changed the u.s. and the rest of the world. american history tv prime time all this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern. join us on tuesday for live coverage of the opening day of the new congress. watch the official swearing in of the new and reelected members of the house and senate. and the election of the speaker of the house. our all day live coverage of the day's events from capitol hill begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.com or you can listen to it on the free c-span radio app. a new generation of military helicopters is being developed by the pentagon to include aircraft with common technologies and enhanced capabilities. the plan called the future vertical lift program was discussed by a group of military officers from the army, marine corps and special operations command. this is an hour.

>> good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us this morning to talk about future vertical lift. before we get started let me take care of the -- of the obligations that we have at all our events. before i get into the meat of this fascinating topic. let me just give our security announcement for all our events we like to remind folks that we are in a nice secure facility here, but nothing is as secure as it could possibly be and so if anything were to happily be your security officer, i will give directions about where to go and most likely we would head out the back here and to a safe location over by the national geographic building. if that were to become necessarily let you know and there will be the voice of god

coming through the speakers. in all likelihood we will have an event that will not be eventful in that sense but it will be event eventful i think on the substance. i'd also like to thank our sponsors, this future vertical lift series is sponsored by bell and textron. so we want to thank them for making this series possible. today we are going to talk again about future vertical lift and as i mentioned this is part of a broader series of events that have been looking at this question of what's the future of vertical lift, where are things going. and i'm really excited, actually i've been waiting for many months to have today's event where we're going to talk about a requirement for future vertical lift that has been winding it's way through the pentagon and actually has gotten approval. we are at a stage where rather than just talking about it people are getting now deeply into beginning to execute

programs. so that's a major step. it's what we want to focus on today. we've got an all star cast from the services here to make us smarter about this. to my right is colonel erskine bentley, united states army, it is the trade dot manager for future vertical lift. he has had a number of command positions in the army, in aviation, and has been the air requirements branch chief as well as ground requirements branch chief at socom. so he's a dual threat at least, perhaps more. to his right is colonel john barranco -- did i pronounce that correctly? >> barranco. >> barranco from the united states marine corps, currently assigned to headquarters marine corps aviation as the aviation requirements branch head. he has previously served as executive officer to general kelly and if you are like me and you have your u.s. marine corps

cabinet bingo sheet at home i've determined you can pretty much staff the entire cabinet with former marine officers. i'm going to pencil you in, john, as a future secretary of transportation if that's okay with you. in all seriousness, he has a lot of experience obviously in aviation and instructor pilot and naval academy graduate. to his right is colonel david phillips who is here who is a peo for rotary ring at socom is a test pilot and also trained as a program manager so another dual threat joining us. and with that we're going to start with the army, which is the lead service for the activity that's under way and then we will hear a little bit from the other two panelists and then we will go into q & a. colonel bentley, over to you. >> great. thank you. good morning. first of all, sincere appreciation to cesis for

putting on this event and also you mr. hunter, ms. johnson also. as we look at the future future vertical lift systems that encompasses the entire future vertical lift inventory from our smallest training helicopter to our largest cargo helicopter. we've taken a mission systems approach to defining our requirements for the vertical lift family of systems. we have department and service equities across that system, but as we look at the army requirements and specifically for capabilities set 3, we see that the greatest joint need across the services is for our capability set 3 aircraft. so that's our intent to go after a cape set 3 first. specifically for the army we are looking at a utility mission. this utility mission involves medevac capabilities, it

involves our air assault capability, the ability to assault light forces and their equipment and also involves troop movement. as we also look at what the army requirements are, we look at the reach, protection and also the lethality of fvl aircraft. when we talk about reach we're looking at the power, the speed, range and endurance of fvl and specifically cap set 3. this enables the army to conduct strategy deployment and once we arrive in theater at a place and time of need it allows us to immediately go into operations. so it's about strategic dee employability with tactical employment once we arrive. the other thing about reach is it gives us maneuverability and agility in and around the objective area. as we look at protection, fvl speed and range also enables us

