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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 th

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.

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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.
- mandevil 3y ago
  With the obvious caveat that if there ever actually is a shooting war with China on one side and the US on the other then the whole world is in serious trouble and there are no good options: I am not sure that having superior technology is critical to winning wars against "peer" competitors. The last time there was a full out peer-competitor bleeding edge war between major powers (World War Two) the side that invested in a few wonderwaffen that were supposed to eviscerate their larger number of enemies lost, and the side that invested in a lot of pretty good weapons and most importantly, the logistics and reliability to have these pretty good weapons actually show up at the battlefront won the war. It's hard to directly translate this into modern terms, but I would say that a few pieces of "exceptional, ground-breaking technology" wasn't what decided World War Two, so why do you think it would decide this hypothetical war?
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Good points, especially about the extremely hypothetical nature of these issues, though I'm not suggesting better technology to the exclusion of logistics. As a counterpoint, NATOs strategy in the Cold War was to 'offset' superior Soviet numbers by having better technology - first by having more nuclear weapons, then by using the superior technology of precision munitions and the associated global navigation and sensor network (so the munitions can track their own position and locate their targets) as demonstrated in the Gulf War. But by far the most important point: > With the obvious caveat that if there ever actually is a shooting war with China on one side and the US on the other then the whole world is in serious trouble and there are no good options: I think about that, and I never heard it said (so thanks): At the end of WWII, the leaders of the combatants thought that future large-scale war must be prevented because the improving technology would wipe out civilization, thus they created the UN, (proto-)EU, etc. That was 80 years ago. A war with China may very well include, for example, missiles hitting San Francisco, LA, SD, Seattle. Even if the US won, it would lose badly.
    - SEJeff 3y ago
      > A war with China may very well include, for example, missiles hitting San Francisco, LA, SD, Seattle. Even if the US won, it would lose badly. This is how ALL wars are, and I can say this confidently as a combat veteran from Operation Iraqi Freedom II. When you fight in a war, you always lose a small bit of yourself. There is no turning back. When someone in either side is injured or especially dies, both sides permanently lose. The thing about war many civilians never seem to understand is that one side loses less, but both sides still lose. If this was untrue, we would not have such a high number of homeless veterans or veterans who commit suicide. Personally, I know of six soldiers I deployed to Iraq with who have committed suicide over the past 20 years (OIF II was ~2003-2004). No one ever wants to talk about these things in polite company, but you can never take these things back. War is hell.
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SkyMarshal 3y ago
The US military is retooling for war in the far-flung islands of East Asia. The Valor's range and speed advantage is critical there, and combined with its technical maturity, made it an almost shoe-in for winning this competition. It's also useful for the Marines who are reorienting completely around East Asia, so Bell may get to sell some to them too. The Defiant is pretty cool though and I hope there's a commercial future for it. It may be attractive for large multinationals to replace their corporate helicopter fleets with, or for industrial uses that need a helicopter with greater load-lifting capacity than most others.

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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.

mandevil 3y ago
With the obvious caveat that if there ever actually is a shooting war with China on one side and the US on the other then the whole world is in serious trouble and there are no good options: I am not sure that having superior technology is critical to winning wars against "peer" competitors. The last time there was a full out peer-competitor bleeding edge war between major powers (World War Two) the side that invested in a few wonderwaffen that were supposed to eviscerate their larger number of enemies lost, and the side that invested in a lot of pretty good weapons and most importantly, the logistics and reliability to have these pretty good weapons actually show up at the battlefront won the war. It's hard to directly translate this into modern terms, but I would say that a few pieces of "exceptional, ground-breaking technology" wasn't what decided World War Two, so why do you think it would decide this hypothetical war?
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Good points, especially about the extremely hypothetical nature of these issues, though I'm not suggesting better technology to the exclusion of logistics. As a counterpoint, NATOs strategy in the Cold War was to 'offset' superior Soviet numbers by having better technology - first by having more nuclear weapons, then by using the superior technology of precision munitions and the associated global navigation and sensor network (so the munitions can track their own position and locate their targets) as demonstrated in the Gulf War. But by far the most important point: > With the obvious caveat that if there ever actually is a shooting war with China on one side and the US on the other then the whole world is in serious trouble and there are no good options: I think about that, and I never heard it said (so thanks): At the end of WWII, the leaders of the combatants thought that future large-scale war must be prevented because the improving technology would wipe out civilization, thus they created the UN, (proto-)EU, etc. That was 80 years ago. A war with China may very well include, for example, missiles hitting San Francisco, LA, SD, Seattle. Even if the US won, it would lose badly.
  - SEJeff 3y ago
    > A war with China may very well include, for example, missiles hitting San Francisco, LA, SD, Seattle. Even if the US won, it would lose badly. This is how ALL wars are, and I can say this confidently as a combat veteran from Operation Iraqi Freedom II. When you fight in a war, you always lose a small bit of yourself. There is no turning back. When someone in either side is injured or especially dies, both sides permanently lose. The thing about war many civilians never seem to understand is that one side loses less, but both sides still lose. If this was untrue, we would not have such a high number of homeless veterans or veterans who commit suicide. Personally, I know of six soldiers I deployed to Iraq with who have committed suicide over the past 20 years (OIF II was ~2003-2004). No one ever wants to talk about these things in polite company, but you can never take these things back. War is hell.

deleted 3y ago

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SkyMarshal 3y ago

The US military is retooling for war in the far-flung islands of East Asia. The Valor's range and speed advantage is critical there, and combined with its technical maturity, made it an almost shoe-in for winning this competition. It's also useful for the Marines who are reorienting completely around East Asia, so Bell may get to sell some to them too. The Defiant is pretty cool though and I hope there's a commercial future for it. It may be attractive for large multinationals to replace their corporate helicopter fleets with, or for industrial uses that need a helicopter with greater load-lifting capacity than most others.