[HN Gopher] DARPA's new X-76
___________________________________________________________________
DARPA's new X-76
Author : newer_vienna
Score : 121 points
Date : 2026-03-09 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.darpa.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.darpa.mil)
| dash2 wrote:
| " With SPRINT, we're not just building an X-plane; we're building
| options". Found the guy who couldn't be bothered to write his own
| press release...
| notahacker wrote:
| Good to hear that the DoD's new contract with OpenAI is solving
| all the most important problems...
| O5vYtytb wrote:
| It's a quote from someone...?
| jdiez17 wrote:
| ... who probably wrote their prepared PR statement with an
| LLM.
| esseph wrote:
| I have always talked/written like this. now that LLMs do it
| in a similar enough way, my own writing gets called AI
| slop. I just wish my rotator cuffs knew I was a robot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Skimping on the service again, are we?
| irl_zebra wrote:
| It's probably good signal at least, if not a bit of a
| harsh thing to say that I don't mean in a bad way, that
| your writing was bland or mediocre since LLMs are
| basically regression to the mean.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It feels like DARPA has fallen so far. In a post-Salt Typhoon
| era it's really hard to imagine them as dynamic, best-in-class
| innovators anymore.
| ambicapter wrote:
| This administration doesn't really prioritize anything that
| has to do with intelligence, so advanced research was
| obviously going to fall by the wayside.
| browsingonly wrote:
| https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs
| bigyabai wrote:
| No search results for "Salt Typhoon" as the query. This
| nation really is fucked.
| ambicapter wrote:
| What are you saying? Do you think my claim was that all
| US research programs have closed up shop?
| irl_zebra wrote:
| I think I'd rather have them working on airplane tech rather
| than writing airplane tech press releases. With this approach,
| it's not just a tactical thing; it's relieving the burden of
| wordsmithing from technical people.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| You're absolutely right.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just
| didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone
| to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a
| new job. I hope they get it.
| binkHN wrote:
| It was a GPT.
| irl_zebra wrote:
| Or, at least, my take on GPT. :) I promise I am a human.
| palmotea wrote:
| > The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just
| didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up
| someone to do more design work, it freed someone to
| interview for a new job. I hope they get it.
|
| Do technical writers work on press releases? This sounds
| more like a job for the public relations/corporate
| communications department.
| newer_vienna wrote:
| I'm quite fond of the caption, which describes a "a proof-of-
| concept technology demonstrator that aims to demonstrate
| technologies and concepts"
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| It looks like a maintenance nightmare with those clutches to
| decouple the blades and the mechanisms to have them folded during
| cruising. Does it even improve substantially in anh metric over
| the V280 to put money into it?
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| The V280 is designed to be cheap (a very relative term here).
|
| Reading between the lines, I suspect "fast, but also expensive"
| was a design option that popped up and was not chosen earlier
| in the V280 program and now Darpa wants to pay to see where it
| goes.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Hard to be more expensive than F-35B.
| XorNot wrote:
| The F-35 is cheaper then some new production 4th generation
| fighters at this point.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The sticker price is competitive but the cost per flight
| hour and the availability factor is pretty horrifying.
| Factoring in the cost of flying and the availability
| makes the Grippen about half the cost.
|
| I wonder if the flight hour cost of F 35 includes the
| maintenance it's undergoing when it's not available.
| bigyabai wrote:
| The Gripen is a fantastic jet, but you're basically
| describing the difference between a fourth and fifth
| generation platform. When Saab and Embraer roll out their
| own fifth-generation jets, they will also have to contend
| with expensive RAM coating and complex internal
| hardpoints.
|
| Putting aside the export market, it's a small miracle
| that the F-35 turned out as well as it did. Having a
| mostly-common fighter airframe shared between the Navy,
| Marines and Air Force was a pipe dream in the 90s.
| America is lucky the program didn't collapse entirely.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| 4th generation platforms like Grippen are not survivable
| in a modern air defense environment without complementary
| 5th generation platforms to establish air superiority.
