Bell Textron hires general manager in Wichita to lead FLRAA production for Army helicopters

Adam Blackford is the general manager of Bell Textron's Wichita facility. Blackford got his start as an industrial engineer at Cessna in Wichita and has been with Textron for 27 years.

Source: By Jenna Farhat – Reporter, Wichita Business Journal

Bell Textron has named a Wichita general manager to lead the site's work on the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program, as the U.S. Army rushes the timeline to replace its aging fleet of Black Hawk helicopters.

Adam Blackford, the GM of Bell Wichita, said fuselage work will begin in Wichita on the FLRAA program sooner than initially expected.

Bell, a subsidiary of Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT), completed renovations earlier this year on a 120,000 square-foot facility located on Textron Aviation's east Wichita campus. The Bell Wichita facility is responsible for work on the fuselage of the MV-75 helicopter — formerly known as the V-280 Valor —which was selected by the Army to replace its aging fleet of Sikorsky BlackHawk helicopters.

The FLRAA program has an estimated value of around $70 billion in the decades to come, the WBJ previously reported.

Still in the early stages of FLRAA program development, Bell Wichita now plans to build a complete fuselage for the MV-75 helicopter by the end of the year, Blackford told the Business Journal.

The company is prepared to increase hiring in Wichita to reflect the Army's newly expedited timeline. Work will be "ramping up aggressively over the next three or four months," Blackford said.

The Army has indicated that it now wants the next generation of helicopters as early as 2028, two years earlier than initially stated, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

"We're going to end the year at about 50 people," Blackford said about Bell Wichita's assembly workforce plans. "We had a plan before to be around 40. ...We have officially increased our workforce headcount profile for this year."

After reaching the production phase, Blackford expects to add a second shift — a night shift — to the manufacturing schedule.

After fuselages are manufactured in Wichita, they will be shipped to a Bell facility in Amarillo, Texas, for final assembly. Transmissions and rotor blades for the helicopter will be made at a new $632-million facility in Fort Worth.

That the FLRAA work will remain in Wichita was touted as a success for the the city's aerospace industry, as some subcontractors expressed concerns about the future of Spirit AeroSystem's (NYSE: SPR) defense portfolio in light of Boeing's pending $8.3 billion acquisition of Wichita's largest employer. Spirit AeroSystems lost the FLRAA fuselage contract last year when Bell Textron took over fuselage construction from the supplier.

Officials including Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) have recently pushed to bring defense work to Wichita as an effort to diversify the city's aerospace economy and reduce its reliance on the turbulent commercial aviation industry.

Bell Textron signage went up in February on the east Wichita facility where it will manufacture fuselages for a high-profile U.S. Army program.

Blackford said the FLRAA program serves as a good model for diversifying Wichita's aerospace industry.

After the MV-75 makes its debut in the Army's fleet, other branches of the military may show interest in the helicopter, Blackford said.

"You could be looking at the Marines, the Air Force, and even the Navy operating this aircraft," Blackford said.

"Beyond that, there will be interest from foreign militaries that want to operate the aircraft as well. I know there's already interest from the U.K. and other countries," he said. "I think it could be a very stable, long-term program that will help Wichita."

In 2022, Bell beat out Boeing Defense (NYSE: BA) and Lockheed Martin's (NYSE:LMT) Sikorsky for the Army contract aimed at replacing the Black Hawk fleet with more than 1,000 of the new helicopters. Boeing and Lockheed Martin initially protested the program award to Bell Textron before ceding the contest.

Textron Inc.'s Bell division last year took over the fuselage work from Spirit AeroSystems on theMV-75 helicopter for the Army's Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program.