6 ms·

Bell's V-280 Valor Tiltrotor Picked as Army's Black Hawk Replacement (2022)

44 points by dralley 3y ago

dralley 3y ago
* Tiltrotor design, similar in principle to the V-22 Osprey but mechanically much less complicated than the Osprey mechanism, and more stable due to lower disk loading * Current max speed of 345mph * Current max range of 2,400 miles * Capable of unmanned flight * Helmet allows the pilot to see through the body of the aircraft using AR
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  A touch screen? I'd think something tactile would be better. As a driver, I hate my touch screen radio because I have to look at what I'm touching and avoid accidental contact.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    Since the introduction in the early 2000s of the so-called "glass cockpit" the current norm is multi-function displays surrounded with "soft buttons" whose functions change depending on the currently-displayed screen. In practice there's not much benefit to this over a touchscreen, since you have to verify the button you're about to press is currently set to the function you want. Since the touchscreen has fewer moving parts, I'd wager the maintenance and production costs are much lower.
    - Pasorrijer 3y ago
      Sure, but imagine you're wearing gloves, covered in dirt and mud and oil. I'll take buttons any time over the obsession with touchscreens.
      - throwup238 3y ago
        Turbulence too. With a flat surface, there's no way to anchor to a physical point before pressing. With buttons, there's tactile feedback so you can keep your finger on the button through turbulence until you're certain it's the one you want to press.
        saltcured 3y ago
        My experience even in older cars (where bumps more likely affect your control efforts) is that you also need fixed perches near the important controls. Then, you can rest part of your hand on this perch while aiming fingers to the controls. I think avionics soft buttons are usually arranged this way, and one can imagine similar touch interfaces that would focus on the edges of screens with robust bezels of some kind. Your body and arm might be shifting around due to the shaking of the cabin. Your hand is stabilized relative to the buttons or knobs near the perch, so you can aim precisely. What you don't want under shaky situations are controls way out in the middle of a field of controls where you need to aim precisely and have no perch for your hand. Even worse would be the kind of consumer touch UX with drag or other gestures where you could accidentally input some high magnitude command because a cabin movement pushed your free-aiming hand across the screen...
      - stonogo 3y ago
        I don't have to imagine, since I have flown these and similar aircraft. It really does not make a difference. I prefer a mechanical cockpit, but the choice between MFDs and touchscreens is not much of a choice. There are so many buttons on MFDs that you don't really operate by feel. I would agree if the choice were between mechanical cockpits and either of the other two, but that's not the choice at hand, since most Blackhawks were upgraded to MFDs year and years ago, to the point anyone flying in the military today would be nearing retirement if they had much experience in the original cockpits.
  - oldpersonintx 3y ago
    [dead]
- Seanambers 3y ago
  This thing can actually cross the Atlantic hot damn.
- masklinn 3y ago
  > similar in principle to the V-22 Osprey but mechanically much less complicated than the Osprey mechanism, and more stable due to lower disk loading Being much lighter / less capable than the v22, 30 years younger, and the Navy not being involved, help a lot with everything.
- SEJeff 3y ago
  The irony here, is that an F35 has a max range of ~1,380 miles by comparison, though obviously an F35 can do in-flight refueling.
thunderbird120 3y ago
Wasn't really very surprising when this happened. The V-280 demonstrator was running laps around the competing program (the SB-1 Defiant) in pretty much every category the army really cared about. Tiltrotors let you fly dramatically further, dramatically faster than conventional helicopters, and on top of all of that the actual technical maturity of Bell's prototype was light years beyond what Sikorsky managed with the SB-1, getting eventually retired only because they basically ran out of things to test. The SB-1 had constant issues due to the requirements of the program. Making a helicopter go that fast introduces a lot of complexity, to the point that the SB-1 was really not any less complex than the V-280. Essentially its only winning points were in better hover performance and a slightly smaller footprint but those weren't enough to justify having dramatically slower speed and half the range for an aircraft whose main purpose is to act as a transport.
- dralley 3y ago
  Also the thing was tall as f** and therefore likely just as difficult if not more difficult to service. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPmihf_WUAICL4y?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPmihf_WUAICL4y?format=jpg&name=...
- wolverine876 3y ago
  FWIW, I read stories about it at the time (interested in the technology, not Pentagon contracting competitions). What I read before the announcement thought the outcome was unknown, and nobody before or after presented it as lopsided. Certainly I didn't read everything, so YMMV.
sparrish 3y ago
Those crayon-eating grunts are gonna end up shooting the blades off the V-280... you watch. <grin>
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > crayon-eating This is for the Army, not the Marines
  - warner25 3y ago
