Originally Posted by
chopper2004
Thanks gramps lol
Umm, theres quite a few flying leathernecks I know that would like to teach the commandant how to suck eggs in lieu of what has been happening across the corps but that is another story.
Back to target sorry topic, and yours and everybody when sorry oops if the Army pick the Raider X, in a weird form or fashion, forget the X2 technology its the human ergonomics here.
- side-by-side seating -great for CRM, Human factors no different to Kiowa Warrior of past or the armed Huey gunships over SEA
Though I wonder if the weight of the Raider X might be something to contend with as put it another way, was it not one of the factors re the large SB-1 design which the army shook its head and went hell no lets go to V-280 Valor.
cheers
The reasons Army went with Valor are fairly straightforward. One of the biggest was Sikorsky's proposal was, in the words of the GAO denying the protest, "...technically unacceptable because Sikorsky failed to provide the level of architectural detail required by the [request for proposal]”. In other words, Sikorsky screwed up their bid so badly it wasn't possible to fully evaluate what they were offering. In effect, they were saying, "Don't worry, just trust me". This also contributed to findings that indicated Sikorsky didn't provide sufficient information to allow confidence in their bid price.
Then of course there were factors such as Defiant was a year and a quarter late for the Army's schedule for getting into the air, and then soon had to be grounded. It flew nowhere near the number of hours that Valor did. It kept missing its promised milestone dates. Valor promised significantly higher performance for the production version. Valor met or exceeded everything it promised for the Technology Demonstration when they said it would. Defiant missed a number of times, which gave greater confidence in Valor's claims.
I doubt if weight was much of a factor, there were so many other considerations.