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In 2020, Walker D. Mills and Dylan “Joose” Phillips-Levine wrote “The Future of Tactical Airlift is Here and it’s Vertical,” where they explore tactical airlift use in the U.S. military and argue that rotary-wing and tilt-rotor aircrafts should have a significant role in the future. Four years later, we invited them back to discuss how tactical airlift has evolved. Read more below.Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Staff Sgt. Rose Gudex)In your 2020 article “The Future of Tactical Airlift is Here and its Vertical” you argued that vertical-lift aircraft were superior to fixed-wing aircraft for tactical airlift missions. In the past four years, how has tactical airlift in the U.S. military evolved?In our 2020 article, we argued that rotary-wing and tilt-rotor aircraft are ideally suited for the tactical airlift role across many different environments. Over the past four years, this remains true, and we’ve seen major developments in vertical lift. The Marine Corps has declared initial operating capability on its CH-53K King Stallion helicopters, which have significant range and payload improvements over the existing heavy-lift fleet. The Army chose a tilt-rotor design from Bell Textron for its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program, opening up the whole UH-60 Black Hawk fleet to replacement by tilt-rotors. And the Japanese Self Defense Force received their first V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, the first international buyer for the aircraft. It’s clear that vertical-lift technology, especially tilt-rotors, is both improving significantly and in demand by the U.S. military and foreign partners.Since 2020, CV-22s from the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy have been grounded on multiple occasions in the wake of crashes and mechanical failures. Army helicopters including UH-60s and AH-64s have also been grounded after crashes. How do these groundings play into your thinking about tactical airlift and about future operational employment of vertical-lift aircraft? Despite some