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Army Tilt Rotor program


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The S-97 has a couple of fundemental problems that will limit what it can do. The first is the location of the transmition and the control rods which limits the size of the cabinThat cabin is only going to be large enough for three troops and that's with minimal equipment. The second, as was already pointed out is how low the rotor is. Maybe it will be good for light attack and recon but I don't see the extra speed being worth it in those roles. As an attack pilot there are times when I'd like more speed such as responding to a TIC that's far away, but in conventional, symmetrical warfare I'd rather have more fuel or more munitions than more speed. The Echo model apache is fairly fast for an attack helicopter already. ...and you can see out of both sides from either seat. Just a thought. Anyway, I think in the long run the AVX guys have the answer. I checked out all of the offerings at the Quad A convention a couple years ago and this one makes the most sense to me. http://www.avxaircraft.com/programs/

2013-0830_Attack+layout_3400x2200p.jpg.

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@ Synixman. So these V22 drivers that talk up their airplane, do they have any OPERATIONAL experience in anything else?

 

That's the problem, you guys view everything from the point of view a helicopter. The Marines view the Osprey as a fixed wing asset that lands like a helicopter, not vice versa. A lot of the early Osprey pilots were transitioned from other communities than the 46 (Harriers, Hornets, KC-130s. Prowlers) If you understood how Marines maneuver from the sea, avoid high threat areas, build combat power in an objective area, and use the sea as maneuver space, the application and potential of the Osprey is pretty much undeniable. I don't know why that blows some people's minds. Yeah it's a shitty and slow from IP inbound to short final, (I've been stuck in the pattern with them...) but the point is to land to an LZ where getting shot at from IP to short final is not an issue and minimize enroute/egress time. This isn't hollywood where we're rolling around in the 'Nam from hot LZ to hot LZ.

 

 

....oh and name one tactical operation that would require a HOGE in an Osprey at max gross? Quite curious.

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but the point is to land to an LZ where getting shot at from IP to short final is not an issue and minimize enroute/egress time. This isn't hollywood where we're rolling around in the 'Nam from hot LZ to hot LZ.

 

 

....oh and name one tactical operation that would require a HOGE in an Osprey at max gross? Quite curious.

It doesn't need to be "NAM" to plan for taking fire short final, that's a contingency. To me it's a pretty damn big contingency. But to each his own. The only true critic of the airframe are the ground force commanders we are tasked with supporing. Would they rather fly in a H1, 53, 60 or a 22? Hmm I wonder what they would say.

 

Hover at max gross weight OGE. Yeah a DUST landing in a high LZ with a heavy load.

 

Don't get me wrong, the V22 has its roll and it's good for certain rolls but the last place I wanna see that thing is in the sand box doing assaults.

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Problem is that 5,400 ft number isn't even max gross. That's just a typical load. Can't speak for the other 60 guys on here but my old unit did many insertions & resupplies in OEF between 7-8K on mountain pinnacles. That was in the summer as well.

Same here, in the summer the DA in A Stan was pretty high. I've had to take off at max get IGE in the summer.

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Ospreys did't land on pinnacles in Afghanistan. Huey's did that, resupply, and all of the SPIE stuff with various cats and dogs. Ospreys don't do SPIE inserts with conventional units due to the prop wash, and there are better assets to do that mission (cough, cough Huey cough). It's not like we're trying to fast rope or VBSS an entire battalion into an LZ or ship.

 

Creep0321 you watched it from the POV of a grunt with absolutely no knowledge of the considerations for landing in that environment. So you're opinion is like me trying to tell a NASCAR driver how to win he Daytona 500.

 

As far as the ground forces (....or customer) dictating what they want, if you understand how joint tasking and frag process at the MAW get dealt out, ground commanders ask for a capability not an asset. So the asset may get dictated to them, and depending on the distance and range the Osprey maybe the only option. Hence the distributed operations MEUs are in love with right now.

 

WRT to slow tilt rotor into a hot LZ argument, it's not going to happen. Every single ISR platform and FW asset with a pod and various GBUs/Gun on it's wing, plus whatever RW escort is going to ensure that LZ is winter/ice before Marines roll in there. Especially with bigger operations involving battalion and company sized inserts. You don't just insert that many Marines with out having every fire support and ISR asset available to you sticking their nose in there. So this argument is pretty dumb.

 

Say what you want about the community but the aircraft itself is probably going to revolutionize how we do business. They're already looking at strapping weapons on that thing - it's just a matter of time.

