In the late 80’s/early 90’s, the Bell-Boeing team behind the V-22 showed a display model and a painted three-view of what they termed the “AV-22,” for “Attack.” This would have had the V-22’s wing, propulsion system and tail, but an entirely new fuselage. This would have produced a highly armed vehicle capable of providing full mission escort to passenger and cargo carrying V-22s. This would be useful, as attack choppers could not keep up with the V-22, and fighter jets did not have the duration (and would have a hard time flying as *slow* as the V-22, especially at the landing zone).
The V-22 is shown armed with a Gatling gun under the nose; two Sidewinder missiles, and some unknown number of internally stored Maverick air-to-surface missiles, deployable from beneath the forward fuselage.
If anyone has more on this (good drawings/diagrams, brochures, photos of the model, better artwork, etc.), I’d be interested.
3 Responses to “AV-22”
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Considering the problems the engine-gearbox has shown in general deployment already, seeing what happens when some machinegun fire goes into it should be fascinating. 😉
That speed problem has turned out to be a real shortcoming in Afgan service; they have to send out Cobras or Apaches well in advance of the Ospreys, so they will be at the operations position to provide air cover when the V-22 shows up with the troops.
Another big problem is that if both engines quit, the Osprey has the gliding potential of a rock, and unlike a normal helicopter, can’t do an auto-rotating emergency landing.
Not a model, exactly, unless you mean “flight model,” but the old (circa 1991) Electronic Arts attack helicopter flight sim “LHX” featured an attack version of the Osprey as a selectable aircraft for some missions. I seem to recall that one of the things you could do with it, that you couldn’t do with the others was make attack runs in “airplane” mode, down on the deck at 350+ knots.
Armament was heavy–a belly mounted turret with both a laser designator and a 25mm electric Gatling slaved to a (simulated) IHADSS type helmet mounted sight, plus underwing hardpoints for lots and lots of Hellfires, and I think it could also carry at least a couple of the 7- and 19-shot launchers for 70mm rockets, not that anyone playing the game used them very much (it was rather difficult to hit anything with them, especially any kind of moving target, and they tended not to have much effect on heavily armored AFVs)
I do not know how much of that was from Boeing and how much of this was from the imaginations of the programming team, though.
The game was 320×200 256-color VGA graphics, and anything rendered in it was necessarily rather blocky and blobby. But I seem to recall the one in the game had side-by-side seating, whereas the art you’ve put here shows in-line seating and looks almost like they cut off the nose of an A10 and stuck it on the V22’s fuselage–bubble canopy, fixed GAU/8 electric Gatling gun, and all.
“WINGS” , August 1989, if you don’t have that issue already, has that illustration, as well as two others of the same craft, and says the Mavericks total six, in three internal bays. The gun under the nose is 25mm, with 2,000 rounds.