It would have to look like this:
Posted on 01/01/2018 8:21:42 AM PST by shove_it
The movies were right: Gremlins are real.
Or at least they will be if DARPA -- the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- has anything to say about it. As we learned this week from our friends at the Navy Times , DARPA is moving ahead on its effort to create a fleet of flying aircraft carriers, which it calls the "Gremlins" program, with demonstration flights scheduled to begin sometime next year.
What are Gremlins? We've been watching this particular hush-hush DARPA project for more than two years now . In a nutshell, it calls for the creation of a new class of small, reusable drones that can be launched midair from a C-130 air transport, disperse to surveil (or, depending on the payload, attack) targets as much as 300 miles away, then return to their flying airbase to dock for refueling and rearming.
Basically, Gremlins will be flying, warlike Roombas, but supersized -- big enough to carry 60 pounds of payload each.
What are Gremlins for ? According to our friends at Scout Warrior , who've also been following this project closely, one key objective of the Gremlins is to extend the range at which U.S. air forces can operate in a contested environment characterized by an adversary employing A2/AD (anti-access/aerial-denial) tactics. These include the use of cruise missiles to keep aircraft carriers at bay, forcing airplanes to fly long distances to reach their targets, and surface-to-air missiles, which make it hazardous for nonstealthy aircraft to get too close to hostile territory by air...
(Excerpt) Read more at nasdaq.com ...
My life for Aiur!
Ah! But, will they be able to make it invisible?
You could actually build this thing.
Of course you would need multiple nuclear reactors able to provide a LOT more power than a current carrier.
It would take several times as much power to lift a carrier vs pushing one in the water at 35knots.
It would need to be made of light-weight metals and composits.
It would need more than 4 fans for safety...hooked to multiple power plants, also for safety.
Redundancy would be the watchword.
It would have to look like this:
The USN's attempt at a flying aircraft carrier (USS Akron/Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighter.)
Yup, about right...but with many smaller fans rather than 4 huge ones.
Basically it would be powered by multiple steam engines running electric generators.
The current carriers are basically just steam powered...we use nuclear fission, which is a simple technology, to make steam.
The same tech that allows toy drones to fly would work on this massive scale.
A single 20 dollar microcontroller could handle fan control and navigation. (4+ billion operations/second) but the system would be massively redundant with MANY watchdog systems.
Cough up 100 billion$, 5000 middle-aged, overweight, WHITE engineers and you could have it flying in 3 years.
They were on their way out because of new Chines missiles, weren’t they? Seem to recall a story about the morality of putting 5 K personnel on a target.
One big thing to blow out of the sky. LOL
Helluva job making that stealthy.
It would also have a massive radar signature (very hard to mask) and would be way easier to destroy than a sea-based carrier.
Imagine the massive radar and electronic countermeasure systems you could mount on that platform.
An awacs would be blind by comparison.
It would know exactly where everything moving in the air and on the ground was for 500 miles around...stealth included.
Imagine how many interceptor missiles could be carried on-board.
And given how large it would be and how redundant the systems would be it would take a small nuke to knock it out of the sky. Hit a major US asset with a nuke and your entire country will be turned to glass...that’s a lot to worry about for any adversary.
A puny missile from a fighter jet would just make a small dent in the thing...if it could get through.
Even before. The Soviets tried it in 1930s and it even served them well earlier in WWII against Romanians.
Supposedly their budget is $2.97 billion. Sounds like a lot but for our federal government that spends almost $4 trillion a year that’s not really much. About half of one percent of the military budget if I did my math right. They did develop what became the internet, early self driving vehicles, the first version of google street view, the Sea Shadow stealth ship, and the Predator drone.
It would be easy to locate.
Given enough $$$ it would not be easier to take out than a current carrier.
It is possible to build such a thing, whether it is a wise decision is another thing.
I think large aircraft that can loiter for long periods over a target area and loaded with thousands of small drones is a better way to go...there is no current way to deal with thousands of armed drones trying to take out your military assets.
The entire Russian and Chinese supply of anti-aircraft/missile systems could not hope to cope with thousands of fast armed drones.
Yeah i remember that.
Must have been fun getting into the airplane....
That very much depends on who is President at the time. Barry would have apologized for us offending the nuker.
We will in the future have another idiot such as him.
Too bad that DARPA didn’t move when this was first demonstrated in 2004.
The first step of any program is the concept demonstration where you take current technology and see is currently possible and what needs to be developed. DARPA leadership said it would be 10 years before anything could be done then Mr. Wynne, then Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, showed the “experts” of an airborne demo already accomplished by CIVILIANS using a USN Drone and a C-130 near West Palm Beach, Florida.
I was lucky enough to have a few of the photos sent to me by my friends.
The 2004 demo confirmed the problems with the concept that existed in the mid 1930s (USS Macon - ZRS-5 and Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk) and confirmed by the USAF in 1949 (B-36 and XF-85) and again 1952 - 1956 (FICON and B-36 testing and limited operational use by SAC).
The 2004 effort had it’s DARPA funds unexpectedly cut in half part way through the flight demo phase. It cost the small, but extremely experienced, company $ 500,000.
It was rebriefed in 2015 to AFSOC leadership (I was there) and AFSOC started pushing the effort HARD! DARPA then issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) with an extremely short notice. Again, I got involved and some limited pro bono work.
That 2015 RFP is the baseline for this effort.
Unfortunately DARAP’s newest program is only half way there - the UAV’s range requirements aren’t operationally effective; something I knew back in 2005 based on modeling and simulation.
There’s much more on this game changing effort but NOT on this forum. - 30 -
I was picturing the huge flying carriers from the Avengers movies.....what a disappointment.
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