Originally Posted by Bitmonx
Upgrade the EC120 now
Shame
this never proceeded past the study phase
Originally Posted by SansAnhedral
Tough to compete with a european consortium funded by huge sums of interest-free multi-government-backed loans and grants
As with the Airbus vs. Boeing spat, there's some truth to both arguments. In the rotorcraft world, the high-volume DoD programs allowed Sikorsky, Boeing and Bell to enjoy significant scale economies, underpinning the production efficiencies and low cost sourcing introduced by these primes. And the European loans are to some degree countered by DoD Independent Research and Development (IRAD) funding under FAR 31.205-18 (though ironically one of the civil programs to have most benefitted from IRAD is the
AW609).
Originally Posted by Gemini Twin
Blind reliance on continuing military orders and complacency killed the US commercial helicopter industry
This is an interesting question. When Bell's Terry Stinson famously stated in a Rotor & Wing interview in February 2001,
"In all honesty, if we had the chance to enter the commercial helicopter manufacturing business from scratch, in today’s market, I wouldn’t do it. It’s not profitable enough." he was widely derided. But from Stinson's perspective, he was probably just calculating that 360 V-22s and 280 UH-1Y/AH-1Zs were equivalent in value to 23,000 JetRangers. And at the time it probably seemed a lot easier delivering Ospreys, Venoms and Vipers than that many 206s.
I/C