Bell V-280 Valor Sling Load & Tactical Data Link

We just finished up another incredible day of flight tests for the V-280. We were able to demonstrate an external sling load operation with the aircraft. This is something that's well within the aircraft's capabilities, but we continue to try to demonstrate more and more operational type maneuvers, more operational capability with the aircraft. External load, external lift was one of those opportunities we wanted to demonstrate for the customer and for the user community so they can see how tilt rotors can be applied during their missions. We actually had a group watching the PDAS camera, the distributed aperture system camera on the bottom of the aircraft. That was actually showing the external load as it was being moved around by the aircraft. That's also a capability that the pilots and the folks in the back of the aircraft have to be able to look through their helmet and on display or their MFD at the load as they're hooking up and as they're flying the aircraft to see what the load is doing. So pretty important for us to demonstrate those two things independently, even more critical for us to be able to demonstrate how those things work together. In less than a year we were able to demonstrate the incorporation of a tactical data link on the aircraft. That demonstrates our modular open systems approach, also demonstrates the execution of the combined Bell Lockheed Martin team. Demonstrated the ability to use our omnidirectional and our directional antennas, beaming data and information from the aircraft down to a ground station.