By Robbin Laird
The panel on the future of vertical lift and interviews conducted by the press during the recent AUSA conference provided further insights regarding the FLRAA program and the way ahead. The conference was held from the 14-16 October in Washington D.C.

Let us address first the schedule indicated by these sources plus information associated with achieving Milestone B.

Milestone B was achieved in the summer of 2024. This is what the PEO of Aviation for the U.S. Army wrote about achieving this milestone and the next phase of development:

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. — The Army’s Future Vertical Lift program took a major step forward as the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, program entered the next major phase of development when the Army announced the approval of the FLRAA Milestone B Acquisition Decision Memorandum on August 2, 2024.

The decision came after the successful FLRAA preliminary design review in April and a meeting of the Army Systems Acquisition Review Council in June. After reviewing FLRAA affordability, technological viability, threat projections and security, engineering, manufacturing, sustainment and cost risks, the ASARC confirmed that all sources of program risk have been adequately addressed for this phase of the program. Milestone B allows the Army to exercise contract options and continues development of the aircraft as it now enters the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

“This an important step for FLRAA and demonstrates the Army’s commitment to our highest aviation modernization priority,” said the Army acquisition executive, the Honorable Douglas R. Bush. “FLRAA will provide assault and MEDEVAC capabilities for the future Army, adding significantly increased speed, range and endurance.”

“This is an exciting day for the Army … and more importantly for our Soldiers. The FLRAA provides truly transformational capability to Army aviators as we uphold the sacred trust with the Soldier on the ground,” said Maj. Gen. Michael C. McCurry, 17th chief of the U.S. Army Aviation Branch. “Future battlefields require expanded maneuver, the ability to sustain and provide command and control across vast distances, and of course, evacuate our wounded. All of these apply to both conventional and special operations forces. With roughly twice the range and twice the speed, FLRAA brings unmatched combat capability to the joint force.”

The Army awarded the FLRAA Weapon System Development contract to Bell Textron on December 5, 2022, and it includes nine options. The Milestone B allows the Army to exercise the first option which includes detailed aircraft design and build of six prototype aircraft. The Army is planning for the first FLRAA flight in 2026 with low-rate initial production scheduled to begin in 2028 and initial fielding activity in 2030. The Army will continue to review and refine the schedule as necessary based on the contract award and the latest program activities.

“PM FLRAA and our Team of Teams across the aviation enterprise are working hard to make sure that we get it right,” said Brig. Gen. David Phillips, Program Executive Officer, Aviation. “We will deliver a next generation combat capability that meets the Army’s goals for affordability, survivability, maintainability, reliability and safety.”

“The FLRAA Milestone B decision is another successful step of a deliberate modernization effort by the Army,” said Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, director for the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team. “The many stakeholders, including academia and industry, have worked hard to ensure rigorous technology development and demonstration and have informed FLRAA requirements and affordability. FLRAA’s speed, reach and survivability will be key to transforming U.S. Army maneuver.”

“I am very proud of the FLRAA team. We’ve maintained a deliberate balance between sustaining program momentum while maintaining technical and acquisition rigor,” said Col. Jeffrey Poquette, FLRAA project manager. “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 up front.”

FLRAA will provide transformational capability for ground forces and aircrews with speed, range, and surprise to present multiple dilemmas to the enemy. It will expand the depth of the battlefield, extending reach to conduct air assault missions from relative sanctuary while enabling us to rapidly exploit freedom of maneuver to converge ground forces through decentralized operations at extended distances. FLRAA’s inherent reach and standoff capabilities will ensure mission success through tactical maneuver at operational and strategic distances.

As the Army transforms to meet an uncertain future, FLRAA is one of many modernized capabilities that will help ensure the Army of 2030 and beyond is ready to win when the nation calls.

The next phase was described by one source after the AUSA conference as follows:

Bell is to deliver two virtual FLRAA prototypes – exact digital replications of what Bell intends to build to the army in February 2025. One copy is to be sent to Fort Novosel, where the army’s Aviation Center of Excellence will examine the design. Another copy is headed to Redstone Arsenal for analysis by Army Materiel Command. The virtual prototypes are also intended to fulfil a Middle Tier Acquisition requirement to deliver working prototypes to the field before transitioning to a programme of record, which cannot be done with a complex aircraft.

Another source added:

A so-called Critical Design Review (CDR) is expected to occur next summer ahead of the planned delivery of the first of six FLRAA prototypes in 2026. The program schedule as it exists now sees low-rate initial production of the tiltrotors starting in 2028 and units beginning to use them operationally in 2030.

What underlies progress to the next phase is the design and development approach being followed by Bell and the Army with regard to the platform. Digital engineering is how the platform is being design which allows for a more rapid and effective development process which changes how requirements are shaped in the process of the build of the aircraft.

The panel on the future of vertical life explicitly discussed this process.