some additional protection for the force. not only for the aircraft but also for the occupiants and the force in general. the speed and range of fvl coupled with, you know, advanced survivorability equipment, sensors and other equipment enables us to increase the protection of our force. as we look at the lethality of fvl, the speed and range coupled with sensors, lightweight precision munitions is going to increase the lethality of army aviation and vertical lift aviation in the joint force. we spent quite a few years developing our requirements and we still have a long way to go. we're just kind of, you know, scratching the surface on developing our initial requirements, but really what we have is a well informed decision-based plan of execution. we have a very large investment

in s & t that's informing the capability set 3 and fvl, we are looking at different ways of manufacturing using different materials, advanced technologies for vertical lift and we're also looking at the opportunity to use a modular open systems architecture in fvl aircraft that could be common across the family. but we've done a lot of work getting to where we are. we have a lot of work to do. even before we start refining our requirements and before we start writing protection route requirements for fvl. but the army is excited about capability set 3, we're definitely excited about leading the multi-service team for fvl development and specifically capability set 3. and we are looking forward to the future. >> all right. thank you. colonel barranco, please. >> good morning and thanks for

having us here today. andrew mentioned i'm a naval academy grad, he didn't tell you ternl phillips is a west point grad. i don't know if you guys know there is a little game tomorrow. maybe you heard something about that. >> is there a wager? >> not yet. >> not yet. >> maybe. >> but we'll see. a great opening by colonel bentley and, you know, i agree with everything that he said. you look at what's the need in the impetus behind the future vertical lift family of systems. probably a lot of you saw recently articles about the america deployment that the marine corps did with f-35. you look at f-35 across the joint force, across the three services, look at f-22, we are fielding and half fielded fifth generation fighters and it's important we need that, we need a fifth generation fighter attack aircraft, strike aircraft. with the exception of the

auspray when you look across the majority of our joint force we haven't really seen any large technical advances in aircraft since third generation, second or third generation. i mean, generation. really since vietnam what massive technical leap, despite all the technical progress we have seen the last generation, have we really seen vertical lift aircraft with the exception of the offer which is a very small portion. it is kind of a shocking assertion when you think about it. so the need both forestry is and across the joint force to leverage technology and to develop new, more capable aircraft has never been larger. when you look at the threat out there today, when you hear a lot about anti access systems, ava right of potential competitors that the u.s. plans for, plans

to compete against, our assembly areas, our rare areas are going to have to be farther away from the action than they ever have been before. they're going to have to be. our ability to penetrate, to get close to where the action is is is going to be limited. it will be limited by those systems. it is one of the reasons we invest in the fifth generation strike tactical aircraft. it will take range and speed from the assembly areas to the flat. along the flat we have talked about operations. we will have smaller, more capable, more lethal, more networked, net centric forces. we're never going to get away from the concept of at the decisive moment we will still need to mass our or forcesis and bring them to bear. that also will require that we have vertical lift systems that give us additional speed, additional range and

survivability. very excited to be participating in this with the army. the army multiservice program. we're still in the early stages. but what we're finding is future vertical lift, we have a lot more in common with the needs we have identified across the services, socom, army, marine corps. than differences. i think we have put a lot of time, a lot of effort, most importantly money towards it. we're looking forward to successfully deploying the first of a large future vertical lift systems. thank you. >> thank you, colonel. and pulling up the rear guard is colonel phillips from socom. >> okay. good morning, everybody. i would like to start out saying

if you get a call from someone saying, hey, come sit on a panel with a lot of experts and field some questions, consider that call carefully. consider that person who made that call and think about if that person will be on your christmas card list. i would hike to say thanks for having us here. thanks for taking us this together. thanks to csis for having is us. it should be a two-way conversation. we should hope it up. we should leave with a better shared understanding of the challenges ahead. i really think it is is great to see these familiar faces in the audience. if we don't leave with a shared understanding we will waste that opportunity i think if we start by looking at the environment, you look at the risks and you look at the way we should

