SubscribeIt descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell ... Consider it a gift from above.There goes any chance to feign some innocence. Dropping hell into mosques is a gift from god.
This speed is only achieved at the expense of payload, so that typical tiltrotors carry about half the payload of typical helicopters. For example, the V-22 tiltrotor has an empty weight of about 32,000 lb (14,500 kg), has two 6,150 shp (4.6 MW) engines and carries 24 troops. To illustrate the relatively greater efficiency of a helicopter, the CH-53E Super Stallion has the same empty weigh and the same engine power (3x 4300 shp), but can support a 50% higher maximum weight. This allows the CH-53E to carry 55 troops, and results in a payload that is more than twice that of the V-22. Because of the helicopter's greater payload, it has greater range than the tiltrotor, since it can carry much more fuel. The V-22, however, cruises 50% faster, and at much higher cruise altitudes. Because of this payload disadvantage, the tiltrotor's transport efficiency (speed times payload) does not ever equal that of a helicopter. The speed advantage alone, however, is significant in some military missions. For example, if the mission extends to 500 nautical miles (900 km), a typical tiltrotor can arrive in 2 hours, where a helicopter might take as long as 3 1/2 hours. The 1 1/2 hours saved could be very valuable tactically, and is the principal virtue sought by the military forces that advocate the tiltrotor.Along with mission time, the 50% increase in speed and higher cruising altitude would make a V-22 much harder to shoot down with small arms, RPGs, or even shoulder launched SAMs.
Odin Leberman, then a lieutenant colonel and the Osprey squadron commander at New River, ordered marines in his command to falsify Osprey maintenance records. He did it to make the plane appear more reliable than it was, to increase its chances of winning new funding. "We need to lie or manipulate the data, or however you wanna call it," he said in a meeting. A maintenance crew member was secretly running a tape. Leberman was later relieved of duty.A couple of the technical problems discussed in the article stand out, but I will only address the vortex ring state problem:
The accident was attributed to a little-understood flight phenomenon called vortex ring state, or VRS, in which a helicopter descending rapidly at low forward speed drops into its own turbulence. Its rotors lose their grip on the air, and the bird drops out of the sky. That news especially shook the Osprey community - it suggested that the plane might be fundamentally flawed. One squadron member reportedly turned in his wings.and solution:
Solution: Install a simple warning system. When a pilot pushes an Osprey toward VRS, a light flashes in the cockpit and a voice cautions, "Sink rate." And Osprey pilots now know to pay attention to those warnings.It appears that piloting a V-22 will be a serious challenge. It is my understanding that the Harrier has had similar problems. It is said that so long as the Marines only allowed their best pilots to fly Harriers the safety record was okay, but as soon as they relaxed their standards a little they started to see crashes. At any rate, the problem isn't really solvable, and weather that is an issue can't really be known definitively until the V-22 has seen combat missions.
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Oh, and: This Osprey, it flies?
posted by docgonzo at 10:49 AM on October 1, 2005