
The SB-1 Defiant coaxial compound helicopter prototype, built by a Sikorsky [LMT]-Boeing [BA] team, broke contact with the ground on March 21 for the first time. Neither company released much information about the flight, although a video of the event at Sikorsky's West Palm Beach, Florida, flight test facility shows the aircraft in a low-level hover over the runway, in slow forward and backward flight and pivoting around its main rotor mast before making a gentle landing. The video shows…