collaborate to address those risks will paint a little bit better picture from the socom perspective. we know that the world is not getting to be a more safe place. and we know our competitors, regional rising states and violent extremist organizations are all continuing to threaten our national interests. so we have to be cognizant that as we develop a new future vertical lift aircraft that it can keep up with that environment. and really we want to stay ahead of that environment. so fortunately the investments that we make down at u.s. socom when d.o.d. was in a drawdown period, came to bear after the attacks of 9/11. so we were able to execute long-range assault and infiltrate missions through the mountains at night in afghanistan. we were only able to do that because we had invested in the equipment and training to be

able to do those missions. hm 60 kilos is an example. that blackhawk led a lot of those missions. we invested those and fielded those in the 1990s. so looking at that history, how should we be prepared to look at it in the future? i think one of the enduring ways is to have better inter dependence. i think those three tenets the last 30 years ask and particularly the last 15, we can't separate space and time. we have to operate together. we have to operate with nested operations and nested acquisitions. so integrating with services in the past could be perceived to be a challenge. but i think going forward i think that's the right thing to do. and a couple of examples i can call out in recent history.

they gave us an aircraft at socom. we modified it to meet our mission requirements and fielded it has the mh-606789 ch47-f is under way with the army. renew with the hm-47-g are aligned. the synergy is already paying enough in development. so we have to keep up with the environment. we have to learn from our history. we have to take the lessons we have learned and the recent fielding of aircraft and employ them on on this vertical lift opportunity. we have to learn as much as we can from the flight tests that are coming up. i really believe speed, range, and pay load are achievable. and i think jmar flight tests down at the two that are building the aircraft will pull out the envelopes or in a possible to get there. i think that the key point, and the key point i would like is operational suitability is not just about speed, range, and pay

load. operational suitability is really includes sustainability and survivability. and those are the kinds of things that help build combat power for all ofs, not just socom. it is driven by sustainable and survivability has to be up there on the priority list and we have to think through that carefully i think after we get those five things, not just the top three but all five, i think then we should fold that to carefully considering better mission equipment. better hardware, software, better architectures. and be acknowledge i'll enough to keep up with the environment and stay ahead of the environment. i'll say it again. i think it is important to stay ahead of the threats to maintain that comparative overmatch. the past 20 years of mission

equipment, there's been a lot of great opportunities. but it is littered with examples where we didn't really live up to your expectations on open architecture systems. we have learned a lot i think that learning is still going on in the s and t community. if you're industry is and you're not familiar with the architecture demonstrations, if you're not familiar with the acronyms is and those programs, go out and get family with the army s and t and the folks working on that. i think it's important. our collective challenge will be to the prioritize those along with the speed, range, and pay loads we are going to see. to provide value to soft commanders given its expected costs it provide those capabilities in all weather, all environments. and we have to be able to execute our missions when the

enemies least expect it. integrating open tech sure with sensing technologies is a way to do that. but it can't be cost prohibitive. it can't take too much time. it can't cost too much money. so the bottom line, socom has lined up with the other services. he we need aircraft with range, speed, pay load, survivable andaband sustainable. we have to address the risks collectively in environments starting here but in a lot of ipts and a lot of discussions with industry and keeping our operators involved in the process along the way to make the right decisions or. thanks again for having us here today, and i look forward to your questions. >> thanks. well, we'll start with a couple from down here. by the way, as i encourage panelists to question each other

if you would like. i don't know if i can get you to do that. we have had a events recently i have had a couple panelists engage and it keeps things lively. so you're encouraged. i want to talk about the commco ality of the requirement. there is a requirement that has gone through the j rock. as colonel bentley mentioned, that's a starting point. that's an initial and early look at requirements. there's quite a bit of requirements work still to do. and the fact that the three of you are here today means we are fairly well aligned across the services on this initial requirement. but then the question is how do you stay aligned as the requirement matures and grows more detailed? it strikes me there may be more differences between future

