Posted on 01/12/2018 11:43:02 AM PST by Red Badger
Boeing showed off a scaled concept model of its hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft design.
This week Boeing revealed the first design details of a demonstrator aircraft that would go faster than Mach 5. Boeing hopes to build the hypersonic concept around a combined-cycle engine that incorporates elements of a turbine and a dual ramjet/scramjet. The unveiling came at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech forum in Orlando, Florida, as reported by Aviation Week Aerospace Daily.
Boeing's model design is similar to one Lockheed Martin is working on. The aerospace industry right now is racing to produce a hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft to replace the famed SR-71 Blackbird.
The design is an early concept that's not yet approved by Boeing for full-scale development. But the model, which shows a twin-tail, highly swept delta wing configuration, represents a feasible hypersonic design, Boeing's head of hypersonic research told Aviation Week Aerospace Daily:
“We asked, ‘What is the most affordable way to do a reusable hypersonic demonstrator vehicle?’ And we did our own independent research looking at this question,” says Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing chief scientist for hypersonics. If the concept is selected for full-scale development, Boeing envisions a two-step process beginning with flight tests of an F-16-sized, single-engine proof-of-concept precursor vehicle leading to a twin-engine, full-scale operational vehicle with about the same dimensions as the 107-ft.-long SR-71.
Boeing will expand on research from its past X-43 and X-51 Waverider experimental aircraft, which were tests of unmanned hypersonic planes, as the company refines a new aircraft design. The X-51 broke the record for sustained air-breathing hypersonic flight when it flew at Mach 5.1 for three and a half minutes before running out of fuel and crashing into the Pacific Ocean on May 1, 2013.
The big difference is that the X-51 was a small test vehicle dropped from a B-52 Stratofortress. It used a rocket booster to achieve Mach 4.8, then jettisoned the booster and used a scramjet to top Mach 5. A hypersonic replacement for the SR-71 would need to take off under its own power, accelerate through Mach 1 and up to above Mach 5, and then slow back down and land, a much more difficult challenge.
To tackle this problem, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are studying turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engines along with Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne, respectively. A TBCC engine would use a conventional turbojet to achieve speeds up to about Mach 3, the limit for a turbojet, and then transition to a dual ramjet/scramjet, which must be traveling at speeds over Mach 3 to work properly, compressing air from the intake to achieve combustion without an axial compressor. The ramjet/scramjet would then carry an aircraft to speeds over Mach 5. The plane would need to transition back to to the turbojet to slow down and land.
Boeing's project for a "son-of-Blackbird" hypersonic strike and reconnaissance aircraft is in its very early days. Meanwhile, a demonstrator for Lockheed Martin's design was possibly spotted in Palmdale, California, near the Air Force plant where Lockheed's Skunk Works operates. Work on a TBCC engine, funded under DARPA's Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) program as well as by NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, is also still in the early stages.
It is difficult to put a timeline on the research or the potential flight tests, though Lockheed reportedly hopes to fly a single-engine scaled demonstrator known as the flight research vehicle (FRV) in the 2020s. One has to imagine Boeing wants to match Lockheed Martin's development schedule, if not surpass it.
I have been able to see a SR71 once. Not up close but at a military base in cali.
This spy plane started when we looked at the USSR circa 1950 and literally had no better information than the German charts created during the war. We literally didn’t know the locations of many cities. Complicating things back then were old soviet maps that were deliberately inaccurate in a paper version of what we can do with GPS today.
These days, it seems like we are “needing” this plane mostly out of habit.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
There’s one parked in front of Space Camp in Al. You can reach up and touch it. It’s beautiful.
I saw one up close at the Pima air museum. There’s a few out there to go see close now. I saw one at a distance at an air show at Carswell AFB around 1970.
They made a big show of keeping it in a hanger 100 yards or so away with the doors open. Air police all around it with AR-15’s.
But I’ve still never seen a U-2.
Very cool.
There is an A-12 (an SR-71 variant) outside of the NASA Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, where you can get quite close to it.
I see one all the time....................
You beat me to it. :-)
Fortunately, it has been repainted since your picture.
By the way, the rust is from the paint, not the skin. The skin is titanium, but the black paint contains iron.
Indeed it is.
http://www.afarmamentmuseum.com/sr71blackbird.html
Great place to go.
Saw many of the planes, of the models I had built as a kid.
Now I need to make it out to the Air Force museum and see the B-70
Paul.........................
I thought they mothballed the Blackbird years ago.
Guess not.
I know virtually nothing about planes——but the one in that pic is beautiful.
.
Been there, walked under it. There's also a Tacit Blue, parked underneath it, or there was when I was there. Great museum.
This looks very much like the plane in Google Earth picture published this week.
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