As a helicopter pilot my heart skipped a beat at the start of this. I trained that a chip light, sensor or otherwise, especially accompanied by anything else (warnings, noise). Is either no fly or land immediately because somethings about to break. Hearing the words "three chip burn advisories" sets off so many alarms. I'm glad you went into such detail about. I just cant imagine seeing that many warnings and no urgency. A training exercise just doesn't seem worth the risk, I would have settled for landing at the nearest land mass, not even airport.
Someone else in the comments mentioned that the Ospreys had a big problem with false-positives, but I don't know how reliable the info is. If that is the case, it's more understandable that a pilot would ignore it
I see this comment a lot and it’s so frustrating. The Osprey chip burn advisory just tells you that chips are being burned. The chips caution tells you when there’s unburnable chips. A lot of helicopters don’t have this level of granularity and just tell you when there’s unburnable chips, hence the (well deserved) apprehension from helicopter pilots. Does that detail matter? Maybe, maybe not. You could still argue they did the wrong thing (and many do, with validity). The frustration for me comes from people who have just enough experience to have some sort of insight, but not enough to actually be familiar with the v22. It’s really easy to armchair quarterback aviation mishaps, especially when you don’t have a full picture of what was actually going on, what the publications say to do, and how the crews are trained to handle it. (I apologize if this comes off as combative, I’ve just seen this type of comment a lot and need a bit of a rant)
you'd be interested in the Porsche 917 from 1969: "These first cars had alloy tubular chassis, which was gas-filled to detect cracks. There was a big gauge in the cockpit, which measured the gas pressure. If the gauge zeroed, they said it meant that the chassis has started to crack, and they said I should drive home 'mit care'. I told them, 'If the needle zeroes I'll park the bastard there and then walk back, pick up my Deutschmarks and go home'.
Porsche did the same thing for one of their lemans cars in the 70s. They were having trouble with cracks in their spaceframe chassis so they filled it with nitrogen and gave the driver a chassis pressure gage that would tell the driver when a crack was propagating in the chassis
@@tank-elevenYou’re capping big time im German and you said with care and just replaced with to mit but care isn’t a German word and Deutschmarks is also wrong
I would call the crash mentioned at the beginning a huge misjudgment by the pilot , lack of training, or lack of adequate procedures. They had a literal warning from the aircraft something was wrong for 45 mins.
@@devins9894 Depends on how often the false positives happen, given the threshold for the indicator urgency protocol and the general disregard for the early warning, that rather suggests that the issue isn't with the pilots being lackadaisical so much as that the Osprey's chip indicator has a notably flawed implementation. Course there is also the question of whether the higher risk of military aircraft reduces the threshold in general by nature of the more risky objectives they partake in alongside a more hostile environment. But given that early so considered false positives may in fact not be false positives in what should be a very normal environment, I would suggest that indicates that normal environment false positives are too common or the procedure itself was too relaxed on the warning signs. So it depends.
The one stat that would’ve been most helpful would be crashes per flight hour. Crashes per airframe doesn’t control for how many were built, and deaths per flight hour doesn’t control for the fact that the osprey carries a lot more people than a black hawk. If I had crashes per flight hour I could directly compare how unreliable the different airframes are.
I'd also like specifically _fatal_ crashes per flight hour. Since if say a Blackhawk crashes more often, but has a higher chance of the crew and passengers suriving the crash that's also notable. I _really_ don't like the "deaths per flight hour" mentioned in the video since it also ignores that even if the Osprey had _double_ the deaths per flight hour than a Blackhawk, you'd also need at _least_ two Blackhawks to match the one Osprey's carrying capacity meaning double the flight hours for a given mission.
I live in Yakushima and witnessed the whole recovery operation take place. I also talked to a few of the Navy drive team members who were part of the operation and were doing multiple dives a day. It was a crazy time with both US and Japanese military personal, sea and air assets, as well as local fishermen who volunteered to search for survivors and recover the wreck. The sad part is that they were so close to the runway and could've made it if they didn't ignore the chip warnings. RIP
@@nulnoh219 yeah - I remember always being cautioned about too sensitive warning threshholds in systems engineering, as users tend to develop automated responses to them, up to the point of not even remembering a warning or that they turned it off
Helicopter blades work like plane wings, but they constantly fly in a small circle. One of the main differences is the helicopter blades often have to fly in their own wake. They are also thinner and bend easier, but their tangential inertia 'centrifugal force' helps keep them close to level. If you try to pick up a fully loaded parked helicopter by its rotor tips, the rotor blades will bend out of the way, or break.
Thank you for putting this together. The public only gets told when things go badly. They don't get told all the times things go fine. Most people don't realize how dangerous aircraft development used to be and how much work goes in improving something that isn't perfect the first time it's built. Thanks.
sometimes if the check engine light goes off, you should respect it. If the pilot wouldve responded to inital warning, he mightve had time to get to a landing spot in time or at least safer. If he wouldve communicated better, people couldve had support crews ready in a more controlled crash. Plenty of things that couldve been improved.
10:41 The rotor twist doesn't hurt hover efficiency. The reason why most helicopters have thin blades is for better forward flight. But since the v-22 rotors are always facing "upwards," they can make use of the more efficient twist angle. I'd recommend the textbook Helicopter Theory by Johnson for more information.
@@johnathanclayton2887 The blade fold system specifically is driven though individual components on the blade called planetaries, but you do need hyds to roll the nacelles up and down to position the blades properly. The APU doesn't have a pump on it, but powers a midwing gearbox that has a hydraulic pump attached to that instead
I've been following you since the beginning of the channel, and I've always been impressed with your research and presentation quality. The quality of your 3d animations just keeps getting better!! Physics demonstrations, along with visualizations of complex engineering, makes it all so much more interesting and easy to digest. One of my favorite youtube channels hands down.
The Concorde had a superb safety record. Only one crash, because another plane dropped debris on the runway. So not Concorde's fault. Glad you put Concorde into a safety video.
That Operation Eagle Claw might be one of the most incompetent missions I've ever heard of. Yeah lets just shoot at a petrol tanker when we're trying to be sneaky, can't see any issue there.
You need the numbers of major incidents ending in death or hull loss per flight hours (at around 19 minutes in this video) to understand the safety factor. 1.59 major incidents per 100,000 flight hours for Chinooks and 2.27 for every 100,000 hours of flight for Osprey. Blackhawk as far as I can tell is around 1 death per 100,000 hours (but I can't find hull failure data). These numbers are all skewed however due to passenger capacity and I can't tell if the numbers take into account the fact that a large number of Chinooks were shot down during Vietnam.
