Originally Posted by
The Sultan
Lone,
While not a pilot (something about having too high of an IQ) I have thousands of hours in the front or left seat of military helicopters so I am very familiar with NOE day and night operations. Drop before ignition is a bad idea and would result in more than a few own goals.
It is certainly fraught with technical chances for malfunction, yes.
There is ordnance that is released in an unarmed state in a variety of military aircraft. (Arming delays come in a variety of forms, our torps had the low tech solution of a lanyard...). Since most munitions would be guided, the 'drop and ignite' poses little obstacle to the munition getting to its target,
but, all of that violated the KISS principle and requires a substantial change in arming and ignition logic . That would make the munitions for the Raider bespoke / non standard with the other users of that munition. That's a bit of a red flag for most people in the acquisition field.
Your point on "there's a better way to carry/deploy those weapons" has merit.
I had envisioned, when I saw the original Raider design, that an internally carried weapons module would be deck / floor mounted and "roll" or "pivot" about 210 - 240 degrees on fore and aft arms. The mount would (in my mind's eye) be a circular or hexagonal rack that could revolve like the cylinder in a revolver-style pistol.
After deployment, it would hang adjacent to and below the edge of the door.
The bottom of the cylinder, or the bottom two positions on the cylinder, would be the only ones that could fire. (that
should keep the rocket exhaust below the horizontal stab and pusher prop, but it would take some better modeling and dynamic testing to confirm that).
Yeah, that's a rube goldberg device for sure, but then so is every helicopter out there.
That kind of approach would require more moving parts in terms of the door hinge (or a sliding door rather than a hinged door), and of course that leads to more things that could malfunction.
I'd sketch it for you on the back of a napkin if were were in a bar, but this format doesn't lend itself to that kind of illustration.