China is testing what looks like a direct copy of Sikorsky’s S-97 high-speed helicopter. The Raider, as it’s known in the U.S., has two sets of counterrotating rotors and a pusher propeller that give it a top speed of about 230 knots, almost 100 knots faster than the speediest conventional helicopter. The Chinese version, which Western observers have dubbed a carbon copy of the Raider, first appeared a few days ago, but it’s not clear how the People’s Liberation Army will deploy it. Experts have been poring over the photos released by the PLA and say it copies the Raider almost to a T on the outside. The tail is a little different and the turbine exhaust is in a different place. Western design elements frequently make it into Chinese aircraft, but the hybrid helicopter is an unusually brazen copy.
Sikorsky originally built the Raider as a contender for the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), but the Army canceled that program in 2024, opting for a combination of drones, satellites and crewed helicopters to fill that role. Sikorsky is keeping the program alive in hopes of selling the unique aircraft to other arms of the military but it hasn’t any bites so far.
Someone said “copying is the sincerest form of flattery”. You can’t put the Genie back in the bottle. What rules are left to follow now?
People who understand flight, knows flight is subject to physics. Basic physics do not change. The environment the physics operate in may change necessitating a flying machine to have an appropriate mechanism to handle the environmental change. Aviation science has reached a point of understanding enough about aerodynamics which is only applicable with earth’s atmosphere, that to achieve the desired performance the shape has already been optimized. That is why fourth, fifth, and now sixth generation designs, no matter which country they come from…ALL LOOK SIMILAR. However, from an American perspective, we think we are the only people on the planet with superior intellect, design, engineering, and manufacturing capability, that no one else on the planet does not, therefore everything that another country introduces is therefore a COPY? Why? Because they look similar? In other words, other countries have inferior everything, resulting in intellectual theft by less intellectual people of our intellectual superiority? How about the distinct possibility that they, too understand the same physics they and we live in also, and arrived at the same conclusion we did, to get the desired performance, it has to look similar. As a nation, we are looking and behaving similar to the Wright brothers who squandered their resources protecting what they saw as their intellectual property…called controllable flight. Glenn Curtiss found a way to do wing warping better, offered to work in collaboration with the Wrights. The Wright brothers declined and spent their resources circling their aerodynamic wagon, accusing Curtiss of copying their flying machines, which coincidentally??? looked similar, by patent infringement litigation. Who won that “battle”? Curtiss Wright is still here, and we as GA pilots got the benefit of three axis control. Is it possible we can learn something from the Chinese and aviation history before we decide any other potential aviation innovation is a “copy ” of our self-described “superiority”?
“How about the distinct possibility that they, too understand the same physics they and we live in also, and arrived at the same conclusion we did, to get the desired performance, it has to look similar.”
To a degree, sure, physics will dictate certain design features. However, Airbus also came up with a “high-speed helicopter” and it looks nothing at all like the S97. And back in the 80s, Sikorsky tried out several other high-speed helicopter designs that also looked distinctly different than the S97. The only way that physics would dictate a nearly-identical design is if they were solving for the *exact* same solution, including all of the pros and cons. Isn’t it at least a little curious that China should determine that it needs an identical set of capabilities nearly 2 decades after Sikorsky first started test-flying the X-2 that the S97 is based off of?
It just smells too similar to the “Concordski” (which was known to be based off of copies of the Concorde designs) and Buran (also partly based on copies of the Shuttle, as I recall – though arguably the Buran actually improved upon the design of the Shuttle and as such it has some distinct design differences).
Smart, advanced engineers would naturally investigate other’s designs, to evaluate it’s pro’s and cons. That is, too me, simple common sense. As the Wright’s learned, controlled flight is not one country’s intellectual domain. At this stage of aerodynamic knowledge, there are many fixed physics that are now well accepted through evaluation of the competition both certified or experimental. We know as much about the J-10C as the Chinese. That accumulated knowledge is labeled under “national security”… making any “copy” or similar resulting shape either by design or discovery of performance within our mutual and universal environmental environment. When we do it… it’s by superior design, engineering, testing, and manufacturing. When China or Russia or Iran does it… it’s called copying particularly by intellectual theft and subsequent reverse engineering.
For many reason’s, the US has to have an enemy, particularly for justifying and supporting the military industrial complex. That MIC process is rediculusly expensive, ponderous in execution, and incapable of efficiently and adequately manufacturing the latest, supposedly greatest flying technology incubator masquerading as a lethal flying machine such as the F-35, Patriot middle system or basic 105mm artillery shells, for example. Since we have been at permanent war with so many enemies real or contrived since WWII… how is the self-described ” superior” US military performance of our military hardware and software? We now have 80 years of accumulated data which has resulted in losing every war, conflict, skirmish, incident … you fill in the name of choice for such behavior.
As a US Navy vet, assigned to naval aviation, my observations come from both history combined with personal experience. Our quick, knee-jerk reaction to legitimate peer competition smacks of incredible hubris vs consideration other countries are not exceptional therefor by definition inferior…meaning all they can do is copy for at best, military equality but politically expressed as inferior. Our historical performance says our system is broken in do many ways. I love my country by participating in military service as millions of others. I don’t want to participate as an individual nor as a country in any more wars. We need to learn to cooperate and respect other cultures vs making the entire planet our enemy… and thinking we have the balls and the stuff to enforce our mandate on all these “enemies”.