vertical lift than there are similarities. it is is a program that comes mind as a major joint program going forward. obviously that proved to be quite a challenge. it turned out there was less common ality when they were finally produced than had been the notional perspective going in back in the '90s. i would be interested in each of your thoughts on how do you maintain the commonality of the requirement as you get more detailed into some of the issues you raised about deployability ability to do mission upgrades? your thoughts on that. >> this is something that, you know, we're all looking toward. and really what we've developed is i think a broad area of joint trade space that we've noticed.

because really as we look at the pay load capability of the aircraft, some of the speeds and ranges that we are looking through there is a lot of alignment between the services. we still have, as we said, a lot of work to do in that area. when we look at pay load of the aircraft. even though the army and marine and socom environment may be different in, say, number of soldiers or number of marines on the aircraft, we can trade that pay load for other things. for instance, we could trade part of that pay load that the army uses for soldiers into fuel to increase the range of the marine corps. needs or that socom needs. the other is the multiservice capability of the aircraft there

is a lot of dynamic, expensive components that you could see using throughout the services. both are members mentioned the open architecture system. there is great commonality across the services. >> to colonel bentley's point, you talk about differences and requirements in space. every requirement is a range, a threshold. a minimum that you think you need or that you assess and your objective, your ultimate desire. within that spectrum, whether it's x speed to y speed, that's your trade space. and there's a lot of overlap in between there. to get to as close to the perfect shared solution, whether it be compromise, of course there will be. that's not a bad thing.

we're in a fiscally constrained environment. anybody who doesn't believe i think is fooling themselves. we need shared technology, systems, aviation supply and logistics. that's a reality. it's not just a physical reality. it will be a battle field reality. we will not be able to move, sustain, supply services like we have done in the past. to think we are going to have that degree of overmatch in the future, i think that's probably a wrong assumption. talking a little bit about this, you talked on f-35. these are important distinctions to kind of make here. and colonel bentley touched on it.

it was unique. something new. there's a lot of lessons learned. it becomes more difficult to leverage existing relationships and structures that work well. that's not what we're doing here. this is army-led. we are using existing army program management structure, existing support. we're not creating something new from scratch. that in and of itself is a guarantee that it is smoother than f-35.

it f-35 is doing very well. one complete squad ron is fielded. yes, there are similarities. but we have looked at those and tried to take lessons learned from there and structure this a little bit differently. >> so i think the aoa will flush that out i think another good example in socom has been the mh-60-m&m h-47-g. we made hard decisions back to the early 2000s to have a common set of mission equipment in those aircraft. that decision was hardz at first and required a lot of compromise. we built in the ability to

upgrade those systems. now with common contracts, common sustainment tables, that's really the way we can federally operate the fleet today. and if we hadn't made those hard decisions early, 15 years ago now, we wouldn't be where we are today. >> thanks. a related topic but moving in the next topic, getting to the next generation of vertical lift systems. you all referenced this in your remarks. i want to drill down a little bit deeper. and in particular, something is -- several of you mentioned, you know, we focus on speed, range, lethality. i wouldn't in any way minimize them. they have the potential to support new concepts of operations, as you mentioned,

colonel bronco. so there is that piece that perhaps will will will encourage sustaini sustaining commonality. the pace of the development is pretty consistent across the mission that you're looking at. but there is also this aspect of sustainability and adaptability that we're hoping to have in these new systems. so if you could maybe talk a little bit about how that need to get to a more sustainable fleet or set of fleets in the case, or system of fleets and the ability to adapt is and moving in awe way that is system or not consistent. knowing you can't get too much of a threat in an unclassified environment. >> thank you.

