Aero: F22ski

Russia unveils top secret new fighter
(AFP) – 10 hours ago
MOSCOW — Russia on Friday unveiled a new fighter aircraft touted as a rival of the US F-22 stealth jet and developed amid the highest secrecy as part of a plan to modernize the armed forces.

The fifth generation fighter, manufactured by the Sukhoi company and known as the PAK FA, made a maiden flight of just over 45 minutes at the firm's home base of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Far East region.

"The flight lasted 47 minutes during which all the aircraft's systems were tested. It was successful," Sukhoi spokeswoman Olga Kayukova told AFP. "This is the first time it has been unveiled."

Pictures broadcast on state television showed the fighter jet -- which has been kept closely under wraps for years -- flying at altitude and then landing on a snow-surrounded runway.

"The aircraft performed well in all stages of the flight programme. It is easy and comfortable to pilot," said Sergei Bogdan, the pilot for the flight, in comments published on the Sukhoi website.

The new jet has the capability of carrying out long flights above the speed of sound as well as simultaneously attacking different targets.
Russia is currently embarking on a major programme to re-equip its military, not least the air force which is still using largely Soviet-era equipment and suffers from frequent crashes.

The new fighter, which has been in development since the 1990s, is due to enter the armed forces in 2015, Russian news agencies said.
The first flight of the PAK FA (Prospective Aviation System of Frontline Aviation) is being seen in Russia as a major boost for the military after the project was hit by repeated delays over the last years.

"There is no doubt that the plane is needed," the ex-commander of the Russian air force, Anatoly Kornukov, told the Interfax news agency.
"Our Su-27 and MiG-29 planes are good but have aged. They are 20 or more years old and it's time to have something as a replacement," he said.
He said the new plane could easily stand comparison with the US F-22, also a fifth generation stealth fighter.

"It's going to be no worse than an F-22. I've been in an F-22 and I know."
Russia's campaign to modernize its military has been marred by repeated setbacks with new equipment, above all a string of failed tests of its new Bulava sea-based intercontinental nuclear-capable missile.

Aero: Farewell to the man who made supersonic flight posible

Hat tip to NeptunusLex.com's comments, below.

Wall Street Journal

Farewell to the man that gave us supersonic flight:

Mr. Richard T. Whitcomb, who died Oct. 13 at age 88, solved a problem that had bedeviled aviation engineers, whose designs couldn’t achieve supersonic flight even though they seemed to have enough power. Increased wind resistance at speeds approaching the speed of sound was the problem. Engineers took to calling it the “sound barrier.”

Mr. Whitcomb’s solution was to taper the airplane’s fuselage in a manner he often likened to a Coke bottle, which dramatically reduced drag. Within three years of Mr. Whitcomb’s discovery in 1951, U.S. Air Force interceptors were flying at supersonic speeds.
Initial designs were centered around the shape of bullets, since bullets were known to travel at supersonic speeds. But shock wave build-ups tended to interfere with each other in the three dimensional application of winged flight at transonic flight, when the airflow around the body no longer acts as an incompressible fluid.

Whitcomb’s coke bottle design, when combined with swept wing geometry, permitted high powered aircraft to push through and eventually detach their shock waves.

To be fair, other scientists were there first, including a German named Otto Frenzl in 1943. But Whitcomb – who independently discovered the same phenomenon in 1952 – was the first to successfully operationalize it, giving your correspondent and his friends many moments of hair-on-fire raging around.

For which we thank him.

Aero: PENTAGON PUSHES FOR UNBLINKING SURVEILLANCE

This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
U.S. plans to deploy an unmanned surveillance airship to Afghanistan are moving forward, with a contract for the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) demonstration expected to be awarded by year-end.

Designed to stay aloft for three weeks carrying a heavy payload of wide-area sensors, the airship is becoming a flagship for Defense Dept. efforts to provide unblinking airborne surveillance to defeat the threat from roadside bombs.

With other programs pushing unmanned aircraft to greater persistence and heavier payloads, the Pentagon is coming to grips with the consequence: a torrent of motion imagery that must be analyzed and archived to be of use.

The Pentagon's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) task force has the LEMV on the fast track, with a single demonstrator vehicle to be fielded to Afghanistan within 18 months of contract award. Congress has fully funded the Fiscal 2010 budget request of $90 million for the program.

U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command (SMDC) is to lead the airship program, contracting with an industry consortium now taking final shape. More here…

AEROSPACE: Pentagon Eyes Orbiting Power Station

This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Military planners responsible for finding space resources to support troops on the ground think the time may be ripe to advance the 40-year-old space solar power concept to help reduce the logistics train behind forward-deployed forces.

The concept of collecting solar energy above the atmosphere and beaming it to the ground as microwaves or lasers has long been seen among military freethinkers as a way to get electricity to remote airfields, fire bases or other distant outposts without having to haul fuel for diesel generators.

But that out-of-the-box concept may be gaining new life as the incoming administration looks for "green-energy" technologies to reduce reliance on foreign oil, and technologists home in on the hardware that would be needed to orbit deployable sunlight collectors measuring kilometers across and get power down from them to troops on the ground. Engineers studying space solar power (SSP) believe a pilot plant could be orbited fairly soon.

More here...

AEROSPACE: B-36 Video

Thank you Lt Col Stidsen for pointing out this almost lost piece of history.

"Superb footage . It's from "Strategic Air Command" (1954) - my all time fav-o-rite movie. That sequence - and others in the flick - is why the 36 is my favorite aircraft of all time. Interestingly, "SAC" has never been released in DVD, only in VHS (many moons ago) ."

Video here...

