Air Force funds ‘blended wing body’ design for long-range, fuel-efficient flight
popsci.com
popsci.com
For domestic flights, I am sure there are window seat aficionado who will continue to pay for window in flight. For everyone else, and by current seating maps there are a LOT more of them, this is just a non issue.
If a BWB design permits reasonable density, aisle access, fuel efficiency and a pleasant flight experience (speed, noise) then I'm all for it.
If it has to be a freight or logistics/materiel/fuel aircraft for the forces before general service, so be it.
That doesn't change the fact that there is space for more corridors.
Airline economics depends on a lot of factors (like fast boarding), and being allowed to fly the plane is one of them. Satisfying that requirement to flying is patently possible, but unless you have some non-public data, none of us can tell if it's profitable.
They require a higher angle of attack on take-off and landing, and, with passengers sitting much further from the centerline of the aircraft than on a conventional design, passengers are subject to much more g-forces during roll maneuvers.
The second issue can be mitigated by avoiding rolling the aircraft and/or by performing less aggressive rolls, but the first issue is something passengers will just have to deal with if BWB passenger aircraft become a thing.
The only seats that do change shape, those lie flat seats, need a fair amount of room around to not bump into something else while changing shape.
Pendolino is a nice technology, but expensive to maintain. And aircraft, unlike trains, is very sensitive to total weight; the actuators for the seats will be extra dead weight that you need to lift, and this extra weight may eat quite a bit of the fuel savings, if not all of them.
https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/low-carbon-aviation/hyd...
The general idea is to use liquid H2, like the old KN-88 design.
With planes though, you only need to deliver it to an airport. Airports are also very frequently placed next to large bodies of water, so with enough electricity you could make it on site.
I'm willing to bet that Hydrogen will never take off for cars, but I think it could have a place for planes and ships, and even trucks in some situations.
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and you're seated here
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Uh pardon me, excuse, pardon me... to get out
The challenge for that is economic: those use cases which are generally filled with adaptations of older generation aircraft at the moment probably don't pay back the R&D costs of the programme. Especially since a viable civil aircraft programme also involves worldwide line maintenance capability, a liquid aftermarket etc.
Blended wings are are not a novel idea, and the major airframers have produced multiple concepts, often combined with theoretically much more efficient open rotor engines. The first attempt at a blended wing passenger aircraft was actually over 100 years ago (it was years ahead of its time... and it crashed on its first flight). But there are a lot of challenges other than the passenger experience characteristics people have already mentioned: instead of a simple tube, you now have a broad internal space that needs bracing in a way which doesn't add weight or negate space advantages, and novel designs greatly increased uncertainty in an industry whose safety record relies on predictability. And there's commercial conservatism in an industry whose customer base invests billions in new airframes on the expectation of commonality with existing airframes, phased replacements over predictable replacement cycles etc, and where the second entrance to the market sector might well be the most successful....
Military use involves completely different economics, but for related reasons the anticipated greater fuel efficiency is rarely a big deal for the military. Still, if the military write blank checks, that leaves scope for prototypes that airline executives might struggle to say no to
I think this assumption is wrong, for airplanes. Higher fuel efficiency means longer range for the same amount of fuel, so it's an increase to range for the same weight carried (or an increase in weight carried to the same range, presumably). I think this is extremely important to the military.
That's quite different from an airline, where a 20% saving in their largest expense against a 3% margin in a price competitive industry is game changing
I am welcome to alternatives, but the announcement included:
“Blended wing body aircraft have the potential to significantly reduce fuel demand and increase global reach,” said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. “Moving forces and cargo quickly, efficiently, and over long distance is a critical capability to enable national security strategy.”
It could be cleverly written to suggest it is about fuel efficiency and range, but that these straightforward and public explanations aren't the real reason. Totally possible, but what are they then? I know I don't know enough to second guess the public statements of the Secretary of the Air Force and the plain reading is that the first sentence is directly related to the second.
But we all know that's not how it works. Both sentences are just always true, they aren't necessarily related. I don't know what else it would mean though.
