus, Leonardo and its Future Programmes Group are working alongside the MOD’s Defence Tools and Assist’s (DE&S) Future Functionality Group and the Royal Navy to concentrate on de-risking rising applied sciences and ideas.
Proteus is an evolution of the MOD’s Rotary Wing Uncrewed Air System (RWUAS) Idea Functionality Demonstrator (CCD), which Leonardo has been concerned in since 2013. In July 2022, Leonardo was awarded a four-year contract for the RWUAS CCD Part 3 Know-how Demonstration Programme (TDP).
Following this, in September 2023, Leonardo and the MOD unveiled a conceptually mature design at DSEI in London. A 2-3t expertise demonstrator based mostly on a single foremost rotor design was exhibited with the ambition for this demonstrator to take flight in the course of this decade.
Proteus represents a low-risk idea with modularity and autonomy at its core. The multi-role air car will perform on-board decision-making at a degree not seen earlier than, and delivering for future mission successes can be on the coronary heart of this.
Uncrewed programs can function in high-threat conditions the place there would in any other case be an elevated Threat to Life (RtL) in deploying a crewed platform. Because of this skill to push operational boundaries and improve platform persistence, a refreshed method to Availability, Reliability and Maintainability (AR&M) and modularity is a elementary consideration for Proteus.
As a result of uncrewed programs are designed to ship extra persistent operations, there’s a must minimise upkeep, restore and overhaul. Sustainability is a key driver within the growth of the expertise demonstrator, with recycled supplies and attritable airframes simply two approaches being thought-about by the crew.
The challenge will validate {that a} platform with excessive ranges of modularity and autonomy can ship or contribute to the supply of impact, additional pioneering the way forward for army aviation.
A Collaborative Strategy
Proteus isn’t just about rising expertise, but additionally new methods of collaborative working.
The Future Programmes Group meets with key stakeholders, together with the MOD, each quarter for system idea evaluations – or SCRs – which is an open, clear method to cross-industry/MOD working and is a departure from the normal industry-MOD method to contracting.
This enables all events to examine the well being of the challenge frequently in order that amendments could be made and suggestions offered virtually in actual time, avoiding expensive and time-intensive adjustments being made additional down the road.
“We’re becoming a member of forces to essentially discover what the artwork of the attainable is,” says Martyn Ashford, Head of Future Programmes Group at Leonardo Helicopters UK. “By taking this method, we will actually measure the well being of a programme, and we’re breeding a degree of belief.”
Ashford provides: “It’s actually a collaborative effort, which is one other method wherein Proteus and the Future Programmes Group are taking a refreshed method to challenge supply.”
Digitalisation is vital to delivering this agile method, and Leonardo is working with Siemens to adapt the Teamcenter Product Lifecycle Administration (PLM) instrument for the challenge.
A full digital twin is being utilised to simulate design outcomes, and artificial environments are being employed to signify the combination of airborne car fashions. The information collected can be layered with the tactical mission system, enabling the crew to find out the way it will form the long run autonomous functionality of the plane.
A dynamic integration rig can also be getting used to check the superior autonomous programs on board the plane.
An increasing variety of initiatives
Whereas the success of Proteus is a precedence for the group, its ambitions go far past this key challenge.
The Future Programmes Group has additionally been concerned in different key UK programmes, such because the Defence Science and Know-how Laboratory’s (Dstl) Rotorcraft Ideas and Tactical Aviation in Contested, Degraded and Operationally limiting setting (RCAT) programme. That is looking for to develop applied sciences that may counter rising and evolving battlefield risk programs which might be coming to the fore and that may in the end shield the MOD’s plane fleets.
In the course of the four-year programme, an {industry} consortium led by Leonardo will discover the event of those applied sciences for next-generation plane.
The Future Programmes Group has additionally been exploring Air-Launched Results (ALE), whereas Leonardo competed within the MOD’s Heavy Raise Problem – two additional examples of the corporate’s involvement in rising necessities and the way forward for aviation.
What’s widespread throughout the initiatives that the group is engaged on, is that they transcend low Know-how Readiness Degree (TRL) analysis and growth (R&D) efforts. They really sit round TRL4-7, which implies the expertise has usually been validated in addition to demonstrated. They’re due to this fact tangible efforts that transcend analysis.
Though it isn’t the only focus of the group, preliminary work has largely been on uncrewed applied sciences and exploring the potential that they’ve in future operations.
“We hope that autonomy and automation will develop into a future crown jewel for Leonardo, and thru the Future Programmes Group, we’re establishing ourselves because the UK hub for army uncrewed programs,” explains Ashford.
“We’re accelerating the technological evolution of autonomy and automation, difficult ourselves to take a distinct perspective based mostly on all of our crewed expertise and making use of it to the uncrewed phase, which is collectively driving a totally completely different mind-set throughout the firm.”
Conclusion
Leonardo is dedicated to delivering the best subsequent era of rotary-wing functionality to its prospects, and the Future Programmes Group and the expertise it’s fostering is vital to this.
Not solely is the corporate exploring rising applied sciences that may present operational benefit throughout future missions, additionally it is introducing a brand new tradition inside Leonardo that may result in agile and environment friendly challenge administration that has digitalisation – and success – at its core.