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Creep0321 you watched it from the POV of a grunt with absolutely no knowledge of the considerations for landing in that environment. So you're opinion is like me trying to tell a NASCAR driver how to win he Daytona 500.

 

 

Your right, I dont know sh*t about the considerations for landing in that enviornment. All I am saying, is as the guy getting inserted (not a grunt mind you), the time it has taken to land in an Osprey in any sort of brownout condition, is scary as sh*t. And making multiple passes at landing, during the day in a flat desert in Oman, without actually touching down, does not raise my faith in the platform.

 

However, like I have said before, I think it is great in its other roles (ie, Long range insertion into controlled LZ's, MFF operations ect...)

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I think we're comparing two different things here. What the Marines and AF use the V-22 for and what a V-280 would be used for in the Army.

 

As HD said the V-22 meets their needs and the Huey picks up missions the V-22 can't do. Fine, that works. Problem is, if this V-280 has roughly the same cabability as the V-22, that won't work for the Army. From what I've read, this airframe is replacing all UH-60s therefore it better be able to do all jobs that the 60 currently does.

 

The Army does need to do mountain pinnacles, OEF proved this and the 160th commander in the above article expressed the importance of it. In order to do that you need an aircraft with a decent HOGE capability. I really don't see the V-280 providing that.

 

I don't consider speed from the RP to the LZ important but the need for door gunners is. Don't care if it's called Cherry or Ice, no way of really knowing until you arrive. I know for a fact door gunners have been proven invaluable in protecting both the aircraft and troops in a hot LZ. Minus a tail gunner and a remote belly gun that only a few have, the V-22 doesn't have them. The V-280 better have them or they're going to leave their flanks exposed and no way of covering the assaulting force.

 

Army Aviation does air assaults to sometimes limited areas. Size matters. Not only that, if they were strapped with some ridiculous restriction of 250 ft between aircraft and a 50 ft step up, you'd be severely limiting in where your formation can land. You want all your assaulting force on the ground at the same time.

 

What I keep hearing is the benefit of reducing logistics requirements such as the eliminations of some FARPs. No, unless all services are full up tilt rotor, you're still gonna need FARPs everywhere. Even the future AF CSAR platform is a 60...much to that communities dismay. You also still have the needs for conventional helo escort which in itself creates an increased planning logistical requirement.

 

I'm a believer in speed and range. Some missions (MEDEVAC,CSAR) benefit greatly from it but there are plenty of times where the enemy is well within the range of a typical helo. Considering we'll always have small FOBs, COPs etc, speed and range aren't all that important. We could've strapped externals on 60s in OEF and OIF and flown most of the day but there wasn't a need.

 

So, tilt rotor or pusher, I say bring them on. I just don't look at any airframe in extremes of good or bad. Everyone wants to say such and such aircraft sucks or it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's not reality. Reality is that all aircraft have their limitations. You need to pick the one that most closely suits the mission you want it to do.

 

Doesn't really matter anyway. If Bell can't get this thing down to a reasonable acquisition cost and hourly maintenance rate that the Army can afford, we'll be faced with the same problems that the AF has with the F-22. We'll buy far less than what we want and be faced with not meeting our obligations at home and abroad.

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Reality is that all aircraft have their limitations. You need to pick the one that most closely suits the mission you want it to do.

 

Doesn't really matter anyway. If Bell can't get this thing down to a reasonable acquisition cost and hourly maintenance rate that the Army can afford, we'll be faced with the same problems that the AF has with the F-22. We'll buy far less than what we want and be faced with not meeting our obligations at home and abroad.

 

Well said. Unfortunately, politicians will make the decision as to what we buy and how many. The aircrews will either have to deal with it or ETS.

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@ Synixman. So these V22 drivers that talk up their airplane, do they have any OPERATIONAL experience in anything else?

 

Yes. I flew the -46 as part of the first Marine unit in Kosovo in '99 and Afghanistan in '01. I flew in the first flight of V-22s into Afghanistan in '09. I'd take the Osprey instead of a -46 in just about any mission, and ESPECIALLY an LZ with heavy brownout.

 

Any questions, ask.

 

Somebody used G2mil as a source earlier. FYI, G2mil is run by Carlton Meyer, a disgruntled former Marine and well known conspiracy theory tin foil hat crackpot. It's a poor source for any information that is, well, true.

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I'd love to fly an Army V22 if it ever happens.

 

You might get better. An old group CO of mine was the program manager for this. Apparently everything that bugs tiltrotor pilots about the V-22 is getting fixed and then some. The V-280 will be quite the hotrod if the Army antes up and buys it.

