Posted on 06/25/2006 1:45:41 PM PDT by Gideon7
For years, the U.S. military has wanted a plane that could loiter just outside enemy territory for more than a dozen hours and, on command, hurtle toward a target faster than the speed of sound. And then level it.
But aircraft that excel at subsonic flight are inefficient at Mach speeds, and vice versa. The answer is Switchblade, an unmanned, shape-changing plane concept under development by Northrop Grumman.
When completed (target date: 2020), it will cruise with its 200-foot-long wing perpendicular to its engines like a normal airplane. But just before the craft breaks the sound barrier, its single wing will swivel around 60 degrees (hence the name) so that one end points forward and the other back.
This oblique configuration redistributes the shock waves that pile up in front of a plane at Mach speeds and cause drag. When the Switchblade returns to subsonic speeds, the wing will rotate back to perpendicular...
If all goes well, Darpa says, a 40-foot-wingspan demonstration model could be ready by 2010, and a full-size Switchblade should be all set for a brawl by 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
What we've been doing in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent in Iraq, is to get tighter integration between ground troops and air support. As in Special Forces unit creeps along, finds the bad guys, relays coordinates to nearby aircraft, which drops a precision bomb on the bad guys. Which seems to be how we got Z-man in Iraq a little while ago
Ever hear of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
I do not disagree. Do you agree that groundtroops are essential, both in locating the targets and mopping up the aftermath?
I don't want to sound crass about it, but the groundtroops make it all possible and are seldom recognized by ANY media for what they provide and sacrifice. "Star Wars" was a remarkable film, but it was a film. Our soldiers on the ground take the brunt of it. Always have and always will.
Not being argumantative, just wishing a little more attention be paid to the "grunts".
FMCDH)BITS)
Yeah, I have, and that's the reason they haven't been used again, by anybody. The capability is used as a deterence, not a club. I'ts kind of like the "Cold War"...you've heard of that, right?
This is the world, where I live, and I'm as much frightened by a nuclear attack as I am of contracting cancer......yeah, there is always a chance, but I won't run around in circles trying to avoid either. Life is too short already.
FMCDH(BITS)
The movie was "Sling Blade"...
Northrop Grumman also makes unmanned ground vehicles.
The Globalhawk and Hunter are theirs now too. Hunter was a TRW manufactured and product improved Israeli product. Globalhawk is was developed by Ryan, and they were aso bought by Northrop Grumman. The Globalhawk is built in the same factory that built the B-2A
Excellent catch!
If a couple of good nukes can keep my sons from going in -- let fly!
You Sir...Have the best tagline I've ever seen!
Unfortunately, trans-sonic variable geometry is not quite that simple.
Its rather funny to look at many of NASA’s “experimental” designs from the last 40 years and compare them with German research from the second world war. I’m a proud American, but its rather pathetic we keep rehashing these ideas and claiming that they are our own.
Gadzooks, fella, it took me a while... 
to realize my post was from 14 months ago!
However, being just as proud an American as anyone, I realize that if there are aviation ideas and concepts from the past (even the Nazis, the Soviets or them dead-gum Barbary Pirates) that will help in applications of today, there is not any shame in using them. I also realize that one can independently come up with an aviation idea or concept that was arrived at by someone else in the past.
Luft '46 shows a lot of the German aviation concepts that came around during the Nazi rule. Yet most of them were too advanced for the technology and materials of the time, thank heavens! Andernfalls würden wir alle Deutsches sprechen.
Jack Northrop was dead set on proving his flying wing concept from the 1930s right up to the day the Pentagon canceled the B-49 project in 1950 and had the 13 aircraft built or near completion all cut up and destroyed on the spot. Yet if one looks at the current B-2, it has exactly the same wing length as the B-49. An old idea was finally proved when the technology and materials came about.
Don't know if I even came close to answering your question, but I do not think it 'pathetic' if we use some old concept with modern technology and materials to build an aircraft that will defend the USA.
However, it would be 'pathetic' for someone to, let's say, build a Model-T Ford and claim it all an original idea. I don't think anyone at Darpa is claiming the Switchblade UAV is a stand alone, one for the ages, completely original concept thought up right on the spot in their hidden offices deep in the bowels of the Pentagon!
Now that the required intelligent part of the day is over... 
it's party-time! Time to kick back, watch the old Duke kick some hinney on the tube and start drinking beer!
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