Florida is understood for its sunny skies and scorching temperatures, however nothing brings the warmth just like the S-97 RAIDER® on the Sikorsky Improvement Flight Middle the place the superior helicopter often zips, dips, dives and pirouettes, reaching speeds of 205+ knots. A standard helicopter simply can’t sustain. As an 80 percent-scale prototype of the RAIDER X® design, the S-97 RAIDER flight take a look at program informs design selections, correlates to a digital prototype and allows Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin firm, to experiment with the distinctive capabilities that X2™ know-how offers. The S-97 RAIDER is the know-how demonstrator for RAIDER X®, Sikorsky’s Future Assault Reconnaissance Plane (FARA) providing, to revolutionize the U.S. Military’s fleet. The staff designing RAIDER X gathers information and classes from each S-97 RAIDER flight. Future aviators will depend on RAIDER X to be a quick, agile, survivable compound coaxial helicopter to handle evolving threats in probably the most troublesome environments.
The RAIDER X Aggressive Prototype (CP) plane is making progress due to Sikorsky’s digital manufacturing facility and different superior methods. With the RAIDER X CP, 3D printing allowed the staff to scale back threat and fabricate and validate elements in weeks to months, versus what would traditionally take months to years. The Sikorsky staff additionally constructed a second RAIDER X fuselage, which is being built-in into the staff’s structural take a look at program and might be used to validate the flight and floor masses functionality of the airframe. It’s checks like these that assist Sikorsky’s flight security program, offering information to optimize and speed up the design, leading to extra flexibility and larger threat discount. RAIDER X additionally encompasses a Modular Open System Method (MOSA) for avionics and mission techniques, providing “plug-and-play” choices for computing, sensors, survivability and weapons. This permits a broader vary of plane configurations for particular mission necessities.
Commercial
“We have now a mature functionality throughout Lockheed Martin and our suppliers to include many extra additively manufactured elements on the RAIDER X CP plane,” mentioned FARA Chief Engineer Pete Germanowski. “The speedy maturation of this know-how throughout the Lockheed Martin enterprise and our provide base, for each metallic and composite supplies, allows schedule, price and weight financial savings throughout our techniques.”
“With established high-tech manufacturing services, a flying prototype within the S-97 RAIDER and present digital thread and digital fashions, the RAIDER X will supply the operational flexibility the Military wants together with velocity the place it issues, a big multi-functional weapons bay and unprecedented acceleration and deceleration functionality,” mentioned enterprise growth director Jay Macklin.
RAIDER X additionally encompasses a Modular Open System Method (MOSA) for avionics and mission techniques, providing “plug-and-play” choices for computing, sensors, survivability and weapons. This permits a broader vary of plane configurations for particular mission necessities. The autonomy, fly-by-wire know-how, and co-axial design will enable crews to fly extraordinarily quick and very low to function in and dominate the decrease tier of the air area for many years. The prototype Raider X, its submission for the US Military’s Future Assault Reconnaissance Plane (FARA) programme, is 90% full and the corporate has 98% of elements available for the construct. The corporate is ready for the T901-GE-900 Improved Turbine Engine (ITE) from Normal Electrical to reach in November 2022.