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Oh my gosh.. sometimes I love this board.. other times I'm just like really? I'll respond then get back to turning wrenches on my classic truck. I'm just over the uninformed opinions on an aircraft most really know nothing about. Also, sorry, riding in the back as a passenger does not make you a subject matter expert. Not trying to offend but I ride Delta to go home for Christmas and I don't claim to know squat about a big 747. Grandma in the back of that 747 is still going to grip the arm rest when a little "rough air" is encountered because she probably thinks the aircraft is going to magically fall out of the sky.. a lot of the same can be said about opinions on tilt-rotor aircraft.

 

Being a former USAF Flight Engineer on the CV-22 I can tell you, yes we had our growing pains. I'm now in the Army doing Army Aviation stuff but if the Army had tilt Rotor I'd be the first to volunteer. When I started as a CV FE from being a UH-1N FE things were a lot different. The aircraft was new and we still were not sure how to use it. Remember it was the first of it's kind. Everything we did was a hybrid of helicopter knowledge and C-130 knowledge, we picked and choose what we liked and what we didn't depending what worked out best. No previous reg. or document was around to govern us on how to operate so things or missions differed depending on where the flight lead (AMC) hailed from .. being Rotary wing or fixed wing background. Eventually we figured out how to best employ the systems and upgrades and modifications started rolling out from Bell-Boeing. It's to be expected with anything.. it even happens with car design . Hell the Apache started out with steam gauges if you guys remember. Missions, and requirements change. Especially when you’re writing the book as you go on how you're to be used. Which brings us to regs. The CV-22 regs. changed about every 4-6 Months when I first swapped to the CV. If that doesn't tell you how we were writing the future I don't know what to tell you.

 

I'm not here to insult any Marines as I'm glad they are on my side too.. but The Corps did them wrong by starting the program with non rotary wing rated guys. If I remember correctly they were fixed wing guys. You former fixed wing private pilots turned Helicopter pilots know what I mean when you remember how "bad ass" you were going to hover when you first took the controls of a helicopter and realized you're back to square one again (ok, for the most part). The Marine Corps uses their MV-22 different than the Air Force uses it's CV-22. I think up until 2 years ago the aircraft were made a bit differently. The CV-22 has the infill / exfill mission while the MV-22 has the "ship to shore" mission. What I'm getting at is that they are both 2 completely different missions. SO when you make fun of an MV-22 not being able to do a bad ass UH-60 style dust landing .. A. they can do those too, but B. it's going to look completely different as it's a VTOL .. not a Helicopter... they have nacelles and don't have to tilt the disk as much or move the fuselage.

 

The new V-280 design .. I saw this 2 years ago at Ft. Rucker and spoke at length with the Bell representative. It is designed to do 280 Kts, auto-rotate, fit in the same LZ size as a UH-60 and have almost the same cost per flight hour as a UH-60. No lie, that last one I found to be quite an aggressive promise. As I know the CV-22 was expensive to operate / maintain. But with all the operational "testing" we helped Bell-Boeing with during the initial years of operational CV-22, they should have a lot of things figured out by now. Engine and tranmssion in a weird spot for ya? Not enough sheet metal for your liking? Maybe.. but a UH-60 is still just aluminum too.. a skillcraft pen can put a hole through it's skin I'm pretty sure. But we know skillcraft pens are made from titanium.. which is why they are more expensive then the civialn market equivalent ;)

 

Weapons.. the CV-22 had gun fitment tests done in a varity of spots along the fuselage of the aircraft. It can be done. But why? You're thinking like a helicopter guy again. And I'm not saying that to be a dic*, I'm just not sure you understand the profile at which this thing can accelarate or decellerate is actually very impressive when practiced by the right pilots. And I'm not going into specifics.

If your scared of something new and different, that's ok.. just say so. But that's why it's also exciting, because it's scary. "Flying is inherently dangerous". Also, the only way to not have any risk on the risk assesment for aviation is to just not fly, is that really going to happen...nope. I know the V-280 looks scary and a lot like the V-22 .. but it seriously will be a bad ass aircraft. Read the facts and not the "lore" that's on here or a bunch of other sites from people with so called knowledge. Opinions are just that, opinions. I'm here to tell you it's bad ass and really is the most forward thinking aircraft the Army could get (if they build what they have claimed they will build). It would seriously change the battlefield. Now the likely-hood of the Army to be this forward thinking.. very low. Most are scared of something they know nothing about. Sorry, but that's the fact. Now back to wrenching. Flame away, I'll check back in 6 months.

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