Airbus To Develop X3 Successor
LONDON — Airbus Helicopters will build a large-scale
compound helicopter to further develop the technologies
used its in X3 high-speed demonstrator.
Work on the LifeRCraft (Low Impact Fast &
Efficient RotorCraft) will begin this year, and Airbus
aims to start flight demonstrations around 2019.
The aircraft is being developed in the framework of
the European Union’s Clean Sky 2 Joint Technology
Initiative and aims to build on the initial high-speed test
work completed by the X3, which was retired to the Musee
de l’Air in Paris earlier this year.
Like the X3, the LifeRCraft will use fixed wings for more
efficient lift, open propellers for high-efficiency
propulsion and a main rotor that provides vertical takeoff
and landing capabilities.
The company previously said the X3 had more than
proved a business case for a high-speed rotorcraft using
the X3 – known as X-cubed technology – and it could
find its way on to a product during the 2020s.
"This is not an investment in a product, but a
second phase of research," said Airbus CEO Guillaume
Faury, speaking at the Farnborough air show. "We 
believe we are coming closer and with this phase and we 
will be closer, to reaching a point where we could make 
a decision for a product.
"But we need as well to work to exchange and
communicate with our customers, because this kind of
helicopter would change the way they are doing business."
Airbus plans on producing preliminary studies,
architecture and specification work this year.
Development and testing of components and subsystems
for the aircraft will take place between 2016 and 2018,
with flights in early 2019.
"We have observed that the introduction into market
of new formulas is difficult to make and succeed, so in
this second phase we want to focus on operations,
customer benefits and the value it is creating," Faury
added.
Airbus, previously Eurocopter, unveiled the X3 back
in 2010. The aircraft’s development was prompted by
the then-CEO Lutz Bertling, who wanted to produce
comparable performance with Sikorsky’s X2
technology and the AgustaWestland AW609 commercial
tiltrotor, but at a third of the purchase or direct
operating costs. By the time the aircraft halted operations
in mid-2013, it had completed around 200 flights and
flown around 150 flight hours. A tour of the U.S. saw
operators from both the commercial and military world
fly the aircraft. In the weeks before the 2013 Paris air
show, Eurocopter revealed that a series of test flights
had yielded speeds of 255 kt in level flight breaking the
X3’s previous top speed of 232 kt set in May 2011, but
also breaking Sikorsky’s X2 record speed, by reaching
263 kt in a dive.
Part of the success was thanks to the installation of a
new aerodynamic fairing around the rotor head to reduce
its parasitic drag.