Their Osprey told them to land over and over for FORTY-NINE MINUTES before the crash. They didn't need a runway. They thought it was a false alarm. At first, they didn't even know what a chip warning was! Their fault.
I was flying offshore in a Bo 105 helicopter (BoCal) and we got a chip light. The pilot was not concern. Then five minutes later, we got another. This time the pilot showed some concern. When the third chip light came on a few minutes later, he found the nearest offshore platform with a helipad and set it down, asap. They flew a mechanic out, turns out it was a faulty chip light, but the pilot was not going to take any chances after that 3rd light.
They knew but ops procedure had it as a low priority. Second light it escalated and should have resulted in a mission cancel and immediately seeking a LZ, however flight ops did not have it as that critical and the training around it was bad. This has been changed and the procedure for a chip indication has been escalated. I belive one light is advisory to land soon, second WILL divert immediately, and third is "on the ground, _NOW"_
@@amogusenjoyer it's a sensor that atracts and monitors for magnetic chips in the gearbox, and then can burn them off to reset. Every sensor can and will go bad at some point, but you must treat them seriously. It's also possible to get a light from general wear. It's why there's a grace to the procedure.
19:55 The high fatality rate per incident *can* be attributed to larger airframes being able to hold more passengers…but how much of the fatalities are due to larger capacity vs each incident’s higher likelihood of being catastrophic/fatal due to the complexity of airframe? While ospreys are statistically less likely to have an incident than tradition helicopters, the likelihood of an incident being fatal is increased and I would argue that for the C-47, it is due to higher capacity, while for the V-22 it is due to the complexity of the airframe causing unrecoverable failure So what am I trying to say… I think that the osprey’s safety record is so negatively viewed because most people think that if you have an incident, you’re very likely to perish, vs if you had an incident on a traditional helicopter, you’re more likely to survive
Right but what kind of incidents? Most of the (mechanical) things that caused Ospreys to crash would cause any helicopter to crash in an unrecoverable fashion.
Another (as per usual) excellent video. As a purely non-pilot civilian but huge "All flying machines" buff, I have had a dim view of the Osprey. This video went a long way to make me reassess. Thank you.
Mobile Suit Gundam is a cultural cornerstone in Japan, in the same league as Star Wars is in the US. Not surprising to see Japanese servicemen name their craft after it.
>6:38 Bit of an oversight to not comment that, right after that, one of the sea stallions crashed into one of the parked C-130. Due to the resulting blast and shrapnel all the other helicopters had to be left behind.
Cockpit recordings of military pilots are always so calm and emotionless. They could be in a death spiral and just keep reading out altitude every few seconds like its a Sunday drive.
When shit starts to go sideways its best to stay calm. Training helps a lot and experience. We do a lot of simulator training and that helps greatly. Anyone that panics is generally not helpful to the situation. Reminds me of Apollo 13 even if it was dramatized a bit. Keep working the problem and don’t make it worse is a good adage. I teach my students to say “whats next”. Pilot heard a loud bang, “whats next”, fly that thing till it will not fly any longer. You will see this with emergency responders as well. Everyone should get some rudimentary training such as first aid and fire training. That shit saves lives.
15:49 it's pretty impressive the gearbox continued to work for 15 minutes with a broken off tooth. Those chip detectors need to be rock solid though, so the pilots don't ignore them. Maybe they need a redundant second one?
Chip detectors is a whole subject of debate in aviation in general. There are many types of chip detectors for different uses. Some are checked by maintenance and are just magnets in the oil system. Some are checked before flight and not electrically monitored. Some are monitored in flight but not active and then there are the active ones like this system. I have flown all these systems on helicopters as well as airplanes. I have had to shut down three engines due to chip lights and make several as soon as practical, as soon as possible, as well as immediate landings or shutdowns. All that to say its complicated. The worst thing in operation is false chip-lights which lull a crew into a sense of complacency. Ohh just another chip-light with some fuzz is not uncommon. Some systems are too sensitive, others are not sensitive enough. I suspect that this complacency played a large part in this scenario. Active vibration monitoring would be a good secondary way to enforce what to do when a chip-light is encountered. We do this naturally as looking for secondary indications. Just last month i had an engine seize up on start, its a mechanical device. Shit happens.
The nacelle positioning mechanism is very similar to how regular flaps work in an airliner. Also, the coolest planes have always been dangerous. I think that at any given time, you can only make an aircraft so good with the technology at hand. This means that the more of the pie you take for capabilities, the less resources you have for reliability, redundancy, ease of maintenance.
I understand we don't have the full set of data but relative safety requires comparing incidents or casualties per flight hour across VTOL aircraft. Osprey incidents are always high-profile because its the "new" thing and often carry spec ops or something similar.
Ummm cause we got TWO HUGE engines on a rotating joint along with two HUGE fan blades. I hear them all the time practicing around my house. When they in helicopter mode it sounds like something is trying to punch it's way through the air. I can only imagine the amount shaking those engines take from the sound alone
I was fortunate enough to enjoy a quick ride-along in one of these when I was in the corps, courtesy of MCAF Quantico after participating in one of their CoC ceremonies. Watching the earth rapidly zoom out through the open cargo bay door when the pilot pushed the throttle and pitched up was an experience I'll never forget. "Impressive machine" is an understatement. Its such a shame that it took so many pilots' and passengers lives in its testing and service.
Yet at the same time, the number of people and pilots its killed in its entire lifetime is significantly less than the number that have been lost in Blackhawk accidents in the course of a similar time period, and yet people don't seem to judge the Blackhawk as a "killer" aircraft. The V-22 really gets an unfair rap for its supposed deadliness when it's actually one of the safer rotorcraft around statistically.
Really interesting the misconception that this aircraft is singularly unsafe, I ve heard it many many times, and never cared to check the actual data. A good lesson learned.
12:30 woah i didnt know that the osprey had a central linkage between the two motors. I thought both nacelles were basically entirely independant a part from fuel systems. That's crazy, the engineering behind that shaft alone is so interesting!
I don’t think the blade twist is a negative tradeoff for V-22. Since it doesn’t have to fly horizontally in helicopter mode the blades can have closer to an ideal twist and actually achieve a higher figure of merit. You also got the vortex ring state portion wrong. When a helicopter descends into its own wake it can get into a situation where the vortices get ingested back through the rotor, causing a sudden and significant decrease in thrust.
