Cheyenne Warrior

When it lost out to Boeing last January in the competition for the contract to develop the U.S.'s first supersonic transport plane, Lockheed Aircraft Corp. still had a multimillion-dollar ace up its sleeve. The Army had earlier awarded the company an $86 million development contract for an aircraft to ride shotgun for the vulnerable troop-carrying helicopters in Viet Nam. Last week at Van Nuys Airport, Calif., Lockheed put its answer in the air: a prototype of the radical AH-56A Cheyenne--a combination helicopter and fixed-wing plane--gave a 15-minute display of its capabilities for members of the military, Government and the press.

The Army's need developed out of the fact that low-flying, thin-skinned and slow-moving helicopters are often clay pigeons to ground-based enemy sharpshooters and are virtually impossible to protect with jet or conventional prop planes. In demonstrating how it could do the job, Lockheed's Cheyenne rolled down the runway at 50 m.p.h., stopped, reversed direction, then did a series of intricate ground maneuvers before lifting itself 10 ft. aloft and hovering in that position. Extending and retracting its landing gear, the craft climbed to 30 ft. and, in helicopter fashion, backed up in the air. Test Pilot Don Segner then gave the plane's single turbine engine the throttle, and the 55-ft.-long craft raced above the applauding gallery at speeds approaching its maximum of 250 m.p.h.

Impressive Talents. The Cheyenne's stubby wings help lift it at high speeds and ease the strain on the rotor blades overhead. Vertical takeoffs and landings, plus its hovering capability, are aided by a tail-mounted stabilizing rotor. Increasing its acceleration capacity, which carries the Cheyenne from zero-hover to 230 m.p.h. in 38 seconds, is a rear-mounted pusher propeller. Moreover, the plane can decelerate from this speed to zero-hover in 17 seconds.

Most impressive of the Cheyenne's talents, however, is its deadly arsenal. Moving in for the kill, the two-man crew--pilot and copilot-gunner--have at their fingertips six missile launchers, a swiveling belly-turret with a 30-mm. automatic gun, and a nose turret armed with either a 40-mm. grenade-launcher or a six-barrel minigun that fires 6,000 rounds per minute. A special helmet linked to an infra-red light beam allows the pilot to aim his fire system by moving his head, while the gunner, using a periscopic sight, can presumably hit an object as small as a car radiator cap from 1 +- miles away.

The Army has indicated that it wants 600 of the craft, for which it would pay about $1,000,000 apiece. The final decision, however, rests with the Department of Defense. Should the defense order come through, Lockheed will have funds to permit further exploitation of the AH-56A design. Company Chairman Daniel J. Haughton thinks there will be a good foreign market for the Cheyenne, and Lockheed engineers are already studying a 30-passenger commercial version called the CL-1026 for intracity travel. Beyond that, the company envisions a 90-passenger model that could cruise at 500 m.p.h. over a 500-mile range.

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