Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
Would you say that any momentum that X-2 had gained was lost due to a leadership change, to UTC spinning off / selling SAC, or was there an aviation/rotary wing business/market issue that cropped up?
Or was the Army requirement at that point in time not being well enough defined? I seem to recall that initial discussion of what became the S-97 was assessed as a case of
"an aircraft that was designed to meet a requirement that didn't exist" or something like that... m an, it's been a while.
(IIRC, SAC spent their own money on X-2, or UTC/SAC did. Is that right?)
The true Sikorsky types had been battling loss of momentum long before X2. X2 was a triumph in that we pulled it off with little management support. Back at the turn of the millennium we were stricken with a series of presidents/VPs from Lockheed, P&W, Boeing, and Bell. They all wanted to fix what was broken at Sikorsky. Besides X2, it was a miracle that the UH60 production program more or less recovered from their fixes, though at a cost to the profitability which led to UTC selling the division.
Sikorsky spent their money on X2. It was all IR&D. I was gone before the spinoff so I can't really talk about what I didn't witness.