From RASCAL to RASCAL-X: Celebrating a Legacy of Rotorcraft Innovation
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Come join AIAA-SF for food and fun at our 2025 Annual Awards Banquet on November 15th. Help us celebrate with this year’s Section Awards winners and other honorees. Your ticket includes dinner, admission to the Moffett Field Museum, and a presentation from our special guest, Jay Fletcher, on the history and ongoing story of the RASCAL helicopter.
This presentation highlights the legacy and future of vertical lift research through the U.S. Army’s Rotorcraft Aircrew Systems Concepts Airborne Laboratory (RASCAL) program. Centered around the newly inducted JUH-60A Black Hawk RASCAL—now a featured exhibit at the Moffett Field Museum—the talk will reflect on over three decades of innovation in flight control, human-machine interfaces, and handling qualities science and technology.
Originally conceived in 1989 to meet the evolving research needs of NASA and the U.S. Army, the JUH-60A RASCAL was transformed into a full-authority, fly-by-wire flying laboratory. Equipped with a programmable flight control system, real-time obstacle detection and avoidance, and a color helmet-mounted display, RASCAL served as a versatile testbed for a wide range of experimental technologies. From advancing sensor-driven autonomous navigation to the development of MIL-DTL-32742, its contributions have shaped the trajectory of modern rotorcraft systems.
With the retirement of the JUH-60A platform, the RASCAL legacy continues in the form of the newly developed UH-60M-based RASCAL-X. Making its maiden flight in April 2024, RASCAL-X is designed to support next-generation research in modular open systems architecture, advanced flight controls, human-machine teaming, and autonomy. As a national asset, RASCAL-X will enable future breakthroughs in Army aviation and vertical lift science for years to come.
Jay Fletcher is a former RASCAL flight test engineer, project manager, and Deputy Director of the U.S. Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate (AFDD) at NASA Ames Research Center. Jay began his career at AFDD after graduating from Princeton University in 1985. He earned a Master’s Degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at Stanford while working as an aerospace engineer and a RASCAL principal investigator at AFDD in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He published several papers and reports focused on the identification of rotorcraft flight dynamics using RASCAL flight test data that were used in the design of the RASCAL flight control system and continue to be widely referenced.
Jay left government service in the late ‘90s to pursue a career in automotive racing engineering, but returned to AFDD in 2004. He served as the RASCAL project manager from 2005 to 2012, and guided many of the aircraft’s most productive flight test development projects. Jay also oversaw RASCAL work as the AFDD Deputy Director from 2012 to 2018.
In 2018 Jay transferred from the Army to NASA, and became the Director of the New Opportunities Center at NASA Ames. He later served as the Deputy Director of Aeronautics (acting) and the Associate Director of Aeronautics Projects. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Programs and Projects Directorate at Ames.
Schedule:
Dinner starts at approx. 5:00 pm
Come as early as 4:00 pm, or stay as late as 7:00 pm, to explore the museum.
NOTE: A REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or ID card, or a valid passport, required for entry to Moffett Field
Register here: