Originally Posted by
noneofyourbusiness
The Airbus Racer would be the competitor to Sikorsky Raider, as a demonstrator is being built. Racer and Tiltrotor have much better fuel burn rate than Sikorsky's X2 technology. After the Army had industry fund the JMR demonstrators, it is totally unacceptable to say forget your investment, we really want something else now. Constantly changing their mind could once again leave the Army getting nothing. The Bell V280 clearly is better than the current Black Hawk, or SB1 Defiant, as a transport aircraft.
Racer would be a competitor to Sikorsky's X2 technology (as embodied by Raider) in the civil world, but has a couple of limitations in military guise.
First, Army wants to able to load/offload their medium/light helicopters quickly from both sides. With Tilt-Rotor you can do that in a nearly 360º arc around the aircraft, and only slightly less with X2. With the Racer concept, because of the support structure for the props you can only come directly towards it or away in an arc of at best 180º. That brings up the second limitation, you've got to be careful moving near those props until both of them are stopped, which can only happen when on the ground. At least one has to be kept turning with any altitude because the prop[s] are what provides the antitorque force. With X2, the prop can be started/stopped while airborne since it is strictly propulsion, the contra-rotating rotors cancel out the torque. With Tilt-Rotor the issue doesn't arise because the proprotors cancel each other out and also when on the ground the proprotors are up and out of the way.
In civil use, these aren't serious limitation because its no big deal to wait until they're stopped or to approach the doors only from the side/front.
BTW, Bell also has an attack version of the V-280; except for the lack of windows aft of the cockpit, it doesn't look that much different from the transport model. As with all the JMR proposals, to meet the high speed requirement, the main weapons are carried internally.