>> obviously the speed and the range allows us to stay outside the envelope. as we look at the ability to move a joint force into is an area of operations, by interability through the services by common ality, we are ale to reduce our footprint. we are looking to explore different types of interopability where possibly we could share maintenance capabilities. not only the sustainment chain of of parts ask and supplies, but also theability for services to work on other aircraft. we think of nothing today of flying in those aircraft. we would probably want to explore joint sustainment. the other thing, and we have touched on the open architecture

capability, that allows us to plug 'n play and rapidly innovate new technologies into the aircraft. so if we go to a more of a -- there's a knack for that approach or with resident firmware and hardware that's available. and we really define that open tech sure how different capabilities can play and play, how easily it is is to upgrade the aircraft. one of the other opportunities is with a clean sheet design we can design all of this into the aircraft up front. we've had both in the h1 fleets and the h60 fleets in the past 30 plus years, we have experienced great growth in enhancing the capabilities of the aircraft. with this in mind we would go into capabilities set three planning for that growth in the future.

>> yeah. that is absolutely a great point. you know, you talk about the sustainability of logistics footprint. there's also a threat reduction piece to that. look at the range and speed of our current aircraft. our fods. every once is a logistics draw. every one of those keeping with the advanced systems that are out there is a target. it's a draw. manpower, force protection, other resources for defense. every one is a target. you think about an all networked aircraft that can easily share information, think link 16 but even more so. the ability to share

information. shared information, shared situational awareness is its own form of threat reduction. sharing enemy locations, mission data, realously on the battle field, that is one of the greatest aircraft survivability threat reduction things we could possibly do. that's not to say we will not continue to invest in direct energy systems for missiles and other counter radar systems. we are. but i can think of no better way than to be link examined have everyone sharing information. i would argue that probably that capability, that kind of digital opability, that is probably our greatest overmatch right now against our opponents, potential opponents. you look at some of on our potential peer competitors out there. they make good hardware.

they make good aircraft. but can they network them is and share information in real-time like i feel we have the potential to do. that's probably our greatest potential overmatch. that's our greatest advantage and we need to exploit that. that's what we're building from the ground up in this system. it is going to benefit all aircraft across the joint force. that's really the direction we need to go. we spend a lot of time in the marine corps.. we are building that network right now. but what we're building right now is an ad hoc after the fact. what we are looking to do here is to build from the ground up this digital interoperable network where we are all connected. i think that will be a huge

advance for us. >> that is a good question. to two points the gentleman had earlier is sustainment and is survivability are inextricably linked. i think our sustainment is linked to the services today. we are tied to the army for some of our systems. and we are tied to the navy for some of our systems. i think we've got some on the sustainment side. we share a lot of lessons learned across the community. we got those doors opened. we have to continue to share all those lessons learned and not forget them i think we can't get so focused, like we said, on the tech demonstrators that we forget the rest of the requirement. and i think that focus, those discussions, staying focused where the threat is going and trying to stay ahead of that is very important.

>> i have one more question set, and then we will turn to our audience. i have to say there is probably as much or more knowledge in the audience than we tend to have here at csi is s. the issue that will be the most lively discussion on capitol hill and for a set of years and probably has been already is this issue of timeline. how this next gen capability will start to deliver into the operating force. i would just be interested in each of you just tackling how the timeline looks from your service perspective. when does this need to deliver -- colonel, you already referenced a little bit about some of the advances here to the existing force, which seems like a key point. if you could each talk a little bit about timeline.

>> as we look at our cape set 3 development, we are looking to get this capability into the force in the early 30s. we've already mentioned we're currently involved on analysis of alternatives that will help us refine those capabilities. and then starting in probably fy 19, fy 20, we will probably be making some decisions on the multiservice aspect of the program, that joint trade space again. we're going to continue to refine our requirements there. probably we will make decision toss go forward and built our prototypes. then look at the low rate production of one of those prototypes in the late 20s. i think we will move into full rate production would be in the early 30s with getting this into the field shortly thereafter.

