Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

"Controlling an aircraft like this must be very difficult, right?" Dr. Wright continued, seemingly thinking of something. Although he built tanks, he still had some understanding of airplanes.

If it's a normal flying airplane, then you just control the control surfaces normally. If it's a helicopter, then you control it like a helicopter. However, if an airplane wants to act like a normal airplane and also take off and land vertically, that's much more difficult.

This can be seen in vertical takeoff and landing fighters.

In the sixties, a trend of vertical takeoff and landing fighters swept the globe. After all, if there was an airplane that didn't need a runway and could take off directly, and then transform into a regular airplane to participate in combat, that would be too powerful, especially under the premise of nuclear war. Runways would definitely be gone. Sturdy caves could accommodate warplanes to escape nuclear bombing, and then launch attacks.

At that time, warplanes would have to take off and land in places without runways, making vertical takeoff and landing the only option.

However, many countries abandoned it after research. In the end, only two were successful: the British Harrier and the Soviet Yak-38. Although the latter made it to service, it still wasn't used much in actual combat. The only one that participated in war was the Harrier.

Even the Harrier was immature and often had problems during takeoff and landing, and could even result in the destruction of the aircraft and the death of the pilot. As for the Yak-38, it was even more impressive, with the automatic control authority of the ejection seat being higher than manual control. Once it detected something was wrong, the pilot would be automatically ejected before they could even react, saving them from not having enough time to parachute.

Fighter jets are like this, and the tiltrotor aircraft in front of them wants to be mature? I don't know how much it will cost.

"Yes, controlling this kind of aircraft will definitely be difficult, but it's not a big deal. We can see that current computer technology is developing rapidly. When this aircraft is developed, we will definitely have more advanced computers that can better control the aircraft and solve this small problem."

Back then, the computer used for the Apollo moon landing had only 4KB of memory and a calculation speed of only 40,000 times per second. Now, even a small 8086 chip can perform five million calculations per second, not to mention those supercomputers that can perform hundreds of millions of calculations per second.

The performance of computers is developing very fast, so there is no need to worry about control issues.

Qin Yang said this, but he admired Dr. Wright very much in his heart. Someone who plays with tanks can actually see the key problems in aircraft design at a glance. Amazing.

Even in later generations, the control of tiltrotor aircraft is a major problem. After all, the problems encountered in reality are too complicated, and the flight control is difficult to handle. However, that is still immature, and it will always mature in the future. Qin Yang is now proposing this technology just to brag.

"At the same time, we can also provide more redundancy in the mechanical structure. For example, although the engines are placed on both sides, they must be connected together through a drive shaft."

There are very few single-engine helicopters. Generally, there are two engines, and large ones may even have three. They are generally arranged on the top of the aircraft, under the rotor. These engines are connected together through a reduction gearbox, jointly driving a rotor. This way, if one engine fails, the other engines will quickly burst out with maximum emergency power, allowing the helicopter to continue flying and avoiding the destruction of the aircraft and the death of the pilot.

The engines of the tiltrotor aircraft are arranged on both sides, but they also need to be connected by a rotating shaft in the middle. This way, if one side fails, the other side can quickly supply power.

You can tell by watching the Osprey take off. When one side of the engine fails, the other side's propeller will also rotate. Although this leads to the complexity of the system, it is also necessary. After all, even with the technology of the Americans, they dare not guarantee that the engine will not fail.

If the two sides are not linked, once one side fails, it will definitely be an aerial flip, resulting in the destruction of the aircraft and the death of the pilot.

Qin Yang's statement of this design shocked Dr. Wright. This President Qin is clearly an expert, having designed everything properly. President Qin has accumulated a lot of experience in this project.

"President Qin, how long have you been researching this project?"

"I just think about it when I have nothing to do," Qin Yang said with a smile, "It's not mature experience, just taking it out and talking about it casually."

"President Qin, you are really amazing. Can I tell your ideas to the helicopter designers in China?" Dr. Wright asked.

After all, this was thought of by Qin Yang. If he said it, he would naturally have to get Qin Yang's consent, otherwise it would be plagiarism. Americans in this era are still very righteous.

"Yes, if they want design drawings, they can get them from me for one million US dollars per set," Qin Yang said, "I don't guarantee maturity, after all, everything is my idea."

"Stealth aircraft? What stealth aircraft?"

In this era, proposing the idea of stealth will not make people look at you differently, but will only make people curious, because not many people know what stealth means.

"Now, detecting targets relies on radar. If there is an airplane that can reflect radar waves in other directions instead of returning to the radar, wouldn't the radar be unable to find it?"

Dr. Wright widened his eyes: "President Qin, your mind is full of whimsical ideas."

"Helicopters flying at treetop level are easily captured by ground radar. If helicopters can be stealthy, they can launch concealed attacks on the enemy, and the enemy will not be able to defend against them at all."

For a period of time, the Americans highly praised stealth technology. No matter what they were doing, they required stealth. For attack, there was the F117, for combat, there was the F22, and for bombing, there was the B2. In helicopters, there was also the famous Comanche helicopter.

This helicopter has a sci-fi appearance, with all weapons built-in, not only radar stealth, but also infrared stealth. It is the most powerful war machine of the US Army. Unfortunately, its era has passed.

When it came to research and development, the Red Empire was gone, and the Americans were the number one in the world. Various projects were cut. After the Crusader project was cut, it soon came to the Comanche. As a result, this helicopter was canceled before it could almost be finalized and put into service.

Now, having nothing to do, it's good to brag to Dr. Wright about this helicopter. Even if you only talk about the concept, it is very advanced.