Next-Gen Military Rotorcraft Concept Design Assessment

This paper presents the contributions of the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) to a Leonardo-led consortium participating in NATO Next-Generation Rotorcraft Capability (NGRC) Study #5, which is aimed at the development of Integrated Platform Concepts (IPC) to fulfill the NATO NGRC 2035+ Capability Development needs. NLR contributed to this industry effort by providing an independent evaluation of the high-speed tiltrotor concept proposed by the consortium led by Leonardo, considering aspects such as handling qualities, rotorcraft-ship compatibility, as well as a broader operational Battle Lab assessment. The handling qualities assessment and related control law development considered predictive metrics from ADS-33E and MIL-1797A, and yielded Level 1 handling for the baseline tiltrotor concept along with an evaluation of design sensitivities. The ship compatibility assessment, based on in-airwake trim and simulated lateral approach procedures, offered early insight into tentative limits for tiltrotor shipboard operations on Frigate-class navy vessels. The Battle Lab simulations provided an early holistic evaluation of operational effectiveness of the proposed IPC in the Air Assault mission scenario that is part of the NGRC Concept of Operations (CONOPS).