The blade twist is most certainly a trade off. Yes, when the v22 is flying in conversion mode the nacelles tilt forward instead of the fuselage, but when landing or taking off it will suffer from the inefficiency that was mentioned. He did not get the vortex ring state wrong. I understand that it is commonly taught that it is caused by descending into your own "dirty" air with no other lateral, forward or back motion, well this isn't necessarily wrong, its not why you loose lift in that case. what the dirty air causes is more instable flight than anything else.
@@SHEEPS_1231) what is the ideal twist of a rotor blade in hover? Again, V-22 actually has a higher FOM than a typical helicopter partially because of its high blade twist. 2) It’s not dirty air. It’s recirculating the downwash, i.e. the rotor is seeing extra high inflow velocity.
Some of the Marines I went to Boot Camp with in 1999 died in a few of the crashes. I served when 9/11 happened and deployed after, but the V-22 wasn't ready for general use. So, I never got to fly on one. I didn't mind, because I didn't feel like it anyway after losing my Brothers. USMC 1999-2007
they are such cool aircraft. I was lucky enough to see a Marine Corps Presidential Osprey take off and land in NYC. They looked great in green and white.
Something else interesting about the osprey, that came to light deep, deep into development and deployment, is that the engines aren't actually rated for a sustained hover. Just take off and landing.
Brian, this video is awesome! You and the team did a great job!! However, I'm not quite sure the Vortex Ring State definition is correct. You need to talk to Al Brand at Bell Flight. He did the original work solving and understanding Vortex Ring State, and has an amazing simulation in X-Plane of a V-22 entering VRS and how to safely get out of it (hint: it's different than a typical rotorcraft!). Looking at the future, mission requirements haven't really changed, but designs and techniques certainly have. Can changes in the FLRAA design mitigate problems on the V-22? Bell certainly thinks so.
I remember watching an episode of a Singaporean documentary series that covered Okinawans' opposition to the presence of US military bases on their island (among other things). One of the many reasons the Okinawans raised to support their opposition was this very reason: the safety record of the V22 Osprey VTOLs. They were concerned that a V22 might crash into a more populated or urbanised area of their island, with much more deadly consequences for them. I also remember reading in the New York Times ages ago a whole page of letters to their editor in response to their earlier coverage of the V22's questionable safety record, with many people on either side of the argument for the aircraft. There were those who felt the V22s are just unsafe and a threat to the safety of US military personnel, and there were also those who felt the V22s were necessary to replace aging military equipment; the whole thing was a total quagmire I recall.
In theory, with craft that can neither glide nor autorotate (It can't, right?) wouldn't it be feasible to lay low, i.e. 20 metres above the water so it can attempt to save the crew in case of total failure?
It's a common misconception that any given helicopter is easier to fly than any given airplane and nothing could be further from the truth. The complexities of the physics around helicopter flight are entirely different and not always immediately intuitive. Combine the varied flight characteristics of helpcopters AND planes in the same vehicle and it seems like it''d be a real mess.
I used to think it was easier, until I flew a helicopter and then a jet on a simulator. I could barely do anything in the helicopter without almost crashing, while the plane was way easier and also more intuitive.
I've never heard anyone think this. Everyone I've ever talked to, even casually about aviation, assumed helicopters were inherently more difficult/more complex.
Was going to say, having flown a small aircraft and tried helicopters on a simulator (usually easier), they're much more difficult. Takes hours just to get hovering reliably down, then you've got all the complex physics like you said. Stuff like vortex ring states, how the air can work against large objects like mountains and such. I think the biggest misconception with helicopters is they fall out of the sky as soon as the engine dies/turns off, which isn't true. They can make unpowered landings, they just get one shot at it assuming they have enough altitude/speed.
One of the reasons the early V22 program had so many problems is that the test pilots were pulled from the fixed wing pool rather than helicopter, so they came in with the wrong set of skills and experince.
It should be noted that Osprey crashes get more attention than say, fighter crashes, because they usually have a higher death toll, which may exaggerate the actual relative likelihood of an osprey crash.
On the flip side of that, failures are more often catastrophic than traditional aircraft because an engine failure in a traditional jet or helicopter does not result in the craft immediately flipping over and diving into the ground. There is time to assess the situation and potentially make corrective or life-saving actions in other aircraft.
Even if the crashes are not more numerous, they are nearly always deadly because this aircraft can neither glide nor can it auto rotate if it loses propulsion. If they could come up with a ballistic parachute for it or ejection seats it would be one of the safest aircraft in the forces.
I am confident that the next generation of vertical lift fast planes will be large versions of the six rotor drone architecture. Using electric motors and one or two central generators, these could lose one, two, or even three non-adjacent rotors and keep flying.
The Osprey is so much fun! It's taking the worst things about helis and the bad things about airplanes and mix it into something that actually works! Absolutely terrifying engineering! Sad to see them crash, they are so unique.
VTOLs are a blessing and a curse. What you get in utility, you pay for in complexity. And unfortunately, complexity often comes at the expense of safety (margin).
My former son-in-law flew helicopters. Then he flew turboprop aircraft. He flew USN personnel to an installation that had V-22 Osprey's. While there, he was given the opportunity to use the simulator. They were amazed when had very few problems.
Chip detectors is a whole subject of debate in aviation in general. There are many types of chip detectors for different uses. Some are checked by maintenance and are just magnets in the oil system. Some are checked before flight and not electrically monitored. Some are monitored in flight but not active and then there are the active ones like this system. I have flown all these systems on helicopters as well as airplanes. I have had to shut down three engines due to chip lights and make several as soon as practical, as soon as possible, as well as immediate landings or shutdowns. All that to say its complicated. The worst thing in operation is false chip-lights which lull a crew into a sense of complacency. Ohh just another chip-light with some fuzz is not uncommon. Some systems are too sensitive, others are not sensitive enough. I suspect that this complacency played a large part in this scenario. Active vibration monitoring would be a good secondary way to enforce what to do when a chip-light is encountered. We do this naturally as looking for secondary indications. Just last month i had an engine seize up on start, its a mechanical device. Shit happens.
honestly this plane was the first of its kind, to me as a mechanic in training and engineering enthusiasts, too many complex systems in something as temperamental as an aircraft can be deadly, without a lot of redundancies put in place. This aircraft needed to be visually inspected thoroughly before every mission, and also pulled apart and x ray tested every week. It has too many failure points that can cause a crash, it honestly is in need of a complete redesign with modern techniques and building materials.
