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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: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:23PM (3 children)
The story is not terribly well researched by the journalist.
Its really two stories. First, the blackhawk is a 1970s design to replace the huey. Its not a bad design for a 1970s chopper. For something made with slide rules in the pre-microprocessor era it kicks butt. Obviously there's been some modernization, but a model-T with an engine computer and Android Auto entertainment system is still fundamentally a model-T. The MH-139 is a 2000s design to replace the huey. Both the huey and the MH139 were made by Bell Helicopters. The MH139 was in a shared group project with this Augusta consortium because Bell was super busy with the second story, that being the V-22 Osprey which is a deathtrap.
The second story is the Osprey has always overpromised under-delivered and killed a lot of people. Part of ramping up the contract and r+d tempo on the V-22 around 2005 was Bell apparently giving up on their 2000s modernization of their old Huey, they sold out their share of the group project back to Augusta.
So its not frankly too shocking that the company that made the Huey, when in competition with another company that tried to upgrade the Huey in the 70s, kicked their butt in 2000s. I mean ... think about it... the MH-139 modernized a Huey using modern CAD/CAM whereas the blackhawk was a competitors attempt at a sequel made using sliderules... Meanwhile the failure of the V-22 program led to Bell having to give up and refocus on the new V-22 rather than the sequel to the Huey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:15PM (2 children)
Only 42 so far, but who's counting?
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)
The Marines that ride and fly them everyday still have a big hard on for them...
I mean it's still tragic that 42 service members died because something went wrong, but as far as I'm aware those deaths lead to the discovery of flaws which were later fixed in hardware by the company or fixed in wetware with new training and maintenance procedures, so those deaths we're not in vain. Ideally those faults would have been identified before in testing, but as we all know it's impossible to fully simulate real life. Sometimes a bug can't be found until the end user gets ahold of it.
(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.