Sikorsky and Bell are the two companies, working hard to produce the next black hawk aircraft for the Army. This next generation aircraft would fly speedily in harms way, drop off the troops and then move out of the place very easily. Sikorsky, which is making the next generation black hawk helicopters told that they are working rigorously on their futuristic machine which would have two counter rotating rotors. The Sikorsky named their future machine as Defiant X. Bell, who is another contender is manufacturing their fancy bird named as V-280 Valor. Bell’s approach is quite different form the Sikorsky’s Black Hawk “Defiant X”, as it’s a tiltrotor type of helicopter.
A tiltrotor aircraft is a typical airplane having an engine on its each wing, which works in a familiar way. The reason behind providing engines on each of its wing is to provide big thrust to the airplane and its wings help the aircraft to lift itself to a height on its stable place. If the engines had propeller that was perpendicular to the ground, then with such a big thrust the aircraft would have moved forward rather than landing and taking off on its stable place.
Therefore, the blades were adjusted parallel to the ground so that the Pilot could land and take off on a stable mode rather than moving forward like an airplane. This type of aircraft is much in demand by the army as it does not require a runway for the aircraft to take off and its engine also provides a lot of thrust to move it forward with a fast speed. Ryan Ehinger, who is the vice president and the program director for the Bell’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft said that there is nothing that would compete with their Tiltrotor when talking about speed and range.
The Bells. V-280 production has a speed north of 300 knots, or 345 mph which is double the speed of a classic black hawk helicopter. When compared the Valor with its ancestor named Osprey, the Valor has two engines while the engines in the Osprey does not move physically when the rotors powered by them, change their positions. In Valor, having its two-rotor placed like a helicopter would make it a risk factor if one of the rotors stops working suddenly.
In the Valor, the two engines of the rotor give power to the gear box system of the Valor, which could be placed anywhere around the aircraft. The computer system inside the engine helps determine how much power each rotor engine gives to the gear box system and it will also help both the rotors spin even if one of the engines fails of a sudden, to avoid major accident. The Valor aircraft of Bell is said to be the improved version of Osprey. The Valor proves to be much better and overcomes all the drawback that Osprey had in the past.