    I believe that this is ultimately supposed to replace not just the Black Hawk but the Army's Apache and Marine Corps' Cobra too. I recently had a conversation with a Marine Corps Cobra pilot who had real concerns about the configuration that a tiltrotor needs to be in when employing weapons.
    - dralley 3y ago
      Not the case. I don't think there's any plans to replace the Apache, but the closest thing would be the FARA program which hasn't selected a winner yet. There is a little bit of controversy though about the fact that none of the other existing or proposed rotorcraft would be able to keep up with the V-280 (for escort duties), so probably they will be attaching some weapons to the thing. But it's definitely not intended to be a dedicated attack helicopter.
      - warner25 3y ago
        I've been trying to find where I read this, and I can't, so I think you're correct. Maybe I was confused by some stuff that was just Bell and Sikorsky marketing material about their attack / recon variants. I'm thinking about the lack of an aerial escort with comparable speed and range for the Army. The Marine Corps, at least, has the F-35. It might not actually be necessary for the Army with UAS and long-range precision fires that could see the route / objective area and hit targets ahead of the Valor's arrival.
psunavy03 3y ago
"The story does not necessarily end with the Army's decision. Lockheed Martin, which owns Sikorsky could very well protest the decision, which will put the entire program on hold at least for 100 days while the Government Accountability Office weighs its counterargument." And this is the screwed-up state of DoD procurement in 2024 . . .
- dr_orpheus 3y ago
  "put the entire program on hold at least for 100 days" I don't think the wording here is quite right. The GAO has 100 days to decide if the protest is valid or not. If it is valid, then the program could be on hold for longer. The GAO could decide day 1 "nope, your protest is not valid" (they won't). Most likely it will be closer to 100 days of the program on hold, but it shouldn't be "at least 100 days". But it also just any government procurement in general, where a protest is par for the course. Common amongst any large NASA procurement as well: https://spacenews.com/gao-denies-l3harris-protest-over-ball-aerospace-weather-satellite-instrument-contract/ https://spacenews.com/gao-denies-l3harris-protest-over-ball-... It is also happens often because even if a company doesn't think they have a valid protest the government will have to release more details of the proposals and so it is often used as a way to gain business intel.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Defiant was one of those rare projects where Lockheed and Boeing were teamed up, which helped the program not at all. The Valor had a laser-focus, by comparison. I had the good fortune to have a tiny toe in both programs. "But wait," I hear you ask, "why didn't Boeing supply a design of their own? Don't they make the CH-47" Well . . that's a long story, but the short version is that the 47 was designed a long, long time ago, and it's a Vertol design, not Boeing. Editorial warning, but I'm not sure Boeing has the ability to design a whole lot, these days.
ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago
> Valor is set to enter service in the mid-2030s That seems like a long time
- dralley 3y ago
  I think that's either wrong or outdated, they're aiming for the first ones to be in service by the end of 2030. But of course it will take years (probably a decade) to replace the entire fleet.
warner25 3y ago
This has been a mildy controversial decision, and I was initially concerned that the Valor was the wrong choice, but I've convinced myself over the past year that it wasn't. In the mid-2000s, the Army decided to cancel the technologically revolutionary, expensive, and long-delayed RAH-66 and Congress allowed it to reinvest the RAH-66 money into known quantities like UH-60, CH-47, and AH-64 instead. We got whole new fleets of those aircraft with upgraded capabilities, and then we all saw how they were reliable workhorses over the last 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that choosing the Valor reflects this lesson-learned. The Defiant was the riskier new technology while Bell's tiltrotor design is more mature after many years of feedback and optimization from V-22 operations. If we actually want to get something out of this program, the right decision is probably to "not let perfect be the enemy of good." The more mature design is probably going to be the safer one for aircrews and troops, the easier one to maintain, etc. My remaining disappointment is that the Defiant reportedly had better hover power under high and hot conditions which is what we really needed in Afghanistan. The CH-47's much greater hover power compared to the UH-60 turned the CH-47 into the preferred (sometimes only) platform for air assaults and everything else. I wonder if we could have done very well by just continuing to iterate on and build more CH-47s to replace some or all of the UH-60s in our assault helicopter battalions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > In the mid-2000s, the Army decided to cancel the technologically revolutionary, expensive, and long-delayed RAH-66 and Congress allowed it to reinvest the RAH-66 money into known quantities like UH-60, CH-47, and AH-64 instead. We got whole new fleets of those aircraft with upgraded capabilities, and then we all saw how they were reliable workhorses over the last 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that choosing the Valor reflects this lesson-learned. ... If we actually want to get something out of this program, the right decision is probably to "not let perfect be the enemy of good." ... That seems to be the Department of Defense's general approach these days, but I wonder if they are just fighting the last war. Against forces that are already massively outgunned, such as ISIL or the Taliban who generally had only rifles, explosives, and RPGs, improving technology generally doesn't help. Against 'near-peer' foes (the euphemism for China), it may pay to invest in the truly exceptional, ground-breaking technology - you don't want your ship or city defended by good-enough, economical fighters and anti-air; you want to see some X-wing fighters up there shooting lasers at their old turbine and missile buggies; you want what stealth bombers looked like next to the Soviet fleet. That said, tilt-rotors are still a big step forward from standard helicopters.
