On December 5, the Army announced that Bell’s V-280 Valor has won the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition aimed at fielding a modern replacement for the legendary UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The contract award, potentially worth as much as $1.2 billion, will fund ongoing development of the platform heading toward a production contract worth tens of billions of dollars.
The V-280 Valor is designed to serve as a medium-lift infantry utility platform that will offer a huge leap in capability over the Black Hawk in a number of important areas. With a top speed of 305 knots (approximately 350 miles per hour), the Valor can best the Black Hawk’s top speed by more than 100 miles per hour while offering a combat range of around 900 miles, almost three times that of the UH-60. And believe it or not, it promises to do all that while carrying as much as 25% more weight on board.
The Army is the world’s largest operator of H-60 helicopters, with more than 2,100 platforms in active service, making its FLRAA procurement decision a monumental one regardless of winner. However, since the V-280’s victory was announced, we’ve been inundated with commenters asking questions about whether the V-280’s tilt-rotor design could prove to be more trouble than it’s worth. At the top of this list are concerns about the safety record of the Valor’s tilt-rotor predecessor, the V-22 Osprey, and observations about the Valor’s wider footprint than the Black Hawk it will replace.
A great deal about the requirements the Army laid out for the FLRAA program, as well as the reasons behind the Army’s decision, remain classified, making it quite a bit tougher to address the questions posed by our audience. However, we have been able to put together some reasonable answers to these looming questions based on official statements and a great deal of research.
Related: The Bell V-280 Valor will replace the Army’s legendary Black Hawk
How is the V-280 Valor different from Bell’s V-22 Osprey?
Bell’s V-280 Valor’s tilt-rotor design is a significant departure from the Black Hawk’s conventional helicopter layout and is more in keeping with Bell’s own V-22 Osprey. But while these two platforms leverage the same basic approach to aviation, there are a number of important differences.
A tilt-rotor aircraft is, at its most simplistic level, a combination of helicopter and airplane design elements meant to give operators the basic utility of a rotorcraft alongside the greater speeds and ranges allowed by fixed-wing aircraft. This is accomplished via powered rotors mounted on rotating nacelles at either end of a fixed-wing, with the props pointing up for vertical take-off and landing operations, and forward during sustained flight.
The most apparent difference between the V-280 Valor and V-22 Osprey is their size. The V-280 was designed from the start to support infantry operations, whereas the V-22 is considered a medium/heavy assault support and utility aircraft. In practical terms, that means the V-22 is quite a bit bigger — it’s capable of carrying as many as 24 troops, while the V-280 is limited to just 12.
That difference in purpose also manifests in the doors used in each aircraft. The V-22 leverages a large rear cargo ramp, while the V-280 has sliding six-foot doors on either side, more in keeping with the existing Black Hawk.
Perhaps the most important difference between these platforms in terms of operation, however, isn’t quite as conspicuous. Unlike the V-22, the V-280’s engines don’t actually rotate at the ends of its wings. Instead, the engines remain in place while the rotors and drive shafts tilt.
“Our fixed engine configuration allows maintainers the ability to remove an engine, drive shaft or gearbox independent of each other, reducing time required for maintenance procedures, and increasing aircraft availability to the operator,” Keith Flail, Bell’s Vice President, Advanced Tiltrotor Systems, told Tyler Rogoway in an interview for The Warzone.
Related: Questions about Ospreys’ safety remain as SpecOps aircraft return home following incident in Norway
The V-22 Osprey and tilt-rotor aircraft’s reputation for being unsafe
The most prominent concern flooding the comments sections beneath stories and videos about the Army’s decision really boils down to the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey’s reputation for being an unsafe platform. The V-22 program has certainly seen a number of high-profile incidents, leading to the deaths of service members, dating all the way back to the early 1990s.
The first fatalities associated with the Osprey were in July of 1992 when seven Marines were killed. Eight years later, another Osprey full of Marines would go down, killing 19. In all, 51 service members have died in Osprey crashes throughout the program’s lifetime, with the most recent coming in June of this year when an Osprey belonging to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing crashed in California, killing five.
Every service member lost in training or combat is a tragedy, but in order to determine whether the V-280 is truly an unsafe replacement for the UH-60, it’s important to view these tragic incidents through an admittedly difficult-to-muster lens of objectivity.
Fatalities are an unfortunate fact of life in military aviation regardless of platform, and while there’s a valid argument to be made that many of these deaths could have been avoided through better training or maintenance practices, the Osprey certainly isn’t alone in its stomach-churning body count.
Between 2013 and December 2020, 224 service members died in over 6,000 separate DoD aviation accidents that destroyed 186 aircraft and caused around $10 billion worth of damage.
