Textron’s Bell V-280 Valor Chosen as New U.S. Army Long-Range Assault Aircraft

Businesswire ^ | 12/05/2022 | Bell

[Paladin2]

Compare and contrast to a helicopter....

[crusty old prospector]

Will it be electric? What is its carbon footprint?

[Seruzawa]

Valor. What a stupid name. I guess the woke Army can’t use Amerindian names any more. Nope. No more tributes to worthy foes. Just insipid committee chosen n generic names. Gag.

[\/\/ayne]

[SaveFerris]

Guess I just like the older stuff

[\/\/ayne]

Nickname it the Zuni.

[MHGinTN]

So ‘they’ have worked the kinks out of the Osprey?

[ought-six]

Another Osprey?

[Psalm 73]

Have been working on/with helicopters since 1980, and have been working the Lockheed Martin FLRAA entry (part-time) for the last six months.

I cannot fathom the US Army leaving the foundational utility/assault rotary wing aircraft for a tilt-rotor.

From Huey to Black Hawk to, Osprey? Sad.

Picture air cavalry arriving on tilt-rotors. Pathetic.

[Jeff Chandler]

Top speed: 322 mph
Range: 2,417 mi
Length: 66′

[Seruzawa]

I think “Gold Plated Money Pit” is more likely.

[themidnightskulker]

Gonna need both air and ground superiority to use that in combat. Looks like some shmoe with a rifle could lob bullets into those exposed engines.

I hope that it’s just that the cowls are removed, not a design flaw...

[Jet Jaguar]

Ping.

[\/\/ayne]

That’s an early prototype, maybe it got better.

[Nathan _in_Arkansas]

Boy, that’ll last a long time in a radar-threat environment.

We started training low and slow again, and the Army picks a lumbering, large radar signature aircraft that “is fast.”

I gotta retire soon.

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

Fiasco.

[Jeff Chandler]

So how do they determine the winner of the competition, whoever offers the largest bribe?

[jz638]

Tilt roters can get you farther away from your supply lines and out of range of your QRF faster. They also have all of the mechanical reliability of variable geometry aircraft with less crash survivability and the type of loiter time that makes them very unlikely to be pulled from VIP transport missions to be converted into aerial scouts or gunships. They look great in political campaign commercials, video games, and for football stadium flybys, making their surviability in a budget cut environment nearly perfect.

Sorry, that may have been just a bit sarcastic.

[FreedomPoster]

Yeah, I fear air-air and surface-air missiles are a LOT faster. As you know all too well.