Over the past eight decades, developments in vertical lift aircraft—both helicopters and verticalshort takeoff and landing (VSTOL) planes—have given the American military unparalleled capabilities on the modern battlefield. The U.S. has led the world in vertical lift technologies with the help of some of the brightest minds in this field—Igor I. Sikorsky, Arthur M. Young, Frank N. Piasecki, Charles H. Kaman and Stanley Hiller, Jr., to name a few—and by having the industrial prowess to make their concepts reality.