| You can't avoid having a fleet of something like F-35 to
| gain control of the airspace.
| sofixa wrote:
| > modern air defense environment
|
| Wildly dependent on your definition of "modern", which
| mostly depends on your potential adversary. The
| Russia/Ukraine, and the new war in the Gulf have shown
| numerous ways in which 4th generation jets, and more
| importantly cheaper missiles and even more cheap drones
| can perform supression of enemy air defences and/or air
| support. Unless you're fighting the US or China, 4th gen
| jets are plenty. And even against US and US defended
| locations, cheap drones and missiles have been able to
| influct some pretty serious damage to critical
| infrastructure (like extremely expensive and rare radar
| systems). An adversary not crippled by extreme sanctions
| and corruption for decades might have been able to
| achieve even more, even with the total lack of airpower.
| XorNot wrote:
| Presuming that state of affairs will persist though is
| fraught.
|
| It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military
| installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept
| those systems - and depending on a number of factors you
| could easily end up back at low performance drones being
| so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to
| deploy.
|
| WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely
| the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military
| installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept
| those systems - and depending on a number of factors you
| could easily end up back at low performance drones being
| so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to
| deploy.
|
| That's unlikely. Anti-drone defences will only improve,
| yes, but autonomous drone swarms numbering in the
| thousands to tens of thousands are doable today, and few
| weapons systems can handle the rate of launch/fire
| required to combat that. Especially if there are follow-
| up waves mixing drones and heavy missiles against which
| your anti-drone defences wouldn't be enough.
|
| > WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking:
| surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine
| gun.
|
| But building a cheap kamikaze drone costs much less than
| building a human.
| XorNot wrote:
| Define cheap and multiply by thousands. Ukrainian front
| line drones stopped being DJIs years ago.
|
| They're now much closer to $3000 USD+ at the low end for
| an ISR vehicle. $8000+ for the more capable FPV kamikazes
| is the estimate for Russian models.
|
| Which is comparable to a 155mm artillery shell. But with
| a lot less payload.
|
| There's already literally millions of drones being
| produced and used per year in that conflict - and they've
| made a big impact, but the stability of the frontline
| also reveals that the impact of "swarms" is hardly
| overpowering (the obsession with them is also weird - if
| you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing
| you'd do is put them all close together).
| sofixa wrote:
| > overpowering
|
| As Iran shows, you don't need overpowering. You need to
| hit the enemy where it hurts them, like strategic
| infrastructure.
|
| > "swarms" ... (the obsession with them is also weird -
| if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing
| you'd do is put them all close together)
|
| On the contrary, a swarm allows you to overwhelm the
| enemy air defences, which allows you to hit targets,
| including those same air defences, without having to
| disable them first. Cf. Iran destroying a THAAD radar.
| greedo wrote:
| 4th generation aircraft are not sustainable in modern
| combat without a wide array of assistance from EW etc.
| The losses of aircraft in Ukraine on both sides are
| horrifying. The only reasons the Ukrainians persist is
| because they have no choice. The Russians can sit outside
| of the Ukrainian engagement range and lob semi-smart
| bombs, or air to air missiles at any Ukrainian aircraft
| that show up on their radar.
|
| The real reason stealth is needed is as a counter to
| GBAD. Modern anti-aircraft missiles are incredible
| lethal.
| sofixa wrote:
| > "modern combat"
|
| > have no choice
|
| That's my point. Any battlefield today is "modern", but
| militaries operate with what they have. From Russia to
| the Houthis passing via the Houthis, we've seen insane
| amounts of damage done on "a modern battlefield" with
| anything from Cold War era equipment to cheap drones
| assembled by a terrorist group living in the mountains
| with no industrial base.
|
| Yes, if the US wants to fight China, and vice versa, it
| needs 5th gen jets. Everyone else doesn't _need_ them.
