“ With SPRINT, we're not just building an X-plane; we're building options”. Found the guy who couldn’t be bothered to write his own press release…
newer_vienna 36 minutes ago [-]
I'm quite fond of the caption, which describes a "a proof-of-concept technology demonstrator that aims to demonstrate technologies and concepts"
NitpickLawyer 4 minutes ago [-]
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
irl_zebra 1 hours ago [-]
I think I'd rather have them working on airplane tech rather than writing airplane tech press releases. With this approach, it's not just a tactical thing; it's relieving the burden of wordsmithing from technical people.
bigfishrunning 45 minutes ago [-]
The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a new job. I hope they get it.
jdiez17 47 minutes ago [-]
You're absolutely right.
notahacker 1 hours ago [-]
Good to hear that the DoD's new contract with OpenAI is solving all the most important problems...
O5vYtytb 1 hours ago [-]
It's a quote from someone...?
jdiez17 1 hours ago [-]
... who probably wrote their prepared PR statement with an LLM.
esseph 1 hours ago [-]
I have always talked/written like this. now that LLMs do it in a similar enough way, my own writing gets called AI slop. I just wish my rotator cuffs knew I was a robot.
jacquesm 58 minutes ago [-]
Skimping on the service again, are we?
53 minutes ago [-]
bigyabai 1 hours ago [-]
It feels like DARPA has fallen so far. In a post-Salt Typhoon era it's really hard to imagine them as dynamic, best-in-class innovators anymore.
ambicapter 25 minutes ago [-]
This administration doesn't really prioritize anything that has to do with intelligence, so advanced research was obviously going to fall by the wayside.
mrDmrTmrJ 53 minutes ago [-]
To be clear, this is not a power-point program but a continuation of a long-standing design work with Bell.
The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept.
radicalethics 13 minutes ago [-]
I wonder what the motivation behind this is. Tactically, why ever show your latest weapon? What is the strategic purpose of this? It's like if I message my opponent in SC2 and tell them exactly what I'm going to tech to. That's ... insane right? Why would anyone do that?
benjcpalm 6 minutes ago [-]
It's not a tactical choice- it's strategic deterrence, and it's not insane at all!
The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific capabilities.
There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US government as the program was under development. It makes the US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from thinking about conventional warfare with America.
That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to justify the risk to the program.
3 minutes ago [-]
kuprel 13 minutes ago [-]
From the image it doesn't look balanced for VTOL when the propellors are vertical. Also are the jets enabled during VTOL?
rluna828 26 minutes ago [-]
I wonder is Iran would have gone different if we had captured the Ayatollah instead of killing him. A stealth drop ship like this would have allowed that to happen. The reason why regimes are more likely to negotiate when you capture their leaders is because you might release them. (not a good day for the usurper.)
HumblyTossed 35 minutes ago [-]
Hmmm... that just looks like problems. It's a lot of mechanical parts that always have to work correctly.
01100011 23 minutes ago [-]
The Osprey killed a lot of Marines over the past decades. It took a while to work out the issues. Hopefully we will remember what the Osprey taught us.
PowerElectronix 1 hours ago [-]
It looks like a maintenance nightmare with those clutches to decouple the blades and the mechanisms to have them folded during cruising. Does it even improve substantially in anh metric over the V280 to put money into it?
rluna828 23 minutes ago [-]
it also has stealth. This is a complete disaster. The only purpose of this stealth ship is to steal leaders and or go inside cave lairs and blow them up.
cucumber3732842 1 hours ago [-]
The V280 is designed to be cheap (a very relative term here).
Reading between the lines, I suspect "fast, but also expensive" was a design option that popped up and was not chosen earlier in the V280 program and now Darpa wants to pay to see where it goes.
Zigurd 40 minutes ago [-]
Hard to be more expensive than F-35B.
greatgib 42 minutes ago [-]
I can't access darpa.mil. Was it slashdotted because of the article being posted here, or now it is unavailable outside of US?
logotype 35 minutes ago [-]
I can access it from the UK
newer_vienna 35 minutes ago [-]
Still up here in the US
bilsbie 43 minutes ago [-]
So it has jet engines that blades unfold and attach to during takeoff and landing? Why not always use the blades?
rluna828 25 minutes ago [-]
stealth
porphyra 1 hours ago [-]
Cool, I guess this should be able to hover in much more "austere" environments than the F-35B STOVL and the Harrier Jet. Tiltrotor with folding rotor blades sounds very mechanically complex and challenging though.
trelliumD 18 minutes ago [-]
that already exists in the form of Saab Gripen :)
FrankBooth 10 minutes ago [-]
Where do the 14 soldiers sit in the Gripen?
rkomorn 9 minutes ago [-]
On the wings, obviously, for quick deployment. Maybe I mean early deployment.
ceejayoz 1 hours ago [-]
So it's an Osprey with a jet in the back?
torginus 1 hours ago [-]
Usually with these programs, they just commission an artist with some vague description, like they tell him to draw a futuristic VTOL aircraft, these pics have zero bearing on what gets delivered.
Sometimes they even take the piss with this, like in this video for a next-gen engine, where you can see their engine doesn't even fit in their fantasy aircraft:
Isn't this need already met by the Bell V280 that the army already selected for it's Blackhawk replacement? What is the big innovation they are going for here?
Tuna-Fish 44 minutes ago [-]
+50% top speed over the V280. Bell offered it as an alternative to the V280 in the early stage of the contract, but it was judged too experimental (and probably too expensive). Apparently DARPA is funding further development of the concept.
crimsoneer 30 minutes ago [-]
Someone has played the new Deus Ex games
phplovesong 47 minutes ago [-]
The swedish gripen can do mach2 (2300km/h) and does not need a traditional runway (500 meters of something "flat enough" will do). I assume its way cheaper than something like this.
Zigurd 38 minutes ago [-]
I suppose the argument is that X-76 could work in environments without roads. But that also implies without fuel or any other support on the ground.
RandallBrown 44 minutes ago [-]
Can it hover?
thatmf 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bak3y 24 minutes ago [-]
hopefully we never will - the last thing I want the government MORE involved in is healthcare
vicnov 7 minutes ago [-]
It is a fascinating take. I am curious to understand what model you think would work.
The U.S. effectively has a dysfunctional system with wild mix of "no regulation" and heavy state participation. I am not sure there is any country with a deregulated system where people can enjoy good healthcare. You could theoretically say that Switzerland does this, but the government there requires everyone to have insurance, even though hospitals are 100% private.
Rendered at 19:01:31 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Two articles that cover this in depth are: 1. Revised Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Concepts Emerge From Special Operations X-Plane Program. December 2024: https://www.twz.com/air/revised-fold-away-rotor-aircraft-con...
2. Bell’s Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter. September 2021: https://www.twz.com/41997/bells-plan-to-finally-realize-a-ro...
The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept.
The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific capabilities.
There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US government as the program was under development. It makes the US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from thinking about conventional warfare with America.
That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to justify the risk to the program.
Reading between the lines, I suspect "fast, but also expensive" was a design option that popped up and was not chosen earlier in the V280 program and now Darpa wants to pay to see where it goes.
Sometimes they even take the piss with this, like in this video for a next-gen engine, where you can see their engine doesn't even fit in their fantasy aircraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHun6rxQm0
The U.S. effectively has a dysfunctional system with wild mix of "no regulation" and heavy state participation. I am not sure there is any country with a deregulated system where people can enjoy good healthcare. You could theoretically say that Switzerland does this, but the government there requires everyone to have insurance, even though hospitals are 100% private.