The Wall Street Journal provides this fascinating glimpse at some of the unmanned drones being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works

Lockheed is shedding its ambivalence and busily developing concepts for newfangled drones. One drone would be launched from, and retrieved by, submarines; another would fly at nine times the speed of sound. A third, which is off the drawing board but not quite airborne, has wings designed to fold in flight so that it could rapidly turn from slow-speed spy plane to quick-strike bomber.

Lockheed is drawing its drones from the same well that produced its stealth fighters: the company’s secretive Skunk Works unit. And the unmanned craft are just as radical as some of the unit’s past creations. “You have to throw out conventional aerodynamics,” Skunk Works head Frank Cappuccio says of the so-called morphing drone, with the folding wings.

As it pursues cutting-edge technologies, Lockheed – maker of the world’s costliest fighter plane, the F-22 – also wants to throw out conventional economics. The drone ideas it has disclosed are relatively inexpensive, more in the spirit of trailblazing models made in Israel than the $57 million Global Hawk unmanned spy jet made by Northrop Grumman Corp. at the same Mojave Desert airfield where the Skunk Works sits.

The U.S. arsenal should have plenty of room for both types. The fiscal 2007 Pentagon budget unveiled yesterday proposes boosting spending on unmanned aircraft to $1.7 billion next year. A separate long-term Pentagon blueprint calls for a quantum leap in drones, from hand-launched planes for battlefield surveillance and pilotless scout helicopters to long-range unmanned bombers that military planners expect to make up nearly half of the Air Force’s future strike fleet.
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[The] Skunk Works these days devotes some 40% to 50% of its own research funds to unmanned aircraft, Mr. Cappuccio says. Quietly, Lockheed has already contributed to the drone revolution. Skunk Works developed flight-control systems for the Dragon Eye, a five-pound, hand-launched reconnaissance drone used by Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003.

It also designed and delivered the seven-pound Desert Hawk within 127 days of receiving an Air Force request. The total cost for the first six drones and laptop-computer control system was less than $400,000, Mr. Cappuccio says. To date, Lockheed says it has supplied 126 Desert Hawks, which are used for surveillance to protect U.S. bases in Iraq.

The Skunk Works’s new concepts, like the morphing drone, are more ambitious. With funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Skunk Works set out to develop a plane whose wings can fold inward in flight so it can transform from a slow, loitering aircraft into a speedy plane that swoops in to drop a bomb. The project tests the viability of new materials for aircraft skins and “smart” controls that enable the plane to morph within “10 to 20 seconds without falling out of the sky,” Mr. Cappuccio says.

Read the whole article.

Tags: aircraft | news | blog | weblog | military | surveillance | airplanes | drones | war

It’s an all-science-fiction hat-trick at the blog tonight folks! I’ve got three articles on potentially amazing technologies, starting with this article from the Hunt Aviation website:

Fuel-less Gravity Powered Flight

The idea that an airplane can fly endlessly carrying heavy loads of passengers and cargo without burning any fuel, can stop and hover in place weightless at any time, and can takeoff and land vertically is a radical departure from accepted thought concerning aviation. This new reality that is made possible by the invention of Robert Hunt’s astounding new hybrid aircraft is Hunt Aviation’s vision of the future of aviation. Our aircraft is a rigid glider made of lightweight composite materials. The new hybrid “gravity-powered aircraft” is formed by merging the capabilities of the following devices into a single new aircraft apparatus: (1) an aircraft capable of aerostatic (lighter-than-air) lift to gain altitude; and, (2) a glider aircraft capable of aerodynamic lift, having a high glide ratio to accomplish long range gliding; and, (3) an innovative new extremely low drag vertical axis wind turbine that is capable of harnessing the force of the wind to generate power as the aircraft glides upward via positive buoyancy and glides downward via gravity acceleration.