| They 're nice to have to make your job easier (like
| Israel vs Iran), but don't guarantee you anything (like
| Israel vs Iran).
| lukan wrote:
| "4th generation aircraft are not sustainable in modern
| combat without a wide array of assistance from EW etc. "
|
| But isn't that true of the F35 as well?
|
| On it's own, I doubt it would survive much longer on the
| eastern front in Ukraine.
|
| In Iran the F-35 also did not fly around freely while the
| ground radars were active. They had to be taken out
| first. For that stealth was probably useful (and in
| general it is).
|
| But it is not making them invisible - and cheap sensors
| and AI is likely to counter it soon. Because sensors and
| analysis will get better over time and sensors also
| better and cheaper. But the stealth will remain largely
| the same. It cannot really be upgraded for existing jets.
| slaw wrote:
| Russia/Ukraine war shows that 4th generation jets are not
| survivable in any current as of 2026 air defense
| environment.
| UltraSane wrote:
| The Grippen is incredibly vulnerable to anti air
| missiles.
| simonh wrote:
| I've had to eat some humble pie and moderate my
| assessment of the F-35. It still does have a lot of
| issues, for sure, but it turns out if you divide an eye
| wateringly large number by another impressively large
| number, the result can be a lot better than I thought it
| would be.
|
| It's lot more about operational costs and project
| deliverables than plain sticker shock, and it is turning
| out to be a capable platform.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I've had to eat some humble pie and moderate my
| assessment of the F-35
|
| Same for me. I was surprised to hear that it actually
| competes favorably on price. And aside from early griping
| that it couldn't beat an ancient F-16 in a dogfight, it
| seems pretty capable in that regard too. Saw a demo at
| the last airshow I went to and that plane was defying
| physics. I love the 16, always will, but I definitely
| don't think it would hang with an F-35.
| esseph wrote:
| In a real fight, the F-35 smokes the F-16 beyond visual
| range before the F-16 even knows there is a problem. The
| radar and electronic warfare capabilities are incredible.
| budman1 wrote:
| all these cost assessments are numbers on a spreadsheet.
| let's see what the numbers look like after 20 years on
| the line, with SrA mechanics and most flight hours by new
| Lt's and Captains. if they over-estimate the engine
| rebuild time, or if it really takes 2 hours instead of 30
| minutes to remove and replace an avionics box (as was
| forecast), the calculation can veer in the other
| direction quickly. i predict the F35 will be the most
| expensive by flying hour of any (line) aircraft that has
| come before it.
| rluna828 wrote:
| it also has stealth. This is a complete disaster. The only
| purpose of this stealth ship is to steal leaders and or go
| inside cave lairs and blow them up.
| budman1 wrote:
| without stealth, an aircraft will survive about 5 minutes in
| contested airspace.
| carabiner wrote:
| All military aircraft are maintenance nightmares. They're also
| extraordinarily loud and devour fuel. These are not intended to
| entire commercial service where they need to turn a profit for
| the operators.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > They're also extraordinarily loud and devour fuel.
|
| Steal helicopters have entered the chat.
| greedo wrote:
| Comanche was cancelled, and even it was loud and gulped
| fuel. The "stealth" Blackhawk derivative used in the Bin
| Laden raid might be quieter, but it definitely gulped a ton
| of fuel. Fuel consumption is just an accepted issue with
| helicopter technology.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Maintenance is an issue for more than just profitability.
| More maintenance means fewer sorties in a given time period,
| heavier reliance on and utilization of supply chains, and
| fewer platforms that can be serviced by a given set of
| mechanics and facilities.
|
| Just look at WW2: Germany had some fantastic equipment, but
| they couldn't field it because they didn't have the fuel,
| spare parts and the maintenance capabilities available. A
| tiger could kill 10 Shermans, but the Americans could always
| bring up an 11th Sherman.
|
| For decades we have been able to afford complacency - we
| strike when we're ready against people who mostly can't
| strike back. We can afford to be wasteful because we have so
| much more than anyone we would go up against. No one is
| seriously threatening our ability to keep our military going.
