The US Army won’t take delivery of its first new tiltrotor assault craft until 2030. But it’s already writing new doctrine for the speedy, far-flying Bell V-280 Valor. If it works in practice, this doctrine could solve one of the Army’s most serious battlefield problems: how to break through stiff enemy defences. Both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to do this in their ongoing war, and while many Western soldiers have argued that’s because they’re doing it wrong, it seems at least possible that traditional Blitzkrieg style land assaults have become less effective in the age of the drone and the “cautious tank”.
With the V-280, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like an aeroplane thanks to its pivoting rotors, the Army could simply bypass the defences – and land thousands of troops hundreds of miles away in the span of one night.
Major General Brett Sylvia is commander of the 101st Airborne Division. This was once a force of paratroopers but today it is the US Army’s specialist helicopter-borne assault formation. The general revealed the new doctrine at an industry event in Washington DC earlier this month.
“We can’t actually do the large-scale, long-range air assault today,” Sylvia said, “because the platforms that we have organic to the 101st are not enough in order for us to be able to do that in one period of darkness.”
The US Army won’t take delivery of its first new tiltrotor assault craft until 2030. But it’s already writing new doctrine for the speedy, far-flying Bell V-280 Valor. If it works in practice, this doctrine could solve one of the Army’s most serious battlefield problems: how to break through stiff enemy defences. Both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to do this in their ongoing war, and while many Western soldiers have argued that’s because they’re doing it wrong, it seems at least possible that traditional Blitzkrieg style land assaults have become less effective in the age of the drone and the “cautious tank”.
With the V-280, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like an aeroplane thanks to its pivoting rotors, the Army could simply bypass the defences – and land thousands of troops hundreds of miles away in the span of one night.
Major General Brett Sylvia is commander of the 101st Airborne Division. This was once a force of paratroopers but today it is the US Army’s specialist helicopter-borne assault formation. The general revealed the new doctrine at an industry event in Washington DC earlier this month.
“We can’t actually do the large-scale, long-range air assault today,” Sylvia said, “because the platforms that we have organic to the 101st are not enough in order for us to be able to do that in one period of darkness.”