The Army's Future Long Range Assault Aircraft aims to usher in a new era of speed, range and adaptability to support and protect soldiers on the ground. Backed by cutting-edge digital engineering, FLRAA isn't just a new rotorcraft; it's a leap forward in how the Army plans, flies and fights in tomorrow's conflicts.
"It's a game-changing capability in terms of speed and range," said Army Col. Jeffrey Poquette, FLRAA project manager at the Program Executive Office for Aviation. He characterized the next-generation tiltrotor assault aircraft as "twice as far, twice as fast" at the annual Association of the U.S. Army Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, March 2025.
The implementation of digital engineering will be a "pathfinder for the Army," serving as a model for how digital engineering can be adopted and implemented by the Defense Department acquisition enterprise to improve efficiency, reduce costs and accelerate the development and test of capabilities. The challenge, Poquette said, is that this is new territory, but the level of insight that the government gets into the design is unprecedented.
Digital engineering enables the Army to harness the power of technology for digital design creation and assess the impact design changes make before bending metal.
"Digital engineering isn't magic," he said. "It's just a really deep look in a common environment where we have a single source of truth. We never don't know what the design is today. I can take my phone out right now and look at the design and see where we are … that's powerful."
Poquette said when prototypes are built and tested, often things are found that have to be fixed. Some of those fixes could be significant, while others could be costly and will inevitably extend the acquisition timeline.
"I'm not even going to say that digital engineering is faster upfront. It's an investment in time. It's an investment in intellectual capital. But when we build the prototypes, we're going to be so confident that anything we need to fix should be small, should not be expensive, and that we can quickly fix those prototypes, continue on with the test program and get the capability into soldiers' hands as soon as possible," Poquette stated. "Together [with industry,] we're going to build the aircraft that meets the Army's requirements, and [it] is truly going to change the nature of the assault aviation platform."
The Dawn of New Digital
Digital engineering enhances FLRAA missions by enabling faster, smarter and safer operations. This includes the use of model-based systems engineering tools like Cameo — a collaborative environment for defining, tracking and visualizing all aspects of a system through models and diagrams. Additionally, 3D models support design, manufacturing and assembly processes, streamlining development from concept to execution.
Michelle Gilbert, technical management division chief at PEO for Aviation FLRAA Project Management Office explained that the FLRAA is using model-based systems engineering to create the digital models of the system's architecture and requirements, merging them into a digital twin that defines the system, demonstrates its behavior and predicts performance.
"[This is] establishing a digital thread which captures the relationship between system and program data. The digital thread provides … a better understanding of the system. We are also utilizing a collaborative digital environment to enable near real-time access to this data."
The performance models are used to emulate and simulate the performance of the FLRAA to understand the behavior and tweak flight control laws — modifications to the flight control system's algorithms, which govern how pilot inputs translate into aircraft control surface movements.
"We can also use it to help ensure that from a user interface standpoint everything is correct and suitable before we go and actually build the system, [and] we're doing all of this digitally," Gilbert said. "We have a lot of digital models that represent our system that have allowed us to reduce the risk before we go and bend metal on our prototypes."
The digital engineering strategy, Gilbert noted, is incremental. She and her team are currently focused on using digital engineering to design and document the system during development. As the program progresses, these efforts will expand into testing, eventually incorporating sensor data from the aircraft and linking it to various enterprise sustainment tools. For now, the priority remains on building a solid digital foundation before moving into test and evaluation.
"Using our digital environment to link test data together with the system design of the aircraft can help make the verification process more efficient. It can help correlate information together, where before there wasn't a linkage between information, and provide easier access to all supporting program data," Gilbert said. "For our stakeholders who are trying to qualify our system, that's very helpful. And then our digital engineering efforts will expand beyond that to support sustainment. Conceptually, every single aircraft in the field could have its own digital representation."
Gilbert noted that one outcome they've already encountered from using the digital tools is that it forces the developer and the government "to have a deeper understanding of the system and how onboard systems interact with each other."
Additionally, the digital tools have enabled the team to create linkages to all of the data.
Crews also benefit from immersive virtual training, accelerating readiness for unfamiliar or high-risk scenarios. This makes the aircraft more agile, reliable and adaptable to the demands of future battlefields.
