Ars Technica is reporting that the Italian-made MH-139 helicopter beat out two other bids to replace the UH-1 after the programme was put out for bidding.
Just in time to avoid the end of the fiscal year, the US Air Force has finally selected a successor to the aged UH-1 Hueys used by the Air Force's nuclear missile security force: the MH-139, a militarized version of the AgustaWestland AW139 from the Italian aerospace and defense company Leonardo. The MH-139 was a joint bid by Leonardo and Boeing and will be built in the United States at Leonardo's facilities in Philadelphia. The award this morning is for $375 million, covering delivery of the first four helicopters. But the overall program could be worth up to $2.4 billion, delivering up to 84 helicopters, as well as training systems and support equipment.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 27 2018, @09:46PM
I don't know every crash, but the general V-22 theme is its too low powered and too fat, so they cut corners in weird places. Something like the highest pressure hydraulics in mass produced aerospace by a huge fraction are in the V-22, stuff that you can get away with on a 1000 psi system will kill people on a 6000 psi system.
There are also some issues where they kinda whipped it together without the wind tunnel technology to really understand whats going on, again killing a lot of people. For example an efficient way to get killed in a helo is a slow vertical descent where you're sinking into turbulent airflow and it gets worse as you drop ever faster; the V-22 has that like any other helo but its 1000x worse. Some sprightly and studly strong helos can power right out of a stupid maneuver like that; fat and weak V-22 not so much its going down... Sort of like its not too hard to get killed in a stall using a WW1 biplane because they don't have enough thrust for their weight; whereas its kinda hard to die in a stall in a F-16 because in a few seconds you have a 1:1 thrust to weight ratio and nothing short of a spin can get you. Something like a study upgraded AH-64 is hard to kill in a vertical descent because its got enough raw power to escape; V-22 not so much.