Army Vertical Lift Key to Indo-Pacific Strategy.

• Author: Carberry, Sean

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The distances involved in a war in the Pacific are a challenge for any military platform, let alone rotary-wing aircraft. However, Army officials believe the service can exploit gaps in the air domain and challenge adversaries in the Pacific theater with future rotorcraft.

The Army's requirement is to be able to self-deploy and project force into the Indo-Pacific from Hawaii, said Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team at Army Futures Command. That's why Future Vertical Lift programs are critical: they provide the speed and range needed to maintain standoff and close distances quickly. "The current fleet can't do it.

They're not fast enough, and they can't fly long enough," he said at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, D.C. In the exhibition hall below were the four aircraft competing for the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft and the Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft programs.

"Those advanced rotorcraft configurations give us the speed and the range to cover Indo-Pacom, [multi-domain operations]-relevant distances," he said.

"We want to be outside of surface-to-surface fires, we want to be outside of medium-range ballistic missiles," he...