57% higher top speed. Crikey.
What is the unit cost? The Army pulled the Kiowas and It would be nice to get a good scout bird back in the inventory. We now have to use Apaches for the scout role.
Additionally, Is the SOF a community wanting to replace the Little Birds now, or is this aircraft an expensive solution looking for a problem?
That's "ludicrous speed".
I've seen the marketing video as well as an early training video - hot, hot, hot.
We need this. The Kiowas were stuck in Baghram as they could not fly above peaks with weapons
I’m thinking that I need one of these!
I spent over 20 years flying army helicopters. Most of my time is in UH-60’s, but I’ve also flown UH-1, OH-58, and AH-1’s. I was in several AVIM and AVUM units as a maintenance test pilot. That got me in a lot of different cockpits.
My observations are simple. I’ll take durable, easy to fix, but maybe a little slow over flashy, complex, fast, but fragile. Aviators want to fly and need many hours in the cockpit to become effective. I didn’t say proficient, I said effective. A chronic lack of flight time plagues the service, in every branch. Commanders are worried about their OR rates more than anything. The best way to have a high OR rate (Operational Readiness) is to limit your flight time.
I know lots of Apache pilots. All have way less actual flight time that UH-60 and OH-58 guys. Barely getting or needed a waver to make your semi-annual minimums sucks.
Not seeing any Armament info. Rockets and 30 Cal I guess.
Not seeing any Armament info. Rockets and 30 Cal I guess.
Good for Lockheed-Martin and good for Sikorsky whom it acquired. Sikorsky would have had a tough go of it, if United Technologies had not found a buyer and instead shoved it out as an independent company. If you are mostly a military contractor, you have to be very large, to sustain you past your production cycles, through R&D into the next contracts. Sikorsky makes some good military helicopters but was to small in the commercial helicopter space to compete with the very much larger competitors in that space. Glad Lockhheed-Martin is making the merger of their talents work.
I’m not very familiar with the helicopter industry, but this platform looks like it might have some great adaptations for civilian use as well.
I’d guess the blade configuration would make metro landings safer and the top speed would be an advantage in areas like aerial rescue and patient transport.
Remember that twin-rotored chopper we saw at China Beach?
In a conventional copter with a single main rotor, forward air speed can cause the blade to go supersonic on one side of the AC or stall on the other. This limits top speed to about 1/2 the speed of sound.
With twin rotors you can reduce their rotating speed as forward airspeed increases and still maintain lift on the "trailing" side of the aircraft. If you had enough airspeed, you could even stop the main rotor's rotation altogether and fly it like a fixed-wing biplane (theoretically)
Specs, video, and more at the Lockheed site
http://lockheedmartin.com/us/products/s-97-raider-helicopter.html