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Home » Av Week Extra » First Flight of Sikorsky X2 Demonstrator

First Flight of Sikorsky X2 Demonstrator

This arti­cle first appeared at AviationWeek​.com.

Sikorsky’s futur­is­tic X2 high-​​speed heli­copter tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor made its first flight today in Horseheads, N.Y., in the hands of chief test pilot Kevin L. Bredenbeck.

The single-​​engined fly-​​by-​​wire air­craft fea­tures coax­ial rotors and a pusher pro­peller that Sikorsky believes will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the heli­copter world with cruise speeds of up to 250 kts, some 100 kts faster than cur­rent pro­duc­tion heli­copters.

“This isn’t an air­plane we are train­ing to hover. It’s a heli­copter that will go very, very fast,” said Sikorsky CEO Jeff Pino. “I think it will get to 260 kts.” (The heli­copter world speed record is held by a Westland Lynx at 216.45 kts).

Today’s flight lasted 30 min­utes, dur­ing which Bredenbeck demon­strated hover, for­ward flight, and a hover turn.

Current heli­copter speeds are lim­ited by rotor aero­dy­nam­ics. In con­trast the X2’s coax­ial rotor sys­tem is opti­mized for all regimes of flight by a fly-​​by-​​wire con­trol sys­tem that will slow the rotors at high for­ward speeds to pre­vent their tips going super­sonic, while max­i­miz­ing lift and min­i­miz­ing drag by adjust­ing the pitch of the rigid, carbon-​​fiber blades. The counter-​​rotating rotors pro­vide equal lift on each side of the air­craft and, unlike a tra­di­tional heli­copter, are relieved of hav­ing to pro­vide all the for­ward propul­sion by a large pusher pro­peller at the rear of the fuse­lage.

The rigid­ity of the blades allows the rotors to be closely spaced only two feet apart, fur­ther reduc­ing drag. Sikorsky believes the gap can be reduced even more in the future.

The X2 tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor is pow­ered by a 1,452 shp, FADEC-​​equipped T800 tur­boshaft engine that was pre­vi­ously installed in one of the Comanche heli­copter pro­to­types. It dri­ves both the rotor and the pusher pro­peller through two gearboxes.


So far the aero­space industry’s solu­tion to high speed, ver­ti­cal flight has been the hugely com­plex tiltro­tor, a hybrid air­plane with rotors. The X2 dif­fers markedly in that it is still a heli­copter that can go fast, autoro­tate, hover, and fly nap of the earth.

The X2 can match the speed of the Bell/​Agusta BA609 tiltro­tor with far less com­plex­ity, accord­ing to Steve Estill, Sikorsky’s vice pres­i­dent for world­wide sales. X2 tech­nol­ogy is espe­cially well suited to mis­sions such as fly­ing fast to oil rigs, which would call for devel­op­ment of a light to inter­me­di­ate X2 twin of the same size as the 12-​​passenger S-​​76 or 19-​​passenger S-​​92.

Read more about this story, see some gouge on the new laser JDAM, read about a new UAV called “saucer” and debate how much time is right for the new KC tanker from our Aviation Week friends at Military​.com.

– Christian

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August 28th, 2008 | Av Week Extra | 404526 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/08/28/first-flight-of-sikorsky-x2-demonstrator/First+Flight+of+Sikorsky+X2+Demonstrator2008-08-28+18%3A35%3A07Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. irtusk says:
    August 28, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    it would be hillar­i­ous if they obso­leted the ENTIRE jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for that stu­pid Osprey in one fell swoop

    Reply
  2. Moose says:
    August 28, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    I wouldn’t bet on it. This may be a bet­ter heli­copter than the Osprey, but the Osprey is a bet­ter air­plane than this.
    It WILL how­ever be a great Osprey escort (think of a 200+ kt Cobra).

    Reply
  3. Scathsealgaire says:
    August 28, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    @Moose
    Cobra came out of the Huey pro­gramme. Imagine the bas­tard child that would be an Osprey Gunship?!?!
    Now that would be an appro­pri­ate Osprey escort. A Midget “Spectre”, that hov­ers if necessary.

    Reply
  4. Doug VW says:
    August 28, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    Maybe Sikorsky could team up with Kamov Helicopters and apply this tech­nol­ogy, along with west­ern avion­ics & arms, to the KA-​​50 which already uses counter-​​rotating rotors. Kamov has pre­vi­ously teamed up with Israeli Aircraft Industries to cre­ate the KA-50–2 Erdogan.
    Then again, with the stuff Russia is doing in Georgia…maybe we don’t want to upgrade any of their weapons systems.

