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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM      129

Senator MONRONEY. That would be difficult to do. You would have to go through another set of engine developments, would you not?

Mr. THAYER. It is a matter of growing the present engine, of which there is, it appears to us, a great amount of growth. It is not a very expensive operation to go from 3,000 horsepower we are getting now to 3,400 to 3,500. 

Senator MONRONEY. You could do that pretty much with the present configuration of the engines? It is just natural growth.

Mr. THAYER. Yes, sir; very little weight increase. It is primarily a process of putting in higher temperature materials in the engine and raising the thrust that way, rather than a redesign. 

I would like to, with your permission, show you a 12-minute movie which is really a flight test report. 

Senator MONRONEY. Very well. 

(Motion picture presentation.)

Senator MONRONEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Thayer, for those motion pictures. They demonstrate clearly the ability of this plane to hover, to take off. 

Seeing the plane in actual flight, although the size and mass of the plane doesn't show up either in the pictures or in the model the size that it actually is-what did you say the weight was? 38,000 pounds loaded?

Mr. THAYER. The design gross load is 37,500 pounds, with 8,000 pounds of payload. At the present time the airplane is flying about 2,000 pounds overweight because a couple of years ago we and the Air Force, in the interest of the economy, curtailed the weight reduction program, because we didn't need it. We had sufficient power. We don't need it in order to perform the objectives of the military program, which was brought out in the film, as that of test and evaluation in the field. This is the only VTOL airplane in the United States that can be operationally evaluated. 

Senator MONRONEY. This was taken direct from the drawing boards and produced according to specifications with the size of the fuselage and load-carrying cubage required, and produced from the ground up and is now ready for production model testing by the Air Force; is that correct?

Mr. THAYER. It is ready now for the operational evaluation testing. 

Senator MONRONEY. Explain what that means. 

Mr. THAYER. That means that the military plans to take the five airplanes-and by the military I mean the Air Force, Army, and Navy. 

Senator MONRONEY. This is joint DOD. 

Mr. THAYER. It is a triservice program. However, the Air Force has cognizance of the program. We are responsible directly to the Air Force. 

The military plans to take these five airplanes and take them into the field and determine, because they are capable of carrying a substantial payload a substantial distance, and operate both in the VTOL and STOL mode. They intend, under all kinds of field environments, to evaluate how best to use this type of airplane to perform the military mission, which is that primarily of an assault transport. 

Hopefully, at some point when enough information has been accumulated to insure that this is a practical machine to use in the