| But militaries need to be prepared for peer conflicts where
| someone could give us a run for our money.
| greedo wrote:
| The comparison in tech is apt, but the countervailing
| argument is that the discrepancy in economies doomed the
| Nazis in WW2. German was a little powerhouse considering
| the size of its population, but it only had half the GDP of
| the US, not to mention the other Allies. Combine this with
| a smaller population, and it really didn't matter what the
| Germans did in terms of equipment. They were destined to
| lose unless they struck gold with a wunderwaffe like the
| atomic bomb.
|
| In today's world, the US outspends the next 10 countries
| _combined._ In normal times, it values the lives of its
| servicemen, and is willing to spend quite a bit to ensure
| dominance. So it will often have boutique gear that other
| countries could never afford.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > A tiger could kill 10 Shermans, but the Americans could
| always bring up an 11th Sherman.
|
| Supply is one part, being able to repair is another. The
| tiger was a massive pain in the dick to fix. It had a weak
| gearbox that took _hours_ to get to.
|
| Plus most of the parts were bespoke, which means lots more
| tooling needed to service everything. The other thing is
| that germany wasn't actually that mechanised compared to
| the french, or english
| jjk166 wrote:
| > The tiger was a massive pain in the dick to fix. It had
| a weak gearbox that took _hours_ to get to.
|
| Which is exactly the topic under discussion.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The F-35s train over my house. When the business end of the
| engine points downward it rattles the windows and sounds like
| freedom.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| So it's an Osprey with a jet in the back?
| torginus wrote:
| Usually with these programs, they just commission an artist
| with some vague description, like they tell him to draw a
| futuristic VTOL aircraft, these pics have zero bearing on what
| gets delivered.
|
| Sometimes they even take the piss with this, like in this video
| for a next-gen engine, where you can see their engine doesn't
| even fit in their fantasy aircraft:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHun6rxQm0
| porphyra wrote:
| Cool, I guess this should be able to hover in much more "austere"
| environments than the F-35B STOVL and the Harrier Jet. Tiltrotor
| with folding rotor blades sounds very mechanically complex and
| challenging though.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Isn't this need already met by the Bell V280 that the army
| already selected for it's Blackhawk replacement? What is the big
| innovation they are going for here?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| +50% top speed over the V280. Bell offered it as an alternative
| to the V280 in the early stage of the contract, but it was
| judged too experimental (and probably too expensive).
| Apparently DARPA is funding further development of the concept.
| mrDmrTmrJ wrote:
| To be clear, this is not a power-point program but a continuation
| of a long-standing design work with Bell.
|
| Two articles that cover this in depth are: 1. Revised Fold-Away
| Rotor Aircraft Concepts Emerge From Special Operations X-Plane
| Program. December 2024: https://www.twz.com/air/revised-fold-
| away-rotor-aircraft-con...
|
| 2. Bell's Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A
| Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter. September 2021:
| https://www.twz.com/41997/bells-plan-to-finally-realize-a-ro...
|
| The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on
| the folding rotor concept.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor
| concept
|
| Oof, I wish I had a job like that.
| phplovesong wrote:
| The swedish gripen can do mach2 (2300km/h) and does not need a
| traditional runway (500 meters of something "flat enough" will
| do). I assume its way cheaper than something like this.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Can it hover?
| Zigurd wrote:
| I suppose the argument is that X-76 could work in environments
| without roads. But that also implies without fuel or any other
| support on the ground.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'd go for simplicity and do a tail lander.
| usrusr wrote:
| These days my vote would go to a quad. Impeller fore, impeller
| aft and one in each wing. Behind doors, obviously, like the
| bays for retractable landing gear - this is a solved problem.