>> how does it look from the department of navy perspective? >> you're right. probably a lot of the audience is extremely knowledgeable. that's why i have brilliants working for me. i actually do. same thing, early 2030s, 2033 is when we first will start to see introduction the. could that be earlier? it can always accelerate if it becomes a priority and the funding is is there. we foreseen it replacing the h 1 yankee. we're playing ahead. when you think about it, uh 1 yankee came into introduction in

2008. 25 year air program. in 35 they will hit their airframe life, and we will look to replace them. that puts us in a quandary in the interim. for us,ing the 22 has changed things. it has changed the game. one of the primary missions we used to do. one of our big missions was to escort the ch-46. that's not a mission we can perform for the mb-22. we don't have the range, speed, capability to do that. that's one of the very important things as we look at this as we move forward with the analysis of alternatives.

>> i'll sound like a broken record a little bit, but we're absolutely tied to the army on this. our mh-60-m fleet we finished those in 2015. we look at 25 years from that. that's where we are looking to absolutely line up with the army and take the new vertical lift aircraft, same modifications we needed to as necessary. and really in the interim we're going to sustain our bird fleet and mh fleet. we're investing them now so they will be relevant until the next opportunity comes for the next capability set. >> all right. i did want to open up now to audience questions. i'll have the mike brought to you. please just briefly state your

name, your affiliation if you have one, and make it a question. here i saw is the first hand right here. >> good morning. this is for colonel wrangle. where in true capability are you looking at? you have the ospreys and you're talking about facing out the h-1s. you're bringing in 53 kilos of heavy lift. what range are you looking? are you trying to do each one replacement or a year longer? basically what capability are you most needing? >> yes, sir. that's a great question. it's one that gets asked often. i think human nature is to when

you replace something -- we try to pigeon hole. it's true. it did replace our h-46s. but to compare the v-22 and its size, what it carry to the h-46 is not apples to apples. i'll defer to colonel freeland. you can fit twice as many as the v. obviously the speed is well-known. a lot of people aren't aware of that. it is is not an exact replacement. it is is medium lift plus. as we look at replacing the yankee and the zulu our initial going in, we thought we would like to be able to carry eight people. eight marines, eight soldiers. that's a threshold.

the army looks as more replacement as h-60. it was camp robl to h-46. osprey is larger. more people. we look at it as yankee replacement this is where the trade space discussion comes in. if it carries 11 or 12 people and does the other things that the marine corps. wants it to do, that's great. that's fine. we view that as a bonus. now replacing the 46, that's a larger pay load, more troops. that is not a one to one, apples to apples comparison. but that's fine. we would welcome that. if we were able to accomplish everything else we wanted to and capability to boot, that would be great. eight is a threrb requirement. that is a lift capability that is no less than what we have now with the added range and speed

that we want. if we can get more of everything, that would be tremendous and we welcome that. we present that challenge to the industry. hope that answers your question, sir. >> obviously cost would be a key factor. it needs to be on a range that matches there too. >> could you address the integration and organic of both sensing capabilities. >> to our current man-to-man capabilities, we are utilizing

that in our tack aircraft and utility aircraft. we see the ability to expand that capability in order to not only really expand on the capability that we have in the apache to control different aircraft. we see that in the capability set three. so we definitely want to continue to explore that. in line with man-to-man teaming, we want to explore the capability to optimumly crew the vehicle. do we see fbl aircraft obviously controlling other aircraft? we do. but this is one of the areas that we really want to explore and see what the capabilities are. so it goes much further than man-to-man teaming. it gets into, as we said, the

optimally crude capability of how different missions could require different crews and just really continue to explore that and what are the potentials there. as far as advanced sensors, obviously that is something that is in development. and it goes back to the open architecture. the joint trade space to use the same architecture, different sensors for the services based on the different mission requirements and things of that nature, that's where we really see the development of that going. >> i completely agree. it kills me to admit this. the army is ahead of us on man-to-man teaming. no question about it. we have not taken it to the degree that the army has. that is absolutely one of our goals in the future. something we are working right enough on kind of an off

