Wouldn’t have thought that this would be the winner:
"WASHINGTON — Textron’s Bell has won the U.S. Army’s competition to build the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the service’s largest helicopter procurement decision in 40 years.
The deal for the next-generation helicopter is worth up to $1.3 billion and is set to replace roughly 2,000 Black Hawk utility helicopters and around 1,200 Apache attack helicopters around 2030. FLRAA will not serve as a one-for-one replacement for existing aircraft, but it will take over the roles of the Black Hawk, long the workhorse of the Army for getting troops to and around the battlefield."
Man when the Blackhawk first came out they had some real issues.
There was some bad gallows humor about it at the time. those thing fell out of the sky for six months.
I remember. Hell there were guys who would joke that during briefings initial stages of the operation called for the crashing of a UH 60 as a diversionary tactic to confuse and disorient the enemy while the true entry team would insert from an alternate UH 60.
How have the Osprey faired when taking small arms fire? I know a helo is a compromise to start with, but these seem to be another order of magnitude toward Rube Goldberg…. Does the extra speed (and altitude) make any difference getting to and from to make up for it?