|
| They don't have to be efficient, because how much hovering time
| would you really need? Battery could even exist only in mission
| specific pods (internal perhaps, when it's a cargo carrier),
| trade-off as needed.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Electric motors are very light too.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > They don't have to be efficient
|
| Thats the point, the more efficient the less supply line you
| need, which means more autonomy.
|
| I cant find the source but in Afghanistan a large proportion
| of the Allied casualties were from protecting supply lines.
|
| The thing about quad copters is that they work at small scale
| because the rotor have almost no inertia. When you scale that
| up to 2m, then inertia is a bitch. That means you need
| tilting blades to make up for that lack of control.
|
| BUT
|
| You also need something to be powerful enough to alter the
| speed of the rotors to get yaw.
|
| Plus you then also need to get them all to rotate so that you
| can get the efficiency of normal flight.
|
| The reason why the osprey exists is because it has longer
| range than a helicopter (~1200 miles vs 400) its also faster.
| bilsbie wrote:
| So it has jet engines that blades unfold and attach to during
| takeoff and landing? Why not always use the blades?
| rluna828 wrote:
| stealth
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Speed and efficiency I suspect
|
| Targeting a propeller for both raw lifting capacity as well as
| speed is quite difficult. I suspect they have different
| geometry as well.
|
| If you spin a propeller fast enough the tips break the speed of
| sound, from what I recall that knackers the efficency. To
| generate lots of lift a bigger rotor is more efficient (hence
| why helicopters have long rotoblades that don't spin at high
| RPM)
|
| The longer the blades the faster the tips, which means there is
| a tradeoff between thrust and speed of the air being yeeted out
| the back
| greatgib wrote:
| I can't access darpa.mil. Was it slashdotted because of the
| article being posted here, or now it is unavailable outside of
| US?
| logotype wrote:
| I can access it from the UK
| newer_vienna wrote:
| Still up here in the US
| dang wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260309171633/https://www.darpa...
| might work
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Inaccessible from France. With family.dns.mullvad.net private
| DNS.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Hmmm... that just looks like problems. It's a lot of mechanical
| parts that always have to work correctly.
| 01100011 wrote:
| The Osprey killed a lot of Marines over the past decades. It
| took a while to work out the issues. Hopefully we will remember
| what the Osprey taught us.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Someone has played the new Deus Ex games
| rluna828 wrote:
| I wonder is Iran would have gone different if we had captured the
| Ayatollah instead of killing him. A stealth drop ship like this
| would have allowed that to happen. The reason why regimes are
| more likely to negotiate when you capture their leaders is
| because you might release them. (not a good day for the usurper.)
| ivell wrote:
| I don't think whatever is negotiated with Iran's current regime
| would actually be honored by them. They may commit something to
| get their leader back, but won't be keeping the promises.
|
| Their self stated goal is destruction of Israel and US. They
| could have chosen peace and not have funded proxies across the
| middle east. Their choice of aggression by whatever means they
| have at their disposal just shows what their long term strategy
| would be.
|
| They have shown the intend. They just didn't have the capacity
| to follow through. Once they gain the capacity, they could go
| extreme lengths. Just see how they attacked their neighbors who
| were not party to the war.
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| A very good response to the parent comment and summary of the
| current situation.
|
| AIUI the Iranian attack on Arab countries is strategic,
| increasing energy costs pressures the US to stop military
| action. However the US and allies were prepared with set
| aside oil reserves, increasing supplies from other sources,
| and reducing Iran's ability to interfere with shipping.
|
| Major warfare always has tragic effects, but against regimes
| actively pursuing destruction of other nations, return of
| fire is a rational response.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > A stealth drop ship like this would have allowed that to
| happen.
|
| Yeah, I saw that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode too.
|
| Sadly, we might need some more intensive vibranium research
| before it becomes reality.
| trelliumD wrote:
| that already exists in the form of Saab Gripen :)
| FrankBooth wrote:
| Where do the 14 soldiers sit in the Gripen?
| rkomorn wrote:
| On the wings, obviously, for quick deployment. Maybe I mean
| early deployment.