Colonel Jeffrey Poquette, project manager for the future long-range assault aircraft, described the approach as follows:

So I’ll start with the FLRAA specifics, because as General Schlosser said, we are kind of the pilot case for digital engineering. We like to say that the program is born digital—a cleansheet design, the first time it’s been done in forever. We get a lot of extra homework from the Department of Defense, the Army, and even the GAO to talk about the benefits of digital engineering.

Digital engineering is a large umbrella; there’s a lot that falls under it. Model-based systems engineering falls under that umbrella. I’ll focus on the digital environment.

The digital environment is a collaborative workspace. Let me talk about how we used to do Previously, I would hand over words in the requirements document and expect Bell to go do some things and send me some engineering artifacts back. They would spend months doing that, and we would spend months reviewing it. If we found something wrong, we’d send it back, and we would iterate—that takes time.

In the digital environment, we are working in real time with Bell every day, looking at what they’re doing, and we are course-correcting them as needed. We catch issues right after the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). When they submitted their model of the system after PDR, we turned around about 3,000 things we needed them to address within two weeks.

These are not big things; they are just items to ensure we get it right. I want to make clear that that’s the goodness of digital engineering—finding those issues now and ensuring we don’t build the wrong thing is a testament to the power of digital engineering.

So you asked how it makes for a smooth program. I’m not sure if it makes it smooth; what it does is make it faster. It allows us to iterate quicker and collaborate in a way that was just unheard of in the past. Another thing that we do, like digital model-based systems engineering, is that it’s all done in the model. The likelihood of missing a requirement that General Baker handed to me is almost zero because it’s not just words on a page; it’s in the systems engineering model.

So we’re really proud of it. We talk a lot about it, and the Army is going to continue to emulate the things that we’ve done, get lessons learned, and develop weapon systems this way into the future.

Major General Michael McCurry, Chief of Staff Futures Command, added:

I’ll jump in from the Futures Command perspective. Digital engineering brings everything that JeE talked about. You heard General Schlosser say earlier that FLRAA is one of the two premier systems we’re doing digital engineering with in the Army; the other is ground combat vehicles.

So what does that do? You heard yesterday our chief in his address that’s now on lunch say, “Step on the gas; we’ve got to do things faster.” He also talked about process innovation. Well, this is an example of process innovation, and we have to continue to innovate our processes inside the Army as well.

Dr. James Kirsch, Director of the Army’s Aviation and Missile Center, underscored:

I’ll add a little more to that, because we talk a lot about going fast, and a lot of times we’re talking about going fast in the design and development phase. But there’s another piece of that before we can actually hand kits to soldiers, and that’s getting through the material release process, which includes airworthiness for aircraft as well. That generally happens at the end. We get a lot of documents and a lot of data from the PM as they’re finishing up their product, and then we spend a lot of time evaluating and determining whether or not we think this aircraft is safe to fly.

Now, in this digital environment, we’re involved in the process from the very beginning, and we can watch those things develop over time. We have much more access earlier in the program to the data, which should help us get to those pieces of the process—the airworthiness releases, the safety releases, and the material release process—that actually allow us to get that kit they’ve developed into the hands of our fighters that much quicker.

Digital engineering allows the delivery as mentioned about of a virtual prototype in 2026 as a key deliverable.

Colonel Jeffrey Poquette discussed this aspect of the program as follows:

The other thing I’d like to highlight is that this is a kind of a first for aviation, as we’re delivering a virtual prototype. Our virtual prototype is a simulator of sorts. That virtual prototype will be put down at Fort Novosel and one up in Redstone, modeling the flight dynamics of the aircraft, with a lot of real hardware and some simulated hardware. That will deliver in February, which is the first major material delivery for the program.

With that virtual prototype, we’ll put one down at Fort Novosel and one up in Redstone. It will inform doctrine and training, expose Army aviators to tilt-rotor technology—which they haven’t experienced before—and it will be a design tool for Bell and the program office to iterate on and get to the point where we can fly. So, the first prototype delivers in 2026, and flying will occur sometime shortly after that.

A key aspect of the program is engagement by the operational force in becoming familiar with the platform and how that platform will impact Army concepts of operations.

Familiarization was highlighted by Colonel Poquette during the panel discussion.

We’re located in Huntsville, AL. My initial thought was to let’s go to the 101st; they’re right up the road. I had a conversation with General Baker, a former 25th commander and deputy commanding general there. He said, “Why don’t we go to the place that we really think this aircraft matters?” It was a perfect idea. We executed it, and it took an extra month to get all the logistics in place. We sent the Bell team and my human systems team out there to bring the mock-up to receive input from the 25th.

The 25th CAB took place with the guys who could potentially fly it, and the combat brigades out there came across. We spent a week out there with them, iterating on the two configurations we wanted to test. We started with one configuration that we thought we were going to choose, with the seat configuration. We ran the soldiers through, you know, without any combat gear. Then we added weapons, then we added body armor, and then we added MOPP gear.

