Army ditches helicopters for new radical air assault planes

It’s a plane. It’s a helicopter. It’s both. Meet "FLRAA," the Army’s new tiltrotor for Future Long-Range Air Assault. This is how the Army will island hop in the Pacific to fend off China. And by the way, Chinese President Xi Jinping has nothing like it.

With a stunning announcement, the Army did more than ax 40 generals and open the door to AI. The Army bet its future on this radical aircraft, whose engines swivel to take off and land like a helicopter, or fly high and fast like an airplane.

Then came the Army shake-up. On May 1, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the Army to focus more on the Indo-Pacific. In that region, sheer distance and Chinese missile threat rings are locking out current helicopters. For the mission of air assault – when troops move into hostile and contested areas by rotary-wing aircraft – the hard truth is that the Army has a looming capability gap.

"We can't actually do the large-scale, long-range air assault today" with the speed and distance required in modern warfare, Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, said last year.

That’s unacceptable, given Xi’s growing appetite for military confrontation.

Why rotors instead of jet engines? Can that not be done? I’m just a fungus.....

It can be done but the problem is total lift = volume of air moved x velocity of the air.

A jet engine produces a smaller volume of air moving at a much, much higher velocity to generate the same amount of lift as a rotor (or propeller) moving a much larger volume of air at a slower velocity. When you land, have troops fast rope from a hovering aircraft to the ground, or sling a load under the aircraft, the lower velocity of air is much more desirable.

Also, at very low speeds and in a hover a rotor is much more efficient than a column of jet exhaust in creating lift.

This is quite fascinating. I was stationed at the Army’s garrison at Asmara, Ethiopia (now Asmara, Eritrea). We were supplied by Army convoy from a US Army operated seaport at Massawa on the Red Sea. From Massawa, we could watch Israeli gunboats.

While at the Asmara Army station, the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, came for his annual medical checkup because he never trusted his own medical people. Of interest is the Ethiopian government would not allow us to have weapons superior to theirs. They had M14’s, so we had WWII M1’s. They had M-60’s, we had water cooled 30’s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagnew_Station

Kagnew was actually a huge spy station.

Later when assigned to Ft Eustis, VA, I went to Norfolk where the Army had one of it’s naval stations, was invited to go for a boat ride, and went on a small ship or sorts for an hour or two.

Thanks for your updating information.

So it does not have a drive shaft that has to bend and transfer power at almost 90 degrees then?

It does, but in the Osprey the transmission rotates with the engine and prop, so the cross shaft has to be right on the pivot point.

With the Valor, the engine and transmission remain fixed on the wingtip, which simplifies the connection of the cross shaft to the transmission. The cross shaft connection can be placed at the optimal location along the transmission for most efficient introduction of power into the drive train, not forced to be at the nacelle pivot point.

As someone who understands drive shafts and flexible drive shaft angles and weaknesses very well isn’t this just trading one problem and weak point for another?

I have been into racing and offroading all my life and flexible drive shaft connection U-joints and CV joints are a huge huge problem with angles, balance, and weak points in the transfer of power from engine to drive output load. And there is no cure for this arrangement. To have a flexible drive shaft that changes angles you have to include flex joints and they are always a very weak point in power transmission to load. And the more angle required the weaker the system will be.

A static inline system with no weak joints between output and load is extremely more reliable no matter what else the engine/engines drive aside from the main power to load connection.

An example would be the early auto enclosed static inline drive line systems. While they were phased out for weight and cost reasons, they were actually much stronger and much more reliable for power transmission than the later flexible drive lines are because they had no “flexible joints” between engine, transmission, and output drive. They were direct static inline drive.

You can pull over to the shoulder in a car if a U-joint breaks, you cannot pull over to the shoulder if a joint breaks on an aircraft. So the difference I see here between the Osprey and this one is that the Osprey can still turn both rotors with one engine if needed, but if a U-joint/CV joint breaks on this shaft output you will be flying with only one rotor. Correct?

If so how would you counter the pulling torque of one huge rotor like that without the other to counter it? I would think it would immediately start to spin 360s in the air? What are the glide characteristics like I wonder?

Or do they have a variable angle gear to gear drive box to handle these angle variations from inline to 90 degrees rather than joints? That is the only way I could see it being safe and reliable... I keep thinking about the “Jesus Nut” situation with this and the rotor output. While it won’t fall off it could completely detach rotor output and possibly produce some horrific vibration issues.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.