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Army will be getting a replacement for the Blackhawk

They were crashing Ospreys due to critical gaps in flight training rather than failures of the aircraft. It was a new concept with a hazardous learning curve.

There is so much money in R&D and procurement that every new aircraft will be subject to political fights both intra service and in Congress. Congress critters want the thing built by the contractors in their own backyard and will try their best to screw the other guy out of it. Fortunately the flight tests usually win out. Then there is contractor fraud to deal with......
 
Actually, it won't be a total replacement for the Blackhawk but for will be used specific long-range roles. The UH-60V and UH60M (both being either upgraded or still being built, respectively) for tasks that don't require the capabilities of the V-280.

IMO, the V-280 will need a larger LZ to land in with that wing/rotor span, the Vortex Ring State (VRS) is characteristic of the tilt-rotors (the V-280 is really not a traditional helicopter). While all rotorcraft are susceptible, the side-by-side rotor configuration of V-22 (and all similar tiltrotors) are susceptible to asymmetric onset of Vortex Ring State (VRS), brought on by descending too quickly. The one-rotor-in/one-rotor-out conditions results in large rolling moments and departure from controlled flight (aka crash).
I don't know the Army's actual plans, what you say makes sense. Like I was saying before, the Army needs huge fleets of helicopters, like thousands. So my guess, replacing thousands of Blackhawks with Tiltrotors is probably more money then the Army will ever have. There would likely have to be a mix.

The Aerodynamic uniqueness with the assymetric lift and vortex ring state, keep in mind, these will be Fly by Wire, the Osprey was able to solve those problems with software in the Fly by Wire. My impression of the Osprey is those things are no longer problems, but its been nearly 20 years since I did anything with an Osprey. No reason to suspect the V-280 wouldn't solve the problems the same way.

The Crashes with the Marine Corps Osprey came from the gipping the test and development I talked about above. After the accident, they tested it more thoroughly, fully understood the issue and fixed it.
 
I don't know the Army's actual plans, what you say makes sense. Like I was saying before, the Army needs huge fleets of helicopters, like thousands. So my guess, replacing thousands of Blackhawks with Tiltrotors is probably more money then the Army will ever have. There would likely have to be a mix.

The Aerodynamic uniqueness with the assymetric lift and vortex ring state, keep in mind, these will be Fly by Wire, the Osprey was able to solve those problems with software in the Fly by Wire. My impression of the Osprey is those things are no longer problems, but its been nearly 20 years since I did anything with an Osprey. No reason to suspect the V-280 wouldn't solve the problems the same way.

The Crashes with the Marine Corps Osprey came from the gipping the test and development I talked about above. After the accident, they tested it more thoroughly, fully understood the issue and fixed it.
See my post above. 9 marines dead in 2022. I believe there were two crashes. One in Norway, one in the States. 4 Class A crashes - which is more than $2,000,000 in damages and/or debilitating injuries. I don’t think the V-22 is a flying death trap, but it still continues to catch pilots out.
 
They were crashing Ospreys due to critical gaps in flight training rather than failures of the aircraft. It was a new concept with a hazardous learning curve.
Your the 2nd person to mention training caused the crashes?
The 4 crashes in test and development were all mechanical failure, design problems.
The crashes after becoming operational are a mix of mechanical failures and human error, which is typical of most military aircraft.

Now, I haven't worked closely with the Osprey in Decades, but nothing I've heard nor seen in the crashes indicated training gaps were the cause? Is there someone claiming this or some reports claiming this?
 
See my post above. 9 marines dead in 2022. I believe there were two crashes. One in Norway, one in the States. 4 Class A crashes - which is more than $2,000,000 in damages and/or debilitating injuries. I don’t think the V-22 is a flying death trap, but it still continues to catch pilots out.
Not sure what you are getting at? I don't think either of those crashes had anything to do with Power Settling (vortex ring state or asymmetric lift) what I was talking about were fixed that you replied too. From what I understand, the Norway was simply outright Flat Hatting and screwed up. The Crash in Southern California, I have not seen a cause yet reported in the news, so I can't say it wasn't power settling or in/out ground effect asymmetric rotor lift, but if it was, then it would be the first time since the test and development phase.
 