The crash data is a bit misleading, because UH-60s and CH-47s are flown in *much* worse conditions than V-22s. The CH-47 in particular can operate in high-hot conditions where the V-22 simply can't, so comparing crashes isn't quite apples to apples.
I will say, my biggest concern with the Osprey isn't the complexity or uniqueness of the airframe... it's that they can't safely land in full forward configuration, which means that one of the operations which is most safety critical (landing) involves a regime change from forward flight to hover where the number of points of failure increases. If the prop-rotors were able to be full-forward while also having enough ground clearance for TO/L, I think they'd have fewer incidents as a fixed-wing landing can enter glide if full engine failure occurs.
I was curious so I looked it up and the glide ratio for the Osprey is 4.5:1. Not sure how viable that is for gliding after engine failure. I assume to make it better they’d have to make the wings longer, bringing in all sorts of new problems.
Unfortunately I don't think the physics of the plane allows that. You want the biggest props you can for hover flight, which makes it way oversized for forward flight. trying to force the issue would require a massively tall hump on the roof, making storage and weight a problem.
In an emergency situation you'll just kinda accept the propellers will strike the ground if you have to, but also you don't have to have them elevated _much_ to get them clear. Just a few degrees will do. But with a fat aircraft with little stubby wings, its glide speed will be very high. You might have enough control to ditch, but any landing is still probably closer to a controlled crash than an actual landing. I kinda doubt it auto-rotates well either, so which it technically has both aircraft and helicopter emergency modes, it won't be good or safe in either. I will add though, that if landing on a runway there's no _need_ to do a full regime change to hover. The nacells can be pitched up only part way to provide extra lift while still mostly in forward flight.
That’s your biggest concern? FYI, the prop blades are designed to ‘broomstraw’ or shatter, should a nacelle-forward landing be necessary. All three hydraulic systems are able to single-handedly operate the nacelle conversion function. In the event of a dual engine failure (which has never happened), the V-22 has minimal glide capability so you’re not making it to a runway unless you’re already above it (4:1 from the cockpit is like an elevator ride)
20 yrs ago, I made a demonstration model of V 22 for my highschool science exhibition. In those days, I thought the days of the helicopter were numbered. I was wrong of course.😅
I can't wait to see if we get electric motors powerful enough to drive v22 blades. I would be all for a hybrid system where a large turbine provides the power. But I think you could do a double redundant electric motor on each nacelle and get rid of most of the years and you could have one of the safest...
As a helicopter pilot my heart skipped a beat at the start of this. I trained that a chip light, sensor or otherwise, especially accompanied by anything else (warnings, noise). Is either no fly or land immediately because somethings about to break. Hearing the words "three chip burn advisories" sets off so many alarms. I'm glad you went into such detail about. I just cant imagine seeing that many warnings and no urgency. A training exercise just doesn't seem worth the risk, I would have settled for landing at the nearest land mass, not even airport.
Someone else in the comments mentioned that the Ospreys had a big problem with false-positives, but I don't know how reliable the info is. If that is the case, it's more understandable that a pilot would ignore it
yeah this - I mean if this was a now-or-never rescue mission I'd kinda get it, but for a training exercise?
I see this comment a lot and it’s so frustrating. The Osprey chip burn advisory just tells you that chips are being burned. The chips caution tells you when there’s unburnable chips. A lot of helicopters don’t have this level of granularity and just tell you when there’s unburnable chips, hence the (well deserved) apprehension from helicopter pilots. Does that detail matter? Maybe, maybe not. You could still argue they did the wrong thing (and many do, with validity). The frustration for me comes from people who have just enough experience to have some sort of insight, but not enough to actually be familiar with the v22. It’s really easy to armchair quarterback aviation mishaps, especially when you don’t have a full picture of what was actually going on, what the publications say to do, and how the crews are trained to handle it.
(I apologize if this comes off as combative, I’ve just seen this type of comment a lot and need a bit of a rant)
@@Beep-bophdjcienencio So, is it a land as soon as possible or practicable emergency?
Does normal helicopters have this kind of chip detector/burner?
Filling the blades with pressurized nitrogen is a cool way to monitor for cracks, super cool engineering stuff love it
you'd be interested in the Porsche 917 from 1969: "These first cars had alloy tubular chassis, which was gas-filled to detect cracks. There was a big gauge in the cockpit, which measured the gas pressure. If the gauge zeroed, they said it meant that the chassis has started to crack, and they said I should drive home 'mit care'. I told them, 'If the needle zeroes I'll park the bastard there and then walk back, pick up my Deutschmarks and go home'.
Porsche did the same thing for one of their lemans cars in the 70s. They were having trouble with cracks in their spaceframe chassis so they filled it with nitrogen and gave the driver a chassis pressure gage that would tell the driver when a crack was propagating in the chassis
A better way would be by simply using a traditional metal alloy.
@@1ytcommenterWow! You should be an aeronautical engineer, with insight like that! I bet no-one ever thought of that!
@@tank-elevenYou’re capping big time im German and you said with care and just replaced with to mit but care isn’t a German word and Deutschmarks is also wrong
I would call the crash mentioned at the beginning a huge misjudgment by the pilot , lack of training, or lack of adequate procedures. They had a literal warning from the aircraft something was wrong for 45 mins.
If I recall correctly, there was also a problem with false positives.
Even so that's no reason to be so lackadaisical about it. When lives are on the line that's an issue to worry about ON THE GROUND.
That seems like a big detail to purposefully leave out
@@devins9894 Depends on how often the false positives happen, given the threshold for the indicator urgency protocol and the general disregard for the early warning, that rather suggests that the issue isn't with the pilots being lackadaisical so much as that the Osprey's chip indicator has a notably flawed implementation. Course there is also the question of whether the higher risk of military aircraft reduces the threshold in general by nature of the more risky objectives they partake in alongside a more hostile environment. But given that early so considered false positives may in fact not be false positives in what should be a very normal environment, I would suggest that indicates that normal environment false positives are too common or the procedure itself was too relaxed on the warning signs. So it depends.
@@neeneko there is no such thing as false positive in aviation. If a warning light blinks at you, you assume it's doing it for a reason
The one stat that would’ve been most helpful would be crashes per flight hour.
Crashes per airframe doesn’t control for how many were built, and deaths per flight hour doesn’t control for the fact that the osprey carries a lot more people than a black hawk. If I had crashes per flight hour I could directly compare how unreliable the different airframes are.
