Originally Posted by
ShotOne
Surprised to see Apache being talked about. I seem to recall hangars full of them for months or years with no trained crew to fly them.
ShotOne, surely you read what I said about it? The bit about "except training"?
Tuc, the rest of - the great majority of - the Apache story was actually pretty impressive c.f most projects, given the UK specific mods (of which engines were the most high profile, but by no means only, challenges). Initial assessment 1994, Apache chosen 1995, Initial RTS 1999. ISD was then delayed from what it could have been by that training issue, but the capability releases did not stop in the meantime.
Speaking of the RTM322 integration, I think RR (and in particular the couple of Mesa on-site engineers who undertook the integration tweaking) should have got much more kudos for what they achieved in a short time. It was so smooth, it looked easy - and so many people may have thought it WAS easy.
McBoeing were worried, given the problems they had moving from -701 to -701C engines for the US Army. As it turned out, the 322 was working well in a fraction of the time that program(me) took.