And despite the Osprey’s negative reputation, you won’t find its incident record as a dangerous outlier in service-wide or branch-specific data. As Marine Maj. Jorge Hernandez, spokesman for Marine aviation, explained to the Military Times in a July e-mail, the Marine Corps’ MV-22 Osprey has a lower mishap rate per 100,000 flight hours than the Harrier, Super Hornet, F-35B, or CH-53E Super Stallion.
“The 10-year average mishap rate for MV-22′s is 3.16 per 100,000 flight hours,” Hernandez wrote on July 8.
In the 33 years since the Osprey started flying, 51 service members have died in crashes. In the first 33 years the H-60 Black Hawk flew, more than 180 American service members and civilians died in non-combat-related crashes according to the list tallied by ArmyAirCrews.com. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that the Black Hawk existed in higher volume than the Osprey during this time and I was unable to find accurate data on the UH-60’s mishap rate per 100,000 flight hours early in its lifespan. I was, however, able to confirm that Black Hawk, like most programs, had its own series of early setbacks.
In April of 1985, six years after entering service, the Army’s fleet of some 630 UH-60s was grounded pending investigations into 37 deaths across 23 incidents. Three years later, that fleet had grown to 970, but an additional eight incidents brought the death toll up to 65. To be clear, it seems likely that the Black Hawk may have still had a better mishap rate than the Osprey during this time — as the Army pointed out in March of 1988, it remained the “safest helicopter the Army had ever flown” despite these fatalities. Helicopter technology at this point was, to be fair, quite a bit more mature than tilt-rotor platforms were when the Osprey entered service.
The point isn’t to suggest that the Osprey is safer than the Black Hawk, but rather just to point out how these sorts of tragedies are, to some extent, inherent to the danger of military aviation.
There are, however, a few factors that play into the Osprey’s perception as unsafe. The first may be recency bias, as the V-22 only entered service in 2007, compared to the decade-spanning careers of its peers. Aircraft, like people, often only get one chance at a first impression, and the Osprey’s early crashes certainly left their mark.
The second tragic variable to consider is the Osprey’s utilitarian role as the Marine Corps’ workhorse troop transport. When a fighter jet crashes, you might see one or two fatalities, but when an aircraft carrying two dozen Marines goes down, the death toll can be much higher. As a result, the Marine Corps’ Hornets and Super Hornets may go down at more than twice the rate of the Osprey, but this results in fewer fatalities.
To be clear, the Osprey does have a much higher number of fatal mishaps than the H-60 series of helicopters, but it’s important to remember that the H-60 series has been flying for nearly 50 years.
In short, the tilt-rotor Osprey has seen some tragic incidents in its service life, but it’s certainly not the systemically unsafe platform many seem to think it is.
Related: Part-time commando makes history by breaking 3,000 flight hours in the Osprey
Will the V-280 Valor’s wider footprint negatively affect combat ops?
The V-280 Valor is undoubtedly larger than the Black Hawk it will replace, with a wingspan of nearly 82 feet compared to the H-60’s slim waistline of just 6’9”. The Valor is quite a bit shorter, however, measuring in at 50.5 feet compared to the Black Hawk’s nearly 65 feet.
When you compare them in that way, the Valor seems much larger than the Black Hawk, but if you turn the Valor 90 degrees, the size disparity becomes less pronounced.
The Valor’s wide footprint will potentially limit its ability to land in tight spaces, something many have voiced concerns about, but Bell believes that the benefits of the tilt-rotor design outweigh any potential limitations.
“The V-280 has a slightly larger footprint than the UH-60. However, you get speeds and ranges to fight against near-peer threats with unprecedented operational productivity. You can’t win the fight unless you’re in the fight,” Flail said.
As an example of footprint, Flail points out that you may only be able to fit 10 V-280 Valors in a soccer field, whereas you might have been able to squeeze 12 Black Hawks instead…
“But you could execute missions with twice the speed and twice the range.”
That speed and range could certainly come into play if the United States finds itself in a Pacific conflict — something Bell was acutely aware of when preparing this graphic that compares the V-280 Valor’s range to that of the UH-60.
And while the Valor may need to choose its landing spots more carefully, that added speed and range promises to save lives in medevac operations. Speed is so valuable in medevac operations because of what’s known within the medical community as the “golden hour.” If you can get a wounded Soldier to advanced medical care within the first hour after they get hurt, their likelihood of survival increases dramatically. The Valor’s ability to travel at double the Black Hawk’s speed and at twice its range can pay real dividends in terms of troop survival, Bell contends.