We timed them. The people that do this kind of human systems science are technical experts. We measured every soldier with giant human-sized calipers. We wanted to ensure we could take care of the 5th percentile soldier and the 95th percentile soldier. We did that in two configurations. What we found out is that the soldiers really liked the second configuration better.

Now that they liked it, why did they like it? It was more comfortable, it was faster, and they weren’t tripping over each other. We got feedback on the cockpit; the cockpit was mocked up with a lot of 3D-printed controls and that kind of thing. The weapon was different. When we were in location, we had the crew chief seat oriented differently.

So we took all this into account and we ran that combat speed. Even as the soldiers came out, they ran out and went into the prone with their weapon. It was as tactical as we could make it while getting the information that we needed.

We then take the soldiers after they spend a week doing this, and I will say this: it sounds super cool, but it’s not a lot of fun for the soldiers. I mean, being in MOPP gear and body armor, getting on and off the aircraft multiple times—it’s challenging. So I made a very special point to pull all these soldiers in and said, “Look, I know this isn’t fun, but the information and insight that you are providing to us is invaluable, and it will be incorporated. You are part of something historic—Army acquisition history for Army aviation. One day, when you fly this, or your children fly this, or you see this flying above you while you’re on your front porch as a grandfather or grandmother, you’re going to know that you had input into this aircraft.” That really resonated with them.

And the Army is working the impact on con-ops challenge now as well in advance of receiving an operational aircraft.

As Audrey Decker noted in Defense One piece published on 16 October 2024:

As the Army awaits the arrival of its high-speed, high-capacity tiltrotors in 2030, it is already practicing the new operating concept that they will enable. The idea behind “large-scale, long-range air assault,” or L2A2, is to “deliver one brigade combat team in one period of darkness, over 500 miles, arriving behind enemy lines, and able to conduct sustained combat operations,” said Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, who leads the 101st Airborne Division. And the service can’t do this with the platforms it has today, he said.

Sylvia’s team has started working on the new tactics, techniques, and procedures and has practiced the concept four times in live demos over the last year, and multiple times in simulation. In the simulation, replacing UH-60s with FLRAA gave the combat aviation brigade “four times the amount of heavy-lift aircraft than what I have today,” Sylvia said.

In the most recent test, the unit used its existing helicopters to move a brigade combat team about 570 miles, from Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border to Fort Johnson in Louisiana. The movement required three nights, two mission support sites, and six forward arming-and-refueling points. But in a simulation that used FLRAAs, the same mission required half the sustainment and security footprint–and just one night, Sylvia said.

“We are building, over the course of the next few years, this air assault combat aviation brigade. We are doing the things in order to be able to build the foundation so that all we have to do is just receive the aircraft and we’ll be ready to execute,” he said.

Notably, the arrival of a virtual protype allows for the Army to augment their training for the future fight enabled by the new aircraft as well.

As Colonel Poquette underscored::

We’re located in Huntsville, AL. My initial thought was to let’s go to the 101st; they’re right up the road. I had a conversation with General Baker, a former 25th commander and deputy commanding general there. He said, “Why don’t we go to the place that we really think this aircraft matters?” It was a perfect idea. We executed it, and it took an extra month to get all the logistics in place. We sent the Bell team and my human systems team out there to bring the mock-up to receive input from the 25th.

The 25th CAB took place with the guys who could potentially fly it, and the combat brigades out there came across. We spent a week out there with them, iterating on the two configurations we wanted to test. We started with one configuration that we thought we were going to choose, with the seat configuration. We ran the soldiers through, you know, without any combat gear. Then we added weapons, then we added body armor, and then we added MOPP gear.

We timed them. The people that do this kind of human systems science are technical experts. We measured every soldier with giant human-sized calipers. We wanted to ensure we could take care of the 5th percentile soldier and the 95th percentile soldier. We did that in two configurations. What we found out is that the soldiers really liked the second configuration better.

Now that they liked it, why did they like it? It was more comfortable, it was faster, and they weren’t tripping over each other. We got feedback on the cockpit; the cockpit was mocked up with a lot of 3D-printed controls and that kind of thing. The weapon was different. When we were in location, we had the crew chief seat oriented differently.

So we took all this into account and we ran that combat speed. Even as the soldiers came out, they ran out and went into the prone with their weapon. It was as tactical as we could make it while getting the information that we needed.

We then take the soldiers after they spend a week doing this, and I will say this: it sounds super cool, but it’s not a lot of fun for the soldiers. I mean, being in MOPP gear and body armor, getting on and off the aircraft multiple times—it’s challenging. So I made a very special point to pull all these soldiers in and said, “Look, I know this isn’t fun, but the information and insight that you are providing to us is invaluable, and it will be incorporated. You are part of something historic—Army acquisition history for Army aviation. One day, when you fly this, or your children fly this, or you see this flying above you while you’re on your front porch as a grandfather or grandmother, you’re going to know that you had input into this aircraft.” That really resonated with them.