aredox 3y ago
This machine looks like the Osprey done right. I hope it becomes a new staple of military and civilian aircrafts.
- masklinn 3y ago
  It’s a bit hard to say that it’s an osprey done right when it’s so much less. Not sure Valor would have been a consideration (or indeed a possibility) back in the 80s. It’s an osprey done with a smaller scope, less capability, and 30 years later (thus having drawn from the osprey’s design and operational experience).
  - dralley 3y ago
    Less capability in most respects but it does have twice the range.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      True. But at the end of the day they have very different mission statements and purposes even if there is some overlap in their utility.
jameshart 3y ago
How does this choice play into the longstanding fuzzy line between US Army and US Air Force responsibilities? This is neither fixed wing nor rotary wing; has the range for tactical airlift… Is Johnson-McConnell still considered binding? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of_1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of...
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I ponder this too. Very interesting modern development. And am happy to see the hughly-dogmatic line somewhat slipping. The AH-56 Cheyenne stands out as what could have been an absurdly well equipped very fast helicopter. Speed, and a huge 360 degree underbelly turreted cannon would have been a ridiculous fire support craft. But it had a pusher prop on the back and the Air Force really really really didn't like that at the time (and was also probably hella jealous of the cannon too). I'm not sure what makes me as ok with I am at eroding the air force's role somewhat. Some is probably seeing these great craft (AH-56, V280) & feeling like: if the army is going to have anything in the air, it should be great. It sure feels like the v280 is heralding in a massive shift in policy/what is permitted.
  - icegreentea2 3y ago
    It does help that tilt rotars are totally rotary craft... In any case, V-280 being primarily transport is for sure helpful. While the range might raise some eyebrows, it also means that V-280 can potentially more meaningfully self-deploy. That means less USAF strategic lift assets to spend on the army - USAF is pondering how it can keep forward bases supplied in the Indo-Pacific - strategic lift certainly has a role to play here. I think the reality is that USAF realizes that trying to stonewall the V-280 will NOT meaningfully give it more budget, and that the V-280's capabilities means USAF gets more effective budget.
    - jameshart 3y ago
      Might be less of a case of ‘can’ self deploy and more ‘has to’. Not entirely sure one of these will even fit in a C17. (In comparison, you can fit three Blackhawks in a Globemaster)
tastyfreeze 3y ago
I was starting to think this thing would never enter production. I would love to see these in civilian use. Better that a helicopter or an airplane for a lot of remote site uses.
throwaway8877 3y ago
This thing looks highly vulnerable. Can it float when there is an issue with its engines?
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  Vulnerable to what exactly? Engine failure? It has two engines (like the Blackhawk) and either can drive both rotors if the other fails. Do helicopters typically float?
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    Helicopters can autorotate in the case of engine failure, maybe that's what they meant?
    - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
      This thing has wings. Feather the propellers/rotors and glide down. Same failure mode as any fixed-wing aircraft.
    - nradov 3y ago
      Tilt rotor aircraft have interconnected gearboxes so that they can fly on a single engine. In case of a dual engine failure in vertical lift mode the autorotation capability is very limited due to low rotor inertia; chance of survival is low from any significant altitude. In case of a dual engine failure in airplane mode it can glide like a regular airplane, but the glide ratio is low and stall speed is high so although in ideal circumstances the pilot might be able to put it down safely the most likely outcome is everyone dies.
- exabrial 3y ago
  Taking "float" literally meaning float in water: It's probably safer than a helicopter? I can't remember the name of the effect, but a helicopter in water automatically flips upside down because the heavy engines are mounted on the top. This causes the majority of deaths in helicopter water landings, even in shallow water, because the occupants can't egress due to disorientation. The real question is does it flip upside down if it goes belly first into water. Taking "float" meaning can it land: The blades in the V280 are connected so one engine can drive both props. This thing can also glide AND/or auto-rotate if needed... so I think it'd be pretty danged safe with a competent pilot.
exabrial 3y ago
I honestly thought there was a scenario where they accept _both_ prototypes as winners. They're both quite good at different missions.

