The new drone is just one part of an ambitious overhaul of Army aviation.

Will the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft “replace” some AH-64 Apache gunships? Sort of, technically — but that’s a misleading slice of a bigger story.

How can Army accelerate its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft when one leading contender started flight tests just seven days ago?

The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) must have enough artificial intelligence to fly unmanned at least part of the time, a secure network to control drones, and combination of speed and range that’s impossible for traditional helicopters.

“We were never above probably a total of eight people,” the aviation Cross Functional Team chief, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, told me. “We’re not this big colossal thing, we’re a lean, mean organization.”

Manned air and ground forces would work together and protect each other along the front line, while relatively expendable drones and missiles go deep into enemy airspace.

The Army’s modernization initiatives aren’t plunging into the valley of death this week or even, in most cases, this year. It will take time to build prototypes, to test them and to figure out how the force will make the most of new technology. But over the next few years, enough of these projects have to make it across that daunting gap to actually change the Army.

The Army’s new emphasis on armed recon could potentially disrupt the all-service Future Vertical Lift project (FVL).

All this technology serves a new concept of operations for defeating dense advanced air defenses of the kind Russia and China are both building for themselves and selling abroad.