Speed, range and payload for starters. Lower IR, RCS and Acoustic signatures. Faster ingress and egress to an LZ than anythiing flying. 0-220 knots in 12 seconds. Greater ballistic survivability than any rotary winged platform flying. Tell us in detail about the stabilator and EMI problems with the Blackhawk and tell us, in detail, how many hundreds of personnel have been killed in the 100+ Blackhawk crashes since it entered service. Dunn is wrong about the door gunner, look at a UH-60 with external tanks hung on the pylons and then talk to me about door gunners' fields of fire. The contract for the chain gun was signed over two years ago. He makes no mention of XV-15 gunships. Dunn is wrong about buying a foreign built aircraft, too. Harriers, Goshawks, Dauphins, Falcons, Caribous, Dash-7s have all been foreign built. He is incorrect about deck footprint. The acronym is VRS not VRC. Any helicopter, regardless of rotor diameter, can enter VRS when improperly flown. That's why pilots have the 800/40 rule drilled into their heads during flight school.
Retired Colonel Harry P. Dunn is out of the loop and his opinions, one has to wonder what ax he is grinding, are at odds with the overwhelming majority of people who actually know what they are talking about. '"The terrain and elevation in Afghanistan have validated our need for the capability of an aircraft like the CV-22," Air Force Lt. Gen. Paul Hester, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), last week told a National Defense Industrial Association Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict symposium audeince in Arlington, Va. "We need the technology that this aircraft offers and I am excited that testing is going to begin soon with our Marine brothers' [MV-22 variant]. We need to get on with making sure this program becomes a reality. The requirement is fairly clear, we revalidated it." ... During one mission, AFSOC launched MH-53s from a base 490 miles from the target zone. That flight took nine hours to complete, with three aerial refuelings events. The mission was flown "at the extreme upper limits of our MH-53s flight regime," Hester said, "within the lethal envelope of every air defense in the country [such as ZSU-23/4 anti-aircraft artillery]." "CV-22 on the other hand... would have flown the mission in half the time, without aerial refueling and would have been above almost every defense threat in that country," he added.' SOCOM holds to CV-22 requirement by Hunter Keeler, Defense Daily, February 13, 2002
Those are many valid criteria for a niche weapons system. At present, though, it would seem the jury is out whether the V-22 actually lives up to those criteria claims. I am not against development and deployment of the V-22. But its role as a 'total-fix cure-all' has me suspicious. Plus, A system must be reliable. The variables of reliability are of course myriad, but design should try to maximize that, not complicate it. Your contention that Blackhawk has had 100+ crashes since service entry may not be untoward. How many were shotdown? How many were pilot error? How many were powerline collisions for instance (as just happened in Baghdad)? How many were service-related? And so on.
