Bell's V-280 Valor is Rockin and Rollin

a reply to: anzha

Probably what they haven't heard. Industry is funding something like 85% of this program to date. Textron/Bell and team have basically demonstrated most of what they set out to do. Still no solidified requirements for an acquisition program and the program's future budget is still up in the air.

A car salesman doesn't mind spending money on advertising and burning his gas taking the customer on a test drive, but eventually they're going to want to see some intention to purchase something (or at least see some money upfront).

I imagine this customer wants to wait to see the data from the other flight testing first. Army aviation is trying to throw as little money at it at this stage as possible, and they don't have a great reputation on program management. Sikorsky will probably air the same complaints once they finish a lot of their demonstration program.

"Why am I investing hundreds of millions of my own money for this (your) program again?"

a reply to: RadioRobert

Esper just came out and said they won't be doing both helicopter replacements simultaneously. That means the scout will come first and that also is far more in the Defiant/Raider's corner.

www.defensenews.com...

breakingdefense.com...

300 knots. Albeit to be fair, it was for a short sprint rather than sustained and it was without payload.

The Valor got a PDAS test.

newatlas.com...

They need something in sandy environments such as the Middle East to see whats happening when they take off and land.

The USMC put out some requirements for their FVL buy that pretty much excluded the Defiant or any other non tilt rotor.

The USMC has now said their preference is absolutely a tilt rotor:

www.navair.navy.mil...

a reply to: anzha

I don't think what I saw of the ISMC wishlist is going to be acheivable even with a tilt-rotor, but it definitely would rule out other "helicopter" approaches. Maybe they could get a vectored thrust turbofan to meet some of the requirements, but then we're talking about a whole other program.

It'd be great if they'd play nice with the Army on FVL, but the desired requirements are increasingly at odds with eachother (in some cases at odds with other of their own requirements).

a reply to: RadioRobert

Tilt rotor is the best thing they can get imho. You trade some lift efficiency for a major bump in speed and range compared to a helicopter.

A vtol turbofan can't really compete, would be much less efficient, require oversized engines.

a reply to: moebius

I am saying some of their fantasy requirements cannot be met with a tilt -rotor. And absolutely, the choice of a turbofan would make other stated requirements difficult or impossible. They want a unicorn. That flies. They are going to need to comeback to earth a bit.
You also have the problem that you are now asking for something completely incompatible with the Army's program goals. That's throwing away very real advantages of a more modest program.

Agility here measures specifically the aircraft’s “ability to respond rapidly and precisely to pilot inputs at low speeds or ‘at the X,’ [i.e.] at the landing site,” Bell’s delighted program manager, Ryan Ehinger, told me in an interview. “The V-280 handles like a sports car.”

Bell’s chief engineer on the V-280 offered a somewhat more technical explanation of the Army standard. “ADS-33 Level 1 performance assesses both the responsiveness of the aircraft and the pilot’s workload in flying the aircraft,” Paul Wilson said in an email. “For the V-280 … the aircraft is designed with the control power required for Level 1 responsiveness. Reduced pilot workload is achieved through flight control augmentation taking advantage of the fly-by-wire system. The V-280’s Level 1 agility demonstrated in flight test is equal to or better than the UH-60.”

In layman’s terms, “Level One Handling Qualities” means the aircraft meets the Army’s official Aeronautical Design Standard (ADS-33) for how well it responds to the pilot in fine-grained, low-altitude maneuvers: decelerating to a stationary hover, turning to a precise heading, maintaining a specific altitude and orientation, and so on. It’s assessed by having test pilots put the aircraft through the prescribed maneuvers and rate how hard they had to work to make the aircraft perform.

The ADS-33 standard was only made official in the late 1990s, originally for the cancelled Comanche program. It doesn’t apply retroactively to the Army’s existing aircraft, and it’s likely that only rotorcraft with the latest generation of digital flight controls, often called “fly by wire,” can ever achieve Level One. In fact, the only existing aircraft my sources could think of that met this standard was the CH-47F Chinook and its special operations variant, the MH-47G, which the Army has decided to stop buying.

breakingdefense.com...

www.janes.com...

I was told the Valor apparently made an airshow appearance.

a reply to: anzha

October 18th post has video of them practicing beforehand.

a reply to: anzha

They flew it this weekend at the Fort Worth Alliance air show but it was a low show and from where we were sitting you couldn't really see it over the tents. I have one not so great shot of it I can post later tonight.

Pretty sure they had a chase plane up with it the whole time. Is that some type of requirement since it's still testing?

a reply to: PhantomTwo

They did. It doubles as a camera bird to monitor everything. It's not a requirement, but it's a good idea to have one.

breakingdefense.com...

Shots fired.

breakingdefense.com...

theaviationist.com...

And the V-280 has been retired from flight:

www.defensenews.com...

She was flown 15 times by US Army pilots to get feedback. Infantry squads and maintenance personnel also gave feedback.

And Bell has decided to take apart the V-280 to look for wear and tear after retiring her from flight.

www.flightglobal.com...