"We have a virtual reality capability that's here in our office and it's updated regularly to reflect the system under design," Gilbert said.
During system design, acquisition engineers may not fully grasp design specifics, such as how the hydraulic system will fit into the system, she said.
"It doesn't exist yet in physical form, but we are able to go in, put on a virtual reality headset and they can see exactly where it is in the current design," Gilbert said. "Our engineers or maintainers can look at it and say, 'I'm never going to be able to maintain that system with the way it is now.' We're able to catch things like that earlier and influence a design change."
Getting the MOSA for Your Money
While digital engineering provides the tools to design, simulate and evolve systems faster, a modular open systems approach ensures those systems are built in a way that allows rapid, flexible upgrades.
According to Gilbert, MOSA is an approach to achieving certain objectives, not just through open standards but by following specific design processes to ensure the architecture supports those goals. She and her team developed an architecture framework to guide how the system should be built and analyzed to confirm it meets MOSA objectives.
"The other thing that we're doing is we put in a requirement for an infrastructure on our aircraft that we call the digital backbone. The digital backbone is the onboard network that's responsible for all data exchanges between different components. Any component integrated on the system must follow the defined open standards," she said. "And what that does is it allows for easier integration by not having to update multiple systems on the aircraft when upgrading a capability."
This is similar to the MOSA plug-and-play concept.
MOSA offers a modular and scalable solution for aircraft upgrades, eliminating the integration complexities associated with legacy systems. This approach significantly reduces downtime and modification work by enabling the rapid installation and interchangeability of components.
"For FLRAA, we ensure we have robust processes and requirements in place to design and analyze our architecture and the onboard digital backbone. This, coupled with a robust intellectual property strategy that ensures the right level of data rights are acquired by the [project management office], summarizes the FLRAA open systems approach," she explained. "To ensure that, we do have an open architecture on our platform."
This, she said, will make it easier and more affordable to upgrade and sustain, with the ability to do some of that sustainment on the government side or with third parties. Because of how the system is designed, there's less reliance on the prime contractor, which can help with sustainment costs.
Soldier Testing and Timelines
Soldier testing and feedback are crucial when implementing new digital technology to ensure it meets real-world operational needs. Direct input from end users helps identify usability issues, improve functionality and ensure the technology enhances mission effectiveness and soldier readiness.
For the FLRAA program, there are two ways of achieving soldier feedback. One is through special user evaluations, or soldier touch points, using mockups of the aircraft to ensure optimal seat configurations and whether users can enter and exit from the aircraft safely. A user evaluation in spring 2025 observed how soldiers conduct mission planning on the system, which will impact the software requirements for mission planning.
Another soldier touch point is through virtual prototype simulation.
"We're using the virtual prototype to help us get user feedback that can either support changing the user interfaces, our flight control laws, etc.," Gilbert said. "We're planning on using the virtual prototypes as part of special user evaluations all the way through our development stage. This will support iterative user feedback through development until we have physical aircraft prototypes."
The FLRAA program has come a long way since April 2024, when it took a hybrid approach with a preliminary design using a middle tier of acquisition pathway and developed virtual prototypes. In July 2024, at Milestone B, it transitioned to a major capability acquisition program and program of record.
"We're going to be focused on the detailed design in the near term, but our acquisition strategy is such that we don't wait to complete our detailed design before we begin building our prototypes. We deliberately did that when we set up our acquisition strategy so that once a subsystem reaches the appropriate level of maturity, it can immediately move into build and assembly," Gilbert said. "Even though the design and supporting analysis may not be fully documented, we can begin building those subsystems with an informed level of risk. This helps support schedule objectives while maintaining rigor."
Currently, the Army is scheduled to begin equipping the first Army unit in fiscal year 2030 and completing the first unit equipped in fiscal year 2031.
"Our current focus is on getting the design right, which is crucial for successfully prototyping and future production," Gilbert said. "We are building and testing prototypes to make a production decision by Milestone C, which is currently scheduled in 2028."
"[Development] takes a few years, especially on an aviation platform because there's a lot we have to do from an airworthiness perspective to ensure it's safe," Gilbert said. "We have a lot that we have to do before a soldier can begin operating the system. That's why using things like the virtual prototype and other things like mockups are so important to us — because it's a way of getting them in early while we're still proving out the airworthiness of the aircraft itself."