Discussion
DARPA’s new X-76: the speed of a jet, the freedom of a helicopter
PowerElectronix: 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?
dash2: “ 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: Good to hear that the DoD's new contract with OpenAI is solving all the most important problems...
cucumber3732842: 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.
O5vYtytb: It's a quote from someone...?
jdiez17: ... who probably wrote their prepared PR statement with an LLM.
idontwantthis: 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?
esseph: 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: Skimping on the service again, are we?
thatmf: yet we still don't have universal healthcare
phplovesong: 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.
Zigurd: 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.
Zigurd: Hard to be more expensive than F-35B.
crimsoneer: Someone has played the new Deus Ex games
trelliumD: that already exists in the form of Saab Gripen :)
FrankBooth: Where do the 14 soldiers sit in the Gripen?
rkomorn: On the wings, obviously, for quick deployment. Maybe I mean early deployment.
ocdtrekkie: 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: 16 hull losses per ~400 units built is not exactly a stellar safety record.Or I guess you mean /stellar?
mikkupikku: Why won't they adopt one of Sikorsky's compound helicopters already? They're beautiful and elegant solutions to this problem.
XorNot: The F-35 is cheaper then some new production 4th generation fighters at this point.
cpgxiii: 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.
rluna828: 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: 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: 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.
dmbche: Design remings me of something...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involv...
yabones: The next generations of accidents are going to be even more looney-tunes in nature.
