Comanche crashes and burns

[Lu Zuckerman]

Not much more to say.

 

:unclesam:  rotorheadsmiley This is Pierre just as he flew into a cloud bank practicing instrument flight.   :bowdown: This is Pierre when he landed.  It seems that there was somone else in the cloud bank practicing instrument flight.

[Gummy]

Lu, getting flash backs to the Chyenne?    

What does the army have against developing a helo?

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Gummy

 

I can't speak to the Comanche but the Cheyenne was canceled for several reasons.  1) When the controllability problems were eventually solved the new design was rife with single point failures that could cause loss of control and 2) even with the solving of the controllability problems the rotor system could still diverge and hit the fuselage.  Besides, it was starting to cost too much.

 

It was eventually replaced by the Apache, which was bid at 6.5 Million dollars a copy.  It eventually after going into production cost 14 Million dollars a copy and it exceeded that cost after several years of operation.

 

The technical manuals cost 16 Million dollars to develop and printouts in the form of maintenance cards eventually superceded them.  The reason for this is the maintenance manuals were costing 5 thousand dollars a copy and if the mechanics took them to the aircraft for reference they would get them soiled and eventually they would have to be replaced..

 

The Apache has still yet to attain the reliability level predicted before it went into production and it has never reached the maintainability levels specified in the original specs from the Army.  Worst of all the Apache was designed to be invulnerable to ground fire up to 50 caliber and 23 mm high explosive.  The war in Iraq has proven that they did not meet that design goal either.

 

The Army uses contract personnel to provide second level maintenance because the Army personnel could not perform these more complex functions.  If the Cheyenne had gone into production these same maintenance related problems would have been incurred.

 

Now if the Cheyenne and the Apache were so complex that Army personnel could not support it just imagine what problems would be incurred if the Comanche had entered service.

 

 

:unclesam:  :nuncha: This is Pierre.  He has become very agressive in his training of students trying to teach them not to handle the cyclic too agressively.

[Jesse James]

From what I have read, the super cobra(not sure it's called that) is the best bang for the buck. Lu, what's your thoughts on that. Jesse

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Jesse James

 

In general I am not a big supporter of Bell Helicopters but I really believe that Bell has outfoxed Sikorsky in that they did not wait for a contract to design and build a helicopter to Military specifications.  They (Bell) bit the bullet and through evolution created one helicopter from another making it more effective in its’ role and more lethal in the process.  They adapted systems and structural elements from one helicopter design and created another design.  Therein lies a problem.  If the adapted system had problems on the original design those same problems would show up on the new design.

 

If you check the parts catalog of a Cobra you will find parts that were developed for the 204, 205, 206,212,214 and if you look hard enough you might even find a Model 47 part in there somewhere.

 

Another thing is that Bell finally adapted a four-blade rotor for their various designs making them even more effective.  If the government did fund a design change Bell adapted it for their civil fleet.

 

Did you know that the last contract let by the US Government to Bell to design a helicopter from the ground up was the Huey design.  The OH-58 evolved from a competition between Bell and Hughes for the Loach contract.  Hughes won and the OH-6 was born.  Bell was left with a design that had no military use and it was too ugly to be sold in the civil arena.  They hired Raymond Loewy a prominent industrial designer to redesign the lines and the 206 emerged on the scene.

 

Hughes built 1400 OH-6s which were very effective in Vietnam.  When the contract came up for renewal Hughes who bought into the contract with a low bid wanted to raise the price to a more realistic level.  The Army, which was filled with Bell supporters refused and the 206, with a few cosmetic changes became the OH-58.  

 

I can go on-and-on but I have digressed from the original question (as usual).

 

:unclesam:  :cheers: This is Pierre.  He finally got his point across to his student and now they are friends.  Besides she has a 36 D bust.  It has proven difficult for her to pull aft cyclic so Pierre ever the gentleman helps compress her breasts so she can have full control.

[AeronauticallyInclined]

I personally think the Super Cobra would make a good replacement for the OH-58 in the manned recon/scout role. Put a longbow radar on it and it is ready to go! That would be so much more cost effective than anything else I believe.

:cheers:

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: AeronauticallyInclined

 

You may be correct in what you say however there may be some problems associated with using the AH-1 Super Cobra as a replacement for the AHIP OH-58D.

 

The basic cost of an AH-1 is $10,700,000.  When you add all of the necessary scout package electronics you will raise that price to equal or exceed the cost of an Apache and the AH-1 will have the same capabilities as the Apache but without the crashworthy structure, crashworthy landing gear and crash attenuating seats.

 

One other major point is that the AH-1 has a two-blade rotor system and it can be heard from twenty miles away under certain atmospheric conditions.  This caused a lot of problems for Hueys and early Cobras.

 

The addition of the electronics will make the Cobra as complex as the Apache and this will result in the inability of the Army personnel to maintain the aircraft at the second and third levels of maintenance.

 

:unclesam:  :confused: This is Pierre.  His female student changed to another instructor.  He even told her that he would request an STC to modify the cyclic stick if she remained his student.

[iflytandemrotor]

This is where the Air Force has the Army beat.  The AF says, "We need a jet to do A,B and C.  You guys give us a call when your done and we will let you know which one we want."  

 

The Army says "He guys, lets make a new helicopter.  Then some other Army guys say, "Hey we have one already and we're taking it and going home and making it better"  They do this at the same time, spend all their money and WHAMO!!  The Comanche is dead.