V22 flies from NC to NY little bit over an hour and H46 flies there in 3 plus a stop in the middle.
Not sure how you would clean the data on that.
I'd also like specifically _fatal_ crashes per flight hour. Since if say a Blackhawk crashes more often, but has a higher chance of the crew and passengers suriving the crash that's also notable. I _really_ don't like the "deaths per flight hour" mentioned in the video since it also ignores that even if the Osprey had _double_ the deaths per flight hour than a Blackhawk, you'd also need at _least_ two Blackhawks to match the one Osprey's carrying capacity meaning double the flight hours for a given mission.
@@chrisc1140 one method cannot be the best one. All used together will give more accurate comparing.
I live in Yakushima and witnessed the whole recovery operation take place. I also talked to a few of the Navy drive team members who were part of the operation and were doing multiple dives a day. It was a crazy time with both US and Japanese military personal, sea and air assets, as well as local fishermen who volunteered to search for survivors and recover the wreck. The sad part is that they were so close to the runway and could've made it if they didn't ignore the chip warnings. RIP
Normalisation of deviations.
@@nulnoh219 yeah - I remember always being cautioned about too sensitive warning threshholds in systems engineering, as users tend to develop automated responses to them, up to the point of not even remembering a warning or that they turned it off
Planes are engineering marvels that use air pressure to fly.
Helicopters didn't get the memo and just beat the air into submission.
I was taught that they make so much noise that the earth repels them. 😂
Helicopter: One hundred thousand moving parts, reluctantly flying in formation.
Helicopter blades work like plane wings, but they constantly fly in a small circle. One of the main differences is the helicopter blades often have to fly in their own wake. They are also thinner and bend easier, but their tangential inertia 'centrifugal force' helps keep them close to level. If you try to pick up a fully loaded parked helicopter by its rotor tips, the rotor blades will bend out of the way, or break.
🤣🤣🤣
@@gpaull2 I know the version that they are so aerodynamically disgusting that earth repels them.
Thank you for putting this together. The public only gets told when things go badly. They don't get told all the times things go fine. Most people don't realize how dangerous aircraft development used to be and how much work goes in improving something that isn't perfect the first time it's built. Thanks.
As a V22 Crew Chief.... it seems pretty safe to me.
I just hope that we don't see another mishap anytime soon
It makes my mecha loving heart sing that the call signs for Japanese Ospreys are "Gundam"
I actually turned sound on the video just to make sure that's what they were saying. Pretty cool off the JSDF.
Prepare for GundamFALL... from an Osprey, haha
Gundam22 was a USAF bird.
sometimes if the check engine light goes off, you should respect it. If the pilot wouldve responded to inital warning, he mightve had time to get to a landing spot in time or at least safer. If he wouldve communicated better, people couldve had support crews ready in a more controlled crash. Plenty of things that couldve been improved.
This type of aircraft has been around since 1950. The same reason the type was canceled back then was the gearbox and tilt Wing spars.
10:41 The rotor twist doesn't hurt hover efficiency. The reason why most helicopters have thin blades is for better forward flight. But since the v-22 rotors are always facing "upwards," they can make use of the more efficient twist angle. I'd recommend the textbook Helicopter Theory by Johnson for more information.
He not only got that wrong he completely got the purpose of APU's wrong.
@password6025 does it have a hydraulic pump on it to be able to stow the rotors? Main purpose is starting of course.
@@johnathanclayton2887 The blade fold system specifically is driven though individual components on the blade called planetaries, but you do need hyds to roll the nacelles up and down to position the blades properly. The APU doesn't have a pump on it, but powers a midwing gearbox that has a hydraulic pump attached to that instead
@@password6025 Yeah? are you an expert?
@@snmc2918 yes... tell us more military secrets please
I've been following you since the beginning of the channel, and I've always been impressed with your research and presentation quality.
The quality of your 3d animations just keeps getting better!! Physics demonstrations, along with visualizations of complex engineering, makes it all so much more interesting and easy to digest.
One of my favorite youtube channels hands down.
Hopefully, possible problems while flying the Osprey will be made more apparent with updated software to pilot and assist with making a safe landing.
The Concorde had a superb safety record. Only one crash, because another plane dropped debris on the runway. So not Concorde's fault. Glad you put Concorde into a safety video.
It isn’t the advancing blade that limits the top speed of a helicopter, it is the retreating blade. They call this retreating blade stall.
While it may be unfair to feel this way; if I was needing rescued and I saw a V-22 coming, i wouldn't feel safer.
That Operation Eagle Claw might be one of the most incompetent missions I've ever heard of. Yeah lets just shoot at a petrol tanker when we're trying to be sneaky, can't see any issue there.
Army SF ground forces, Navy helicopters, Marine helicopter pilots, Air Force refueling aircraft. What could go wrong?
0:27 Such a shame for such cool callsigns.
Marines are nerdy.
@@Tinfoil_is_the_new_blackand that's why the love crayons
@@Tinfoil_is_the_new_blacknever forget gigax served and which branch he was in, lol
Most of the squadrons in Japan have pretty good call signs the C130 squadrons out of Futema's was Sumo
I always look forward to your videos. This one was fantastic! 👍
You need the numbers of major incidents ending in death or hull loss per flight hours (at around 19 minutes in this video) to understand the safety factor. 1.59 major incidents per 100,000 flight hours for Chinooks and 2.27 for every 100,000 hours of flight for Osprey. Blackhawk as far as I can tell is around 1 death per 100,000 hours (but I can't find hull failure data). These numbers are all skewed however due to passenger capacity and I can't tell if the numbers take into account the fact that a large number of Chinooks were shot down during Vietnam.
Their Osprey told them to land over and over for FORTY-NINE MINUTES before the crash. They didn't need a runway. They thought it was a false alarm. At first, they didn't even know what a chip warning was! Their fault.
I was flying offshore in a Bo 105 helicopter (BoCal) and we got a chip light. The pilot was not concern. Then five minutes later, we got another. This time the pilot showed some concern. When the third chip light came on a few minutes later, he found the nearest offshore platform with a helipad and set it down, asap.
They flew a mechanic out, turns out it was a faulty chip light, but the pilot was not going to take any chances after that 3rd light.
They knew but ops procedure had it as a low priority. Second light it escalated and should have resulted in a mission cancel and immediately seeking a LZ, however flight ops did not have it as that critical and the training around it was bad.
