Bell V-280 Valor -- The Future of Vertical Lift Takes Flight

[madmusti]

The Bell V-280 Valor, Bell Helicopter's third-generation-tiltrotor, offers the U.S. Army the highest levels of maturity and technical readiness. With its U.S. Army-centric design, the Bell V-280 has the capacity to perform a multitude of missions with unparalleled speed and agility. The Bell V-280's clean sheet design reduces complexity compared to previous generation tiltrotors, with fewer parts, as well as non-rotating, fixed engines. The Valor delivers the best value in procurement, operations and support, and force structure, providing increased maintainability, component reliability and systems designed to reduce operational and support costs.

 

[Malik Alashter]

Awesome bird.

 

[TVVELVEMO$]

A veritable flight of fancy!
You do not want to have a tilt-rotor with side doors adjacent to forward tilted rotors.......tends to chop off arms and legs in rappel mode; ergot the current US marine standard of MV-22 Osprey with rear door access/egress. Currently working on a Herc sized Quad though. Coming to a three storey compund near you!!!!!!!!

 

[United]

dont u think they already have this?

 

[Audio]

A veritable flight of fancy!
You do not want to have a tilt-rotor with side doors adjacent to forward tilted rotors.......tends to chop off arms and legs in rappel mode;

How would people rappel with forward tilted rotors? Which means the aircraft is moving forward and rappeling at least in the videos i saw is always done when the helicopter wasn't moving.

 

[walle]

i guess the future of the US military is still stuck in the middle east.

 

[TVVELVEMO$]

How would people rappel with forward tilted rotors? Which means the aircraft is moving forward and rappeling at least in the videos i saw is always done when the helicopter wasn't moving.

In order to save loiter time over "Hot LZ" the act of egress begins while Rotors are 'rotating' forward; similarly last man may be climbing aboard on 'wire' while the helo/aircraft begins its exit motion. You can verify that by visiting a USN airshow near you and asking the sergent on duty near a tiltrotor--as you display a US flag, may I assume you actually have been stateside?

As a bonus; may I suggest that if you are riding a tiltrotor, then by all means waste 5-15 minutes while the rotors swing up, then proceed to peer out of that side door, drop the rope, wait till it is properly anchored, then say your prayers and then hang ten-if you please.

In the mean time, all US 22-30 marines would have been on the ground and ready to go from their rear exit MV-22 Osprey or Boeing Vertol/Chinook. Hope you get my drift. Cheers.

 

[selvan33]

what's the specification difference between this and V22.

 

[Audio]

In order to save loiter time over "Hot LZ" the act of egress begins while Rotors are 'rotating' forward; similarly last man may be climbing aboard on 'wire' while the helo/aircraft begins its exit motion. You can verify that by visiting a USN airshow near you and asking the sergent on duty near a tiltrotor--as you display a US flag, may I assume you actually have been stateside?

As a bonus; may I suggest that if you are riding a tiltrotor, then by all means waste 5-15 minutes while the rotors swing up, then proceed to peer out of that side door, drop the rope, wait till it is properly anchored, then say your prayers and then hang ten-if you please.

In the mean time, all US 22-30 marines would have been on the ground and ready to go from their rear exit MV-22 Osprey or Boeing Vertol/Chinook. Hope you get my drift. Cheers.

I get the drift that Bell desperately needs your expertise.

Switching from plane mode to VTOL mode according to this video of the V-22 doesn not last anywhere near 5 or 15 minutes, it's more like a minute and a bit. I assume it would not be much longer for the V-280.
It can do it's "exit motion" in helicopter mode, helicopters do move forward with rotors at 90 degrees in relation to the forward motion and starts tilting when all are aboard.

I'd also like to point out to you, that when rapelling will occur the rotors will be generally in the up position, they cannot be in a horizontal position because that results in too much airspeed. If you would like to counter this argument please feel free to post a video of rapelling from a V-22 with rotors tilted forward-hearsay wont fly.
So any opening of doors and "securing the rope" will be done with rotors above the heads of soldiers, not very much unlike how it's done on conventional helicopters.

 

[gambit]

In order to save loiter time over "Hot LZ" the act of egress begins while Rotors are 'rotating' forward;...

True...

...similarly last man may be climbing aboard on 'wire' while the helo/aircraft begins its exit motion.

True...

As a bonus; may I suggest that if you are riding a tiltrotor, then by all means waste 5-15 minutes while the rotors swing up, then proceed to peer out of that side door, drop the rope, wait till it is properly anchored, then say your prayers and then hang ten-if you please.

Absolutely not true...

There are plenty of publicly available videos about the Osprey's ingress/egress of an area -- one provided by a participant in this discussion -- and none require even 5 minutes to fully translate the rotors.

I think you are confused on how a tiltrotor changes from fixed wing to rotary wings flight modes and how rapid based upon immediate need.

At a fixed rate of 3 deg/sec, a nacelle needs only about half minute to translate from full horizontal to full vertical.

V22 Osprey Web

The amount and rate of nacelle tilt can be manually controlled by the pilot or can be performed automatically by the flight control system. The V-22 can perform a complete transition from helicopter mode to airplane mode in as little as 16 seconds.

There is no reason for anyone else getting into this market to deviate from known success as established by the Osprey. But even if a manufacturer decided to use a fixed rotation rate as slow as 3 deg/sec, the time require to change from full forward flight to full vertical flight in an emergency, like airlifting soldiers out of combat zone or fighting a forest fire, should require no more than one minute.

Am willing to go on a limb here and say that the time for the tiltrotor is here. Retired Osprey pilots and crew will speak of its versatility and more manufacturers will get into the market, civilian and military. Emerging economies will be the best proving grounds because they will be able to build airports to accommodate all forms of aircrafts while older and established civilian airports like those in the US will be slightly behind to service their customers with this new form of air transport. The tiltrotor will require no more room to operate than the helo but will far outperform the helo in terms of range and speed. Just what regional air transport needs.

 

[gambit]