The Defiant is designed to fly at twice the speed and range of today’s conventional helicopters and offers advanced agility and maneuverability, according to the Sikorsky-Boeing team. Data from the Defiant will help the Army develop requirements for new utility helicopters expected to enter service in the early 2030s.
The Defiant’s first flight was bumped to 2019 following a technical issue discovered during ground tests. Competitor Bell’s V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft has been flying since December 2017.
This is part of the larger “future vertical lift” program. It is a big deal to rotorcraft companies. And so I suspect everyone will get a piece… just to keep competition.
I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in various ways for several years now.
I will note that Sikorsky is a Lockheed Martin company now. So the team is powerful. But Bell has the benefit of all the lessons learned from their v-22 tilt rotor so their entry is kinda like a smarter v-22. If technical merits were the determining factor, Bell would be hard to beat. But there are always other factors.
The Defiant does have the added feature that it can jettison its main rotors and perform undersea missions as well.
Great - the Army got a new helicopter and we still don’t have a wall. What was it that Eisenhower warned us about? Nevermind - it probably wasn’t important anyway.
That thing looks to have more failure modes than chances of success.
There are reasons that there a bunch of Huey’s still flying, damn near stone axe simple.
However, I could see them building in all sorts of fall back modes of autorotation, and flight control via surfaces instead of counter-rotating lift props…
It’s completely relevant. These programs have been in development for over a decade and are funded by the DOD through their budget. Our helicopter capability has been seriously neglected for three decades and modernization is essential.
Funding border security is a completely separate issue.
I’ve been involved in some helicopter acquisitions in the past 10 to 15 years. My guess is they wont be paying much attention to that. Cargo capacity, range, and cost seemed to be king. Maybe in that order. We were spending millions of NRE (non-recurring engineering) to reduce even 1 lb of weight in on-board survivability equipment. (I guess that was really driven by a range requirement too since ultimately you make a choice between one pound of mission “stuff” or one pound of fuel) I have not read the requirements but if there was not a requirement for minimization of failure modes ( with some way to quantify that) then it won’t matter that it looks like Rube Goldberg designed it.
Like all major accusations, this one will be determined by engineering, politics, management… in no particular order. Pretty sure that all services are going to have some input. And they need to spread the subcontractors around to the states whose senators are powerful. It’s kinda an ugly and brutal business.
Not really. Engineering wise it’s all decades old thoroughly proven lift and propulsion tech. The Russians have been using the counter rotating propeller and lift helicopters and planes for over sixty years. The pusher prop design is just as old or older.
Sorry my friend, I listen when you speak on firearms and tactical topics.
I cut my teeth in aerospace engineering. By nothing more than looking at the pictures, I could explain a bunch of engineering decisions that went into this and the competing Bell design, which is also quite complex.
I especially like the rotor shapes. Interesting combo of sub prop (noise reduction) and stealth design elements on the Sikorski, the Bell pays more homage to stealth in the AC body and tailfins.
Ish appropriately describes the Sik design as Rube Goldberg. They just threw everything and the kitchen sink at this challenge. However, in doing so they left simplicity on the ash heap of often ignored good design principles.
Ish also nailed the competition horse hockey that these “technology demonstrators” have to pass to “win”. To some degree, both of these are Frankensteins with all sorts of high-tech aero bling thrown it, just so that certain companies can show off thier strengths.
ETA: They wrote themselves a replacement parts and maintenance minivan…
My interest helicopters goes back to the 70’s. I was originally supposed to go into the warrant officer flight program in 81 but they literally met the quota and closed the program the day before my final officer’s board.
The lift and propulsion tech is sixty plus years old and highly proven. The rest I can’t comment on with any authority. The Euro’s have been using the same tech literally since before we were even born and sikorsky proved it all up on a scaled down prototype a decade ago.
The bell version is basically an upgraded V-22 which is incredibly complex engineering wise and probably not as effective answer in the MMR as it is just for heavy lift and transport.
We’ve been behind the Russians as far as a MMR helo capability for fifty years and the Chinese for 20.
Actually the average fighter aircraft is far more complex, but if you factor in the good ones with two engines that operate independently, and the fact that they don’t do CAS, the risk is reduced.
Not really, at least until you get into the 5th and 6th generation fighters that require high speed computers constantly adjusting exhaust angles and control surfaces just to fly.
The nature of the tilt and horizontal lift vehicles is highly complex just due to the number of mechanical parts. The fighters mostly rely on electric servos