| adolph wrote:
| Shades of: _Being strapped to the sponsons of an AH-64 is
| one wild, but potentially life-saving ride._
|
| https://www.twz.com/38435/this-is-all-the-survival-gear-
| that...
| rkomorn wrote:
| The straps just need to be a little stronger!
| radicalethics wrote:
| I wonder what the motivation behind this is. Tactically, why ever
| show your latest weapon? What is the strategic purpose of this?
| It's like if I message my opponent in SC2 and tell them exactly
| what I'm going to tech to. That's ... insane right? Why would
| anyone do that?
| benjcpalm wrote:
| It's not a tactical choice- it's strategic deterrence, and it's
| not insane at all!
|
| The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a
| lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific
| capabilities.
|
| There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US
| government as the program was under development. It makes the
| US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from
| thinking about conventional warfare with America.
|
| That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an
| F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the
| fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those
| details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to
| justify the risk to the program.
| bityard wrote:
| Yes, but even if the US didn't release the specifications of
| the F35, other countries around the world would rapidly
| figure out most of the capabilities anyway from photos,
| videos, and casual observation. (In other words, they'd know
| soon enough WHAT it can do but not necessarily HOW it does
| it.)
| bityard wrote:
| This isn't a new weapon, this is a test platform for various
| ideas, none of which are new or secret. Also, there are not
| many groundbreaking advancements left in military aviation.
| Most are just fairly incremental engineering or manufacturing
| improvements. (Military space technology might be a different
| story, though.)
|
| The only other nation with the potential to develop a high-tech
| military plane that could rival US technology would be China.
| But if we ever got into a war with China, they wouldn't need
| superior technology to win. They could win via superior
| manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can
| draft into service at a moment's notice.
| foobarian wrote:
| They could just cease all shipping. The consequences would be
| legendary.
| logicchains wrote:
| >They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the
| sheer number of people they can draft into service at a
| moment's notice.
|
| Even with their manufacturing capacity they don't have
| remotely enough boats to get a nontrivial fraction of those
| people to the US mainland, and the majority of those people
| can't swim, so they wouldn't help in taking the US mainland,
| a requirement to "win" a serious war. Their entire armed
| forces is also almost completely lacking in combat
| experience, and in their last skirmish (against some unarmed
| Indian soldiers in the mountains) 30+ soldiers Chinese
| tragically drowned, due to the aforementioned lack of
| swimming ability.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| How China frames victory and how the US frames victory
| needn't agree, and likely wouldn't. That being said,
| framing victory as only counting if there is a wholesale
| land invasion seems odd, as I suspect neither side would
| want to actually do that... so who 'wins'?
| Alan_Writer wrote:
| I think they just show what it can be seen, like any country
| with advance military developments.
|
| They won't show you everything.
|
| Have you ever heard about those sound/sonic (or something
| similar) weapons the US used in Maduro's kidnap operation?
| Venezuelan soldiers said (pero some publications on the
| internet) that they never saw anything alike, leaving them
| completely disoriented and helpless?
|
| Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or
| solid materiales, and the same time, bacome invisibles.
|
| It's more than sci-fi.
| kuprel wrote:
| From the image it doesn't look balanced for VTOL when the
| propellors are vertical. Also are the jets enabled during VTOL?
| gorkish wrote:
| I'm betting the person who created the "artist rendering" isnt
| an aeronautical engineer.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Wager $10 it's a LLM prompt.
| dmbche wrote:
| Design remings me of something...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involv...
| yabones wrote:
| The next generations of accidents are going to be even more
| looney-tunes in nature.
| conorbergin wrote:
| The Osprey's accident rate is not that bad, and the US Army
| have ordered a new smaller tiltrotor, the v280.
| owlninja wrote:
| They officially named it recently to the 'MV-75'.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The Osprey has a reputation, for sure, but it's mid-pack. They
| called the F-104 the widow maker for a reason, for example. And
| the F-16 has a fairly high accident rate, too, slightly higher
| than the Osprey. Though I think the F-16's history is a bit
| more lopsided, they made some changes after early production
| airframes proved pretty accident prone.
| sedatk wrote:
| In Turkey, F-104 was called "flying coffin".
