Bell selects Wichita for FLRAA fuselage assembly site

Bell Textron Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.) announced the site selection for the future long-range assault aircraft (FLRAA) fuselage assembly in Wichita, Kansas, at an existing facility located at Beech Field on Textron Aviation’s East Campus near the site of Textron Aviation Defense. Bell plans to begin operations at the facility in the next several months.

“As Bell prepares for the next stage of FLRAA’s engineering and manufacturing development [EMD] phase, we are committed to investing in advanced manufacturing to ensure we deliver high performance at an affordable cost to our customer,” says Lisa Atherton, president and CEO of Bell. “Textron has a rich history with the state of Kansas as well as the city of Wichita, and we are proud to deepen that relationship as we establish this new facility.”

In addition to manufacturing the FLRAA fuselage at the newly established Bell Wichita facility, supporting work will take place at several of Bell’s advanced manufacturing facilities in Texas, including Bell’s Advanced Composite Center in Fort Worth. Final assembly of the aircraft will occur in Amarillo.

Following the U.S. Army’s FLRAA contract award in December 2022, Bell says it has established several new state-of-the-art facilities and several new manufacturing processes to drive cost, schedule and performance to support program execution. As Bell and the FLRAA team work through the EMD phase, Bell’s focus will be on continued design maturation and prototyping.

To learn more about FLRAA program developments, read “Integris Composites becomes U.S. Army FLRAA armor supplier” and “Bell V-280 Valor gains clearance for EMD phase, prototype building.”