Additional training was needed to deal with the unique vortex ring state issue that tiltrotors have vs. conventional helicopters.
I'm confused? How many crashes since test and development were caused by vortex ring state?

Yes, there is training for vortex ring state for all helicopters, and I'm sure the Osprey has adapted the training for the one rotor entering before the other and causing the roll over. But how can vortex ring state training be behind the other crashes, when the other crashes weren't due to vortex ring state?

The one in Morroco, might have been vortex ring state, but it wasn't assymetric and didn't rollover. They tried to transition to airplane mode with a tailwind, close to the ground, too quickly and that caused it to settle and hit the ground. That is classic conditions to induce the vortex ring state in approach with a descent, so its possible, but not likely in take-off with ascent, but I don't remember any reports they got into vortex ring state, I "seem" to remember it was a case of power and lift with a tailwind that caused settling with power into the dirt.
 
I am not a pilot so I am relying on what I was told by an AFSOC pilot. There were some crashes in testing before it went operational. Others ascribed to pilot error. The dynamic characteristics of the aircraft result in things happening that are unique as compared to rotary or fixed wing aircraft. When the aircraft gets squirelly on you and nothing in your training prepared you to deal with it, it will try to kill you. Those lessons are hard won.

The Osprey has seen hard use in AFG and other theaters, and lots of training hours so like all aircraft things are going to break. AFSOC grounded all their OSPREYS for a while back in April due to some issues with the clutches. But AFSOC relies heavily on the Osprey.
 
I don't know the Army's actual plans, what you say makes sense. Like I was saying before, the Army needs huge fleets of helicopters, like thousands. So my guess, replacing thousands of Blackhawks with Tiltrotors is probably more money then the Army will ever have. There would likely have to be a mix.

The Aerodynamic uniqueness with the assymetric lift and vortex ring state, keep in mind, these will be Fly by Wire, the Osprey was able to solve those problems with software in the Fly by Wire. My impression of the Osprey is those things are no longer problems, but its been nearly 20 years since I did anything with an Osprey. No reason to suspect the V-280 wouldn't solve the problems the same way.

The Crashes with the Marine Corps Osprey came from the gipping the test and development I talked about above. After the accident, they tested it more thoroughly, fully understood the issue and fixed it.
#1 - This indicates that there will be a mixed fleet for the reasons stated earlier.

“We expect initial FLRAA buy to be 750-1K, and mixed fleet of FLRAA + UH-60 for decades,” Schweizer wrote in an Oct. 12 note to investors.

Here.


and...


#2 - Fly-by-wire is just the control system with programming. VRS is not just corrected with software. The pilot is still part of the system and needs to know what flight conditions can be exceeded to enter a VRS zone.

All I stated was with the early experiences that additional training was required to understand the V-22s' sensitivity to VRS. The same will be needed with the V-280 since it's a different platform, as occurs when a pilot switches to any other aircraft from what they are used to flying.

#3 - The Hawaii & Afghanistan crashs were due to the loss of situation awareness & dust ingestion due to brown-out on final approach. Additional training was implemented in order to minimize those situations by descending in a slow forward approach be for final touch-down.

#4 - Also, there's been clutch issues recently.

Besides the recent Norway controlled landing...


, here's the listing of the various incidents.

 
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I am a pilot, but I haven't flown the Osprey, I was involved in some of the shipboard test and development in that phase as support staff. The test pilots told me it was very easy to fly, and when things got squirrelly on you, you always defaulted to rotating nacelles forward to (I think it was) 25° and it always stabilized and got into the good power part of the power curve.

I was involved the CH-53K training, and standing up the new transition training for that new aircraft, and we frequently visited and touched base with the V-22 training facilities and squadrons to learn from them the challenges of transitioning to a new aircraft. The V-22 training was hardly lacking and was quite thorough.

