Disc-Winged Supersonic Chopper

[KJ_Lesnick]

I saw awhile back some NASA designs which featured helicopter designs with disks (and extendable blades in some cases). 

I was wondering...

If you used a fairly sharp disc which would be good for supersonic flight, with closeable slots in between where the retractable blades are (DC-8 type design kind of, doors cover the slots at high-speed) to ramp up the total lift to allow vertical takeoff at the same time.  The disk has all the blades out for low-speed, slots open and is spinning.  As speed increases, the extendable blades go in and slots close, and eventually the rotor stops spinning and acts just like a regular wing.  For low-speed (when the disk is spining), I was thinking of using a disk-type rotor mounted through the vertical fin (think Commanche style, except it would be completely flush and disk shaped, with variable slots), slots close at higher speeds, and thrust-vectoring and rudder-use provide sole directional control.

Could such a design work?

[Weaver]

I believe it's been looked at several times, although maybe not for speed quite that high. Westland and Agusta both spring to mind..........

[KJ_Lesnick]

Still that would be pretty cool.  A chopper that could accelerate to jet-fighter speeds, dogfight, battle it out, max out at Mach 2.0 to Mach 3.0?

KJ Lesnick