A Scout for a Scout: Army Plots Future Air-Launched Effects

摘要

The U.S. Army's next scout aircraft could enter service in 2024, six years before the scheduled debut of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. The Army's long-awaited, purpose-built successor to the Bell OH-5D Kiowa Warrior, which was retired in 2015, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) in Sikorsky's and Bell's respective versions is designed to function as scout rotor-craft, like the OH-58D, roving ahead of ground forces and picking out the enemy's long-range missile launchers and other formations. But the FARA, unlike the OH-58D, will not be able to perform that mission alone. To survive in the 2030s, the FARA fleet needs its own scout fleet, which the Army now calls Air-Launched Effects (ALE).