Our biggest challenges in training today seems to be the cultural shifts, modern convenience and basic education, we are finding new young pilots and maintainers very ill prepared to learn aviation compared to the generations before them. They simple do not have the basic science and mechanical knowledge that generations before them did, they don't have the life experience of the generations before them. An entire class of Pilots and not a single one had ever changed oil in a car before, nor did a single person know that you turn a nut counter clockwise to loosen it and clockwise to tighten it. Even those about to train to be maintainers had folks admitting the had never picked up a wrench in their entire young lives.

Since becoming operational, there has been more than a few accidents attributable to human error, and there is arguably always a link between human error and training. So I can see how someone might take that attitude and make that statement. Perhaps AFSOC might have a training issues, I have not heard that with the Marine side, but again I'm not close. But human error is not always because of training, there is lack of judgement, there is being overwhelmed by events, etc... Human error is always going to be the biggest factor in mishaps, especially in something like aviation, that systematically eliminates possible causes, they can develop better maintenance procedures, they can engineer more reliable systems and equipment, but when you have a man having to react in seconds, he will always be the weakest link.

Again, I am not close to the Osprey program, not for decades, but I am not hearing anywhere at NAVAIR that training is behind the crashes of the Osprey.

#2 - Fly-by-wire is just the control system with programming. VRS is not just corrected with software. The pilot is still part of the system and needs to know what flight conditions can be exceeded to enter a VRS zone.
VRS can be very unpredictable, all helicopter pilots get training on it, the difference with the Osprey is one rotor can enter VRS before the other and flip the aircraft over, to put it into an unrecoverable situation. So yes all helicopter pilots and Osprey pilots get this training. I don't see how its related to the claim that the Osprey crashes are the result of gaps in training? Especially VRS training since none of the subsequent crashes were due to vortex ring state.

Fly by Wire(FBW) is a control system with programming utilizing Control Laws and conditional based control laws. With a good understanding of phenomenon and the conditions, control laws can be written to avoid the entry into certain phenomenon like vortex ring state.

The computer flies the airplane, the pilot is just telling the computer what he wants the airplane to do. So this has the advantage of actually being able to control the aircraft better especially for conditional based things like entering into vortex ring state and react to and prevent it, before the pilot can even notice it.

I spoke with the test pilots that did the testing after the Vortex Ring State rollover during the operational test phase. They tested it, gathered data and fully understood the phenomenon and then changed the control laws of the FBW and were able to reduce it to the point of nearly eliminating it, and especially eliminate one rotor entering before the other, to cause the rollover.

I actually witnessed the one rotor out of ground effect and the other in ground effect during shipboard testing of the Osprey, combined with vortex like turbulence that runs down the deck edge of the Amphibious assault ship, the pilots literally ran out of lateral cyclic authority and were continuing a drift toward the island. This actually had the contributing factor of the FBW control laws reacting the wrong way. The issue was resolved by changing the FBW control laws.

Tilt rotors have to be FBW cause of the couplings and control changes that happen between helicopter and airplane modes. Actual mechanical links would be hopelessly complex.
 
I know all that. But the pilot still flies the aircraft since the flight-control system (cables or wire) send the inputs to the flight surfaces/engine controls, even autonomously. We're just saying things differently.

More info on the selection.


We'll see what the new V-280 (with it's official designation) in a few years when they build the first production-representative configuration in LRIP.
 
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I know all that. But the pilot still flies the aircraft since the flight-control system (cables or wire) send the inputs to the flight surfaces/engine controls, even autonomously. We're just saying things differently.
No, were not saying the same thing. Fly by Wire does not send pilot inputs to the flight surfaces. That is where the control laws come in. It is NOT replacing control tubes or cable links between flight controls and control surfaces, simply moving the control surfaces according to pilot input over wires with electric signals.

It is literally a set of computers (redundant and comparing output for fault detection/correction) flying the aircraft. Pilot inputs from the flight controls go to the computers, they are interpreted and control laws are applied for the computer to move the aircraft, monitor it and adjust it.