airframe knee board solution because we don't have the open architecture systems in your existing legacy platforms. there are systems out there that we allow you to do that now. the marine corps. is developing a group five us right that we envision as being paurpbd with fbl cape said three. we look at them working closely in tandem, in parallel. on the sensor piece, there are systems out there now. i'm going to avoid getting too specific. but there are systems that exist in open architecture, wave form independent. or wave form nonskreupl gnat can take data from any wave form that will allow us to do sensor

fusion. they can fuse with what they are seeing and what they are getting from all other users on the network so you have on your electronic keyboard, a sensor picture from across the spectrum of users in the joint force for any target you're interested in. we are looking for that in cape said three. #. >> everybody here probably sees the lead for sraoufp vertical lift. some may think it is more urgent than others. it will take another 15 years to get into the fleet doesn't seem

realistic in the 21st century. but that said, there's a new sheriff coming to town. everybody is expecting constraints to come up. services will presumably get more money sometime soon. but here's what i would like to understand or get your views on. within your services how widely shared is the interest in this program, how widely appreciated are they. i have heard army officers cast doubt on the idea that you need anything faster than a blackhawk or an apache. i think the marine corps. has developed ape different attitude with the b-22. so i'm curious to know, there's still going to be a lot of money. it doesn't matter what the new president and new congress do.

so how much of it can you really expect to get? what priority is there within the is services for future vertical lift? >> let me make one comment before i turn it over to the people you really want to the hear from. a lot has looked into the question of what i would call the pipeline. what's very notable about the pipeline certainly for vertical lift up to now and to some extent for each of the services, most acutely fort army, is the pipeline is pretty empty. so the question of bringing forward capability, you've got to have something in the works. my friend general cody talked about when he was the vice chief is and all of a sudden they were in a shooting war. they had a lot of combat capability to the field because there had been a development.

there is nothing to act is accelerate. no matter how much of a priority you put on it. let me let you hear from the panel. >> and that was a very good point. really as we move forward, it is about having something in the pipe there and ready to move forward with. from an army perspective, we have a requirement for increased capability. speed, range, pay load, endurance. we have some very capable aircraft in the fleet right now. so it is a balance between maintaining the relevancy of the aircraft that will be in the fleet for a while and pursuing new capabilities that is going to give the army an operational maneuver capability and a strategic deployment capability.

what the army plans to pursue is well above my pay grade. we are charged with talk to go our users and developing a capability we have sitting in the pipeline and ready to go. so as far as looking at the army capabilities, we have a very capable fleet. we have to maintain that capability. but also we have a requirement for the future to he enhance that through fbl. >> so i can add on to that just a little bit. we have to look at what are the priorities now and in the future. and i think wise investments, as we watch as the army leads the effort, wise investments could really pay off in the future i think there is a recognition of that in socom. you asked about the interest and the benefits. there's definitely interest, and

there's definitely benefits. the timing is what's going to matter once we see where the technology is with the demonstrators. >> back here. >> i don't know about that. your question is what's the commitment in the marine corps.. everyone in the services welcomes different opinions. as we have always done. we are coming out of a decade plus of war. it is is relatively low intensity counter insurgency effort. we're looking forward with emerging technologies, emerging

threats, reemerging potential peer competitors. we are trying to develop our doctrine, our concept for the future. the future is unknown. so, yes, i think there are different perspectives in the services. and within the respective services. the commitment to fbl socom and the marine corps. is strong. whatever that finally looks like, we know that the threat is growing and the capability will be more than we have now. the nuances of where the trade space is and what the final cape said three looks like and the family system looks like, i

don't want to say those are small details. they're not. but we all know we need to advance our capabilities. that we agree on. so i don't know if that was part of the park. >> i can't resist making one other point. that came up from what you were saying. we had an event focused on innovation. and the doctor was one of the panelists. she made the point that really game changing innovation. sometimes it is not changing a specific technology or specific system, it is is about a new architecture that enables an entire new set on of concepts. so one of the things that strikes me about future vertical lift, it is an effort to create an entirely new architecture.

