As the Defense Department’s Future Vertical Lift concept works its way towards becoming an official program of record, the Joint Staff is trying to determine if it can shorten the projected timeline to better meet the services’ needs despite tight budgets.

The current plan roughly revolves around four separate helicopters–light, medium, heavy and ultra-heavy–under a single office to ensure commonality within the family of systems, Lt. Col Alison Thompson, Future Vertical Lift acquisition staff specialist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday. Unlike Joint Strike Fighter, the helicopters aren’t being advertised as variants of the same aircraft, but rather related systems with a common chassis, cockpit, communications suites, or whatever else officials deem will reduce the training and logistics trail without sacrificing capability or increasing cost. The medium-lift helicopter would be the first to hit the fleet, replacing the Navy’s MH-60 fleet, and it is currently expected to reach initial operational capability in about 20 years.

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The Navy’s MH-60R/S helicopters would be the first to be replaced by Future Vertical Lift, though the exact timeline — currently about two decades away — is still to be determined.

“It is a long time out, we’re looking at possibly pulling it forward” despite current budget constraints, she said during the panel discussion. After the event, she told Defense Daily the Joint Staff is doing all it can now–“getting the technology right, defining our requirements, defining where we have acquisition trade space for affordability–those things will allow us to even quicker get through to a program of record and fielded to the fleet.”

Still, the ultimate timeline will depend on how the services adjust to tight budget and sequestration spending caps, if they return in fiscal year 2016. The services would need to invest in Future Vertical Lift even as they sustain their current helicopter fleets and embark on modernization and life extension programs, given the long timeline of FVL.

In addition, the structure of the program is still up for debate. Given that the helicopters will be separate designs and not variants of the same platform, Thompson said it is likely that the final arrangement will resemble multiple program offices under a program executive officer, where the PEO would ensure commonality across the helicopters. But she said the actual number of helicopters is still up for debate, even though most people assume it will be four.

“Right now you have light, medium, heavy and ultra-heavy,” she said. “If you look at the medium class, it’s very broad and we already know there’s not one platform that can cover that spectrum.”