"Perfect Eagle" is not perfect but carries hope to boost Korea's defense industry

　　Expert chat equipment

　　Recently, the South Korean Army has retired five US-made UH-1H helicopters with decades of age and replaced them with the self-developed KUH-1 "Perfect Eagle" helicopter.

　　A reporter from the Science and Technology Daily learned that the KUH-1 "Perfect Eagle" helicopter was jointly developed by Korea Aerospace Industry Corporation and Eurocopter in 2006 and is the first domestically-made new general-purpose helicopter in Korea. This makes South Korea the 11th country in the world to independently develop helicopters. General purpose helicopters are also called multi-purpose helicopters, which can be used for reconnaissance, transportation, and ambulance. When changing from one task to another, some corresponding equipment needs to be added or removed. The "Perfect Eagle" was originally developed to replace its old UH-1H and 500MD helicopters.

　　In this regard, military researcher Lan Shunzheng introduced: “KUH stands for'Korea Utility Helicopter', which is the abbreviation of Korean multi-purpose helicopter. Its appearance is basically the same as Eurocopter's AS332'Super Puma' helicopter. This high imitation is a revised version of the'Super Puma' helicopter."

　　For a long time, South Korea’s main equipment is US-made helicopters, and many helicopters are seriously aging. For example, the 129 UH-1H helicopters it has equipped have flown 792,000 hours and 146 million kilometers. Due to the long flight time, South Korea had to invest a lot of money in maintenance.

　　Public information shows that the "Perfect Eagle" was successfully tested for the first time in March 2010. It is 19 meters long, 5 meters high, and 2.3 meters wide. The aircraft has a maximum take-off weight of 8709 kg and can carry 9 fully armed soldiers. Assault mission. It has a maximum cruising speed of 259 km/h, a battery life of more than 2 hours, can rise vertically at a speed of 140 m/min, and can hover over an altitude of 2,700 meters. The "Perfect Eagle" is equipped with an inertial navigation system, a global positioning system, an automatic flight control system, a forward-looking infrared radar and a digital map, allowing it to perform combat missions in severe weather and night environments, and has strong battlefield adaptability.

　　Since it is a general purpose helicopter, its potential for modification is very large.

　　A model of a "perfect eagle" gunship was exhibited at the "Seoul Defense Air Show" in South Korea not long ago. This gunship can carry a certain number of personnel and materials, but its main business is for ground strikes. According to South Korea’s vision, this helicopter not only has gunship models, but also ship-borne, anti-submarine, search and rescue and special types.

　　Although the "Perfect Eagle" is derived from the "Super Puma" model in a sense, and the "Super Puma" is a fairly mature and reliable general-purpose helicopter, the technology of the "Perfect Eagle" cannot be said at present. Fully mature. Since its service, it has had many accidents, and its performance and reliability have been questioned.

　　Lan Shunzheng introduced: "Because the level of Korean aviation industry is not well developed, when developing the "Perfect Eagle", its appearance and basic design refer to the "Super Puma" helicopter, which is restricted by foreign companies in terms of helicopter technology. Later, South Korean researchers also made a lot of efforts. There is a saying that South Korean researchers are determined to rely solely on their own strength after they have traveled to France for many times and failed to obtain the design and manufacturing technology of rotor blades. In the end, its The design and manufacturing technology are actually the inspiration and inspiration that researchers got from the oven for baking red bean cakes."

　　After the delivery of "Perfect Eagle", negative news continued. It is said that after service in 2015, KUH-1 suffered three consecutive falls. Subsequently, the Korean Inspection Service began investigating the cause of the accident, and found a large number of design problems. During the performance inspection of the helicopter icing phenomenon, it found that 29 of the 101 indicators were not up to the standard. The Korean Inspection Service suspended the production of KUH-1 helicopters in August 2016. But less than two months later, the manufacturer submitted an improvement plan for KUH-1 and requested that the production line be restarted. However, in July 2018, another air disintegration accident occurred during ultra-low-altitude flight. The video showed that its main rotor suddenly fell off, and then the entire helicopter fell to the ground and fell apart like a kite with a broken line.

　　Lan Shunzheng said that in fact, not long after the air disintegration accident in 2018, the South Korean Army resumed the flight operations of some "Perfect Eagle" helicopters on Christmas Eve on December 24 of that year. Helicopter accident report. To a certain extent, since the South Korean side can go around the "Perfect Eagle" within a few months of a serious accident, and no accidents have occurred since then, it also shows that South Korea should have found out the cause of the accident at that time. It may even have made improvements and upgrades to some major problems, such as the widely criticized rotor part, and may also upgrade the crash resistance of the "Perfect Eagle".

　　Generally speaking, special measures are taken for the cockpit, seat, landing gear, fuselage and fuel tank sealing of a helicopter during the design to maximize the absorption or conversion of impact energy when falling to the ground, so as to minimize the impact on the occupants and keep the cockpit as possible Complete, the oil and gas system does not rupture and leak. This will greatly improve the survival rate of the crew. It is said that the UH-60 "Black Hawk" utility helicopter has an anti-crash capability of 95%.

　　"In the 2018 accident, the'Perfect Eagle' crashed from a height of 10 meters, and 5 of the 6 people on board were killed and 1 injured. This shows that its crash resistance is not high. Therefore, South Korea is likely to also It will be improved accordingly." Lan Shunzheng said.

　　Lan Shunzheng specifically pointed out that South Korea has always attached great importance to the development of its own national industry and has strong national pride. In the design and manufacture of many key equipment, we do not want to rely too much on other countries. The launch of "Perfect Eagle" is to uphold this concept. Although at present, the "perfect eagle" is not perfect, but it has greatly promoted and boosted the national defense industry and reduced South Korea's dependence on other countries.

Our reporter Zhang Qiang