[flingwing206]

This is just the Slats Grobnik opinion, but as cool as the Comanche is, I think the military is waking up to the fact that it's just too danged easy to shoot down a helicopter when it's doing helicoptery stuff.

 

The experiences over the last 15 years show no matter how stealthy and high-tech you make the machine, if you're flying low and slow around bad guys with machine guns, RPGs and AA missiles, you are going to have a short but exciting flight.

 

If you are going fast and high enough to avoid that, you are better off in an A-10.

 

However, let it be known that the only parts of the movie "The Incredible Hulk" that I enjoyed were the CG-homage scenes of the AH-66. My dream helicopter is a Ferrari-red Comanche with a buff leather interior. Hooah!

[Gummy]

Lu, my comment was aimed more at the army being overly ambitious.

Like the  Chyenne this just kept getting added to it and by the time the development was done, the cost was to great.

I was watching a docco the other week called Cybercopter, about the Comanche and its development.The ship is truely amazing, but the way they went about designing it was a little strange to me. They started with, whats the ultimate ship we can think of, and then set about developing technology to make it.

If they had of been a little less ambitious, perhaps there would be an operational model now.

It seems strange to me that the army is unable to develop high tech toys, yet the airforce is allowed to do it all the time.

But what do I know, here in my chair in Aus?

But if anyone can shed light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it.

[Jesse James]

I agree with Flingwing 206 the missions that helicopters fly, the stealthy part just doesn't seem that important. They should do more about the reliability on the Apache, and Blackhawk. From what I saw and read especially in the first Gulf War the Cobras and hueys were a lot more dependable. If I remember right the Apache had trouble in the cold wet weather of Kosovo, and the sand in the Gulf.

Flew Lama's a couple winters down south slinging fertilizer and we had the centrecepts(sand filters). We hovered will loading in the sugar-sand of florida, and never had any trouble other than eating our main and tail rotor tape off everyday. Seems like they could do better on the Apache.  Jesse

[KiowaWarrior]

This was a pretty heated topic in the Army Aviation community, especially among the scout pilots like me who were lined up to transitoin to the Comanche.  To shed some light on why the Airforce is able to afford their high tech toys, and the Army is lucky to maintain it's old ones, I can say it all boils down to where the money is spent.

 This is off the top of my head so the figures may not be spot on, but they are close.  The Comanche took up 48% of the annual Aviation budget.  48% went to the development of this thing alone, the remainder went to trying to sustain the rest of the Army's aviation assets.  That included maint., upgrades, ATC personnel and equipment, and support for over 7 airframes.  Talk about misallocation of funds.  20 years, and 16 billion dollars later the project was deemed too much of a burdon.  It was abandoned allowing the annual expense of developing the white elephant to go to the purchase of 700 new airfcraft, the purchase of a new (still unannounced) airframe (likely the UH-1Y),  and upgrading existing aircraft.

  The Airforce will  (smartly) put the money on development and sustainment of it's fleet before it gets filtered through all the smaller expenses such as airfield maint, etc that add up and eventually whittle it down.  Should they need more funding they go to congress with the fact that they cant continue to support their aircraft without the vital support systems needed to keep a fleet in the air.  Because the funding goes to vital areas, it is granted thus freeing up plenty of money for the more superfulous "research and development."  However it bears mentioning that they have their share of antique aircraft flying around.

 Another smart thing on the part of the Airforce is, as some folks already mentioned, they simply tell the contractors to make something nice and compete for the sale whereas the Army tried to develop the Comanche with a "technology after concept" method.  This delayed the project so long, the threat the Comanche was developed for became obsolete, and with it went the airframe.  But man that thing looks bad@$$.

[Heli-Ops]

KiowaWarrior - Would welcome an Army Aviators thoughts on the AH1Z. I spent some time with the Z at Paxc River recently,as well as the Y and was very impressed with what I saw. The new four blades main and tail rotor systems give it so much more performance and the ability to carry everything from Hellfires to the AIM-9X is a unique advantage.

 

Anyway whats your thoughts.

 

Heli Ops  :cheers:

[KiowaWarrior]

AH-1Z: 3400 s/hp, capable of hovering OGE at 910 meters with 4 helfires, and 4 tow missiles, fully digital glass cockpit, long range targeting system with laser rangefinder, FLIR, you name it.  It's an awesome aircraft, nevermind the fact that it was built on a proven airframe.  The Army successfully employed the AH-1 for decades.  What do we do with proven airframes?  Get rid of them and get something new!  What do the Marines do?  Take our old airframes and improve upon them!  This is another example of how the Army may have been able to save a load of money by improving upon the aircraft it had rather than purchasing new experimental aircraft.  The AH-1's eventual replacement, the Apache was developed specifically to defeat the Hind gunship.  It was initially designed for air to air combat.  Once we realized the Hind was not the threat we thought it would be, we shifted gears and the Apache adapted just fine.  The main problem the Apache faces is its difficulty to keep in the air.  Would it have made sence to develope the AH-1?  Without a doubt.  Is it going to be making a return into the Army inventory?  Not in the near future.  I think the Army has learned a hard lesson from the Comanche.  It is now going to devote several billion dollars into refurbishing and upgrading our current aircraft.  Something it should have done long ago!