This has been changed and the procedure for a chip indication has been escalated. I belive one light is advisory to land soon, second WILL divert immediately, and third is "on the ground, _NOW"_
Are false alarms common for that specific alarm?
@@amogusenjoyer it's a sensor that atracts and monitors for magnetic chips in the gearbox, and then can burn them off to reset.
Every sensor can and will go bad at some point, but you must treat them seriously.
It's also possible to get a light from general wear. It's why there's a grace to the procedure.
@@seldoon_nemar yeah that makes sense! The entire concept of burning off the metal debris is still amazing to me though haha.
19:55
The high fatality rate per incident *can* be attributed to larger airframes being able to hold more passengers…but how much of the fatalities are due to larger capacity vs each incident’s higher likelihood of being catastrophic/fatal due to the complexity of airframe?
While ospreys are statistically less likely to have an incident than tradition helicopters, the likelihood of an incident being fatal is increased and I would argue that for the C-47, it is due to higher capacity, while for the V-22 it is due to the complexity of the airframe causing unrecoverable failure
So what am I trying to say… I think that the osprey’s safety record is so negatively viewed because most people think that if you have an incident, you’re very likely to perish, vs if you had an incident on a traditional helicopter, you’re more likely to survive
Right but what kind of incidents? Most of the (mechanical) things that caused Ospreys to crash would cause any helicopter to crash in an unrecoverable fashion.
@@wockyslush3038helicopters autorotate, can help.
Another (as per usual) excellent video. As a purely non-pilot civilian but huge "All flying machines" buff, I have had a dim view of the Osprey. This video went a long way to make me reassess. Thank you.
Hearing the name of an anime robot as call signs really caught me off guard there.
Mobile Suit Gundam is a cultural cornerstone in Japan, in the same league as Star Wars is in the US. Not surprising to see Japanese servicemen name their craft after it.
>6:38
Bit of an oversight to not comment that, right after that, one of the sea stallions crashed into one of the parked C-130. Due to the resulting blast and shrapnel all the other helicopters had to be left behind.
Cockpit recordings of military pilots are always so calm and emotionless. They could be in a death spiral and just keep reading out altitude every few seconds like its a Sunday drive.
I don't think these were the real recordings. Although they probably still were calm.
the army has inhumane protocols for this reason.
Those are recreations and not the original recordings.
When shit starts to go sideways its best to stay calm. Training helps a lot and experience. We do a lot of simulator training and that helps greatly. Anyone that panics is generally not helpful to the situation. Reminds me of Apollo 13 even if it was dramatized a bit. Keep working the problem and don’t make it worse is a good adage. I teach my students to say “whats next”. Pilot heard a loud bang, “whats next”, fly that thing till it will not fly any longer.
You will see this with emergency responders as well. Everyone should get some rudimentary training such as first aid and fire training. That shit saves lives.
my grandpa loved JAG and back in the early 2000s they had an episode about mechanical issues with the osprey
15:49 it's pretty impressive the gearbox continued to work for 15 minutes with a broken off tooth. Those chip detectors need to be rock solid though, so the pilots don't ignore them. Maybe they need a redundant second one?
Chip detectors is a whole subject of debate in aviation in general. There are many types of chip detectors for different uses. Some are checked by maintenance and are just magnets in the oil system. Some are checked before flight and not electrically monitored. Some are monitored in flight but not active and then there are the active ones like this system. I have flown all these systems on helicopters as well as airplanes. I have had to shut down three engines due to chip lights and make several as soon as practical, as soon as possible, as well as immediate landings or shutdowns. All that to say its complicated.
The worst thing in operation is false chip-lights which lull a crew into a sense of complacency. Ohh just another chip-light with some fuzz is not uncommon. Some systems are too sensitive, others are not sensitive enough.
I suspect that this complacency played a large part in this scenario. Active vibration monitoring would be a good secondary way to enforce what to do when a chip-light is encountered. We do this naturally as looking for secondary indications. Just last month i had an engine seize up on start, its a mechanical device. Shit happens.
So why were there only 5 chip events if the sensor was plugged full of metal?
The nacelle positioning mechanism is very similar to how regular flaps work in an airliner. Also, the coolest planes have always been dangerous. I think that at any given time, you can only make an aircraft so good with the technology at hand. This means that the more of the pie you take for capabilities, the less resources you have for reliability, redundancy, ease of maintenance.
Ex. Star fighter, Tomcat, blackbird, X-15, Space Shuttle.
Lmao
I understand we don't have the full set of data but relative safety requires comparing incidents or casualties per flight hour across VTOL aircraft. Osprey incidents are always high-profile because its the "new" thing and often carry spec ops or something similar.
Same thing going on with the F-35. It’s crashed ~12 times. The F-104 fighter crashed about 300 times in Germany alone.
“New” since 1965
@@gbcb8853how many other tilt wing helicopters have been made…
Ummm cause we got TWO HUGE engines on a rotating joint along with two HUGE fan blades.
I hear them all the time practicing around my house. When they in helicopter mode it sounds like something is trying to punch it's way through the air.
I can only imagine the amount shaking those engines take from the sound alone
I was fortunate enough to enjoy a quick ride-along in one of these when I was in the corps, courtesy of MCAF Quantico after participating in one of their CoC ceremonies. Watching the earth rapidly zoom out through the open cargo bay door when the pilot pushed the throttle and pitched up was an experience I'll never forget. "Impressive machine" is an understatement. Its such a shame that it took so many pilots' and passengers lives in its testing and service.
Yet at the same time, the number of people and pilots its killed in its entire lifetime is significantly less than the number that have been lost in Blackhawk accidents in the course of a similar time period, and yet people don't seem to judge the Blackhawk as a "killer" aircraft. The V-22 really gets an unfair rap for its supposed deadliness when it's actually one of the safer rotorcraft around statistically.
ok this is the most I've ever heard the word gundam in a single video. And of all place, I've never expected it to be here
Really interesting the misconception that this aircraft is singularly unsafe, I ve heard it many many times, and never cared to check the actual data. A good lesson learned.
12:30 woah i didnt know that the osprey had a central linkage between the two motors. I thought both nacelles were basically entirely independant a part from fuel systems. That's crazy, the engineering behind that shaft alone is so interesting!
It's for redundancy in the event of an engine failure. One engine can fly the whole aircraft, albeit at reduced performance of course.
