Originally Posted by
JohnDixson
You know, LW, going down that road has just a few former SA folks asking why then didn’t SA simply ( airframe / drivetrain / rotors / power plant -wise ) simply update the RAH-66. Bell has to do development testing whereas the Comanche, aircraft wise, was developed.
Heh, I'll bite. I was a Comanche fan, and yet I always felt that the whole point of LHX had been lost with an aircraft that ended up with two pilots the way an Apache was put together. The Army at that point in time was not willing to risk going single pilot (and in so doing significantly reduce various weight bogies) and for a reason: the technical risk was not all on the airframe side, but was also on the mission equipment and systems integration side. (And let's recall how A-12, a big on risk APN-1 program, died in place).
Resurrecting Comanche would, IMO, fail. However, making a "baby Comanche" sized for a single pilot, and being able to use all of the now more mature tech for mission systems management, might have been a great idea. (USAF and USN returned to single pilot scheme with F-35, right?)
But all of that is "what might have been" thanks to the point mentioned further up: the Boeing factor.
I'll not comment on that further; the "twin primes" thing made me scratch my head a lot a couple of decades ago. I'm running out of scales on my skull to scratch.
