Mechanical fixes kept the SB>1 compound helicopter grounded for weeks this summer, but Sikorsky insists they can catch up.

The Army may need to delay the rollout of the new technology, scale it down, or both.

The Ripsaw design is so flexible, the company claims, it can scale up and down for different missions.

These are huge strategic challenges — and Ryan McCarthy is emphasizing them more than any of his predecessors in at least a decade.

Sikorsky says their Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft design will fly faster, with bigger weapons, than archrival Bell’s. Bell says theirs will be cheaper and more reliable.

Industry’s prototype Robotic Combat Vehicles are proving more capable than the Army expected, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman told me: “It is really exciting.”

But building a global 3D terrain database will require wrangling huge amounts of data, Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais told us.

With the surprise disqualification of the Raytheon-Rheinmetall Lynx, the Army has effectively left itself with one competitor for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, General Dynamics — unless the Pentagon or Congress intervene.

With its trademark tiltrotors too big for the Army’s FARA requirement, Bell is squeezing every ounce of performance out of a helicopter. Will it be fast enough?

The hard part of Multi-Domain Operations isn’t hypersonic missiles or robotic tanks. It’s getting civilian agencies and foreign allies to fight disinformation — long before the shooting starts.