REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (July 15, 2025) – It will be the fastest rotorcraft in existence.
Not only able to fly twice as fast, but the MV-75 -- the mission design series designation given to the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft -- will also be capable of flying twice as far as existing rotorcraft, essential for mission requirements over vast ocean areas and contested environments. Designed for tactical assault and medical evacuation, the MV-75 FLRAA will augment the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleet, providing Combat Aviation Brigades and the Special Operations Aviation Regiment with critical new capabilities.
Needless, to say, it is a top priority of not just Army Aviation but the U.S. Army at its highest echelon.
Although the rotorcraft, which will employ a tiltrotor design, is still in development, pilots, repairers and aircrew members can step inside an MV-75 virtually with the use of wearable Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality glasses, courtesy of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center’s FLRAA Extended Reality lab. This technology provides the ability to visualize, assess and have immersive interactions with the early aircraft design.
“With the use of wearable AR glasses, we have a mobile capability to take these same virtual models to our special user evaluation events,” said Joe Pangburn, acquisition logistics lead for fielding and infrastructure planning at the FLRAA Project Management Office. “In the past, Soldiers gave feedback based off wooden physical mockups without a lot of detail or PowerPoint slides. Today we are using both MR and AR capabilities to display or overlay the live design as a virtual model and give Soldiers and our personnel a glimpse at detailed design for more productive feedback long before we bend metal.”
The Center’s Systems Readiness Directorate stood up the FLRAA XR lab in building 5400 in Jan 2024, with AvMC Viz Lab Senior Engineer Dewayne Ricketts overseeing the effort. With the impact the first lab created, FLRAA asked Ricketts and his team to create a mirror image lab for FLRAA headquarters which came to life in Jan 2025. The headquarters lab brings the XR capabilities to the FLRAA workforce, enabling them immediate access to walk through the live design of the aircraft.
While the AR glasses provide great capability, the MR glasses are the workhorse of the lab. When in mixed reality, the user can see their hands and tools interacting with the virtual design. The team used mixed reality for assessment of all facets of the physical weapon system design, structure size, line replaceable unit accessibility, location of component routing, review of crew systems human machine interface and passenger accommodation such as safety, cargo entry and exit.
“FLRAA brings us the requirements and perspective from the customer side of what needs to be analyzed, what design aspects we should focus on, and how they evaluate and compare different configurations to identify the best solutions,” Ricketts said.
During Soldier user assessments utilizing the AR glasses, crew members respond to a specific scenario. After performing the scenario, the participants answer a series of questions and are given the opportunity to contribute personal insights. Those insights in turn have a direct influence on design suitability, useability, maintainability issues, potential improvement opportunities and life cycle cost challenges.
“We were able to overlay the aircraft onto a wooden mock-up, so they have good, solid, physical walls to work with, but they also see all the detail of the aircraft around that. That's one of the huge benefits of this technology -- mixing the two,” Ricketts said.
FLRAA will be the fastest-developed rotorcraft ever fielded. Part of that is due to the technology available today versus earlier systems and the use of model-based systems engineering, but it also can be attributed to having access to the live design and reusing that data for mixed and augmented reality capabilities, eliminating the usual development lag in review of design concepts, minimizing mockup or prototype required during development and reducing sub-contractor errors and misunderstandings of design requirements.
“The FLRAA PMO is always looking for ways to get the best information possible in the hands of our decision makers as early as possible,” Pangburn said. “The use of XR technology is one of many ways we’re accomplishing that.”
“We have leveraged these advanced technologies to create a unique PM FLRAA capability on Redstone,” Ricketts added. “But beyond that, FLRAA is setting the precedence for all future acquisition.”
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The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, is Army Futures Command’s leader and integrator within a global ecosystem of scientific exploration and technological innovation. DEVCOM expertise spans eight major competency areas to provide integrated research, development, analysis and engineering support to the Army and DOD. From rockets to robots, drones to dozers, and aviation to artillery – DEVCOM innovation is at the core of the combat capabilities American Warfighters need to win on the battlefield of the future. For more information, visit devcom.army.mil/.
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