Hot new helicopter/rotorcraft news

[Griz882]

General Gehler, head of Army aviation, doesn’t sound too jazzed about his Airbuses.

https://www.janes.com/article/86192/us-army-seeks-to-address-pilot-shortfall

Then there’s the fact that they cost 3x as much to fly as the Lakota...

The final quote is quite interesting..."What we have found is that the TH-67 students turn out to be good pilots but poor system managers, while the UH-72A students are poor pilots but good system managers." Thinking of today's military aviator what are we looking for? Stick-and-rudder guys or systems guys?

 

[squorch2]

Systems forever.

 

[phrogdriver]

You can always learn systems later. It’s harder to learn the fundamentals if you never learned them in the first place.

 

[Pags]

The final quote is quite interesting..."What we have found is that the TH-67 students turn out to be good pilots but poor system managers, while the UH-72A students are poor pilots but good system managers." Thinking of today's military aviator what are we looking for? Stick-and-rudder guys or systems guys?

Both. You gotta be able to aviate the airplane to execute the tactics and you need to be able to effectively employ the weapon systems.

 

[thosefreakinATs]

button pushing itsnt going to save you when the bird shits the bed.

 

[Pags]

button pushing itsnt going to save you when the bird shits the bed.

Define "shit the bed." All of my EPs were systems related and didn't have much to do with stick skills but I never had an engine failure nor a TR failure. But I did use the stick skills to land on the boat, fly form, fly the gun patterns, etc. If you start incorporating sensors into your tactics you'll spend a lot more of your time mashing buttons. I saw a dude hand lase an APKWS, he attributed his good shot to lots of time playing video games.

 

[phrogdriver]

The buttons you push will change in your fleet aircraft anyway. Being master of a COTS digimap with Jeppesen charts isn’t going to help you in the fleet because the systems are completely different.

 

[Jim123]

 

[Griz882]

Its an entirely different kind of flying!

 

[phrogdriver]

Altogether.

 

[Gatordev]

Then there’s the fact that the Lakota costs 3x as much to fly...

From what I've been told by a couple of the corporate guys at my company, the -145 costs a lot more than a -135 to operate. I'm not saying that's a reason to pick them, but it's an interesting data point.

As for Systems vs. Stick skills, the fleet will want Systems guys, but what people have to remember is that it's primary flight training. You have to at least try and grasp the fundamentals of flying a helo. That will help you later when the flying part of the automation fails later. And it will fail, eventually.

 

[phrogdriver]

From what I've been told by a couple of the corporate guys at my company, the -145 costs a lot more than a -135 to operate. I'm not saying that's a reason to pick them, but it's an interesting data point.

As for Systems vs. Stick skills, the fleet will want Systems guys, but what people have to remember is that it's primary flight training. You have to at least try and grasp the fundamentals of flying a helo. That will help you later when the flying part of the automation fails later. And it will fail, eventually.

The DoD rate for UH-72 is nearly $2500 an hour, as I recall. For an H135 the cost per flight hour is in the $800s. Still way more than most singles, other than a AW119, with a PT6 and enormous overhaul costs.

 

[ChuckMK23]

TH-XX is part of the larger AHTS - so there will be decisions on what can be done synthetically vs in the aircraft - and that matrix will certainly be different for each vendor.

My hope is there are a few well grounded flags/general officers who will select what we "should" do. The fear is the decision gets made by a bunch of number crunching technocrats using balanced scorecards and weighed measures against "requirements". Data driven decision making in a bureaucratic setting can be evil.

I also hope smart people making decisions look outward for ideas rather than just inward.

We did do fairly well with JPATS/T-6 - what made that program a success?

 

[Pags]

TH-XX is part of the larger AHTS - so there will be decisions on what can be done synthetically vs in the aircraft - and that matrix will certainly be different for each vendor.

My hope is there are a few well grounded flags/general officers who will select what we "should" do. The fear is the decision gets made by a bunch of number crunching technocrats using balanced scorecards and weighed measures against "requirements". Data driven decision making in a bureaucratic setting can be evil.

I also hope smart people making decisions look outward for ideas rather than just inward.

We did do fairly well with JPATS/T-6 - what made that program a success?

Remember how I've said "source selection process" a bunch of times? That's how it's done.

 

[phrogdriver]

TH-XX is part of the larger AHTS - so there will be decisions on what can be done synthetically vs in the aircraft - and that matrix will certainly be different for each vendor.

My hope is there are a few well grounded flags/general officers who will select what we "should" do. The fear is the decision gets made by a bunch of number crunching technocrats using balanced scorecards and weighed measures against "requirements". Data driven decision making in a bureaucratic setting can be evil.

I also hope smart people making decisions look outward for ideas rather than just inward.

We did do fairly well with JPATS/T-6 - what made that program a success?

You’re the first person to tell me that T-6 was done well.