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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 21:45
  #19 (permalink)  
Evalu8ter
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Zummerset
Posts: 1,042
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CTR - well said. I thought it was classy from Bell to congratulate their competitors. Vertical lift is hard to do - we in the industry "get" that. Bell and Sikorsky/Boeing have taken contrasting views of how to approach the Army's Cap Set 3. Sikorsky built on the "what could have been" ABC, whereas Bell have leveraged their XV-15 / V-22 experience for the V-280. The latter seems to be going well; Defiant has a lot of work to do to catch up, but a few months should mean nothing to the US Army for a platform that will be decades in service. Inevitably, a loss will effect the losing team in terms of jobs and investment. Perhaps FARA opens up the chances of "everyone winning"; V-280 replacing UH-60 and a derivative of the S-92 Raider fulfilling FARA - effectively replacing the loss of the OH-58 and the missed opportunity of the RAH-66.
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