AEROSPACE: Bug size flying spies

Bug-Sized Spies: US Develops Tiny Flying Robots

Photo credit to the Washington Post

NewsMax.com
DAYTON, Ohio -- If only we could be a fly on the wall when our enemies are plotting to attack us. Better yet, what if that fly could record voices, transmit video and even fire tiny weapons?

That kind of James Bond-style fantasy is actually on the drawing board. U.S. military engineers are trying to design flying robots disguised as insects that could one day spy on enemies and conduct dangerous missions without risking lives.

"The way we envision it is, there would be a bunch of these sent out in a swarm," said Greg Parker, who helps lead the research project at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. "If we know there's a possibility of bad guys in a certain building, how do we find out? We think this would fill that void."

In essence, the research seeks to miniaturize the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan for surveillance and reconnaissance.

The next generation of drones, called Micro Aerial Vehicles, or MAVs, could be as tiny as bumblebees and capable of flying undetected into buildings, where they could photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.

By identifying and assaulting adversaries more precisely, the robots would also help reduce or avoid civilian casualties, the military says.

Parker and his colleagues plan to start by developing a bird-sized robot as soon as 2015, followed by the insect-sized models by 2030.

AEROSPACE: NASA WB-57 over Afghanistan

Hat Tip to Michael Yon who got the below shot in Afghanistan just a few days ago.

"Here is a rare and curious thing: an antique British [WB-57] bomber flying over Afghan skies. These planes flew in the 1950s and 60s, performing top of the atmosphere reconnaissance. The U.S. Air Force retired the WB-57 decades ago. But NASA owns two, which it uses for an odd group of missions, including collecting cosmic dust from extremely high altitudes. It seems doubtful that NASA came all the way to Afghanistan to collect cosmic dust, but this would be an interesting region in which to search for traces of nuclear debris, drifting upwards from Iran, Pakistan, various Central Asian states, China, or India."


More here: Brochure on NASA missions with the WB-57

AEROSPACE: F-22 in the crosshairs

A Fighter Jet’s Fate Poses a Quandary for Obama

New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
December 9, 2008

Two of President-elect Barack Obama’s stated goals — cutting wasteful spending and saving or creating millions of jobs — are on a collision course in a looming decision over whether to keep building the F-22 fighter jet.

The F-22 fighter jet has been criticized as expensive, but cutting back on it would cost jobs.

Air Force officials have told Congress that they are hoping to win a $9 billion commitment to produce at least 60 F-22s over a three-year period, which would expand the fleet to 243.

More here...

AEROSPACE: Gaming Technology and Training

This screenshot shows flight simulation software created by Air Force researchers who leveraged existing commercial gaming software to demonstrate an alternative way to quickly deliver a low-cost, realistic simulation program with genuine training effectiveness. Researchers integrated the graphics-rich commercial package with high-fidelity real-world aircraft models.

Gaming R&D
by John Schutte
711th Human Performance Wing

12/8/2008 - WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) -- Air Force Research Laboratory's researchers at Mesa, Ariz., unveiled the technological potential of its gaming research and development project publicly Dec. 1 during the 2008 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Members of the 711th Human Performance Wing's Warfighter Readiness Research Division blended commercial gaming technology with military-specific databases that demonstrated quicker, less expensive ways to develop the next generation of tools for interactive military training.

More here...

Aerospace: Drones fly US border security

Drone lands in ND in preparation for border patrol

Dec 7 08:45 PM US/Eastern
By DAVE KOLPACK
Associated Press Writer 24 Comments

FARGO, N.D. (AP) - After two failed tries, an unmanned aircraft expected to be the first to patrol the northern U.S. border completed a flight from Arizona to North Dakota.
U.S Customs and Border Protection officials said the Predator B drone touched down Saturday at the Grand Forks Air Force Base after a six-hour flight from Libby Army Airfield in Sierra Vista, Ariz.

"The aviators all brag about the perfect landing," said Michael Corcoran, deputy director for air operations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine office in Grand Forks. "I guess we'll brag about this one, as well," he said.

The drone is scheduled to begin patrolling the northern U.S. border in January. Its flights will originate from the Grand Forks base.

Officials were waiting for clearance on air space before deciding on a schedule, Corcoran said.

An earlier flight on Thursday was canceled because of maintenance problems, and a flight Friday was aborted because of poor weather.

The Predator weighs 5 tons, has a 66-foot wingspan and can fly undetected as high as 50,000 feet. It can fly for 28 hours at a time and will be equipped with sensors and radar.

The drone has been in use along the southern border with Mexico since 2005.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said the state's congressional delegation had been working for four years to get the unmanned aircraft to North Dakota.

"It is vital to America's security that we protect our borders, particularly the northern border," Conrad said. "The Grand Forks Air Branch plays an essential role in helping shut the door on terrorists who want to sneak across remote border points to strike on U.S. soil."

AEROSPACE: Safer skies; MKV completes hover test

Hat tip to SteelJaw Scribe.

MULTIPLE KILL VEHICLE COMPLETES HOVER TEST, Dec. 3, 2008. Missile Defense Agency Director Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly announced that a test of the Multiple Kill Vehicle-L (MKV-L) was conducted Tuesday, Dec. 2 at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Preliminary indications are that planned test objectives were achieved. Objectives of the test included having the MKV-L hover under its own power and prove its capability to recognize and track a surrogate target in a flight environment. During the test, the MKV-L’s propulsion system demonstrated maneuverability while tracking a target. The MKV-L transmitted video and flight telemetry to the ground. The MKV-L mission is to destroy medium through intercontinental-range ballistic missiles equipped with multiple warheads or countermeasures by using a single interceptor missile…

More, including animation here...