No deal. It would be akin to the navy going to LSA’s for pre-flight and C172’s for primary. Maybe we could get a few of these for VTJ, https://www.kitplanes.com/viperjet/
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- Thread starter Randy Daytona
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Good point. There's been little press on the state of the H145/UH-72 in it's primary training role. Anecdotally I've heard a whole range of reports both good and bad.
But when did the tide turn against Lakota?
It would be if you expect to go straight from a Robbie to a Chinook. This isn't a NIFE-type thing, or a pilot program like what the Army is doing now. They're talking about completely changing their primary trainer. A 66 is not suitable to good instrument or tactical training, at least not safely. And if you do that, you'll incur greater costs in fleet aircraft making up for deficiencies earlier.
Right now they aren't looking at a hybrid solution..
The Lakota works great, countries all over Europe, including the UK, use it as a primary helo trainer. The problem is the Army's contracting construct, where they somehow pay more to operate UH72s/H145s than anywhere else in the Army or the rest of the world.
The issue is that the Army is getting the short end of the stick compared to the rest of DoD and that within the Army, aviation has been picked as a bill payer for the rest of the org.
They're looking under the couch cushions for change, so to speak.
I'm curious. How much time do you have in the R66? I know you're saying that it's not a great tactical or instrument trainer, but do you think the Bell 206 was a better one? That worked out all right for us for about 50 years. What are you basing all of this off of?
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That’s not what we identified as the problem with the 72 as our intro trainer. The Army wants a trainer to correct a problem of having low time aviators teaching other low time aviators in a flight regime neither are familiar with.
And a whole lot of us did push for a hybrid 3 step model where the 66 or whatever was picked was only a basic air handling trainer with a follow on low cost common systems and tactics trainer and a follow on advanced airframe. That is all but dead in the quest to not abandon the 75 and some of the efforts being buried inside of that program under a wider effort (flight school-West).
And to your earlier point, we have always had people go direct from a trainer to a 47. Couple classes on differential collective pitch and holy hell they can hover the beast. Its honestly not that hard to fly.
Nothing says "I"VE GOT THE CONTROLS!!!" like wresting a T-bar from a student who freezes up on the controls at the most inopportune time.
Similar to what NavAir used to do with a FW/RW. T-28/T-34 for basic flight environment and instruments, TH-57 primary helo, then TH-1L for advanced helo. Worked great, all the reasons for changing to a RW or FW only training model are, at least to me, fixing what's not broke.
I've only flown in it as a passenger.
I do know that it has a cycle setup not representative of any military aircraft and that it doesn't have an IFR cert.
The Skyryse aftermarket IFR setup they're working on is not typical of any other IFR cockpit, because it's premised on a different philosophy of pilot workload than the military currently uses.
Robbies also have a huge reputation for mast bumping.
The Army has explicitly excluded a hybrid approach from consideration. They're racing to the bottom to find a lower price point. That really leaves the 505, Robinson, and Enstrom, since the 73 and 407 are too pricy, MD is a fricking clown show, and the H125's rotor goes the opposite direction. None of the first three have IFR kits available yet, which is concerning. Training simulated IFR in VFR aircraft is of limited value, and also limits your available training days due to weather.
Yes, they've gotten by with some barebones aircraft in the past. I'd submit that just because they did that before doesn't mean it's a great idea now. Better an aircraft that can fly fleet representative missions now, both IFR and tactics, so that students can get sets and reps on those things before burning a whole lot more fuel on a "go to war" aircraft.
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What in Allah's name is that contraption that guy is giving a hand job to?Nothing says "I"VE GOT THE CONTROLS!!!" like wresting a T-bar from a student who freezes up on the controls at the most inopportune time.
It screams for turbulence induced PIO.
A shot from the cheap seats (at the Army, not you)... But does the Army regularly practice IFR in anything other than VFR at the school house (or the fleet)? Given the extremely low time of Actual for Army pilots that seems to be the norm, it doesn't seem that way.
Lawman can probably give a more nuanced answer/comment, but my impression is that we (as Naval Aviators and NA IPs) are just used to getting the X IMC if we are able to.
Community dependent considering half the current 64 fleet is not IFR capable and the simulator for the 64 only includes instrument areas in the Cairns/Lower Alabama airspace.
That said, FLAARA and the ranges seen in division/corps exercises have been forcing a lot of the recalcitrant “we’re never gone do this in combat” people out of the room for their ignorance. Now the problem is money and the fact that all the instrument training in the world isn’t stopping the identified immediate problem of aviators that don’t understand basic airmanship balling up a 42 million dollar aircraft because they can’t understand weather cock stability and other tail rotor and power related phenomena. That was a direct result seen from the LUH.
I don't see how getting a less capable aircraft helps fix LTE issues in the Army.
You can simulate any number of TR EPs in a helo with more power (block or move the pedals) and the IP will always have an out. Similarly, you can degrade stabilization.
While constantly being on the edge of disaster in a bug smasher may instill some vigilance, I don't think it will improve airmanship the way the Army thinks it will.
If you look at DOTMILPF or ORM doctrine, you're supposed to impose procedural or training remedies before trying a multi-hundreds of million material fix.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about what has been and will be done in “Flight School - Next” when those decisions are all still in pre decisional status.
There were and are active procedural changes going on across Army Aviation. The materials status we didn’t do was develop, buy, install new tail rotors across the 64 fleet, not chose to change trainers.