{"id":185187,"date":"2011-09-18T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/09\/18\/sikorsky-says-x2-technology-does-not-scale-beyond-medium-lift\/"},"modified":"2011-09-18T12:21:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T17:21:00","slug":"sikorsky-says-x2-technology-does-not-scale-beyond-medium-lift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/09\/18\/sikorsky-says-x2-technology-does-not-scale-beyond-medium-lift\/","title":{"rendered":"Sikorsky Says X2 Technology Does Not Scale Beyond Medium Lift"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any helo folks out there who can explain this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Sikorsky’s breakthrough X-2 high-speed helicopter likely can’t be scaled up to the size of a heavy-lift helo, a Sikorsky executive told reporters Sept. 14.<\/p>\n

“There is a question on the scalability on the X-2 technology at the medium class,” said Scott Starrett, Sikorsky’s vice president for government business development. “When you get to the utility-medium or attack-medium class, it scales nicely.” However, with size and weight increases “you starting getting up to that kind of payload and physical size and it gets to be a different challenge for the technology.”<\/p>\n

Starrett said that the company’s CH-53K, which Sikorsky is developing for the U.S. Marine Corps, could fit into the Defense Department’s Joint Multi-Role (JMR) requirement for the heavy-lift helicopter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Certainly, one explanation here is that Sikorsky is big on the CH-53K, which is under budget and ahead of schedule, but under threat from the V-22 mafia, who see it as a threat (it equals or bests the V-22 in everything but speed with less deck space and lower cost), and they don’t want this as a distraction.<\/p>\n

The other alternative is that coaxial rotors simply do not scale well.<\/p>\n

When one looks at large twin main rotor helicopters, the Chinook and the (huge) Mil MV-12<\/a>, it seems that spaced, rather than coaxial or intermeshing (Kaman) rotors are the architecture of choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any helo folks out there who can explain this: Sikorsky’s breakthrough X-2 high-speed helicopter likely can’t be scaled up to the size of a heavy-lift helo, a Sikorsky executive told reporters Sept. 14. “There is a question on the scalability on the X-2 technology at the medium class,” said Scott Starrett, Sikorsky’s vice president for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1226,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-helicopters","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}