Related: A brief history of helicopter warfare and the future of air assault operations
Is the V-280 Valor the right choice for the US Army?
To be clear, it’s impossible at this early stage of the V-280 Valor’s life to say that it’s perfectly suited for the Army’s needs. In fact, at this point, we can’t even say for sure what the Army thinks its needs are. When asked for more specifics about what prompted the Army to choose the Valor over Sikorski and Boeing’s Defiant X, Maj. Gen. Robert Barrie, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, offered what basically amounts to a verbose wink and a shrug.
“Can we be more specific on the factors of how exactly we arrived at this point? No,” Barrie said. “However, best value is meant in the truest sense that it was a comprehensive analysis of a variety of factors. No one really drove that decision. So, if you look broadly at a very high level, the factors are variables and performance, cost, and schedule, all were considered, and the combination of those are defined explicitly and evaluated… That is what I would describe as the best value [and] what the Army would describe as its best value selection.”
What we can say for sure is that the V-280 Valor benefits from hundreds of thousands of flight hours worth of experience derived from the V-22 Osprey, and the prototype that’s been used for testing has already exceeded expectations. After all, the “280” in its name was meant to represent 280 knots, only for the prototype to cruise all the way up to 305 knots in testing. That first prototype racked up about 200 hours of flight testing between 2017 and when Bell retired it in 2021. Although Boeing’s entry to the Army’s competition— and Valor’s competitor — Defiant X prototype is still flying, it has yet to match the Valor’s time in the sky, due in large part to delays related to its rotor blade and transmission system.
The contract awarded to Bell is good for $232 million with options that range up to $1.2 billion, but even then, the result won’t be a fleet of new transport platforms — it will be a more thoroughly designed and tested platform that’s ready to move into production. In other words, this program is still very much in its infancy.
Will the V-280 eventually prove its doubters wrong and go on to earn a place atop the legendary army aircraft podium alongside the likes of the UH-1 Iroquois and UH-60 Black Hawk? The truth is, no one can say.
But what we can say for sure is the Pentagon believes the Valor has what it takes to be the future of Army aviation. The V-280’s combination of speed, range, and utility could offer a massive leap in capability for America’s infantry troops in the 21st century. But is the Army right? Only time will tell.
Read more from Sandboxx News
- A brief history of helicopter warfare and the future of air assault operations
- A brief history (and the future) of high-speed vertical lift aircraft
- 10 great airplanes before the F-35 that overcame rough starts
- The Bell V-280 Valor will replace the Army’s legendary Black Hawk
- S-67 Blackhawk: The high-speed attack chopper that could have been
Can the bell sling load long distances? Can a tilt rotor fight fires with a Bambi bucket? Can you medivac a tilt rotor with a hoist? I don’t think it will do those take very well. It just flys long distances fast what about the rest of the tasks. That is the reason the Marine corps did not replace all their helicopters with Ospreys.
I think this thing will cost twice as much to maintain and Ian really not sure how the carbon fiber fuselage will hold up overtime or weather conditions I personally belive it will turn into a fair weather aircraft. I rember my first airlift with the uh60,’said ours took off with out a problem my platoon sergants flew into a tree at ft Lewis WA. from then on we called them crash hawks every one survived but they were still figuring them out and the fleet was grounded several times because if they flew to close to a radio tower they would crash so yes every aircraft has had problems If I was still in service I would be mad they didn’t put a skid on it they are so much easier to repell from and fast rope from but maybe the bigger door will help
I hope you can look a bit further into the selection of the V-280, and compare it to some of the missions and flight requirements of Blackhawk helicopters. Further, if specific data is not known, compare the flight requirements to current V-22 capabilities. Things I’m thinking about are the ability to hover, sling load capabilities, operate in dusty conditions, operate in high/hot conditions, and the likelihood of the vortex ring state as experienced by the V-22.
Something not noted by the article – as far as I know, the V-280 has low enough disc loading (ie., it’s got enough rotor area relative to its weight) to auto-rotate in VTOL flight – something the V-22 just can’t do.
When combined with the fact that, IIRC, the V-280 also has the same sort of emergency use transmission and driveshaft system which lets one engine drive both rotors in an emergency, you’ve got a lot of redundancy in vertical flight (as well as the ability to glide in for a landing in horizontal flight, even if the rotors will probably snap on touchdown).
This article covers, a lot about speed, capacity,
And overall things. But what it’s not talking about is survivability, loss of engine, and
Protection of troops on board, and functional
Ability with loss of systems, hydraulics, which
Will factor in and on board computer failure.
Thus autorotation? or just crash survival.
