The vortex ring state (VRS) is a dangerous aerodynamic condition that may arise in helicopter flight, when a vortex ring system engulfs the rotor, causing severe loss of lift. The vortex ring state is sometimes referred to as settling with power. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sees these terms as synonymous, whereas Transport Canada sees them as two different phenomena. A vortex ring state sets in when the airflow around a helicopter's main rotor assumes a rotationally symmetrical form over the tips of the blades, supported by a laminar flow over the blade tips, and a countering upflow of air outside and away from the rotor. In this condition, the rotor falls into a new topological state of the surrounding flow field, induced by its own downwash, and suddenly loses lift. Since vortex rings are surprisingly stable fluid dynamical phenomena (a form of topological soliton), the best way to recover from them is to laterally steer clear of them, in order to re-establish lift, and to break them up using maximum engine power, in order to establish turbulence. This is also why the condition is often mistaken for "settling with insufficient power": high-powered manoeuvres can both induce a vortex ring state in free air, and then at low altitude, during landing conditions, possibly break it. If sufficient power is not available to maintain the airfoil of the rotor at a stalled condition, while generating sufficient lift, the aircraft will not be able to stay afloat before the vortex ring state dissipates, and will crash. This condition also occurs with tiltrotors, and it was responsible for an accident involving a V-22 Osprey. Vortex ring state caused the loss of a heavily modified MH-60 helicopter during Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed. Description Because the blades are rotating about a central axis, the speed of each airfoil is lowest at the point where it connects to the hub-and-grip assembly. This fundamental physical reality means that the innermost portion of each blade has an inherent vulnerability to stalling. In forward flight with translational lift, there is no upward flow (upflow) of air in the hub area. As forward airspeed decreases and vertical descent rates increase, an upflow begins simply because there are no airfoil surfaces in the area of the hub, mast and blade-grip assembly. Then, as the volume of upflow increases in the central region