I don’t think the blade twist is a negative tradeoff for V-22. Since it doesn’t have to fly horizontally in helicopter mode the blades can have closer to an ideal twist and actually achieve a higher figure of merit.
You also got the vortex ring state portion wrong. When a helicopter descends into its own wake it can get into a situation where the vortices get ingested back through the rotor, causing a sudden and significant decrease in thrust.
The blade twist is most certainly a trade off. Yes, when the v22 is flying in conversion mode the nacelles tilt forward instead of the fuselage, but when landing or taking off it will suffer from the inefficiency that was mentioned.
He did not get the vortex ring state wrong. I understand that it is commonly taught that it is caused by descending into your own "dirty" air with no other lateral, forward or back motion, well this isn't necessarily wrong, its not why you loose lift in that case.
what the dirty air causes is more instable flight than anything else.
@@SHEEPS_1231) what is the ideal twist of a rotor blade in hover? Again, V-22 actually has a higher FOM than a typical helicopter partially because of its high blade twist. 2) It’s not dirty air. It’s recirculating the downwash, i.e. the rotor is seeing extra high inflow velocity.
"a rare jewel-escrust engagement"
"THEN DON'T USE JEWEL-ENCRUSTED PARTS!!"
Some of the Marines I went to Boot Camp with in 1999 died in a few of the crashes.
I served when 9/11 happened and deployed after, but the V-22 wasn't ready for general use. So, I never got to fly on one. I didn't mind, because I didn't feel like it anyway after losing my Brothers.
USMC 1999-2007
they are such cool aircraft. I was lucky enough to see a Marine Corps Presidential Osprey take off and land in NYC. They looked great in green and white.
Something else interesting about the osprey, that came to light deep, deep into development and deployment, is that the engines aren't actually rated for a sustained hover. Just take off and landing.
Thanks for the consistent awesome videos. Thorough as always.
IMO Best episode yet !!
I remember watching Reaching for the Skye's and that this was the future. Longtime in development
You can say anything about the V-22 but damn they are so cool, watching them take off never gets old.
Brian, this video is awesome! You and the team did a great job!! However, I'm not quite sure the Vortex Ring State definition is correct. You need to talk to Al Brand at Bell Flight. He did the original work solving and understanding Vortex Ring State, and has an amazing simulation in X-Plane of a V-22 entering VRS and how to safely get out of it (hint: it's different than a typical rotorcraft!).
Looking at the future, mission requirements haven't really changed, but designs and techniques certainly have. Can changes in the FLRAA design mitigate problems on the V-22? Bell certainly thinks so.
There is another reason. I heard from an AV22 is probably the most difficult air vehicle to fly.
I remember watching an episode of a Singaporean documentary series that covered Okinawans' opposition to the presence of US military bases on their island (among other things). One of the many reasons the Okinawans raised to support their opposition was this very reason: the safety record of the V22 Osprey VTOLs. They were concerned that a V22 might crash into a more populated or urbanised area of their island, with much more deadly consequences for them.
I also remember reading in the New York Times ages ago a whole page of letters to their editor in response to their earlier coverage of the V22's questionable safety record, with many people on either side of the argument for the aircraft. There were those who felt the V22s are just unsafe and a threat to the safety of US military personnel, and there were also those who felt the V22s were necessary to replace aging military equipment; the whole thing was a total quagmire I recall.
V22 Crew Chief here, you did a exceptional job here 10/10
are you a crew chief??
It's not just a helicopter, it's a helicopter AND an anvil.
In theory, with craft that can neither glide nor autorotate (It can't, right?) wouldn't it be feasible to lay low, i.e. 20 metres above the water so it can attempt to save the crew in case of total failure?
Really eye opening video. I love the quality!
The Super Stallion is capable of in-flight refueling now. I'm surprised the V-22 is still in service.
its still in service because its better, its faster, looks better, and is more adaptable to modern day threats.
take your 53 back to the antique store
"Simplify and add lightness."
I don't think the V-22 engineers heard this advice.
One of the EC-130Es from Operation Eagleclaw is on display at the Sullenberger Museum in Charlotte NC
It's a common misconception that any given helicopter is easier to fly than any given airplane and nothing could be further from the truth. The complexities of the physics around helicopter flight are entirely different and not always immediately intuitive. Combine the varied flight characteristics of helpcopters AND planes in the same vehicle and it seems like it''d be a real mess.
I used to think it was easier, until I flew a helicopter and then a jet on a simulator.
I could barely do anything in the helicopter without almost crashing, while the plane was way easier and also more intuitive.
I've never heard anyone think this. Everyone I've ever talked to, even casually about aviation, assumed helicopters were inherently more difficult/more complex.
Was going to say, having flown a small aircraft and tried helicopters on a simulator (usually easier), they're much more difficult. Takes hours just to get hovering reliably down, then you've got all the complex physics like you said. Stuff like vortex ring states, how the air can work against large objects like mountains and such. I think the biggest misconception with helicopters is they fall out of the sky as soon as the engine dies/turns off, which isn't true. They can make unpowered landings, they just get one shot at it assuming they have enough altitude/speed.
"It's a misconception" ftfy
One of the reasons the early V22 program had so many problems is that the test pilots were pulled from the fixed wing pool rather than helicopter, so they came in with the wrong set of skills and experince.
I don't think you can say the hull of the aircraft was found, "Near" the crashsite. It *is* the crashsite
Thank you for sticking to engineering. Good episode.
It should be noted that Osprey crashes get more attention than say, fighter crashes, because they usually have a higher death toll, which may exaggerate the actual relative likelihood of an osprey crash.
Not to mention it's a pretty new/untested idea, so of course eyes will be all over it.
On the flip side of that, failures are more often catastrophic than traditional aircraft because an engine failure in a traditional jet or helicopter does not result in the craft immediately flipping over and diving into the ground. There is time to assess the situation and potentially make corrective or life-saving actions in other aircraft.
Yep. It also looks like he’s mentioned both our points in the video, I’m partway through now
Even if the crashes are not more numerous, they are nearly always deadly because this aircraft can neither glide nor can it auto rotate if it loses propulsion. If they could come up with a ballistic parachute for it or ejection seats it would be one of the safest aircraft in the forces.
thats noted late in the video
I am confident that the next generation of vertical lift fast planes will be large versions of the six rotor drone architecture. Using electric motors and one or two central generators, these could lose one, two, or even three non-adjacent rotors and keep flying.
This is one of the coolest planes ever!
