To be clear, this is not a power-point program but a continuation of a long-standing design work with Bell.
Two articles that cover this in depth are: 1. Revised Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Concepts Emerge From Special Operations X-Plane Program. December 2024: https://www.twz.com/air/revised-fold-away-rotor-aircraft-con...
2. Bell’s Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter. September 2021: https://www.twz.com/41997/bells-plan-to-finally-realize-a-ro...
The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept.
> continuation of a long-standing design work with Bell.
sunk investment. The success - it made into production in meaningful numbers - of V-22 means that design will be beaten to death.
Even though Bell X-22 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFdV5CVXGGw) was much better as prop VTOL than V-22, and for jet VTOL Ryan XV-5 Vertifan (look how great it is flying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvkjFIYWR8 ) was much better than F-35 has been and X-76 will be.
And giving pilotless future of combat air, a tail sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter will work great in pilotless version not needing all that folding/tilting hardware. A pilotless would also not have to have at least double engines/etc for reliability (and the monstrosity of interconnect between those 2 engines like V-22 has and X-76 is bound to have).
>decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept
Oof, I wish I had a job like that.
join an enterprise software BigCo.