They aren’t going to because people will complain how they are the only ones gett
Oh hey look a SU-30 TDC, the stripped down SU-30 with 3D thrust vectoring designed to test high AOA maneuvers (no its not a Malaysian MKM as claimed, as the MKM sports only 2D thrust vectoring and such a maneuver is only even slightly possible with 3D vectoring due to crosswind drift) and an aircraft not indicative of actual normal sukhois, especially those without thrust vectoring like the SU-33 as I mentioned.
Also reminder, this aircraft did not quote,
As I stated they cannot, for reasons that should be blatantly obvious, especially for the non-vectoring sukhois because airfoils dont work without airflow.
dudes got literal video of plane hovering and they still keep going about how it is not possible
Yea… but muhhhhh VtoL… now he copium about non TVC Sukhoi because he stupid point its a massive mistake. No talk that Su-35s its also a FLANKER with better TVC and more engine power. So it can do what Su-30sm do but even better…
BUT Muh airflow. he don’t know what he is talking about. At that stage the air itself its a disadvantage because it its pushing the plane.
Spoiler
Wait until he discover that the Su-57 can ALMOST (key word) do this horizontally.
My brother in christ the search function exists.
Good thing thats a SU-33 and non 3D TVS sukhoi like my comment stated and its landing vertically like the original statement was… oh wait no thats wrong, it is one of the 3D thrust vectoring sukhois like the post 2011 SM and both the SM and every other sukoi still cant land or take off vertically like I said.
Just tossing this here for posterity since nobody on this forum seems to know that search functions exist anymore.
Pray tell how airfoils work, I’m eager to know your fantastic insight on the matter. I’d love to see you try and spin up some fresh cope about how the SU-33 hovering and landing vertically in game is somehow even remotely accurate.
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No we had drones come out, that’s why the RAH -66 program was cancelled. The USSR was gone force over a decade when the helicopter continued to be tested.
That wasn’t true then and I don’t believe it is true now. The drone helicopter replacement UCAR went nowhere and was cancelled shortly after the RAH-66. Yet there was still a need for a scout helicopter in Army Aviation. The community of scout helicopter crew knew that as a fact, but the rest of the Army would re-learn it too in the following years of operations.
Ultimately cancelling the RAH-66 was mostly a budgetary decision driven by the need to modernize the other three important helicopters in the Army inventory (CH-47, UH-60, AH-64) but it was a choice also backed by the usual “transformationist” crowd that was promising everything under the sun in their grand Future Combat Systems plans. On the budgetary side it’s shameful that given the vast amount of money the government has to work with they couldn’t find the funds to field the RAH-66 in addition to modernizing the other three important helos. On the other end none of those FCS programs went anywhere and the unmanned systems that were supposed to do the job better never showed up.
That continued need for a new scout helicopter led to what was supposed to be the cheap mostly “off-the-shelf” ARH-70, but it very quickly became neither of those because all of the avionics being added to it, which necessitated airframe changes, increased engine power, etc. Critics will call all of those necessary avionics and defensive systems gold-plating, but that equipment is what is required for such a helicopter to survive and be useful on the modern battlefield. So that got cancelled because it was getting too expensive which defeated the main idea behind that program.
Then they looked at a bunch of options that were also supposed to be quick and easy, including an upgrade of the OH-58D to a new OH-58F standard, but that ran into its own bunch of issues that I’ll have to find out more about when I get a chance. But basically, it was once again becoming not “cheap and easy”.
Then finally comes along FARA, and by the end both Bell and Sikorsky were well along building two prototypes of designs that both held a lot promise and substantially differed from each other in many regards. Then it is cancelled before a winner was selected. Cancelled 20 years to the month that the RAH-66 was cancelled. And the Army gave the same official line of reasoning they gave when they cancelled the RAH-66. This happened despite the fact that mere months ago at the end of 2023 the Army claimed FARA was their #1 priority when asked by someone in congress if the program was at risk of being axed by the Army. And this is probably the last time the Army will be given a shot at a new scout helicopter sadly, because nobody seems to know what the hell they’re doing these days.
The only thing in Army procurement comparable to this tragic cursed saga of trying to obtain a new scout helicopter is the Army’s failed efforts to procure a new self-propelled 155mm howitzer. After the cancellation of the XM2001 that is also a tale of bad decisions with the same lessons being re-learned because there is always some “transformationist” crowd with wishful thinking pushing something that never works out as planned.
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Sadly no.
The problem is the modern helicopter is too expensive and the days of the cheap, light scout are over for major militaries because the survivable scouts aren’t cheap and throw away.
Same issue we saw at the end of WW2 where we had massive fleets of planes that got made obsolete by jet engines and have played an ever shrinking game of building fewer, more capable assets to replace the larger fleet of less capable aircraft and ask each preceding group to do more with less.