How powerful is our army's aerial three-bouncer?

How powerful are our army’s aerial three-bouncers?

There is a very eye-catching piece of equipment in the 2019 National Day Parade, which is the Falcon rotorcraft.

Among the Dongfeng-17 missiles, Wujian-8 drones, 99G main battle tanks and other advanced weapons on site, its style of painting seemed out of place. Many people call it the "Three Jumpers in the Sky", but since it can enter this extremely high-standard military parade, it shows that the Falcon rotorcraft is also quite capable.

The history of gyroplanes:

Gyroplanes are not equipment that appeared after World War II. As early as the 1920s, a man named Juan de la Cierva Spanish engineers invented the gyroplane. Since then, this type of aircraft has been developing, but it has not been more widely used.

It was not until the 21st century that people gradually discovered its value and began to use it in civilian and military fields.

This is very similar to the development of helicopters. After the helicopter was invented, it was not seen for a long time. Until the Vietnam War, Americans needed to search and rescue in the Vietnamese jungle for a long time. and combat, the value of helicopters was discovered, and it has become an essential equipment for the army until now.

The principles and characteristics of gyroplanes:

From the appearance, gyroplanes are very similar to helicopters, but they are fundamentally different in principle. The power of the helicopter comes from the rotor above its head. It uses the engine to continuously rotate the rotor to gain lift, allowing it to fly.

Because the principles are different, there are many differences between the two in terms of take-off methods and safety.

Because the helicopter's overhead rotor rotates directly to take off, it can take off vertically on the spot. The gyrocopter flies by relying on the lift generated when moving forward, so it needs to keep running forward before flying. This requires the gyrocopter to perform a run-up before taking off like a general fixed-wing aircraft. At the same time, when landing, the rotorcraft also needs to glide for a certain distance like a fixed-wing aircraft.

In terms of safety, gyroplanes are much better than helicopters and are said to never fall.

Because the rotor above the head of the rotorcraft can fly with a little updraft, and whether the rotorcraft is moving forward or landing, the rotor above the head will be subject to bottom-up airflow.

Even if the rotorcraft's engine stalls and it has to make an emergency landing, it will be hit by an updraft during the descent, and the rotor overhead will slowly rotate. It will not lose power like a helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft. Then fell down at an extremely fast speed.

Although the gyroplane also relies on the rotor above the head, its power is not on the top of the head, but on the rotor at the tail.

The gyrocopter obtains the power to fly forward through the push of the tail rotor. During the forward process, airflow will be blown up, so the top rotor of the gyrocopter will obtain lift from the bottom up, and then fly up.

The role of the rotorcraft:

The rotorcraft equipped by our army is called the Falcon rotorcraft and is produced by Baoji Special Vehicle Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

In the early version, this rotorcraft could only carry two people and was a pure aircraft. However, the Baoji Factory later made a lot of modifications to it, increasing its load capacity and changing it to be able to carry three people. And the improved version also adds anti-tank missiles, which can also hit tanks.

In addition, the rotorcraft also has the advantage of low noise, which is very suitable for low-altitude raids. Its role can be seen when our army placed it in the special warfare equipment formation in 2019.

However, although gyroplanes have huge advantages, they cannot replace helicopters. First of all, the load capacity is insufficient. Modern helicopters have a load capacity of several tons, and can even have a load capacity of more than 20 tons.

Because the gyrocopter relies on updrafts to take off, the upper load limit is locked, and it can only break the sky by one or two tons. Secondly, the rotorcraft cannot hover and can only keep moving forward, so its functionality is also limited and it can basically only conduct air raids.

In addition, because of its small load capacity, the rotorcraft cannot fly high and has no armor strength. These two shortcomings prevent the rotorcraft from entering high-intensity battlefields, and ordinary anti-aircraft machine guns can shoot it down.

Our military positions the rotorcraft as a supplementary force to helicopters, as well as an anti-terrorist and detective force in cities and jungles.

The production cost of rotorcraft is very low, and the unit price can be reduced to less than 10,000 yuan. Compared with helicopters that often cost millions or tens of millions to produce, the cost of a rotorcraft is almost negligible.

In urban and jungle detectives, this low-cost, high-security aircraft is very suitable. Especially when catching drug dealers in the border jungle, these dozens or dozens of rotorcraft can spread out a large search net.

If there are dozens of helicopters, the cost will be very high. After all, the total air force of many countries only has dozens of helicopters. But if replaced by a rotorcraft with a production cost of less than 10,000 yuan, these dozens of aircraft would require hundreds of thousands of funds, which can be afforded by various armed police forces and even public security teams.

In addition to military and police use, rotorcraft are also used in many civilian fields, such as search and rescue, forest patrol, land and resources exploration, etc. Even rotorcraft can become a tourist item in scenic spots. After all, it is very safe and will not crash even if it loses power.