What if...? This concept helicopter wins a $100Bn Pentagon contract?
178 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Streecer;45298659][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/252Mz9U.gif[/IMG]
the future is here[/QUOTE]
It's like a video cutscene introducing a new unit in an old C&C game
ooh, I get to build clunky ass choppers now
Oh cool, another extremely expensive warehouse filler for the military.
They don't have enough of those.
You know what else cost 100 billion dollars? The whole Apollo program. And that is not counting the benefits from new researched technology.
[editline]5th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;45299487]Why aren't we calling the F35 the M14 of jets, or this the M14 of helicopters?
I guess nobody remembers the time the Military tried to replace every rifle with the M14 :v:[/QUOTE]
How old are you?
[QUOTE=Impact1986;45300784]You know what else cost 100 billion dollars? The whole Apollo program. And that is not counting the benefits from new researched technology.[/QUOTE]
$139 billion, according to Wikipedia and the [url=http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm]Inflation Calculator[/url].
[QUOTE=darunner;45300901]$139 billion, according to Wikipedia and the [url=http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm]Inflation Calculator[/url].[/QUOTE]
According to Wikipedia itself it was 109 billion. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost[/url]
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45300915]You do realize the Apollo program resulted from an arms race that cost well over 100 billion dollars, and was more about "lol I can nuke you from anywhere" than it was about going to the moon.
Countries never do something without something to gain, in which case the technology was a side effect, the primary thing to gain was "oh by the way, we can land people on the moon, imagine where we can land our nukes in your territory".[/QUOTE]
I am only talking about the Apollo Program. Not Project Mercury or Gemini included.
The Apollo Program wasn't about showing that you can send nukes all around the earth. There was a Mercury program which already shown that. If you knew anything about orbital maneuvers you would know that if you manage to put something in a stable orbit around earth, you already managed to show that you could put a nuke anywhere on earth. And that is what Project Mercury did.
It is incredibly shallow of you to think that all this was just to show military strength. If that was so, why were there any other lunar landings?
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;45298671]...that's the opposite of edgy. Edgy would have been if he wanted to spend school funds on military hardware. Why in the world would prioritizing education over military hardware be edgy?[/QUOTE]
I'm getting fucking sick of the word edgy in general to describe anything remotely dark. It's really becoming annoying now.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45301090]The public loved them. Governments don't just go "hey lets do this cause it'd be cool". They want something out of it.
It's not like the military invented RADAR to help make microwaves; they invented RADAR and someone else came up with the microwave as a secondary effect.
Apollo wouldn't have happened had there not been billions of dollars spent on the space race and on weapons technology.
Which is why it's incredibly short sighted to say "yea but with that 100 billion we sent people to the moon". Yes. Yes we did. Cool story.
What if spending the 100 billion dollars on this helps to improve civil aviation, or helps us overcome other issues.. or you know.. helps keep soldiers alive because it isn't a 60 year old airframe? Yes the 100 billion isn't going into something scientific, that's not the DoD's job; their job is to come up with ways to defend us, its other sectors of government and civil workers job's to come up with a use for the technology after it's been used for defense.[/QUOTE]
I still think it is way cooler to send a man to the moon than to invest in another broken Bradley or F35 Project
[QUOTE=goon165;45299205]What and do this a third time?
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA[/media]
no thanks, I'd like my country to not be retarded for once.[/QUOTE]
Except the Bradly is actually a competent fighting vehicle?
[QUOTE=goon165;45298816]80% of the shit on this helicopter looks like it's there just because "it looks cool" and just massively over-complicating the entire mess.
[img]http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/07/04/article-0-1F5E1E7A00000578-633_964x627.jpg[/img]
This whole shit is unnecessary and actually wasting space inside the aircraft. oh wow look 8 hellfire missiles and two hydra rocket pods Ah-fucking-mazing, you know what else has that level of [I]SHIT IS SO REAL RIGHT NOW[/I] weapons load? [B]every other helicopter in the US inventory.[/B] oh and we're not only functionally redundant, OH NO, instead of putting the weapons load [B]OUTSIDE ON THE WINGS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE[/B] putting all that wonderful free space to use this spaceage motherfucker has them [B]INSIDE[/B] the cargo hold.
You know. In the same spot it's supposed to carry 11 dudes.
So unless the guys like wearing guided missiles for hats you probably can't carry them if you feel the need to shoot something, which begs the question. why not just use an Apache or a Cobra for the same thing? But [I]NOoooo[/I] I hear the designers beginning to say. we have to pick and choose our battles! we can't carry men and have all those missiles on board a helicopter at the same time! we're advanced but we don't have the technology for such a massive feat of engineering!