44 points by dralley 3y ago

* Tiltrotor design, similar in principle to the V-22 Osprey but mechanically much less complicated than the Osprey mechanism, and more stable due to lower disk loading * Current max speed of 345mph * Current max range of 2,400 miles * Capable of unmanned flight * Helmet allows the pilot to see through the body of the aircraft using AR

8organicbits 3y ago
A touch screen? I'd think something tactile would be better. As a driver, I hate my touch screen radio because I have to look at what I'm touching and avoid accidental contact.
- stonogo 3y ago
  Since the introduction in the early 2000s of the so-called "glass cockpit" the current norm is multi-function displays surrounded with "soft buttons" whose functions change depending on the currently-displayed screen. In practice there's not much benefit to this over a touchscreen, since you have to verify the button you're about to press is currently set to the function you want. Since the touchscreen has fewer moving parts, I'd wager the maintenance and production costs are much lower.
  - Pasorrijer 3y ago
    Sure, but imagine you're wearing gloves, covered in dirt and mud and oil. I'll take buttons any time over the obsession with touchscreens.
    - throwup238 3y ago
      Turbulence too. With a flat surface, there's no way to anchor to a physical point before pressing. With buttons, there's tactile feedback so you can keep your finger on the button through turbulence until you're certain it's the one you want to press.
      - saltcured 3y ago
        My experience even in older cars (where bumps more likely affect your control efforts) is that you also need fixed perches near the important controls. Then, you can rest part of your hand on this perch while aiming fingers to the controls. I think avionics soft buttons are usually arranged this way, and one can imagine similar touch interfaces that would focus on the edges of screens with robust bezels of some kind. Your body and arm might be shifting around due to the shaking of the cabin. Your hand is stabilized relative to the buttons or knobs near the perch, so you can aim precisely. What you don't want under shaky situations are controls way out in the middle of a field of controls where you need to aim precisely and have no perch for your hand. Even worse would be the kind of consumer touch UX with drag or other gestures where you could accidentally input some high magnitude command because a cabin movement pushed your free-aiming hand across the screen...
    - stonogo 3y ago
      I don't have to imagine, since I have flown these and similar aircraft. It really does not make a difference. I prefer a mechanical cockpit, but the choice between MFDs and touchscreens is not much of a choice. There are so many buttons on MFDs that you don't really operate by feel. I would agree if the choice were between mechanical cockpits and either of the other two, but that's not the choice at hand, since most Blackhawks were upgraded to MFDs year and years ago, to the point anyone flying in the military today would be nearing retirement if they had much experience in the original cockpits.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  [dead]
Seanambers 3y ago
This thing can actually cross the Atlantic hot damn.
masklinn 3y ago
> similar in principle to the V-22 Osprey but mechanically much less complicated than the Osprey mechanism, and more stable due to lower disk loading Being much lighter / less capable than the v22, 30 years younger, and the Navy not being involved, help a lot with everything.
SEJeff 3y ago
The irony here, is that an F35 has a max range of ~1,380 miles by comparison, though obviously an F35 can do in-flight refueling.

