If you could grab Ashton Carter's ear, what would you recommend he spend his money and effort on?
To create a program, perhaps with rewards, that will cause CEO to think more about long term corporate improvements and not short-term personal renumeration. To create a program, perhaps with rewards, that will cause conceptualists to think outside the box.
In other words, to think about potentially significant improvements to the basic functions of VTOL.
Examples being;
~ Active blade twist, so that the rotor can provide more thrust in all flight realms.
~ Root rotor-blade profiles and activities, so that rotorcraft can have a higher cruise speeds.
~ A means of allowing tilt-rotor disks to have large area and low disk loading during hover and small area with high disk loading during cruise.
Dave