What if we had concentrated on a Huey sized platform for our first tilt-wing/tilt rotor? We might be at a point now where we have tilt wing attack airplanes etc...its really a shame that we didn't follow the turbine into helicopters route by starting small and working up.
Bet you this thing was more reliable than the MV-22.
ReplyDeleteMV-22 is very reliable now but it took work to get there but that wasn't the point. the point was that we started medium and are working out from their instead of following the smaller then larger approach.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you could get much smaller than this since you need space between the two rotors. I also don't think it would of made a difference if we made smaller tilt rotors first since we already know how to make big tilt rotors. The real question is would a tilt rotor aircraft have the ability to evolve into a strike platform and perform greater than the apache?
DeleteYou also have to consider maneuverability with a tilt rotor. No matter how small it is, you need a design that can maneuver like a conventional rotor design for a strike platform. Sikorsky has some really fast helicopters like the X-2 which exceeded 250 knots and its not a tilt rotor.
DeleteBecause a tilt rotor gunship is going to operate like an airplane, you incur a huge amount of extra cost and complication when it is hard to see too many scenarios where you couldn't use a STOL plane (like the OV-10 or it's arguably superior competitor, the Convair Charger) and get the same benefit. That could even apply to amphibious operations: OV-10s could take off from LHAs and the Charger had better STOL capabilities than the OV-10.
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