Carrying dudes WHILE being a competent attack helicopter, that'd be mad-
[t]http://ripcrucible.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/hr-mi-24-01.jpg[/t]
-ness.
also don't even get me started on the retractable turret, what the fuck is this world war II? you gonna shoot down many 109s with that thing son?[/QUOTE]
Wow, AVX should hire you. Fuck all those other "engineers" and "scientists" in their fancy shmancy "Research and Development team".
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;45298671]...that's the opposite of edgy. Edgy would have been if he wanted to spend school funds on military hardware. Why in the world would prioritizing education over military hardware be edgy?[/QUOTE]
Because edgy is one of those buzzwords you don't want illiterates to get a hold of.
I love the part where it goes "what if".
[QUOTE=KillerLUA;45301472]I love the part where it goes "what if".[/QUOTE]
He should say it more.
If it can actually get to even 90% of the max speed they're promising, I want one.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;45298624]what if, we put 100 billion dollars into schools instead of into more stupid fucking troop transport helis.[/QUOTE]
We need something to replace the Blackhawk since I heard it has had quite a few problems.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45299645]What if.. we understood how budgets work.
The pentagon already had this money earmarked to them, they might as well make use of it. Also replacing our current aging fleet of "stupid transport helis" is going to become a real issue in the coming years, it's better to get started now, than to wait 15+ years and have to rush through replacing them.
[editline]5th July 2014[/editline]
God forbid it has a turret on the bottom.. for shooting the ground..
Tell you what, since you've got so many ideas, create a helicopter design that meets the [I]unpublished[/I] requirements of the program. Or you can.. you know.. calm down.[/QUOTE]
I think the problem is that the requirements of the program are very likely totally retarded. The US military is a logistical monstrosity, which is what really lets it project force anywhere it feels like and for long periods of time, but its pretty obvious that sometimes this shit goes too far where they try to make a swiss army knife that attempts to cater to the needs of all the different roles of all the different service branches, and the requirement its self is already compromised and unattainable before any engineers or designers even get their hands on it.
F-35 is probably the most recent and egregious example - put in all the most advanced technology you can into the cheapest package you can, while retaining 80% parts commonality in a plane that is designed to replace practically fucking everything in the air force and in the navy. We all know how that's worked so far. Get the most brilliant minds in aerospace and military R&D to work on a project with retarded specifications, and you end up with a grossly expensive useless plane.
I mean they're planning on replacing the A-10 with the F-35 for ground attack roles, so if they're willing to do shit like that, this "transport" helicopter/gunship that would probably be best off just focusing on replacing the Chinook is going to just turn into a budget overrun that tries to replace the Chinook, Blackhawk, Cobra, Opsrey and Apache and fails to do any of their jobs properly for twice the cost.
You know if they put 100 billion dollars into the education system, every greedy son of a bitch north of El Paso would barge their way into the public school system grabbing a piece of the pie. Which would probably destabilize the entire education system hurting the kids more than anything. Causing everyone to try to be a teacher and no one trying to learn. Look at the entertainment industry for christ sakes. Everyone interested in music wanted to be on stage until there is no one to appreciate music in the crowd.
this comment:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/UlA1lPB.png[/img]
Some of you need to realize you don't simply say, "I think our schools need more funding, let's shave
100 billion from our military to pay for it."
It doesn't work like that holy shit.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45301760]I'm pretty sure the US military knows it's needs more than someone on the internet.
The military is attempting to use as many "swiss army knives" as it can because specialized things are special snowflakes that cost a fuck ton of money.
The US navy is getting rid of its frigates, to be replaced by littoral combat ships, why? Because the frigates we have are old as fuck and are special snowflakes, while the LCS is a more "swiss army knife" that costs more, but can do more as well.
Everyone swoons over specialized designs without realizing the logistical nightmare that special designs are. If you have one helicopter that can do everything, then you don't need 5 different kinds of helicopter, with 5 different parts manifests, 5 different crews, you can have 1 helicopter, with 1 parts manifest, with 1 crew.
As explained earlier, the F-35 doesn't suffer from "trying to do everything at once". It suffers from lockheed saying "yea we can get all this done super quick and super cheap" while disregarding the fact that half the technology for the F-35 hadn't even been developed in 2006 when it was proposed.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/MG1200/MG1225/RAND_MG1225.pdf[/url]
[quote]he main purpose of a joint program, versus a set of single-service programs, is to save overall Life Cycle Cost (LCC) by eliminating duplicate research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) efforts and achieving economies of scale in procurement and operations and support (O&S). Yet, the need to integrate multiple service requirements in a single design increases the complexity of joint programs and potentially leads to higher-than-average cost
growth that could reduce or even negate potential savings.