thunderbird120 3y ago

Wasn't really very surprising when this happened. The V-280 demonstrator was running laps around the competing program (the SB-1 Defiant) in pretty much every category the army really cared about. Tiltrotors let you fly dramatically further, dramatically faster than conventional helicopters, and on top of all of that the actual technical maturity of Bell's prototype was light years beyond what Sikorsky managed with the SB-1, getting eventually retired only because they basically ran out of things to test. The SB-1 had constant issues due to the requirements of the program. Making a helicopter go that fast introduces a lot of complexity, to the point that the SB-1 was really not any less complex than the V-280. Essentially its only winning points were in better hover performance and a slightly smaller footprint but those weren't enough to justify having dramatically slower speed and half the range for an aircraft whose main purpose is to act as a transport.

dralley 3y ago
Also the thing was tall as f** and therefore likely just as difficult if not more difficult to service. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPmihf_WUAICL4y?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPmihf_WUAICL4y?format=jpg&name=...
wolverine876 3y ago
FWIW, I read stories about it at the time (interested in the technology, not Pentagon contracting competitions). What I read before the announcement thought the outcome was unknown, and nobody before or after presented it as lopsided. Certainly I didn't read everything, so YMMV.

sparrish 3y ago

Those crayon-eating grunts are gonna end up shooting the blades off the V-280... you watch. <grin>

meepmorp 3y ago
> crayon-eating This is for the Army, not the Marines
- warner25 3y ago
  I believe that this is ultimately supposed to replace not just the Black Hawk but the Army's Apache and Marine Corps' Cobra too. I recently had a conversation with a Marine Corps Cobra pilot who had real concerns about the configuration that a tiltrotor needs to be in when employing weapons.
  - dralley 3y ago
    Not the case. I don't think there's any plans to replace the Apache, but the closest thing would be the FARA program which hasn't selected a winner yet. There is a little bit of controversy though about the fact that none of the other existing or proposed rotorcraft would be able to keep up with the V-280 (for escort duties), so probably they will be attaching some weapons to the thing. But it's definitely not intended to be a dedicated attack helicopter.
    - warner25 3y ago
      I've been trying to find where I read this, and I can't, so I think you're correct. Maybe I was confused by some stuff that was just Bell and Sikorsky marketing material about their attack / recon variants. I'm thinking about the lack of an aerial escort with comparable speed and range for the Army. The Marine Corps, at least, has the F-35. It might not actually be necessary for the Army with UAS and long-range precision fires that could see the route / objective area and hit targets ahead of the Valor's arrival.

psunavy03 3y ago

"The story does not necessarily end with the Army's decision. Lockheed Martin, which owns Sikorsky could very well protest the decision, which will put the entire program on hold at least for 100 days while the Government Accountability Office weighs its counterargument." And this is the screwed-up state of DoD procurement in 2024 . . .

