Is the mount on the V-22 retractable?
I've never seen this type of "contraption" on an airplane or helicopter but that means absolutely nothing. By enlarging the pic it appears to be "foldable"...how I have no idea but that's the only thing that makes sense to my layman's eyes.
Any other ideas of whats going on there?
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ReplyDeleteIn reality probably just something super light weight to hold those two 7 rocket pods,I reckon adjustable tilt to the pods ,nothing foldable on the picts.
ReplyDeleteOnly reasons you would want to fold a weapons mount would be to conceal it inside the hull or to compact it for storage aboard ship. Because of the location I doubt internal carriage as that point on osprey would be inside the cockpit also V22 is not stealthy so there is no need for that. the other would be to compact for storage aboard ship. But Osprey has sponsons that seem just as wide. the wild card might have been the location in relation to the rotors during transition but that spot was likely chosen because the mounting is clear of the rotors
ReplyDeletehow easily could the weapons change, i.e. mounting a M134 or hellfire missiles? isnt it easy (in a relative sense) to switch on attach helos? i am asking because of my naive understanding so not to sound condescending at all.
ReplyDeleteJoe
we won't know until they release more info. i would imagine that a dual hellfire setup wouldn't stress but that's just a guess. the setup has me curious. they could have gone with the mount system like on the OH-58 but there is definitely something else going on here. I have no idea what it is, but i doubt it has to do with shipboard storage.
DeleteIt's a testbed airframe.
ReplyDeleteThe key for the mount is that it's removable.
I suspect this is nothing but a temporary mounting system that can be rather easily removed for the next set of performance tests where you might not want any of that hardware onboard, rather than trying to build something that has to live there forever on every subsequent test.
Given the dynamics and range of motion of the prop arc, wing hardpoints are a no-go (firing missiles through propellers being bad), thus just about anything mounted on the birds has to go chin-mounted, or forward of the blade tips, and not where it's going to shoot flames and FOD into things rather important for continued airworthiness.
question. i've been monitoring your website. is this Ebola thing something i need to put front and center again? am i wrong when i get the impression that you're saying that shit is even worse now than when we all were paying attention to it?
DeleteOver there: absolutely.
DeleteOver here: not so much, but that could change with one outbreak, either today, tomorrow, or next Easter. (I do not think it will abate indefinitely.)
The recent survey notes that of 1993 travelers passing through the TSA kabuki security theatre screenings, none (except for @$$clown Spencer) had the virus. (They helpfully neglect to mention the 100% failure rate to screen out nor detect that one actual case of virus.)
That's a lot of dice rolls coming up 7s and 11s.
I would not bet the farm on that outcome here - or London, Paris, etc. - in perpetuity.
Personally, I continue my own preparations, and await the likeliest next steps from Africa, in roughly decreasing order of likeliness:
A) One or more governments there collapse (Note that Klown Klain is getting out of Dodge a few weeks ahead of the likely explosion, if he's lucky. Mission accomplished, Klowny.)
B) Ebola blossoms outside the 3 main culprit states
(note that A leads to B inexorably)
C) We get a bloom(s) of Ebola here or elsewhere in the "first world"
D) We get an outbreak anywhere in Asia, esp. from Mecca to Manila
(Again noting that either C or D makes the other exponentially more likely)
E) Any outbreak in, say, Rio or Buenos Aires, and we'll be talking about sandbagging the Panama Canal and the Rio Grande, and bulldozing hull-down tank wallows at intervals. The only plus at that point is that "amnesty" talk will become a lynching offense, for cause.
Nothing remotely indicates that anyone anywhere over there has the slightest handle on this disease.
The dearth of figures indicate merely the happy confluence of incompetence, corruption, and hubris, all of which occasioned the initial outbreak growing to the present level in the first place.
And notably, the UN time-lag between hubris and come-to-Jesus admissions of failure are coming closer and closer together over time.
e.g, it took them 3 months to admit their projections were rosy nonsense, but it only took a week for them to admit that claims of hitting their Dec. 1st containment goals were pure malarkey.
The official response on this side of the pond is to not look at the dragon, in hopes it will fly off somewhere else because Magic Beans.
Which works fine as long as it's hapless Liberians &c. we're talking about, but even the media starts to get a bit more upset when it's reporters, let alone average folks in Manhattan sick or at risk.
(Note also that two cases of sick reporters, and virtually all Western journalism suddenly became telephone-based from 2-3 countries away. That should tell you what the media really think about this, in their innermost parts. I almost said "souls", but these are reporters we're talking about.)
The average network executive is Mayor Vaughn from Amityville.
Happy to usher everyone else - including me and you - into the water to drum up business, but never coming off the beach, let alone putting to sea in the Orca.
Would be interested in knowing if they are seeing any debris coming off the rocket launch, or if the debris is clearing the fuel tank... The Hydra 70's throw out lots of debris a good distance at a high velocity, tears up that composite skin real good.
ReplyDeleteIf they haven't gotten that far yet, then expect to see an increase in maintenance man hours doing skin repairs.