EP 55 — Piasecki Aircraft’s John Piasecki on Their Answer to Extended-Range Combat Logistics

Vertical lift aviation is on the cusp of its biggest revolution since the helicopter itself, and John Piasecki, President & CEO of Piasecki Aircraft, is at the forefront with game-changing technologies that could cut operational costs in half while meeting complex military requirements. 

In this episode of DIB Innovators John walks Dave through how his family's aerospace legacy is evolving from the iconic tandem rotor helicopter (now the Chinook) to hydrogen-powered compound helicopters and tilt-duct VTOL platforms. 

The discussion illuminates the strategic shift from pure R&D to production capability with their acquisition of Sikorsky's Heliplex facility, while exploring how their innovations directly address the challenges of Ukraine's contested airspace and the vast distances of Indo-Pacific operations.

Topics discussed:

• How Ukraine's battlefield realities have driven an "asymptotic" increase in air defense lethality, forcing a shift toward unmanned vertical lift systems for logistics in contested environments.
• The strategic advantages of high-temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells that deliver 5x the energy density of batteries and require significantly fewer maintenance-intensive components than turbine engines.
• Why hydrogen fuel propulsion could reduce vertical lift operational costs by 50% compared to conventional turbine helicopters while enabling units to generate their own fuel with just water and energy.
• How the Ares tilt-duct VTOL platform solves the critical gap between V22 Osprey capabilities (300+ mile range) and conventional helicopter support that can't match this extended operational radius.
• The potential for additive manufacturing to transform dynamic component production, reducing 12+ month lead times for critical parts like gearbox castings and cutting development cycles significantly.
• How software-enabled "cyber rotorcraft" technology could extract 15-20% more capability from identical hardware by replacing traditional safety margins with real-time adaptive flight control systems.
• The challenges of transitioning from SBIR program success to production at scale, prompting Piasecki's acquisition of Sikorsky's Heliplex facility after 60+ years as a pure R&D company.
• The shift toward mission-manager operators instead of traditional pilots, potentially solving the commercial and military pilot shortage while broadening access to vertical lift mobility.

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Guest Quote: 

“The turbine engine is an amazing piece of machinery. I mean it is super high specific power and excellent energy density. It's very difficult to compete with a turbine engine in performance. The real advantage of going to hydrogen is that it gives you enough performance to do the missions that the turbine helicopters are doing, albeit at a higher weight, empty fraction, but it does so at an operating cost that is 50% lower because the turbine engine is such a high-maintenance cost item and the fuel is such a high-cost item. And in a fuel cell there's hardly any moving parts. So we expect to be able to achieve 10,000 cycle cycles on a fuel cell. Roughly equating that to a turbine engine, it's substantially lower cost.”