Future helicopter technology remains up in the Air.

• Author: Parsons, Dan
• Position: Aviation - Geographic overview

While jet fighters are in their fifth generation, the Army is still sputtering around in helicopter airframes that have changed little--if at all--in several decades.

What's worse, say Army aviation leaders, is that there is no new-start program of record for rotorcraft and the only- new platform introduced in the past quarter-century was the V-22 Osprey which is flown by the Marine Corps.

Despite budget cuts, Army aviation officials are pushing forward with plans to develop a radically new vertical-lift technology before the current fleet reaches the end of its service life.

In all, the Army has 3,850 rotor-wing aircraft and a smaller fleet of fixed-wing airplanes. It spends about $7 billion annually on aviation and there is little indication its slice of the pie will grow.

The self-imposed deadline of 2030 is still on the horizon, but between now and then many of the Army's workhorse helicopters will become functionally obsolete or so overburdened with upgrades that they are not worth flying and barely capable of accomplishing the mission at hand. Now is the time to begin investment in serious development of what Army leaders interchangeably call "future vertical lift" and the "joint multi-role" helicopter, said Rusty Weiger, the Army's deputy program executive officer for aviation.

"There are new jet lighters all the time, it seems, and we're still on the first-generation helicopter. There's nothing on the horizon for new platforms." Weiger said at an Aviation Week conference in Washington, D.C. "If no one had had the vision in the 1970s, we would have fought Desert Storm with Hueys and Cobras. Someone had the insight to move forward at that point. It is time for us to do the same thing with these platforms."

What the future of Army aviation will look like remains elusive and the requirements equally ethereal, but leaders in search of the futuristic technology have pledged to suppress their appetites for current systems in order to find the next aircraft.

Unlike other big-ticket platforms such as jet fighters and Navy ships, there are no programs of record for new-start rotorcraft. Neither is there Defense Department funding dedicated to development of future vertical-lift technologies.

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Plans are to start development of a medium utility platform within the decade, said Weiger.

"We'll he focusing on the medium version first," he said. "That's where we think we'll get the best bang for our buck. It is also where we...