Great video. I learned something. Thank you
This is the best information about them I have seen.
The Osprey is so much fun! It's taking the worst things about helis and the bad things about airplanes and mix it into something that actually works! Absolutely terrifying engineering! Sad to see them crash, they are so unique.
When I went to AP in 1990, one of my instructors worked on its development. It was notorious from crashing back then and should never have flown.
VTOLs are a blessing and a curse. What you get in utility, you pay for in complexity. And unfortunately, complexity often comes at the expense of safety (margin).
I remember reading through so many flight manuals and being confused as to how helicopters actually fly. Amazing machines.
Please can you do a video on lithography machines which are used produce micro processors
Well done ! BTW: such an exciting documentary does not need added background noise.
My former son-in-law flew helicopters. Then he flew turboprop aircraft. He flew USN personnel to an installation that had V-22 Osprey's. While there, he was given the opportunity to use the simulator. They were amazed when had very few problems.
Which video was it that RE mentions the Osprey and that he might cover it if there was demand? That feels so long ago.
A simply great video!
Me n my team were en route for this SAR but was called off just prior to entering the area
Now we just need a red F22 to be called the Red Comet. Great video as usual, thanks!
I literally looked for RE/Mustard videos of the Ospray last night at like 2am. What are the chances lol
I was a jet engine mechanic for F-15's. When checking chip detectors we liked to eat the chips. Very Crunchy.
Fun fact, one of the crew member in the first crash was actually a vicious V-22 safely defender on reddit.
of course they'd name aircrafts stationed in japan "Gundam"
I'm so excited about this topic!
The problem is that Gundams must be piloted by 14 year olds
The pilot wasn't a Newtype 😂
I think you mean Evangelion.
You'd think they now that. That's a rookie mistake!
I needed that chuckle. I knew some of those guys, and some of the armchair quarterbacks s#!t-posting about the crew has my blood boiling. Thanks
Markie Marks... Lol! 💜
Thank you. I have been curious about this.
Chip detectors is a whole subject of debate in aviation in general. There are many types of chip detectors for different uses. Some are checked by maintenance and are just magnets in the oil system. Some are checked before flight and not electrically monitored. Some are monitored in flight but not active and then there are the active ones like this system. I have flown all these systems on helicopters as well as airplanes. I have had to shut down three engines due to chip lights and make several as soon as practical, as soon as possible, as well as immediate landings or shutdowns. All that to say its complicated.
The worst thing in operation is false chip-lights which lull a crew into a sense of complacency. Ohh just another chip-light with some fuzz is not uncommon. Some systems are too sensitive, others are not sensitive enough.
I suspect that this complacency played a large part in this scenario. Active vibration monitoring would be a good secondary way to enforce what to do when a chip-light is encountered. We do this naturally as looking for secondary indications. Just last month i had an engine seize up on start, its a mechanical device. Shit happens.
6:32 PassEnger
You can say what you want, but the Osprey is one of the coolest looking planes ever created.
Wait these actually exist?
Yes
You're kidding, right?
black ops 2 really felt too futuristic
Have you live in a cave or what
You’re joking
Love your videos
This is a really cool video! Can you do a video on the new V-280 Valor & how they fixed all of the problems that the Osprey had?
2:16 it’s an impressive machine with one giant flaw. It only has two props.
Thank you for making this video im sick of Amerifats telling me this dogshit aircraft is good ITS NOT
The Pilot was a member of NCD. Rest in Peace. o7
I had a church counselor that was in the military. He knew multiple people who died testing these helicopters.
It would interesting to see how the V280 Valor stacks up, and how lessons learned from its larger sibling informed its design.
honestly this plane was the first of its kind, to me as a mechanic in training and engineering enthusiasts, too many complex systems in something as temperamental as an aircraft can be deadly, without a lot of redundancies put in place. This aircraft needed to be visually inspected thoroughly before every mission, and also pulled apart and x ray tested every week. It has too many failure points that can cause a crash, it honestly is in need of a complete redesign with modern techniques and building materials.
The crash data is a bit misleading, because UH-60s and CH-47s are flown in *much* worse conditions than V-22s. The CH-47 in particular can operate in high-hot conditions where the V-22 simply can't, so comparing crashes isn't quite apples to apples.
Do the F-35 sometime please! Love these videos.
I will say, my biggest concern with the Osprey isn't the complexity or uniqueness of the airframe... it's that they can't safely land in full forward configuration, which means that one of the operations which is most safety critical (landing) involves a regime change from forward flight to hover where the number of points of failure increases.
If the prop-rotors were able to be full-forward while also having enough ground clearance for TO/L, I think they'd have fewer incidents as a fixed-wing landing can enter glide if full engine failure occurs.
I was curious so I looked it up and the glide ratio for the Osprey is 4.5:1. Not sure how viable that is for gliding after engine failure. I assume to make it better they’d have to make the wings longer, bringing in all sorts of new problems.
Unfortunately I don't think the physics of the plane allows that. You want the biggest props you can for hover flight, which makes it way oversized for forward flight. trying to force the issue would require a massively tall hump on the roof, making storage and weight a problem.
In an emergency situation you'll just kinda accept the propellers will strike the ground if you have to, but also you don't have to have them elevated _much_ to get them clear. Just a few degrees will do. But with a fat aircraft with little stubby wings, its glide speed will be very high. You might have enough control to ditch, but any landing is still probably closer to a controlled crash than an actual landing. I kinda doubt it auto-rotates well either, so which it technically has both aircraft and helicopter emergency modes, it won't be good or safe in either.
I will add though, that if landing on a runway there's no _need_ to do a full regime change to hover. The nacells can be pitched up only part way to provide extra lift while still mostly in forward flight.
That’s your biggest concern? FYI, the prop blades are designed to ‘broomstraw’ or shatter, should a nacelle-forward landing be necessary. All three hydraulic systems are able to single-handedly operate the nacelle conversion function. In the event of a dual engine failure (which has never happened), the V-22 has minimal glide capability so you’re not making it to a runway unless you’re already above it (4:1 from the cockpit is like an elevator ride)
20 yrs ago, I made a demonstration model of V 22 for my highschool science exhibition. In those days, I thought the days of the helicopter were numbered. I was wrong of course.😅
I can't wait to see if we get electric motors powerful enough to drive v22 blades. I would be all for a hybrid system where a large turbine provides the power. But I think you could do a double redundant electric motor on each nacelle and get rid of most of the years and you could have one of the safest...
such an awesome invention.