Lets put it this way....
Conventional Control systems, you go to land, the pilot directly controls the control the surfaces, the aircraft is dumb and does what ever the pilot inputs for it to do. If the pilot does not recognize the conditions and cues for onset of Vortex Ring State, he very well could enter into vortex ring state.

With Fly by Wire, you go to land, the pilot makes inputs with flight controls, that goes to the computers, the computer interprets what the pilots wants by the inputs and then applies control laws to send outputs to the control surfaces. As you descend, the computers monitor conditions, sees increases of descent rate and angle of approach, compared against pressure altitude and density altitude, sees that the aircraft is entering into conditions that could induce Vortex Ring state then it adjusts descent rate, it also limits rate of roll and pitch that can induce vortex ring state, etc, etc, etc...

It is very different, they are not the same thing done in different ways, they are totally different ways of doing things from beginning to end, the entire system.

Conventional AFCS system might have an inner loop system that will stabilize the aircraft by moving flight surfaces without pilot input and not moving pilot controls, but they are limited in authority. They certainly help in things like vortex ring state, but a far from preventing it. They also may have outer loop control, that move both the control surfaces and pilot controls, that have full authority, but limited rate and often limited force and can be over come, these are more autopilot functions. The pilot can simply let the AFCS move the flight controls with his hands on them and it will maintain course, speed and altitude, if he doesn't want to maintain course, speed or altitude, he can simply override those inputs or turn off the autopilot features, there is usually several and you can choose which one to turn off. So conventional AFCS systems are doing some flying of the airplane, most inner loop stabilization that does not move pilot controls but only has 10% authority. This is still not even close to fly by wire. AFCS just makes the aircraft more stable and easier to fly, the pilot is directly linked to the control surfaces, except for some little kicks of the control surfaces by the AFCS to stabilize the aircraft.
 
With Fly by Wire, you go to land, the pilot makes inputs with flight controls, that goes to the computers, the computer interprets what the pilots wants by the inputs and then applies control laws to send outputs to the control surfaces.
I said the same thing in a pithy way in my post above.

I'm done here.
 
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I flew in a lot of ships from SA315B Lamas to Bell 407s & various Huey models and bigger S-61's and Chinooks, even a couple of the old S-58s.

All were fun especially the Lama's since they are so tiny and you're riding in a bubble with an engine & rotors attached to the frame-work but they could handle the high elevations & could squeeze into tight spots.

The big ships would shake, rattle & role, and stink a lot.

Working sling loads were interesting when you're hooking up a load the ship hovering a few feet over your head.
 
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I personally think the footprint of this helicopter is way to large for what it is. Its dang near the footprint of a King Stallion or Chinook. Way to big for daily ops like the black hawk
I agree.

With a rotor/wingspan like that they'll need a lot of room in an LZ. And the Defiant fit the Blackhawk footprint.

Plus, the speed advantage over the Defiant will be reduced during terrain-following flying since they'll have to pivot the rotors up for clearance. So the tilt-rotor is faster when above an altitude when the rotors are full forward but then you're easier to detect.

The Defiant didn't have to do that and was faster down low with the pusher prop.

IMO, the V-280 would be better for the USMC for troop insertion since they're mainly flying from the sea, use the V-22 for medium cargo weights and the CH53K for the heavy stuff.

My .02
 
I agree.

With a rotor/wingspan like that they'll need a lot of room in an LZ. And the Defiant fit the Blackhawk footprint.

Plus, the speed advantage over the Defiant will be reduced during terrain-following flying since they'll have to pivot the rotors up for clearance. So the tilt-rotor is faster when above an altitude when the rotors are full forward but then you're easier to detect.

The Defiant didn't have to do that and was faster down low with the pusher prop.

IMO, the V-280 would be better for the USMC for troop insertion since they're mainly flying from the sea, use the V-22 for medium cargo weights and the CH53K for the heavy stuff.

My .02
Gotta agree with you there on all points. Personally, I believe there is a desire within the USG to prevent the likes of Lockheed Martin and Boeing from snapping up all the big contracts and having someone go under like was the case with McDonnell Douglas. I think that was also the case with the B-21. If LM had won Northrop Grumman would have closed shop.
 
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