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| L PRGB CHIP BURN
|
| Any time there are planetaries or splines attached to jet
| engines, it's a really weak spot. This holds for ordinary
| turboprops too.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Different engines for different phases of flight? It has been
| tried many times and never really works. Such craft can be made
| to fly, but never well. The answer has to come from using one set
| to power all phases.
|
| Id be interested in seeing a turboprop that can transition to a
| turbofan/jet once the prop is folded away. The f-35 was a step in
| this direction.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I'm confident with the stellar service and safety record of the
| V-22 that an even more complex tiltrotor will be a standout
| success for the military.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| 16 hull losses per ~400 units built is not exactly a stellar
| safety record.
|
| Or I guess you mean /stellar?
| jdkee wrote:
| He is being sarcastic.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| If you look at the V-22 safety record in the context of the
| level of technical development, it is pretty good (e.g. compare
| to helicopters and aircraft from the 60s). The first
| _production_ generation of a brand new type of vehicle is
| always going to be complicated, and virtually all of the V-22
| mishaps come from the "new" components and procedures.
|
| The fundamental tradeoff with tiltrotor platforms is that you
| trade significantly increased speed for significantly increased
| complexity. What that means is your battlefield survivability
| goes up when dealing with any opponent with meaningful air
| defenses, but at the cost of increasing your "resting" accident
| rate when most peacetime accidents are consequences of
| maintenance and/or procedural issues.
| greedo wrote:
| Flying military aircraft is inherently dangerous. The US Army
| had 15 Class A mishaps in 2025, the USN 12, the USAF 14, and 6
| for the USMC. The Apache (AH-64) led the Army, and this is a
| mature airframe, but shit happens.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Why won't they adopt one of Sikorsky's compound helicopters
| already? They're beautiful and elegant solutions to this problem.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| Because Sikorski can't make them work. Sure, they can take off
| and fly fast in a straight line, but they haven't been able to
| demonstrate sufficient maneuverability due to vibration
| problems in the rotor head. They are also _very_ tall,
| prohibitively so for existing shipboard hangar, which would
| otherwise seem to be their advantage over tiltrotor platforms.
| brk wrote:
| I don't understand the purpose of the Xenon taillight.
| tamimio wrote:
| I think the blades are added there for deception, most likely it
| won't have blades.
| EA wrote:
| It will need blades to VTOL.
| tamimio wrote:
| They do exist, WIP, a bladless VTOL
|
| https://newatlas.com/aircraft/jetoptera-bladeless-hsvtol/
|
| > Jetoptera is developing VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and
| Landing) aircraft that use a "Fluidic Propulsion System"
| (FPS) instead of traditional rotors or propellers, acting
| like "bladeless fans on steroids". These systems use
| compressed air and the Coanda effect to generate high-speed
| thrust, promising quieter, more efficient, and faster flight
| (up to Mach 0.8) for aerial mobility.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Running exclusively off jet power would require an extremely
| (impossibly?) strong compressor stage coupled a powerful APU to
| generate lift. It's definitely not light enough to take off
| without tiltrotors.
| tamimio wrote:
| The concept is the compressed air sent through slits in a
| thruster, creating negative pressure that draws in
| surrounding air, resulting in increased thrust, there's a
| concept already of this, check the above reply.
| bigyabai wrote:
| From that link, "the system delivers 10% more thrust [...]
| than a small turbojet."
|
| They are still very deeply limited by compressor
| technology, regardless of whether they use combustion or
| electric propulsion.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| So ... we're going to try even harder to put humans in harm's
| way?
| rozab wrote:
| It's cool they actually still commission concept paintings like
| this
| smlacy wrote:
| That background looks like AI for sure though?
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