    Reply
  5. SMSgt Mac says:
    August 28, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Bell had a tiltro­tor gun­ship idea that got as far as mockup stage years ago, and indeed it was ‘wicked cool’. (The two words I think of every­time I think of the pho­tos of it).
    The prob­lem with helos is at any given time half your wings are going the wrong direc­tion. The helo approach will always be less aero­dy­nam­i­cally effi­cient in the hor­i­zon­tal plane no mat­ter what you do, whereas the tilt-​​somethings get to put their thrust 100% in the direc­tion they need it.
    Pick your ‘com­plex­ity’ penalty and bal­ance that against the ‘effi­ciency’ ben­e­fit for each alter­na­tive and fol­low what makes sense for your application.

    Reply
  6. Ptsfp says:
    August 28, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    Wahoo! Gotta love it.
    The funny thing is that Horseheads, NY is a lit­tle rural town. The fac­tory is rapidly com­ing the lifeblood of the Elmira/​ Horseheads area.
    You gotta love when your small home town makes some­thing hi-​​tech that is national news.

    Reply
  7. Shamus62 says:
    August 28, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    irtusk,
    Apples and oranges man, apples and oranges.

    Reply
  8. stephen russell says:
    August 28, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    Build Commercial & Military mod­els.
    Make this Comanche 2 Gunship for Army & new the new MARINE ONE for the White House.
    & replace the Huey?
    Ideal Gunship, MedEvac, SAR, Cargo, pas­sen­ger model.
    Have com­puter con­trolled flt sys­tems means any­one can Fly it.
    ( have bad coor­di­na­tion for stick, rud­der, ped­als & hover throt­tle in std copters).
    Must make or use in estd copter systems.

    Reply
  9. kevin stafford says:
    August 29, 2008 at 10:52 am

    What about stop rotor tech­nol­ogy, i.e. the drag­on­fly, this has the poten­tial for greater speed and effi­ciency due to using jet propul­sion.
    The capa­bil­i­ties of these sys­tems could be com­pared to see which is more capa­ble for a range of missions.

    Reply
  10. coolhand77 says:
    August 29, 2008 at 10:54 am

    Wasnt there a pre-​​Apache gun­ship pro­to­type with a pusher prop that got scut­tled due to com­plex­ity? Of course it used a pusher, a tail roter, and a stan­dard rotor…
    Had 40mm and 20mm tur­rets in the con­cept as well IIRC.

    Reply
  11. hex16 says:
    August 29, 2008 at 11:58 am

    What is the con­cern about rotor tips going supersonic?

    Reply
  12. Will says:
    August 29, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Recall read­ing an arti­cle about the KA-​​50 a few years ago, but don’t recall the source (AW&ST?) Author stated that the KA-​​50 had, at that time, a prob­lem with the upper & lower rotor blades col­lid­ing if the pilot attempted too tight a turn at high speed. The result, you can guess, was imme­di­ate falling out of the sky.
    This wouldn’t be a prob­lem in civil­ian use, but they’d have to keep the cost down to sell them.

    Reply
  13. Scathsealgaire says:
    August 29, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    @ hex16 “What is the con­cern about rotor tips going super­sonic“
    If the the tip goes super-​​sonic the result­ing shock­wave would tear(best descrip­tion for lay per­son) the tip off, unless the whole thing was designed ALOT HEAVIER.
    In the orig­i­nal teast­ing of super­sonic jets they ended up with mas­sive gouges in the air frame, if this hap­pened in the thin and rel­a­tively light rotor blades the tips would tear off because extremely high pres­sure air would blast it’s way through the metal of the blade.
    Kind of like sand blast­ing, in high speed. And through metal.

    Reply
  14. P.M.Lawrence says:
    August 30, 2008 at 4:05 am

    You don’t need to bother about hav­ing rigid rotors and mak­ing them counter-​​rotate if you go the Fairey Rotodyne route. With that, ver­ti­cal flight was achieved with tip jets ducted from the main engines to elim­i­nate torque, slow for­ward flight made the rotor work like an aut­o­gyro, and fast for­ward flight was prac­ti­cal because the wings pro­vided most of the lift and unloaded the rotor enough that the blades didn’t need to adjust so much and the hinge­ing approach was still good enough. The Rotodyne man­aged speeds above 200 knots in the 1960s, so a mod­ern devel­op­ment should be com­pet­i­tive even today.

    Reply
  15. jon spencer says:
    August 31, 2008 at 6:07 am

    Only one thing to say,
    http://​www​.carter​copters​.com/

    Reply
  16. pedestrian says:
    August 31, 2008 at 9:58 am

    I believe it will become a cheap ver­sion of Ospreys. This does not fly as fast as Ospreys, but cheaper to pro­duce, cheaper to main­tain. It would rather fit into the hi-​​lo mix with the Ospreys. The Ospreys would be the hi (qual­ity approach) and the X-​​2 off­springs will be the lo (quan­tity approach). With a high price tag on Ospreys, a less speedy but lower price tag of the X-​​2 off­springs will pro­vide quan­ti­ties ver­sus qual­ity of the Ospreys, just like the hi-​​lo mix of Raptors and Lightning II.
    >Now that would be an appro­pri­ate Osprey escort.
    I had that in mind too. Probably not any other plat­form would achieve such high speed. It is not fast as Osprey, but faster than any other pro­pelled VTOL exclud­ing Osprey itself. Osprey has dif­fi­cul­ties for weapon bays to be added due to the rotor blade being in the way. The X-​​2 off­spring will have more free­dom to add on weapon bays just like other helos. Both has advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. These are not rivals, but some­thing that would cover the weak­ness of the other.

