Originally Posted by
Doors Off
On the FOD threat to the pusher, via points 3 and 4, I would think that it is of much less consequence to the pusher than that to a tail rotor. You would only lose speed, rather than a total TR drive/control failure. I know which I would prefer to lose.
Doors
Impact of weapon exhaust on the tail has always been a concern and looked at very closely. That’s why the weapons are placed on all helicopters I know of where the tail rotor is not directly behind it. On the Raider the pusher is very big and face on to the back blast. If damaged the pusher wouldn’t just stop working, but be significantly out of balance. If the unbalance is large enough you loose the whole tail.
As to one of your other points about internal weapons carriage; name one helicopter where the missiles are mounted inside the occupied space? They are normally mounted externally or in dedicated weapon bays. When working around military helicopters I always paid attention to the “Armed” warnings and avoided standing in front of the missiles (even knowing if one launched it didn’t have to hit you to cause serious damage to the body). Won’t be able to do that in the Raider.