Army Must Familiarize Itself with Tiltrotor Aircraft for Future Vertical Lift, Program Manager Says

October 18, 2024 3:09 PM - Updated: October 18, 2024 4:08 PM
The Bell V-280 technology Demonstrator. Photo courtesy of Bell.

The replacement for the Army’s air assault workhorse UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter is more like an airplane, so the service is familiarizing itself with the differences between tiltrotor and rotary aircraft flight, the program manager said Wednesday.
“The Marine Corps does this; Air Force special operations does it,” said Col. Jeffrey Poquette, manager of the service’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program. “We have V-22s, so it’s starting to build up the familiarity” with this kind of aircraft.

“Speed and range is what we’re focused on.”

The first prototype is expected to be delivered in 2026.

Speaking at a Defense News event at the Association of he United States Army’s annual meeting, he added that unlike other aviation programs a “virtual prototype” will be delivered to Fort Novosel and Redstone Arsenal, both in Alabama, in February to familiarize Army aviators with tiltrotor operations.

“It’s similar to a simulator, [but] it will have the software that is going to be in the aircraft” and will perform as “how the aircraft flies,” Poquette said. This early training will discover possibilities for operations not envisioned by designers and engineers, he added.

Training right now is critical, Maj. Gen. Michael McCurry, the chief of staff of Army Futures Command, said in the panel discussion, “because Army aviators are basically helicopter pilots.”

“The changes are significant” in flying a helicopter versus tiltrotor and how soldiers get on and off, Poquette added. He mentioned the size of the aircraft’s drive train and the size of the steps that soldiers in full battle kit would use to exit as examples. For infantry, “we don’t want them tripping over each other” leaving the aircraft.

“We’re getting insights” from “those who would fly it” and infantry. “We’re getting in front” of potential pitfalls in how the aircraft can operate in combat.

Additionally, the service must develop a doctrine, Poquette and James Kirsch, the director of combat capabilities development command, agreed. “How do I do an air assault when we’re going 300 knots,” Poquette asked rhetorically. Seventeen-hundred miles is the range requirement.

Kirsch noted that discussions include whether the Army needs active protection on every aircraft to make them more survivable before they are added to the fleet.

Both Kirsch and Poquette agreed the Army cannot afford to build the wrong aircraft. At the same time, the service must also develop doctrine and training for manned/unmanned operations; autonomous operations and flying with unmanned systems in the same air space, panelists said.

Kirsch mentioned pushing the scout role in Army aviation out to more unmanned systems and eventually having one operator controlling multiple systems to achieve different effects.

The service’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget commits $1 billion to the program that will move soldiers to and around future battlefields. Textron Bell was won the contract in 2022 after a competition with Sikorsky-Boeing, the Black Hawk’s manufacturer.

The contract calls for Bell to deliver six experimental aircraft. Low-rate initial production is to begin in 2028.

One feature of the contract was a requirement to develop the vertical lift aircraft with Modular Open Systems Architecture [MOSA], meaning “the standards will be government owned,” Poquette said.

Jeffrey Schloesser, Bell’s executive vice president of strategic pursuits, said allowing on-site additive manufacturing “can deliver a part to the flight line or wherever it is” to keep the aircraft flying” quickly without waiting for the needed part to be sent over distance.

“We’re the pilot for digital engineering. We’re working in real-time with Bell” to correct anomalies that arise. This close collaboration “makes for faster iteration,” he said at the Defense News event.

When the aircraft passed Milestone B, he was quoted saying that “using digital engineering as a key part of our ‘go slow to go fast’ approach has helped to accelerate the program by investing in requirements development.”

Picking up on the need for quick turnaround, Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, the director of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift cross function team, said at AUSA that the war in Ukraine shows the “fast pace of technological change. We know we can add [and] adapt in six to eight weeks” to meet new threats.

Panelists at the Defense News event said this program will be the service’s largest budget item heading into the 2030s. The Army has already started downsizing its fleet of 1,978 Black Hawks in anticipation of the arrival of the tiltrotor, called the Bell V-280 Valor. It will not be a one-for-one replacement, Defense News has reported.

John Grady

John Grady

John Grady, a former managing editor of Navy Times, retired as director of communications for the Association of the United States Army. His reporting on national defense and national security has appeared on Breaking Defense, GovExec.com, NextGov.com, DefenseOne.com, Government Executive and USNI News.

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