Utterly false. Greater fuel efficiency means greater range or less fuel needed for the same range and payload, and you'd better believe that is not nothing to military planners. I can say that because I used to be one. Every drop of fuel burned in theater in a war has to get there somehow. And until it's loaded on a jet and used, it's vulnerable to being targeted either in transit or at rest, and has to be protected. And pre-war, the more gas you're going to burn to accomplish a given task, the more facilities and infrastructure have to be in place at your potential bases to hold it, meaning more access agreements with foreign countries and/or construction contracts having to be paid for in those countries to build said facilities. And you have less ability to use smaller or more austere facilities, limiting your ability to disperse the force and complicate enemy targeting.
The modern solution to the "window seat" is an exterior camera(s) feed accessible from the LCD touch screen in the seatback in front of you.
Of course, the problem with B-21 is that it's quite expensive. If you made a life size replica entirely out of gold, it would be only 5 times as expensive as the real thing.
That's what the USAF is looking for here: an affordable long range aircraft that does not need to go in the heat of the battle like B-21, but can be used for refueling, cargo movements, etc.
Not sure what role this serves for the USAF. It's a transport. Wider loads? Stealth?
The US has had total air superiority in every conflict since the Korean War. That's over. The Ukraine war makes it clear. Against a competent opponent, most of what flies will die. There are just too many man-portable and truck-mounted systems that can take down aircraft. Zipping over hostile territory in helicopters is pretty much out. Flying big, fat transports over contested territory is out. Anything that flies over hostile terrain had better be able to hide, evade, counter, and fight back.
Unfortunately I’m less than optimistic about this particular program actually producing a functional aircraft. The company here is asking for way too little time and too little money to produce a full-sized manned demonstrator IMHO. Especially for a company that has no track record of actually producing full-scale, manned aircraft. It seems like they’re trying to get additional private investment to build their demonstrator but who knows.
The US has never defeated a peer army since WW2, in which the USSR did most of the work. Russia has fifth gen fighters, the S400, and very capable EW and artillery. To pretend they would roll over is pure fantasy.
In any case, we will never fight a hot war with a nuclear armed country ever again. Nuclear deterrence works, and the nuclear bomb has thankfully ended modern warfare between nuclear-armed countries.
The era of superpowers sending men off to die is over, at least between nuclear-armed countries (but not so much between a nuclear and non-nuclear country.)
With this said, all that advanced tech and yet they're shitting their pants in Ukraine against old equipment. Something doesn't fit here.
Regarding training the new forces on western strategy, I'm not sure what else NATO countries could do. That's how they train their own forces. There was a failure to provide the resources (especially air ones) to put our tactics into practice, but NATO can't train Ukraine to fight like Russia/Ukraine/USSR...
I wonder if the couple hundred billion dollars we're sending there, along with "volunteers" that all seem to have CIA operator type resumes, are in any way connected to that.
This has been by far the most successful war-marketing campaign I've seen in my life though. Who would've thought that to sell left leaning/"progressive" people on a military conflict, all you need is social media heavy campaign memes (russian warship, ghost of Kiev etc) with google-translate Cyrillic typeface, and wrap everything in yellow and blue.
We should absolutely avoid sending Ukraine any modern equipment. As soon as the war is over, they'll sell it on the black market to countries that will gladly reverse engineer what we've built.
And as an aside, I have no interest in funding proxy wars with my tax dollars. Let's not return to a Cold War era. Entering this conflict was absolutely absurd.
The West, and more specifically the US, is doing what they said they would do if Russia invaded Ukraine. This was done publicly and apparently privately too. So if this is a proxy war, then it's different from most proxy wars.
I don't like war, but when you have someone that wants to expand their borders, sometimes you save a lot of money and lives by ending the problem at the start. If Ukraine goes well, why not do the Baltics next? What about all those ethnic Russians in need of "saving" in Kazakhstan? It might even give China some ideas. So be careful: by not doing anything and saving your precious tax dollars, you might end up spending more in the future.
Wars of expansion should be costly and expensive, otherwise everyone would just start wars.
And that cold war era... isn't that what's we're already walking to with China? The sanctions, China's claims in the South China sea, etc? Russia in Ukraine are just a side show.
So what? How is this our problem?
