At Bell, the Technology and Innovation team is responsible for creating and maturing the latest technologies and concepts to advance Bell’s commercial and military businesses. Their mission is to radically innovate technologies toward novel and coveted vertical lift experiences. And now, we have a new leader.

The new engineer guiding this team is Jason Hurst. As a Fort Worth native, Jason remembers first hearing about Bell by watching Bell’s famous tiltrotor, the Bell Boeing V-22, fly on the local news. Little did he know that 13 years later he would start his Bell career on that very same program. After spending several years on V-22, Jason knew he wanted to be a part of new product development to take on different challenges and expand his creativity. He later landed a new role as the program manager of the Bell V-247 Vigilant. Jason led the team through the conceptual design of the aircraft and advanced capabilities in autonomy and mission systems integration. 

"The timing of the opportunity was exciting with the emergence of eVTOL technology and the generational modernization of the Department of Defense,” said Jason. “The environment is rich for our dedicated group of engineers who have such great expertise to focus on leap ahead technology."

Now, he’s the Innovation team’s new leader, uniting the military advanced conceptual design and autonomy development team with the current Innovation engineers. Through cross-collaboration, Bell has reduced some duplication of work and brought its talent closer together. During this seamless transition, both teams are already working on preliminary design and early requirements for programs. Jason brought over some of the team to focus purely on research activities that will feed into future aircraft capabilities.

“Right now, there are more new products in the pipeline than we’ve ever seen before at Bell,” said Jason. “Whether it’s clean-sheet designs or new technology for existing platforms, our team is already diving into new opportunities.”