Besides normal operational failures… these aircraft have different susceptibilities and vulnerabilities against hostile sensors and weapons. And they have different degrees of freedom in some obvious signature control areas.
Personally, I have stacked the deck in my own job so that I win no matter which platform wins an acquisition.
I respect Sikorsky alot. But Bell has lessons learned from CV22 that go beyond a simple upgrade.
I have only worked on the periphery of fixed wing aircraft… computers mostly. So I can’t really weigh in on which is more complex. I will say that the rotorcraft have multiple turbo shaft engines that must have linkage to a rotor or two and that each blade pitch on the rotor is being constantly adjusted. And then the flight controls add a collective and cyclic control for the crew. Supersonic aircraft can be nothing but amazing in their complexity. But whatever the metric for complexity, rotorcraft would have a respectable showing as well.
If nothing else, one must respect the platform’s ability to withstand vibration. Rotorcraft crews have notorious back problems from that vibration. I hope all of the FVL candidates will improve in this area.
The most important difference is that those wonderfully complex supersonic aircraft don’t:
Land and take off in the sand or near any FOD,
fly low enough to intercept bullets, let alone hover while being shot at,
carry passengers without ejection seats,
…
I could go on, but that will suffice for now.
If you were referring to my post, I was referring to differences between the Sikorsky and Bell rotor crafts… not the differences between rotorcraft and fixed wing.
Edit.
Oh …wait… you were referring to my post where I WAS comparing fixed wing and rotorcraft complexity. Sorry… I thought you were referring to my post that mentioned survivability issues.
But yeah…you are right about take off and landing phases of helicopters being dicey… let alone having a guy on a rope. There are few good countermeasures against RPGs and anti-tank weapons used against them in this phase. If small arms shooters have taken their first shots - that is, if their location is known- then there are some things you can do. But the most effective countermeasures against RPGs etc are just too heavy… not to mention other downsides listed in this journal
http://jasp-online.org/asjournal/summer-2018/anti-rpg-warhead-an-aircraft-protection-solution/
Yeah, I actually know a fair amount about how the Army protects medium to heavy armor vehicles against well known RPG types. I don’t work in that area, I just know how RPGs work, and saw the images of some of the protective systems, pretty obvious. They are quite problematic to intercept in flight because of no heat signature and thier short range nature.
You are correct that current vehicle borne methods are both heavy and not stealthy.