Originally Posted by
The Sultan
Bell has announced the retirement of the V-280 after it has demonstrated all original FLRAA requirements in a three year/214 flight hour campaign. During this effort the aircraft demonstrated speeds 25+ knots above Bell's goal and 55+ knots above the original FLRAA goal. This compares to the SB-1 barely reaching a speed 20 knots below the original speed goal. As to other program goals the V-280 demonstrated those in flight testing on the actual aircraft while SB continues to promise future attempts to try to achieve in flight or pushing simulations as an acceptable alternative. Bell noted this in their end of testing press release with:
This level of trolling will make it difficult for the Army to give SB any credit for not demonstrating something Bell was able to. Now that the SB-1 performance shortcomings have been bared for all to see, it time for asking why SB could not achieve the requirements even when they were given an extra 1 1/2 years to try to catch up. In this time SB was only able to accumulate around 15% of the V-280 flight time. One needs to ask: What are the concept or reliability issues with the ABC that make it unsafe to even test, let alone risk our warfighters in?
Initiating high g turns, rolls and or dives, causing failure to maintain rotor separation. Safe separation is something never demonstrated by the X2, Raider or Defiant, under conditions of a hard maneuver. These hard maneuvers should be demonstrated by a real aircraft, including when there are strong crosswinds.
The Raider that crashed is proof the rotors are too close to each other. The Raider unexpectedly rolled to one side, then as the pilot corrected the roll, the rotors hit each other. The close spacing of the rotors decreases drag substantially. I have to believe Sikorsky has already told the Army that their demonstrators can't pull high g maneuvers. But that they will increase rotor spacing for production. Which will make a slow, tall Defiant even slower and taller.