dr_orpheus 3y ago
"put the entire program on hold at least for 100 days" I don't think the wording here is quite right. The GAO has 100 days to decide if the protest is valid or not. If it is valid, then the program could be on hold for longer. The GAO could decide day 1 "nope, your protest is not valid" (they won't). Most likely it will be closer to 100 days of the program on hold, but it shouldn't be "at least 100 days". But it also just any government procurement in general, where a protest is par for the course. Common amongst any large NASA procurement as well: https://spacenews.com/gao-denies-l3harris-protest-over-ball-aerospace-weather-satellite-instrument-contract/ https://spacenews.com/gao-denies-l3harris-protest-over-ball-... It is also happens often because even if a company doesn't think they have a valid protest the government will have to release more details of the proposals and so it is often used as a way to gain business intel.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Defiant was one of those rare projects where Lockheed and Boeing were teamed up, which helped the program not at all. The Valor had a laser-focus, by comparison. I had the good fortune to have a tiny toe in both programs. "But wait," I hear you ask, "why didn't Boeing supply a design of their own? Don't they make the CH-47" Well . . that's a long story, but the short version is that the 47 was designed a long, long time ago, and it's a Vertol design, not Boeing. Editorial warning, but I'm not sure Boeing has the ability to design a whole lot, these days.

ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y ago

> Valor is set to enter service in the mid-2030s That seems like a long time

dralley 3y ago
I think that's either wrong or outdated, they're aiming for the first ones to be in service by the end of 2030. But of course it will take years (probably a decade) to replace the entire fleet.

warner25 3y ago

This has been a mildy controversial decision, and I was initially concerned that the Valor was the wrong choice, but I've convinced myself over the past year that it wasn't. In the mid-2000s, the Army decided to cancel the technologically revolutionary, expensive, and long-delayed RAH-66 and Congress allowed it to reinvest the RAH-66 money into known quantities like UH-60, CH-47, and AH-64 instead. We got whole new fleets of those aircraft with upgraded capabilities, and then we all saw how they were reliable workhorses over the last 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that choosing the Valor reflects this lesson-learned. The Defiant was the riskier new technology while Bell's tiltrotor design is more mature after many years of feedback and optimization from V-22 operations. If we actually want to get something out of this program, the right decision is probably to "not let perfect be the enemy of good." The more mature design is probably going to be the safer one for aircrews and troops, the easier one to maintain, etc. My remaining disappointment is that the Defiant reportedly had better hover power under high and hot conditions which is what we really needed in Afghanistan. The CH-47's much greater hover power compared to the UH-60 turned the CH-47 into the preferred (sometimes only) platform for air assaults and everything else. I wonder if we could have done very well by just continuing to iterate on and build more CH-47s to replace some or all of the UH-60s in our assault helicopter battalions.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wolverine876 3y ago
> In the mid-2000s, the Army decided to cancel the technologically revolutionary, expensive, and long-delayed RAH-66 and Congress allowed it to reinvest the RAH-66 money into known quantities like UH-60, CH-47, and AH-64 instead. We got whole new fleets of those aircraft with upgraded capabilities, and then we all saw how they were reliable workhorses over the last 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think that choosing the Valor reflects this lesson-learned. ... If we actually want to get something out of this program, the right decision is probably to "not let perfect be the enemy of good." ... That seems to be the Department of Defense's general approach these days, but I wonder if they are just fighting the last war. Against forces that are already massively outgunned, such as ISIL or the Taliban who generally had only rifles, explosives, and RPGs, improving technology generally doesn't help. Against 'near-peer' foes (the euphemism for China), it may pay to invest in the truly exceptional, ground-breaking technology - you don't want your ship or city defended by good-enough, economical fighters and anti-air; you want to see some X-wing fighters up there shooting lasers at their old turbine and missile buggies; you want what stealth bombers looked like next to the Soviet fleet. That said, tilt-rotors are still a big step forward from standard helicopters.

