Every week is busy for the military’s aeronautical research
arms, but this one was special: a new version of a space shuttle-like X-plane
flew to the Arctic under remote control, and
the world’s fastest suborbital “plane”, the Falcon flying wing, crashed out on
the first of two test flights. And there’s a lot more weirdness to come.
Hypersonic wing lost
in maiden flight
With the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2, the quest
for high speed in Earth’s atmosphere is vaulted to a whole new level. The
Falcon was designed to perform almost literally like a meteor, streaking
through the atmosphere at a low angle.
According to DARPA’s spokesperson Johanna Jones, as reported
by Wired Magazine, the craft did actually achieve controlled flight at more
than Mach 20. Assuming an elevation of 36,000 feet, that’s an astonishing
13,000+ mph.
The carbon-carbon
glider, designed by Lockheed-Martin, was never intended to be recovered. But Darpa
researchers lost contact with the HTV-2 just nine minutes after launch,
leaving researchers at a loss as to what happened.
The Air Force, Navy, Army and U.S. Missile Defense Agency
were all tasked with analyzing the data to determine what happened, but it was
certainly a setback in the effort to build an “instant-strike” platform that
would allow the U.S.
to quickly strike targets thousands of miles away. So far, there are three
non-nuclear options on the table:
—Conventional
warheads aboard ICBMs
—X-51
Waverider, a Mach 5 or 6 unmanned plane equipped with cruise missiles
—Falcon HTV-2, a
Mach 20 armed glider
Unfortunately, ICBMs might prompt a nuclear response, and
the X-51 Waverider has had development problems of its own. Now the HTV-2
program has run into difficulty.
The HTV-2 was launched April 22 from Vandenberg Air Force
Base, Calif., on an Orbital Sciences’ Minotaur
IV Lite rocket and was supposed to separate from the booster at an altitude of
several hundred thousand feet and then autonomously glide at 13,000 mph to a
splashdown in a sea range near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
The separation did occur, but the test ended before HTV-2
could finish its descent into the atmosphere and its glide across the Pacific Ocean. The total distance from lift-off to impact
was about 4,100 nautical miles, and the glider was supposed to reach its target
in just 30 minutes.
According to DARPA, the key technical challenges and
achievements of the HTV-2 program were the design of an innovative high
lift-to-drag aerodynamic shape, advanced lightweight but tough thermal
protection structures, materials and fabrication technologies, autonomous
hypersonic navigation guidance and control systems, and an autonomous flight
safety system.
Report
from Wired
Full
description of HTV-2 from DARPA's Tactical Technology Office
X-37B launched, but
is it a success?
The first U.S.
unmanned re-entering space vehicle was launched without drama aboard a United
Launch Alliance-built Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle on the evening
of April 22.
The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, making its first space
flight, is intended to provide a flexible space test platform to conduct
various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components and
associated technology to be efficiently transported to and from the space
environment where it will need to function.
But first, the Air Force and the X-plane’s designers at
Boeing and Astrotech must demonstrate the reliability and performance of the
aircraft. According to numerous reports, the X-37B successfully deployed from
the large fairing atop the Atlas rocket and heading north over the Arctic. But beyond that, the mission is classified and
nobody knows when the X-37B is returning to base.
For now, all we have is a video of the launch:
Official
report from U.S. Air Force
Report
from CNET News
Here are some other projects from DARPA that could be newsmakers
in months to come:
A helicopter that
might confuse even Sikorsky
According to DARPA, the goal of the Disc-Rotor Compound
Helicopter program is to design and demonstrate the enabling technologies
required to develop a new type of compound helicopter capable of
high-efficiency hover, high-speed flight, and seamless transition between these
flight states.
How does it do it? The aircraft would be equipped with an
aft-swept wing and a mid-fuselage disc with extendable rotor blades. This disc
turns as if were a normal rotor configuration, letting the craft take off
vertically and transition to normal flight by retracting the blades. The disc
would then act as a wing.
The benefits are high speed (300-400 knots) coupled with
VTOL capability. To make the setup work, DARPA will have to also add variable
thrust ducted prop-fans to achieve high speeds and engineer the setup to
seamlessly transition between modes.
Look familiar? Say
hello to military Big Dog
Inspired by the robot that made Boston Dynamics famous, the Legged
Squad Support System (LS3) is designed to be a robotic mule.
Soldiers now carry 50 to 100 lbs of equipment in the field,
often for long distances in rugged terrain such as the mountains of Afghanistan.
Wheel transport is often useless. DARPA believes the LS3 can keep up with
warfighters, carrying 400 lbs of payload for 20 miles in 24 hours.
Even if the beast of burden can stand up to the rigors of
cold, heat, dust, and terrain, researchers must also be sure it can interact
effectively with soldiers, nor give them away by creating too much noise.
Operation MAHEM
The power of electromagnetic pulses has inspired the
imaginations of moviemakers—the EMP weapons in the The Matrix—but DARPA’s
magnetic weaponry project is perhaps more strange. The Magneto Hydrodynamic
Explosive Munition (MAHEM) program, if successful will create self-forging
penetrators (warheads) propelled by metal jets that in turn are generated by a
compressed magnetic flux generator (CMFG). All of this can be packaged in a
single missile.
Explosively-formed jets have already been developed, but the
jets formed hydrodynamically are supposed to be more accurate and controllable,
even to the point of being able to counteract kinetic-energy explosives of the
kind that are often used to disable vehicles, and protect against mines. Even
ships could conceivably use MAHEM to fend off cruise missiles.
Read more about DARPA's
projects here
