Army FLRAA Assault Tiltrotor: “How Cool is That” (From the Joe Piscopo Show)

On The Joe Piscopo Show broadcasting to drive-time New York City on Monday, the Army’s radical new tiltrotor FLRAA grabbed the attention of host Joe Piscopo and guest Dr. Rebecca Grant. 

Piscopo: In your piece you wrote for FOX News, the Army is ditching helicopters for a radical new air assault plane.  How cool is that.  What is going on?

Grant: This is so cool.  It’s a plane, it’s a helicopter, really, it’s both.  The Army calls it FLRAA for Future Long Range Assault Aircraft.  It’s a tiltrotor, so the propellers swivel, it can go up like a helicopter, it can land like a helicopter, but it can also fly with wing-borne flight, and it can fly 350 mph.  That is so much faster than a helicopter.  And it has huge, long range.  This is how our soldiers in the very near future, are going to do air assault, where they go in, onto the target, hop out the side doors and take down the bad guys.  It’s going to be in this new tiltrotor plane.

Piscopo: Man, this really looks nasty.  Is this up and running? 

Grant: It’s really close. The maker is Bell, from helicopters.  They have a couple in test, it’s been approved by the Army, and they are doing the final design review.  Bell will build six more test articles. 

What’s really exciting is that last Wednesday, the Army went to Congress and said hey, we were going to get this by 2030.  But the Chief of Staff, General Randy George, said ‘I need this right away.  We’ve talked to Bell.  We are going to make a deal.  I want this by 2028.’  It’s ready to go, the software is good, and Joe, it is such a sleek-looking plane.   Really cool.

Piscopo: I think of the Osprey.  Which is really an extraordinary machine, but it has had its problems.  This is different, yes?

Grant: Yes.  This is an all-new design.  Everybody who flew Ospreys in Afghanistan, they just swear by them.  The difference here, it’s a little smaller, the tiltrotor mechanism has changed.  Now they only tilt the propellors, not the whole engine nacelle.  And then it’s built from the ground up for air assault.  The Osprey first flew in 1989, can you believe it.  So, the FLRAA is a really big upgrade in tiltrotor technology

Piscopo: What do we call it, the Flora?

Grant: They call it FLRAA.  They’ve got to come up with a better name.  I think the Army’s going to give it a good name soon.

Piscopo: It goes to almost 300 miles an hour, that is unbelievable, that’s huge.

Grant: And flies much farther.  The Army wants this for the Pacific.  China has nothing like this technology.  So, if there’s a scrape down in the South China Sea, or the Philippines, and you want to keep it below a big fight with China, but you’ve got to put some soldiers in, or you’ve got to deliver supplies.  And you know what else?  They think in due course, the FLRAA can fly by itself.  Not with soldiers aboard; but let’s say you want to send them from Hawaii out to the Pacific.  They can send the FLRAA out on its own, and it’ll land, say at Clark AB in the Philippines, or wherever, and pick up soldiers.  This technology has gone that far.  It can do some of these missions unmanned.

Piscopo: Amazing.  This is great. 1700 nautical miles without refueling, carrying 12 passengers.  This is really great.  Does Congress have to approve this?

Grant: Yes, they do.  But the Army has been so swift and decisive.  There will still be Black Hawks in the Army for a while but who knows if they will by anymore.  Because the Army, Dan Driscoll, the Sectary of the Army, and the Chief of Staff Randy George, went up there with President Trump’s approval, with Secretary Hegseth’s approval, and said hey, this is our plan, we’re getting rid of 40 generals, we’re cutting this and that, and we really want this tiltrotor.  So Congress will take that very favorably.  They had already approved of the program, so I think they’re going to say a yes to FLRAA for the Army.

Piscopo: I love it.  Very exciting, Dr. Grant.  Thanks, please come back when you can, love hearing about this.

Grant:  I love talking Army transformation.  Thank you.   

Full radio clip here and here.