Robert D. Hunt, the Chairman of Hunt Aviation, has filed for international patent protection for an innovative new phase change hybrid airship design powered by the thermal energy in the air. The energy to power gliding flight is obtained from the atmosphere itself. An efficient power cycle is created using the natural temperature difference from a low altitude to a higher altitude. Heat energy is taken from ambient temperature air at a lower altitude to power the GravityPlane and heat is rejected to colder air at high altitude to complete the power cycle. This Atmospheric power cycle can be repeated indefinitely to allow the craft to stay aloft virtually forever.

A proprietary low-boiling-point-liquid is vaporized into a low density lighter-than-air lifting gas using the heat in the air near the surface. This creates buoyancy that allows the buoyant aerostat to upward glide. The air becomes very cold when high altitude is reached and the lifting gas is cooled and changes phase to high density liquid that is heavier-than-air. Lift is lost and the aircraft glides back down toward the surface where the Atmospheric Power Cycle is repeated as the low altitude warmer air vaporizes the liquid back into a lifting gas to create lift again. Phase change is performed by heat exchangers that take in heat or reject heat to the atmosphere. The aircraft is insulated to prevent premature condensation or vaporization of the working fluid while climbing or descending.

Power is generated by wind turbines aboard the hybrid aerostat glider during both upward and downward gliding. A portion of the wind turbine generated power can be stored and brought back to earth for later use and may be used for propulsion during take-off and landing for example. In the alternative, power may be used while flying to produce hydrogen via electrolysis or to produce other valuable chemicals or goods. These products can be manufactured while traveling enroute to deliver the products to a purchaser. The GravityPlane can become a flying factory that can generate the power to run a manufacturing process from the atmosphere!

Sounds interesting, but it also sounds like perpetual motion….

Tags: aircraft | aviation | airplanes | technology | blog | weblog

From a Space Review article by Taylor Dinerman:

America’s new ray guns

Few issues in military technology have been subject to as much confusion, disinformation, and ignorance as the subject of lasers and other directed energy weapons. For example, long after the Pentagon had abandoned work on it, opponents of the missile defense program would use the hydrogen bomb-powered x-ray laser concept, known as Excalibur, as an example of the kind of fantastic weapon that would never work. To ordinary Americans, the whole idea of beam weapons seems more like science fiction.

In fact, according to a new book by Doug Beason, The E Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change The Way Future Wars Are Fought, published by Da Capo Press, such weapons are on the verge of being deployed (or, according to some sources, already have been.) Some of the better known weapons include the Air Force’s Airborne Laser (ABL), an anti-missile laser mounted inside a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down medium range ballistic missiles in the boost phase of their flight. Another even more controversial system is the Active Denial System (ADS), a non-lethal crowd control weapon that uses high-powered microwaves to inflict serious, but temporary pain, on anyone affected by the beam.

…Over the last few decades, there has been any number of military laser demonstration projects. The power and sophistication of these systems improved to the point that, by the early 1990s, the Department of Defense decided to go ahead with an operational anti-missile weapon, the ABL.

The ABL is a chemical oxygen-iodine laser mounted on a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down Scud-type missiles in their initial boost phase at ranges of more than 100 kilometers. The US Air Force hopes to build seven of these aircraft so that a team of four could provide ongoing 24-hour-a-day coverage of an enemy launch area over a period of some weeks. The ABL program does not involve any major scientific or technological breakthroughs—it is the first of its kind and, as such, has run into the normal delays and difficulties.

The true potential for this weapons system can, so far, only be guessed at. As Beason points out, “The only problem is that no one knows for sure what other missions the ABL is capable of performing.” In one interesting scenario, the author speculates how it might be used against a terrorist cruise missile attack on a US city. Other possibilities might even include “tickling” space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO), in order to bring it down sooner than would otherwise be the case. Serious experimentation will begin no sooner than 2008. Only last month did the USAF review board give the go-ahead to actually install the laser mechanism in the prototype aircraft.

The ABL is not the only laser weapon the Defense Department is working on, though it is the most advanced. In the mid-1990s, after Israel’s pullout from southern Lebanon, the US and Israel began collaborating on a laser system that would shoot down small artillery and mortar shells as well as short range rockets of the Katyusha type. Referred to as the Mobile-Tactical High Energy Laser (M-THEL), an early, immobile, version has been in testing since the late 1990s. While the experiments have been successful, turning it into an operational system will be a long and expensive process. Israel would like to have such a weapon in the very near future for use against rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.

