The angle of that photo is somewhat misleading, the top of the Canopy of the SB1 is about the same as the top of the Blackhawk. The difference is really all in the rotor head. SB1 is about 4.5-5ft taller than the Blackhawk. Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat.com mobile app
My dad was on the IRT/Return to Flight team with NASA. The Admiral's POC and answer-man. They found NOTHING significantly wrong with the V-22. The problems came from operating the machine FAR outside of the design specs. As absurd as it sounds, more time was wasted arguing about making an aircraft that was "too easy to fly outside of its design parameters." The only changes at the end? MUCH larger instruments, more and brighter flashy lights, and louder and more shrill messages from Bitchin' Betty. Oh and more training. Sure it's had its accidents and failures. But nothing RTFM and some llight evolution didn't solve. Good aircraft.
A Reality Check On The Army Picking V-280 Valor Over SB>1 Defiant Build both? https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/a-reality-check-on-the-army-picking-v-280-valor-over-sb1-defiant .
Well, it was a little before my time but as I understand it...Barb was a secretary who worked at Boeing / Philly. Barb was said to have a gruff, gravely voice due to her penchant for chain-smoking cigarettes. A Crew-Systems Working Group being held in that location had determined a need to add voice warnings to the (early) V-22 to support flight crew actions during emergency procedures. Barb was the only female working in the immediate area, and was informally asked to do a few recordings as sort of a proof-of-concept. Well...Barb's performance was really good and she ended-up recording all of the voice warnings for the V-22. When I was going through CV-22 mission qualification in 2005, I was politely reminded that it's Bitchin' Barb....never Bitchin' Betty! I never had the pleasure of meeting Barb.
Confirmed and he laughed. Thank you. A great little nugget of trivia! She was a secretary in the Joint office at PAX and was chosen specifically for the... ahem... uniqueness of her voice and the attention it commanded.
Ugh, looks like the government upheld the contract award to Bell. https://breakingdefense.com/2023/04/gao-denies-sikorsky-boeing-flraa-protest-bell-army-clear-to-proceed/
Yeah well the way we devlop things now over a decade or so has bloated cost. Nasa/Boeing vs Space x. But seems to me while the army is [perusing range and speed, some of the very concepts of the helicopter are being lost. If its short distance, landing in tight zones maneuverability youre still going to need a traditional helicopetr. Could eiter of these new craft have done the Bin laden raid. Perhaps the answer then is to keep building some Blackhawks, or maybe were going to see some short range quadcopter designs, for that funtion.
Defiant would have been far better in the bin laden raid than a blackhawk. It would have been able to get there much faster and it can use its tail prop to slow down and get into tight landing zones very quickly.
As others have said build both. But really more to the point, I dont think were going to get away from Blackhawks entirely. Maybe the Sikorsky raider will be chosen fro the attack job, and then we'll see a small troop transport off that platform as well. then all the bases are covered. Defiant and valor, their size/footprint seems more like CH53 -chinook footprint. Something smaller is also needed regardless.
Building both doesn't really work. You lose a ton of economies of scale and would make the cost of each of them skyrocket. In addition the maintenance becomes a pain in the ass because you now need twice as many parts to be able to service both of them. Defiant is only a little bit bigger than a Blackhawk. Here's an overhead shot of the two. Image Unavailable, Please Login
It's a little bit bigger, but it's A LOT taller. The QCA assembly with the twin rotors makes up a lot of the height difference. A Blackhawk is about 14' tall, Defiant is over 19' tall. Doesn't make much difference in A/c operation, but for logistics of transporting, storing, removing QCA for maintenance etc. Makes life difficult. In any event Blackhawk in one form or another is going to be around at least another 40 years. It's going to be the B-52 or rotary wing aviation. Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk
Can someone give me a quick rundown on why the twin rotor is better? Complexity to me in combat situations is no good. But innovation when truly innovative should be done even though it may take a bit to work out the kinks.
The army wants to go faster and farther. Conventional helicopters are limited to about 200mph because around that speed retreating blade stall becomes an issue as the blade going backwards on one side of the aircraft isn't going fast enough relative to the air and stalls. That causes you to lose lift on one side, and you lose roll control. With two rotors spinning in opposite directions, when one blade loses its balanced by the other blade on the other side also losing lift at the same time. In addition since the torque from one rotor is balanced by the other rotor you don't need a tail rotor, and so instead the tail rotor on Defiant is turned 90 degrees to provide a huge amount of forward thrust. That lets you go alot faster, as well as accelerate and slow down very quickly so you can get in and out much faster than a Blackhawk.