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Army picks Black Hawk replacement - V-280


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3 hours ago, UH-1Mad said:

that actually hurts my eyes..

the future is here, and it ain't pretty..

😛

 

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of that cartoon style from around a decade ago, with the really big hands and feet but small torso. Way too much engine and tail for that fuselage.

 

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4 minutes ago, Crash Test Dummy said:

Couldn't hit the speed specified in the design requirements.

Once it hits the production mode, neither will it. 
These stripped prototypes aren't reflective of what will become fact. 

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By the time they hang various ECM boxes on it, it will be slow and ugly!

I would have thought a tilt rotor anything  would be too expensive for mass buys.

My guess it they over-speced (like the RAH-66, and the VIP  EH-101, etc)  it and it will end up being too expensive.

 

How are the V-22s doing in the field? Maintenance nightmare?

I only ask because it took 50 years to go from the XV-3 to the V-22. 🙂

 

 

Circa 2000 I was in Texas and did a story on Apaches doing large scale war games. The commander kept one of the last Hueys as his utility hack for running parts and people back to Fort Hood.

He told me he loved it because its operating costs were considerably less than a Blackhawk. And he said the young pilots loved the low tech Huey...A real time capsule for the post-Vietnam guys.

I predict that this will make a Blackhawk look like a Robinson in comparison.

 

Edited by JohnEB
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So I wonder how they are going to get that to fit onto C-5s and C-17s? Being a retired Aerial Porter I think of stuff like this. You can get 2 Blackhawks onto a C-17 easy, I think 6 or 8 on a C-5. If you can't rotate the blades and "wing" like an Osprey that might be fun.

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6 hours ago, Da SWO said:

Helicopters are going away, for now tilt-rotor is the new toy.


I agree for the light stuff but the CH-47 and CH-53 will be around a good bit longer. 

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3 hours ago, Tank said:

but the CH-47 and CH-53 will be around a good bit longer. 

 

Not too much longer.

 

The next step, Bell/Boeing V-44 Quad Rotor.  Currently under Army contract in the design phase. 

 

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Edited by HeavyArty
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The U.S. likes to improve old designs rather than start with a clean sheet of paper.

The UH-1 first flew in 1955 and variants are still in service, likewise the Chinook isn't much newer. The H-53 series is over 50 years old.

 

As has been pointed out, the B-52, KC-135 and C-130 are old designs and the 130 is still in production.

 

Heck, even the planes I think of as fairly new...the F-15, 16 and 18 are 50 years old.

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12 hours ago, Tank said:

Ok but we also still use B-52 and there has been at least 3 other models pushed out. The 53K is almost to the fleet, I don’t see that going away anytime soon. 

Agree here.

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I agree that the H-53 and Chinook will still be around for quite some time.  For that matter, so will the Black Hawk.  The V-280 is not supposed to even be ready to begin fielding until at least 2030, we shall see if they can do it that quickly.  Also, it will take quite a while to replace Black Hawks as new V-280s become available.  They will be around for a long time still.

Edited by HeavyArty
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On 12/8/2022 at 9:21 AM, Mr Matt Foley said:

I can't even imagine the cost of these new aircraft and the delays with extra costs that Bell will toss at the Army.

As compared to the folks at Sikorsky, with their on-time, on-budget CH-53 Kilo?   I'll put my money on Bell for this program.    Plus, does anyone realize how frickin' big the Sikorsky helo is?  The thing is a whale.

 

Image

 

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Edited by 11bee
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On 12/7/2022 at 8:53 AM, HeavyArty said:

 

Not too much longer.

 

The next step, Bell/Boeing V-44 Quad Rotor.  Currently under Army contract in the design phase. 

 

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2.jpg

 

I've been hearing that "under contract" about QTR since 2007.  And there has been nothing to show for it.

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The V-280 prototype was deliberately built with oversize tail surfaces so there would not be any issues with stability during testing. This is not uncommon for preproduction/flight test aircraft. Look at the YF-22 compared to the production F-22 - same thing: oversize tail surfaces to enhance stability. 

 

The V-280 was flying test and demo flights while the Sikorsky team was still working out bugs and bending their aircraft every time they flew. Bell did a PUBLIC demo of the V-280 at the 2019 Fort Worth Air Show (I was there for that, in the Bell pavilion). You don't do a public, airshow demo of an experimental aircraft unless you're 10,000% sure it's going to go flawlessly.

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