May 16, 2003 at 11:43 pm
Don’t take this too seriously, I’m just touching up on some novel work and playing with ideas.
This comes from a Balkans sceanrio sometime circa. 2028
A heavyweight Russian helicopter type derived from the fictional Mi-56, a long-term but failed successor to the Mi-26 Halo.
Mi-56 Hurricane was created as a hybrid design to interface heavy lift capacity and extended long-range with a multirole battlefield combat capability (intended for use in a post nuclear-exchange theatre where forward operating fighter and bomber assets have been destroyed and complex multi-unit operations are difficult).
The Mi-56 Hurricane variant is an NBC compartmented aircraft powered by six turbofan engines and steering assistance provided by thrust-vectoring jets forward and aft. The main rotor is eight-blade counter-rotational, with a tail based on the Ka-27 Helix.
Situated at the back of the enlarged tail is a manned compartment equipped with twin-barrel cannon derived directly from the Tupolev Tu-95 tail gunner.
Situated at the front of the aircraft, slung under the nose is two co-axial 30mm cannons directed by an independent gunnery control officer equiped with helmet-mounted cueing system.
The cockpit of the Hurricane has unusual glass visibility because it is set higher and further back than the Mi-26 chassis design. This is compensated for by digital laser so-called LADAR image-intensifier to feed mode-variable computer landing assistance.
This is where it starts to get really…unusual.
Because the Mi-56 Hurricane desires low air-support dependency, and may well have to survive with total independence, the Mi-56 Hurricane variant mounts on the extended nose a powerful Zirkon-variant heavy radar and radar databus derived from the Sukhoi Su-35 (?) / Mig-31, that allows it to deploy AA-10 Alamo / AA-17 Avalanche variant medium-range AAM’s from its top set of dual H-deployment wings (imagine the H on its side).
In place or support of the usual Strela-variant IR-seeking AAM’s, Hurricane can also support wing-tip AA-11 Archer high-angle boresight variant AAM’s. FLIR must presumably be included. Both pilots have helmet-mounted cueing and digital supporting spacial-awareness systems.
The lower set of wings amidships are slightly larger than those above, and sport a motorised rail system allowing ordinance to be continually fed through hatches from internal stores within the ship, with expended pods being ejected after use. This accomodates all air-ground weapon system types.
The undercarriage of the aircraft is four fold-out quad-wheel / skid gears, with dual emergency redundancy in the forward centre-position to reduce impact of multiple skid-failure or heavy landing.
Fuel stores are internal and modular, with hull and modual armour prevelant throughout the aircraft with excess to the tail and engine assemblies.