Photo By Kelly Morris | Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker commanding...... read more read more
FORT RUCKER, Ala.--The Aviation Center of Excellence hosted its annual Army Aviation Industry Days event at Fort Rucker, Ala., July 28-30.
With a theme of “Leveraging Technology to Meet Tomorrow’s Challenges,” the two-day event included guest speaker sessions and guided panel discussions, more than 45 vendors showcasing their technologies, and industry and Army aircraft static displays.
The event aimed to foster dialogue between industry partners and Army aviation leaders and subject matter experts.
Event host Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, AVCOE and Fort Rucker commanding general and Army Aviation branch chief, highlighted continuous transformation as the Army prepares for the next war fight and eyes a "dangerous geopolitical environment."
“All the things that we see on the news that are happening should probably give us a little bit of pause about, are we ready for that next fight,” Gill said. “We’re watching the world kind of unfold in the context of challenges in the Middle East, the Pacific, and Russia/Ukraine continues to get more and more kinetic, more dynamic.”
“Our job is to be ready for it all,” Gill said.
While the external operating environment proves challenging, so does the internal environment, going forward: The Aviation branch must assume risk as the Army experiences an eight percent cut and prioritizes efforts.
“We are an expensive branch,” Gill said, of the Aviation branch, adding that other areas like air and missile defense and long-range precision fires are taking priority now.
Gill said the very character of warfare is changing.
“We’re not paying attention and we’re not listening if we’re not accepting the fact that the world is changing around us at a meteoric pace…. It’s not my dad’s war, my grandfather’s war,” Gill said.
“Our job is to make sure that when the Army calls we are ready to provide all the things that we do. The seeing, the sensing, the striking, the movement, the extension of the battlefield—that doesn’t change,” Gill said.
Gill said the Army’s flight school is at an “inflection point where we either need to recapitalize what we have and do more of the same, or we can look at ourselves and say, are we delivering the capability the Army needs in the most effective and efficient manner here?”
Gill noted some trends in recent aviation mishaps including power management and spatial disorientation issues, which reinforces the need for “fundamentally competent” aviators.
To produce a better aviator for the Army, Gill said he wants to move toward a contractor owned and operated model for Common Core training.
“We really need to go to something simpler to teach the fundamental skills of our pilots. Think single-engine training aircraft...,” Gill said.
To test the waters, some flight school students recently trained off campus in a proof-of-concept program using a commercially owned and operated training model, and they soloed single-pilot for five hours, something Gill explained hasn’t been done at Fort Rucker in 40 years. They are now in the “fade to green” program where they will train in the UH-72 aircraft here for the combat skills portion of training, and the Army will assess their proficiency.
“My sense is they are going to be as good or better than what we produce right now,” Gill said.
Gill also noted that the 10-year Active-Duty Service Obligation that began at the completion of military aircraft training, has shifted to now starting after completion of the Common Core training phase, (before the students complete their advanced aircraft training), largely due to maintenance issues impacting flight school completion timelines.
Now, “when you finish combat skills, we call you a rated aviator,” he said. At that point, students have soloed and have the requisite experience to get their aeronautical rating.
Per Army Military Personnel Message No. 25-264, the policy will retroactively apply to all Army aviators who entered initial entry flight training on or after Oct. 1, 2020.
Gill gave an update on the Aviation Tactics Instructor Course (ATIC), a reimagined instructor pilot course, which the Center stood up in its initial version in January, that moves away from the traffic pattern and infuses more of a tactical focus and mission planning to develop company and platoon level training.
“The feedback has been a lot of goodness. They talk about the professionalism and commitment of our instructors here in terms of developing them,” Gill said. “We’re going to go back and add a little more instrument training and the up-front stuff.”
“ATIC 2.0” is slated to begin in the Apache helicopters ahead of schedule.
Gill also provided force design updates: The 16th Combat Aviation Brigade is templated to move from Joint-Base Lewis-McChord to Alaska; 25th CAB will become whole and exist contiguously on the Hawaiian islands; a multi-compo battalion, 2-135th Aviation Regiment, will be based at JBLM; and 12th CAB will not become a “full-up” CAB but will have extra maintenance added. Cavalry squadrons will be divested, and those aviators will move to attack battalions.
Gill said divesting Army Reserve rotary wing aviation was a difficult decision.
“In terms of where we could find some savings, it was a tough call the Army had to make,” he said. The Army is looking at options to manage that talent.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems is a “huge growth industry,” Gill said. “We know that is a space we need to move in as an Army. This is not unique to aviation. We’ve got some MOS’s that are experts in these things and we want to be helpful to the rest of the Army.”
“We’ve been asked by Army leadership to take the 15E and 15W, the repairer and operator for what used to be Shadow UAS, and to converge those two MOS’s. We’re moving quickly on that,” Gill said.
Soldiers at 2nd Battalion, 13th Aviation Regiment, based at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., have focused on becoming experts on Group 1 and 2 UAS since the Shadow UAS was divested. The 150U MOS, which was a UAS expert, will now be a UAS integrator and airspace expert integrator also.
Gill explained that Army Aviation owns the night but looks to leverage Degraded Visual Environment technology to own the environment, going forward.
The first prototype for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft is now slated for 2026. “I’m confident with the great partners that we have we’ll get there,” Gill said. It is expected to bring increased speed and range, tilt-rotor technology, open architecture, and provide a learning machine that can adapt and have autonomous capability.
Gill said he wants to double down on aviation warfighting culture. “I’ve asked every one of our leaders in our branch and those not in our branch to have high expectations for our Soldiers. They should be able to roll into a command post, in a sustainment brigade, a BCT, or one of our own headquarters, and contribute right away,” he said.
Aviation leaders need to be able to adapt, do hard things and demonstrate they are a member of the combined arms team.
Lt. Gen. David J. Francis, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command deputy commanding general and former Aviation branch chief, thanked industry partners, including “all those who are looking at Flight School Next and brought your wares to the parade field out here. We know that comes at a cost and we appreciate you showing us what you’re bringing to the table for that,” Francis said.
While no decisions were made during the event about a potentially commercially owned and operated path forward for the future of Fort Rucker’s flight school, industry representatives showcased their helicopters to provide a better understanding of commercially available training solutions.
Francis said transformation across the Army, including force structure changes, merging of commands, and the construct of BCTs and Aviation formations, is happening at a rapid pace “to make sure we are delivering the best Army and the best capability to our Soldiers every single day.”
Among those is the forthcoming merger of TRADOC and Army Futures Command. This aims to bring under one commander three main capability bins: Force Generation – from recruiting command through initial military training to first unit of assignment; Force Development, which will take Soldiers, officers and warrant officers through their entire careers (up through the war college); and Force Design, which will be led by Futures and Concepts Center and continue to modernize the force.
“The beauty…is you’ve got all of that under one roof now, and bringing with them the innovation that has occurred over the last several years,” Francis said.
“We have to be able to meet the needs of the force at the pace of change that the rest of the Army is going through as the world changes,” he said. “As the Army is changing, we never want to lose sight of the fact that we exist to support the ground force commanders in every aspect that Army aviation always has.”
Attendees also heard from leaders who called for industry solutions across a variety of programs, as they provided updates from Army Futures Command, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, Program Executive Office-Aviation and the Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team, as well as program managers and capability developers discussing the AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft, FLRAA, UAS and other topics.
During the event industry representatives were provided multiple Q&A opportunities with Army Aviation leaders.
| Date Taken: | 07.31.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.31.2025 16:52 |
| Story ID: | 544440 |
| Location: | FORT RUCKER, ALABAMA, US |
| Web Views: | 67 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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