These are impressive statistics but what’s important to the crewmen/ soldiers on board
Is mission/survival in the end. Sounds like
“Where’s the money” over likely availability
It’s been proven that aircraft kept in hangers require less maintenance. Billions have been spent on new hangers for UH-60’s. Can this aircraft be pushed sideways into existing Blackhawk hangers? Or must taxpayers replace new hangers? During the acceptance process for the Osprey. The ability to autorotate was dropped as a requirement, because the Osprey was unable to. Will this important safety requirement also be written out for the V-280? Bell seems to have quickly sold the rights to the Osprey to Agusta. Would they have done this to a cash cow?
Justin,
You bring up two points which have been debated quite a bit over the past several years; hangar space and auto-rotation. First of all, Bell did not sell the rights to the Osprey to Augusta; they sold the rights to the commercial version only of the joint Bell/Augusta 609 tilt-rotor to Augusta, now part of Leonardo.
Hangar space can be handled by putting the V-280 into the hangar at an angle, and while you may not be able to fit as many V-280’s as UH-60’s into the same hangar, building additional hangars is not out of the capability of the U.S. Military. Additionally, the U.S. Army, as well as all U.S. Military services, does not hangar all their aircraft; the vast majority live outside of the hangars as they were designed to do.
I believe that the V-280 auto-rotation envelope was defined during Bell’s testing, and while limited was found acceptable to the U.S. Army. The Lockheed/Sikorsky/Boeing SB-1 was not able to define its envelope since it only flew for ~65 hours. However, it is a known fact that rigid, co-axial rotor systems have significant problems with performing auto-rotation due to low rotor inertia and the up-flow through both rotors. Finally, having dual engines that are extremely reliable, has made the ability to auto-rotate a less than flight-critical attribute, and this has been proven in hundreds of thousands of flight hours by dual engine helicopters.
Comparing the V-280 to the V-22 is or UH-60 is not valid in my opinion other than proving new generation aircraft are always better. Like how the F-22 is better than the F-15!
What the comparison should be is V-280 to its competition the Defiant-X. It has a 230 knot air-speed, longer range than UH-60, smaller rotor footprint etc. I have no doubt the V-280 is better than a UH-60 or V-22, but is it better than the helicopter it was competing against?
The SB1 was late to start flying and experienced a mishap early on. The Army tested coaxial rotor systems back in the late 70s and found them too complex. The SB1 flew for less than 30 hours vs 200 for the V280. The SB1 didn’t make the range requirements and only plans to meet them using the Army’s FATE engine which is not operational. The Army’s main focus was range & speed which the V280 is far superior in both categories.
Outstanding article Mr. Hollings. I also highly recommend that people read the December 8th article on the War Zone by Tyler Rogoway, which supports Mr. Hollings perspective.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/a-reality-check-on-the-army-picking-v-280-valor-over-sb1-defiant
I believe people need to get past the “tilt-rotors are unsafe” mentality, because the facts don’t support that mind-set at all, as shown perfectly in this article.
What doubters are missing is that conventional helicopters are essentially useless in modern warfare unless they stay behind the front lines doing logistics. There is a very good reason why both Russian and Ukrainian helicopters are no longer crossing the front lines: they got tired of being ducks in a shooting gallery. Additionally, conventional helicopters are essentially useless in a Pacific conflict because of the ranges and speeds needed to just participate in the conflict; the Bell map in this article tells the story loud and clear. The SB-1 is classed as a compound helicopter, but in reality it is a rigid-rotor, co-axial helicopter with an auxiliary thrusting propeller and no wing; an iteration of a conventional helicopter.
If we had an honest performance comparison of the V-280 and SB-1 against the Army’s RFP requirements, we would find out that the SB-1 could not and never would meet even the minimum threshold requirements for speed and range in a combat configuration. A truism of aircraft design is that you will never have sustainable speed and sustainable long range when your main propulsion system is parallel to the line of flight; the SB-1 just proved this truism once again.
To Bell’s credit they have done an outstanding job of taking the lessons learned from hundreds of thousands of V-22 flight hours and incorporated them into the V-280. Each generation of tilt-rotor aircraft has improved the breed and provided critically needed capabilities to the U.S. Military. That is why the American Aerospace Industry is the best in the world.
The V-280 is the right aircraft, at the right time, for the U.S. Army’s aviation branch to remain an effective combat arm of the U.S. military.
Compared to it’s competition, the V-280 Carrie’s more load faster and further. That might be offset by cost, or not. However, there is fundamentally no substantive difference in either craft’s complexity or safety inherent in either design. If maximum mission profile per unit is the most pressing requirement, it looks like they made the right choice.
Thank you very much and will look for more postings from you
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