unless you envision and try to reach to that new architecture, you are not going to make as much of a game-changing shift as you set out to do. that's a point that was made yesterday i just wanted to make. >> lockheed martin. i have a question for the army as it relates to the capability set 3. will that be in place for the aoa. if the army does not pursue an attack variant, do you think capability set one or other mitigating capability will be envisioned to cover air assault security that the army will need when it fields a much faster assault platform that the legacy security platforms will be able to keep up with? >> thanks, kevin. that's a good question. probably one of the more interesting top to eubgs.

right now the focus is the utility mission. the assault capability. we see that as the greatest joint need. we have some additional study to do is and work on where we see the next attack platform coming from. we definitely want to explore as an attack platform. we definitely want to explore possibly a smaller airframe. there was an fbl replacement. it could be answered by a smaller aircraft, more along the

lines of the oh-58-kw. the short answer, though, we have a lot more work to do. whether that will be possibly a -- the marine approach to the aircraft. whether it could be a kited solution in a cape set three variety. or we have not ruled out the possibility once he entered the smaller aircraft in an armed reconnaissance role. we look forward to the work we have to do on that and the army's decision how we will pursue that capability. >> i consult independently. i appreciate your comments. your mention of the early 30s time horizon. you mentioned an aoa, talking to

the users and aspiration for technology. with that kind of horizon, can you speak about how you're engaging industry and the labs and university infrastructure at the time of this the program's proceeding to make sure you don't leave something on the table or don't overreach. could you go beyond what you have invested in. >> to expand a little bit, there's two major components of the jmr tech program. obviously we have the aircraft demonstration component where we are looking at fbl technologies. we also talked about the open architecture. so the second part of the jmrtd is the open architecture.

you know, underneath the flight demonstration, we have four contracts with industry to develop either fly models or models for wind tunnels. i don't know the exact number underneath the architecture demonstration portion. but i think there's eight or ten involving industry. the industry has done a phenomenal job of engaging the government through the vertical lift consortium where we have had one-on-one interaction. the other approach that we have used is through our request for information, rfi, and receiving industry feedback there specifically on the program. we have had two rfs on cape set three. and we have had an rfi on cape set one. i believe we had eight respondents to our occasional cape set three and six responders to cape set one rfi.

and we still have our second cape set three rfi that is out to industry right now for comment. so we have had a lot of engagement there. and then also through forums like this. and we're also in contact with institutions for development of those capabilities. so i think we have a very broad net. whether or not we're going to be able to capture everything, i think that remains to be seen. >> some of the venues that socom uses. we love the s and t efforts. we have our own that we leverage. we have a lot of great ideas coming out of that s and t community.

for example, we absolutely looked at our own architecture we have in the aircraft today recently. so we held an event where we invited academia, industry, operators. we said let's come in, let's talk about this, even with the aircraft we're sustaining, how do we sustain them until the 2030, 2040 time frame. >> all right. well, we got to all the hands i saw. we are at the end of our hour. i want to thank our audience coming and for asking great questions and being very attentive. keep your eyes peeled for future events on future vertical lift. this series definitely will continue into next year.

we will have something i'm sure in the spring. is and please join me in thanking our panel for a great presentation. [ applause ]. while congress is on break,

we're showing you american history tv programs normally only seen on weekends. we look at what happened after the end of world war ii starting at 8:00 eastern with the fate of nazi and japanese war criminals after the war. that's followed by how the war changed the u.s. and the rest of the world. american history tv, primetime all this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern. sunday in depth will feature a live discussion on the presidency of barack obama. we're taking your phone calls, tweets, e-mails and facebook questions during the program. the panel includes april ryan, white house correspondent for american urban radio networks and "presidency in black and white." princeton university professor glaude, "democracy in black." and david