There have been no comprehensive assessments of costs and savings in historical joint aircraft programs based on actual joint aircraft program outcomes and historical cost data. To help inform future
acquisition strategies for fighter aircraft, the commander of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to analyze the costs and benefits of historical joint aircraft programs, from the early 1960s through today’s JSF.
...
Because of the impossibility of making direct cost comparisons, in which multiple similar single-service programs were developed in parallel with an equivalent joint program, PAF sought to answer the question of which approach costs less by comparing the cost growth of joint and single-service programs. If cost growth tends to differ and be higher for joint programs, this would suggest that the difficulties of joint, common programs are typically underestimated. The degree of underestimation, if any, can be used to estimate whether total costs become higher or lower.
...
A summary of our major findings is as follows. Historical joint aircraft programs have experienced higher rates of acquisition cost growth than single-service aircraft programs and have not saved overall LCC. We compared RDT&E and procurement cost-growth estimates for recent historical single-service and recent historical joint aircraft programs at the same points in their program histories
following the beginning of full-scale development (MS B), adjusting for changes in procurement quantity. Cost growth was measured in dollars of constant purchasing power, so inflation effects were properly accounted for. [b]We found that joint programs experience substantially higher cost growth in acquisition than single-service programs do.[/b]
Although joint aircraft programs may, in theory, save costs by sharing RDT&E resources and by achieving economies of scale in procurement and O&S, the maximum percentage theoretical savings in joint acquisition and O&S compared with equivalent single-service programs are too small to offset the historically observed additional average cost growth that joint aircraft programs experience in the acquisition phase.
[b]JSF is not on the path to deliver promised LCC savings.[/b]
In order to determine whether or not JSF is on track to deliver the originally promised LCC savings, we developed LCC estimates for three notional single-service fighter programs at MS B and nine years after MS B to compare with actual JSF LCC estimates at the same points in the JSF program.
We developed our estimates of LCC for [b]three notional fighters based on conservative assumptions that favored JSF[/b]. We also recalculated our estimates of notional single-service fighter LCC using a
different methodology to verify the robustness of our original production cost estimates. Although the JSF program was structured to overcome some of the problems encountered by past joint fighter programs, it faced the challenge of accommodating three substantially different sets of service requirements (along with international partner requirements) and ambitious technical and performance objectives (such as supersonic low observable short takeoff and vertical landing [STOVL]
capability) into a single core aircraft design, with an 80-percent commonality goal among service variants. [b]Our analysis of SAR data shows that, nine years past MS B, estimated JSF LCC are higher than if the services had pursued three separate fighter programs. [/b]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6035324/f-35graph.PNG[/img]
...
[b]Under none of the plausible conditions we analyzed did JSF have a lower LCC estimate than the notional single-service programs.
The difficulty of reconciling diverse service requirements in a common design is a major factor in joint cost outcomes.[/b] From the Tactical Fighter, Experimental (TFX)/F-111 program in the 1960s through the JSF program today, [b]the attempt to accommodate multiple operating environments, service-specific missions, and differing performance and technology requirements in common joint fighter designs has increased programmatic and technical complexity and risk, thus prolonging
RDT&E and driving up joint acquisition costs. At the same time, service-specific requirements and demands tend to produce less commonality and lead to more variants, thus reducing the main source of joint cost savings anticipated in procurement and O&S.[/b]
...
[b]For example, the congressionally mandated joint Air Combat Fighter program in the early 1970s evolved from an original goal of 100 percent commonality into two distinct platforms with zero commonality: the Air Force F-16A/B and the Navy F/A-18A/B. In other cases, necessary design compromises left the services unsatisfied and sometimes resulted in one or more partners withdrawing from the program, as in the case of the Air Force/Navy F-111 program and numerous others.
These factors work against the potential for joint cost savings, which depend on maximum commonality, and are a major contributor to the joint acquisition cost-growth premium identified in our cost analysis.[/b]
...
[/b]Informed by these findings, we recommend that, unless the
participating services have identical, stable requirements, DoD avoid
future joint fighter and other complex joint aircraft programs.[/b][/quote]
Basically, this shit has never ever been a good idea at any point in all of history, and there is literally no historical precedence behind a successful joint air craft project ever.
Specialized designs exist for a reason, they exist as "special snowflakes" because they can perform their roles properly. As much of a logistical dream it would be to replace every different model with a single model, its simply not feasible because uncompromised multi-role designs are literally impossible. You cannot add more functionality to any design without implementing draw backs in the form of added weight or complexity, etc. Therefore it is not possible to to design a product that will perform the functions of ALL the roles without also including the added weight or complexity overhead from all those roles even when certain roles do not need the majority of the added functionality. Specialized designs will always, always out perform general purpose designs, and this cost analysis, as well as historical precedence, simply shows that trying to create a single design that can perform the roles of all specialized designs satisfactorily is both impossible and vastly more expensive.