Already the lessons taken by all senior politicians and bureaucrats globally from the US and Western Europe turning a blind eye to the original occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is that everyone needs access to an option to rapidly acquire nuclear weapons and to never give them up if you have them. You may have forgotten amidst the news cycles that the first inclination of the West was to offer Zelensky a ride out of Kyiv rather than defend it from Putin's occupation but I assure you no government has forgotten.
Why do you think Saudi Arabia is now actively establishing relationships with Iran - because they somehow suddenly realised that they should put aside their 1300 year old Shia - Sunni conflict for humanitarian reasons?
Something to atone for our sins (invading Iraq the second time and hanging the Kurds out to dry the first time, among others) and build back goodwill among other nations.
We spend almost a trillion dollars a year on the military and equipment that's untested in battle, so let's see how well it would really work -- we're learning a lot already but we don't know if our good stuff is really as good as we think.
But you "have no interest in funding proxy wars with [your] tax dollars" or to "return to a Cold War era", so I guess fuck Taiwan and TSMC.
Ukraine? I'm less familiar with Ukraine, but on top of having a friendly country in that part of the world and US influence (which is part of what makes the US the country it is, something you benefit from), didn't the US and the EU use some of their rocket engines or something like that? Not saying we can't survive without them, but to say there's nothing there also doesn't make sense.
After reading some of Putin's reasoning to invade Ukraine and what he said about other countries in eastern Ukraine being essentially part of Russia, I have to ask what's cheaper (since you care about your tax dollars)? To send them equipment or to be dragged to a proper war with Russia after they decide to invade NATO countries? What's hit to the global economy and how much will it affect your wallet? Assuming that you care about anyone other than yourself, how much will this affect people around you?
Yes, you clearly have never set foot in "eastern" Europe. And I'm saying that as someone that grew up there.
Turkey bought the S400 and got kicked out of the F-35 program (even after paying for the planes)... and they're NATO members.
Not getting involved in irrelevant, needless wars isn't exactly a fringe take.
Anyways, your comment history shows that you're such an angry/bitter/dismissive person that I don't expect you to engage in any discussion in good faith. So that'll be all from my end. Have a good day.
In a conventional war, its true. NATO, or the US alone, or even some individual NATO members on their own, would cakewalk over Russia faster than the coalition did in the Gulf War.
Unfortunately, its pretty hard to tell what their actual red line is for going nuclear which radically invalidates the preceding paragraph.
Not sure how you work that out. The state that spent half a century focusing on air defence to take out the USAF hasn't even substantially reduced the pathetically small and outdated fixed wing capability of the Ukrainian air force, and neither side has done much damage to the other side's airborne logistics, which is where this would fit. It's not been a great war for helicopters, but neither this project nor the US fighter capability that their superiority rests on is going anywhere close to frontline portable air defence systems.
Long range anti-ship missile deployment over the Pacific. A design like this can cover large areas and deploy autonomous weapons from long range.
Weapon development of the US military is almost entirely focused on China and its growing fleet. There are several air launched anti-ship missile platforms under development right now, including swarm attack, stealth and hypersonic missiles. The US is looking for an efficient, long range, high endurance standoff bomber for these systems. It doesn't need stealth; they'll operate from behind air defenses. It needs high efficiency, large fuel capacity and large payload capacity.
And that is exactly what you're looking at here.
Specifically, Rapid Dragon, a rack that lets a C-130 (or any cargo aircraft with a big enough bay) drop a dozen JASSM and LRASM stealthy cruise missiles at a time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
>> The Pacific Ocean is vast, and when it comes to planning for how to fight a war in and across it, the United States is turning to a new airframe design—one that promises more efficient flight. In an event put on by the Air And Space Forces Association on August 16, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Ravi I Chaudhary announced the award of a contract, worth up to $230 million through 2026, for the development and production of a prototype “Blended Wing Body” airplane.
War! Such a fun thing to write about in an enthusiastic article opening! Yay!
Now that their main adversary has cloned that advantage, a new generation approach is imperative. Who knows if this is indeed the future of US air logistics or a diversionary press release to mislead the development roadmaps of foes.