Aside from lasers, high-powered microwaves (HPM) is the other type of directed energy weapons now coming into use. HPM systems originated with the Air Force’s Advanced Concepts group. They tried—and failed—to make artificial lightning bolts. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers who were working on the charged particle beam concept found that HPMs could be generated and could in fact produce some, but not all, of what they had been hoping to achieve.

Read the whole article.

Tags: war | lasers | weapons | technology | blog | weblog

Steve Fossett, the first to fly nonstop and without refueling around the globe, is about to undertake an even longer 26,000-mile, 80-hour trip that will take him across the Atlantic Ocean twice before landing in London. (Source: HeraldToday.com.)

This NASA news release has more details:

NASA Facility Serves as Launch Site for Record-Setting Flight

NASA announced Friday the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., will be the takeoff site for an attempt to set the record for the longest flight of an aircraft or balloon.

NASA and Virgin Atlantic Airways’ agreement to use Kennedy’s Space Shuttle Landing Facility is the result of a pilot program to expand access to the shuttle’s runway for non-NASA activities.

An exact takeoff date for Virgin Atlantic’s GlobalFlyer aircraft has not been determined and is contingent on weather. The flight is expected to take place in February. Steve Fossett will attempt to fly solo around the world, non-stop without refueling, in the aircraft designed by Burt Rutan. It is scheduled to arrive at Kennedy for preflight preparations on Jan. 6, 2006.
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The GlobalFlyer, built by Scaled Composites, Inc., is a single pilot, ultra light aircraft designed for non-stop global circumnavigation. The plane will fly mostly at 45,000 feet at speeds faster than 285 mph.

Via the VirginAtlantic GlobalFlyer webpage:

The current record for the FAI (Federation Aeronautics Internationale) Absolute World Record for Distance Without Landing is held by the Voyager aircraft (also designed by Burt Rutan) which flew for 24,987 miles (40,212 km) in 1986. The longest flight by a balloon is held by Breitling Orbiter 3 which flew for 25,361 miles (40,814 km) in 1999….

In an update to this post, The Daily Yorimuri has an article saying that the JAXA prototype was launched from a rocket and reached an altitude of 11 miles, glided in the air at Mach 2 and landed safely using a parachute.

This was the first successful flight since the last prototype crashed after take-off.

According to The Washington Post:

A breakthrough in supersonic flight could help Japan leap ahead in the aerospace field. The country, which manufactures high-tech components for U.S.-based Boeing Co., has only a limited domestic airplane industry.

[Kenichi Saito, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA] said the prototype 38-foot-long, arrow-shaped craft, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., was launched on a rocket and reached a flying altitude of 11 miles before floating back to Earth by parachute.
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Monday’s $10 million experiment marked a crucial step in Japan’s plans to develop a larger supersonic aircraft that can carry 300 passengers between Tokyo and Los Angeles in about four hours.

It also underpinned a June agreement between Japan and France to jointly research a possible successor to the Concorde over the next three years.

Read the whole article.

From CNN.com:

Japan's space agency plans to launch an arrow-shaped airplane at twice the speed of sound high over the Australian outback as early as next month in a crucial test of the country's push to develop a supersonic successor to the retired Concorde.

The test follows a three-year hiatus since the first experimental flight of the unmanned aircraft, dubbed the next-generation supersonic transport, prematurely separated from its booster rocket and crashed into the desert.

"We've made some improvements so that won't happen again," Takaaki Akuto, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said Tuesday in Tokyo. "This is a pretty important test."

A successful mission will pave the way for additional experiments as JAXA aims to develop a plane that can carry 300 passengers at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, making the run from Tokyo to Los Angeles in about four hours. It will also underpin a June agreement between Japan and France to jointly research such a plane over the next three years.

Read the whole article.