aredox 3y ago

This machine looks like the Osprey done right. I hope it becomes a new staple of military and civilian aircrafts.

masklinn 3y ago
It’s a bit hard to say that it’s an osprey done right when it’s so much less. Not sure Valor would have been a consideration (or indeed a possibility) back in the 80s. It’s an osprey done with a smaller scope, less capability, and 30 years later (thus having drawn from the osprey’s design and operational experience).
- dralley 3y ago
  Less capability in most respects but it does have twice the range.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    True. But at the end of the day they have very different mission statements and purposes even if there is some overlap in their utility.

jameshart 3y ago

How does this choice play into the longstanding fuzzy line between US Army and US Air Force responsibilities? This is neither fixed wing nor rotary wing; has the range for tactical airlift… Is Johnson-McConnell still considered binding? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of_1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of...

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I ponder this too. Very interesting modern development. And am happy to see the hughly-dogmatic line somewhat slipping. The AH-56 Cheyenne stands out as what could have been an absurdly well equipped very fast helicopter. Speed, and a huge 360 degree underbelly turreted cannon would have been a ridiculous fire support craft. But it had a pusher prop on the back and the Air Force really really really didn't like that at the time (and was also probably hella jealous of the cannon too). I'm not sure what makes me as ok with I am at eroding the air force's role somewhat. Some is probably seeing these great craft (AH-56, V280) & feeling like: if the army is going to have anything in the air, it should be great. It sure feels like the v280 is heralding in a massive shift in policy/what is permitted.
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  It does help that tilt rotars are totally rotary craft... In any case, V-280 being primarily transport is for sure helpful. While the range might raise some eyebrows, it also means that V-280 can potentially more meaningfully self-deploy. That means less USAF strategic lift assets to spend on the army - USAF is pondering how it can keep forward bases supplied in the Indo-Pacific - strategic lift certainly has a role to play here. I think the reality is that USAF realizes that trying to stonewall the V-280 will NOT meaningfully give it more budget, and that the V-280's capabilities means USAF gets more effective budget.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    Might be less of a case of ‘can’ self deploy and more ‘has to’. Not entirely sure one of these will even fit in a C17. (In comparison, you can fit three Blackhawks in a Globemaster)

tastyfreeze 3y ago

I was starting to think this thing would never enter production. I would love to see these in civilian use. Better that a helicopter or an airplane for a lot of remote site uses.

throwaway8877 3y ago

This thing looks highly vulnerable. Can it float when there is an issue with its engines?

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
Vulnerable to what exactly? Engine failure? It has two engines (like the Blackhawk) and either can drive both rotors if the other fails. Do helicopters typically float?
- meepmorp 3y ago
  Helicopters can autorotate in the case of engine failure, maybe that's what they meant?
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    This thing has wings. Feather the propellers/rotors and glide down. Same failure mode as any fixed-wing aircraft.
  - nradov 3y ago
    Tilt rotor aircraft have interconnected gearboxes so that they can fly on a single engine. In case of a dual engine failure in vertical lift mode the autorotation capability is very limited due to low rotor inertia; chance of survival is low from any significant altitude. In case of a dual engine failure in airplane mode it can glide like a regular airplane, but the glide ratio is low and stall speed is high so although in ideal circumstances the pilot might be able to put it down safely the most likely outcome is everyone dies.
exabrial 3y ago
Taking "float" literally meaning float in water: It's probably safer than a helicopter? I can't remember the name of the effect, but a helicopter in water automatically flips upside down because the heavy engines are mounted on the top. This causes the majority of deaths in helicopter water landings, even in shallow water, because the occupants can't egress due to disorientation. The real question is does it flip upside down if it goes belly first into water. Taking "float" meaning can it land: The blades in the V280 are connected so one engine can drive both props. This thing can also glide AND/or auto-rotate if needed... so I think it'd be pretty danged safe with a competent pilot.

exabrial 3y ago

I honestly thought there was a scenario where they accept _both_ prototypes as winners. They're both quite good at different missions.