US Army Chooses its new Blackhawk Replacement Helicopter

[Yazata]

The selection process has taken several years and involved lots of testing of prototypes, and the Army has finally decided to go with the Bell V280 Valor. It's another Osprey style convert-a-plane that flies like an airplane but hovers, lands and takes off like a helicopter. It has more payload capacity, is faster and has longer range than the Blackhawk, but there's fear that it might be less reliable and rugged because of its increased complexity.

Apparently a consideration in seeking a Blackhawk replacement was the prospect of a war with China in the Pacific where these helicopters will have to have sufficient speed and range to fly from island to island.

The initial contract is for $1.3 billion, largely to support additional development and testing. But ultimately, if the US buys as many as it wants to buy and if US allies follow suit in replacing their own Blackhawks with this aircraft, the decision could be worth as much as $70 billion.  

[Image: Bell-V-280-Valor_resized.jpeg?auto=webp&...ght=810.75]

[Kornee]

China the workshop of the world for consumer goods. US the workshop of the 'West' for military hardware. The latter indeed planning for a war with the former. Great. Not.

[C C]

[...] Apparently a consideration in seeking a Blackhawk replacement was the prospect of a war with China in the Pacific where these helicopters will have to have sufficient speed and range to fly from island to island...

It's almost surreal how easily that has become the inevitable, climax event for this decade. Journalism greatly looking forward to coverage of the oncoming apocalypse, no more dependence on Trump for ratings.

The more fundamental marvel, which set this up, is how the world ever allowed and facilitated Taiwan becoming the master provenance for advanced chipmaking. Did social justice wholly seize the concept of "diversify" for itself over the last three decades, leaving not a whit of commonsense left in that department for the capitalist mindset?

And the propaganda that the West now has to rally citizens for the cause of quasi-WWIII, Wherein the intellectual class has incrementally completed its de-evolutionary development from championing the cause of the working class (proles) in the 19th-century, to now spurring on fighting and dying nobly for the radical equality of drag queens.