[editline]5th July 2014[/editline]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6035324/fighterjetcommonality.PNG[/img][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6035324/f-35commonality.PNG[/img]
So yeah, they basically promise all the features in the video on one airframe, and it's simply never going to happen.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45302108]It helps if the company developing it doesn't promise an impossible timeline. The issues we're seeing with the F-35 are a direct result of lockheed saying "yea we can get this shit done in like 2 years" instead of saying "yea, the tech for this doesn't exist, so we're going to need some time". A swiss army knife craft could indeed perform the jobs exceedingly well, it just needs proper time and testing to actually develop, not some accelerated "oh god need it now" timeline.[/QUOTE]
It has historically never worked though, as you can see in that chart there, the military has tried more than a few joint projects, and they've basically all failed to achieve good functionality at a lower cost. Rather than time frame limitations, there's just limits to what's actually possible when you're trying to make an optimized weapon that's good at its role, but you give it like 50 different roles to perform. It's not possible to optimize a two role design for its roles more than a one role design - compromises will always be made to ensure the multirole functionality, and it just gets worse and worse as you add the third, and the fourth, and the fifth and the millionth role.
[QUOTE=nuttyboffin;45301804]this comment:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/UlA1lPB.png[/img][/QUOTE]
i like how you voted it down
if you cant tell a joke thats as obvious as that, you're a lost cause
[QUOTE=Ylsid;45298639]ouch i think i just cut myself on your edge[/QUOTE]
Kids getting an education? Man [I]that's[/I] edgy!
Go away, for fucks sake, your post history is a barrage of bullshit.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;45299487]Why aren't we calling the F35 the M14 of jets, or this the M14 of helicopters?
I guess nobody remembers the time the Military tried to replace every rifle with the M14 :v:[/QUOTE]Except that actually worked if you didn't have dainty hands. Unfortunately, the military isn't mostly gigantic linebackers and is actually full of normal-sized people, so a full-auto 7.62x51mm rifle was pretty unwieldy for most people.
Having said all of that, the M14 was accurate and hit like a daterape gone wrong, so it was an excellent DMR and infantry rifle, (when used as a semi-automatic) and with tuning it could be a great sniper rifle as well.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45302146]And politics get in the way too. The army/navy/air force hate to not have their own special snowflakes.
Also, several aircraft are indeed "multi-role". The F/A-18 is actually designed for air to air and air to ground confrontation, the designators do mean something. "F: Fighter-kills airplanes" "A: Attack-kills ground targets"; meanwhile things like the A-10 are for "killing ground targets".[/QUOTE]
Certainly politics and bureaucracy have never in the history of anything ever had a positive effect on any engineering or design effort.
I imagine though the F/A-18 would likely lose in an air to air role against a dedicated air superiority fighter like the F-15, and it would likely be less effective in a ground attack role than the A-10. I mean it makes sense that a multirole aircraft was chosen by the Navy due to logistics and available space on aircraft carriers - in that way it is best optimized for Navy purposes, but the compromises in its design would likely become more apparently if you also tried to extend its role to replacing air force planes, and made it perform various roles replacing the F-15/F-16 and the A-10. Then you get the Air Force complaining about the lack of capability and before you know it engineers are being told to strap the GAU-8 on the F/A-18 airframe.
I don't think this shift towards multi-role aircraft is a good idea at all. People certainly complain about the US military budget, sure, but I'd say you'd get a cheaper, more streamlined and more effective fighting force if you kept specialized planes that were cheaper to develop and build, that could do each of their jobs properly, instead of throwing billions of dollars into R&D sinkhole disasters like the F-35 that try to do literally everything. They could just take the bajillion dollars they're spending trying to design the F-35 and just use it on paying for the logistical overhead of manufacturing and shipping a larger number and variety of parts to maintain a variety of specialized planes.
[QUOTE=Ylsid;45298639]ouch i think i just cut myself on your edge[/QUOTE]
Nah I think you cut yourself on your stupid.
Jesus that thing is ugly.
[QUOTE=Xieneus;45302427]Jesus that thing is ugly.[/QUOTE]
It doesn't have to look good, it just has to preform well.
Please build this army so you can understand the frustrations of working with an overly complicated design. The osprey alone has 23 hours of maintenance for every flight hour.
That's part of the reason why the Marines still fly hueys and cobras. It lightens the logistic load and allows the same ground crew to service both aircraft in the event of man power issues.
[QUOTE=darunner;45299799]The Chinook is 52 years old.[/QUOTE]
They plan to use it until 2038.
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45303917]Doesn't mean you have to wait till 2038 to start working on its replacement.[/QUOTE]
Just sayin'. They got 24 years to work on it. There are gonna be fully-trained servicemen by then who are even born yet.
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