    Reply
  17. C. Foskey says:
    September 1, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    RE Spencer:
    Cartercopter is a joke. They break the mu=1 bar­rier than destroy their pro­to­type and do noth­ing in the fol­low­ing 4 years.
    You other guys have to real­ize that this craft is just a tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor. We cre­ated this as a platofrm to study the entire con­cept to be applied to spe­cific mis­sion pro­files. Actually, the army re-​​funded X2 research for JHL, after they had claimed in 2006 that they were only look­ing at tilt rotor solu­tions. The X2 tech pack­age looks promis­ing, and our con­cepts uti­lize it in an osprey sized air­craft which, if you may recall, can autorotate…as all X2 based designs can.

    Reply
  18. Dennis says:
    September 2, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    I appre­ci­ate Sikorsy’s efforts; but if you look at this:
    http://​www​.giz​mag​.com/​f​a​l​x​-​t​o​-​d​e​b​u​t​-​h​y​b​r​i​d​-​e​l​e​c​t​r​i​c​-​t​i​l​t​-​r​o​t​o​r​-​a​i​r​c​r​a​f​t​-​w​i​t​h​-​i​n​b​u​i​l​t​-​s​o​l​a​r​-​c​/​9​2​34/
    You real­ize that even with it still on the draw­ing board, this design is going to make heli­copters and the Osprey so much over­com­pli­cated /​ obso­lete junk.….
    Sikorsky needs to not make the same mis­take the rail­roads did, they are not in the busi­ness of rail­roads, but of trans­port­ing things. With this thought in mind you would think the rail barons would have started truck and air­craft com­pa­nies.
    No, most of them just went out of busi­ness.…
    I think the heli­copter is not long for this world

    Reply
  19. Cole says:
    September 2, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    Dennis, read the open­ing line of your link which talks about tilt rotors being around since the 50s. Look at how many tilt rotors have been oper­a­tional dur­ing that time vs. heli­copters that orig­i­nated around the same time­frame.
    Look at the 900 lb weight of your air vehi­cle which increases by 200–400 lbs with pilot(s). Look at the measley 100 hp engine to power the bat­ter­ies dri­ving the elec­tric motors. Show me an elec­tric car or hybrid that weighs the same as the high per­for­mance con­ven­tional engine.
    Finally, check out the pow­er­point that I posted in the UH-​​60M arti­cle above and see how air­craft with equiv­a­lent power have much dif­fer­ent pay­loads depend­ing on whether heli­copter or tilt rotor. Hint.…the tilt rotor never wins.
    Now look at this lit­tle X2 gem with 8 blades pro­duc­ing lift in a much smaller rotor diam­e­ter allow­ing enhanced lift in a small LZ with sim­i­lar to tilt rotor speeds. Methinks that rumors of the demise of heli­copters are more than a bit exaggerated.

    Reply
  20. Greg says:
    September 3, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Why not just make an x2 comanche. Then you have an escort for the JHL. Most of the research for the comanche has been paid for. Why not use it in the next gen­er­a­tion attack helicopter?

    Reply
  21. C. Foskey says:
    September 4, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    Greg
    What makes you think that Comanche tech has not made its way in to X2, S76D, H92, UH60, CH53K etc?
    Again, I think a lot of you guys on here keep for­get­ting that this craft is just a tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor. It will never be pro­duced in this configuration.

    Reply
  22. Observer says:
    February 3, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    If the goal is to pro­duce pro­to­types, it seems like Piasecki has already been here and has a leg up on Sikorski. Last year, Piasecki (orig­i­na­tor of the dual rotor sys­tem that led to the YH-​​16, CH-​​46 and the CH-​​47) under con­tract to the ARMY com­pleted their phase-​​one demon­stra­tion of a vectored-​​thrust com­pound heli­copter using a sig­nif­i­cantly larger, Sikorski UH-​​60 air­frame. For their design, they retro­fit­ted a ducted fan and wing stubs onto an BlackHawk air­frame and proved enhanced speed and vibra­tion per­for­mance. As for looks and appear­ance, this air­frame looks much closer to what you would expect from a ver­ti­cal craft too as opposed to hav­ing the dual rotors on top of each others.

    Reply

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