I just watched a YouTube video of the Bell V-280 tiltrotor conducting some kind of low speed agility demonstration… The aircraft can rock back and forth and roll side to side. That’s nice, I guess. However, what I want to see is combat related flight and maneuvers.
Like the old Vietnam era Hueys that came plummeting out of the sky, flaring just before crashing into the ground, disgorged their troops in seconds, and popped off the ground to vanish again, all in about 30 seconds or less, I want to see a V-22 or V-280 perform a similar combat-useful maneuver. Then, and only then, will I be impressed. Until then, the V-22 or V-280 is just a technological curiosity, not a combat asset.
Here’s a video of a Vietnam helo assault… Note how the first helo never even completely touches down. Note how the helo is popping back into the air before the last troop hits the ground. Note how the troops unload in seconds. Note the flare and touch maneuver. By comparison, watching a V-22 landing exercise is like watching in slow motion with a lot of still shots thrown in!
That was from the always astute ComNavOps on the new tiltrotor demonstration. Visit the link to view the V-280 and Huey video demonstrations. ComNavOps goes on to say in the comments:
I also understand that a new aircraft starts with baby steps. You sway a bit before you combat land. I get it. But then stop advertising it as some great accomplishment that proves low speed agility.
Indeed, the tiltrotor has been a major system program for almost 40 years now since the start of the V-22. The baby has to start walking then running at some point. 40 years after the first jet aircraft, we were flying F-15s and F-16s.
It may have, in fact, been the initial insistence on doing all those Huey maneuvers in Vietnam that set the tiltrotor technology back for decades. Trying to put too many requirements on the first major development of the platform ended up making the V-22 go through three development cycles between 1982 and 2007 just to get the basic “truck” version of the aircraft right. Though it has been relatively reliable since then, the Marines won’t put one into harms way if they can avoid it.
See highlights from my podcast with Richard Whittle on the V-22 development for more on that. The chief engineer almost resigned in protest when he saw the requirements for survivability, combat landings, and so forth.
It would probably have been a faster route to a combat-effective tiltrotor had the DOD pursued incremental advances of the technology. The systems approach to getting the fully integrated system right on the first try may appear to be a time and cost saver, allowing us to leap-frog technologies. But in reality, it seems that trial-and-error experimentation with low-level promises in the early phases would quicken the pace of learning without “crash” programs.
Tell Bell engineers in 1980 that the tiltrotor would still be a “flying truck” 40 years later, and they might have been aghast. Of course, the technology may just be more difficult that anyone presumed, given that no one else has developed it. And we still haven’t seen all the V-280 can do, perhaps it could do combat landings. Or maybe combat landings isn’t the requirement tiltrotor technology was destined to fill — it meets other and potentially unknown requirements. But then again, we don’t know the counter-factual of what designs may have arose from low-level and competitive projects…
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