Air Force Could Test "Flying Aircraft Carriers" as Early as Next Year

NASDAQ via Motley Fool ^ | 1 Jan 2018 | Rich Smithl

[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...

[Flick Lives]

Interesting. Sort of a very early “smart bomb”.

[Bobalu]

We will in the future have another idiot such as him.

Trump's recent executive order, which actually enacted a state of emergency (limited martial law) is aimed at deep-state financial assets.

Without any source of illegal funding it might be quite a while before something as evil as Obama gets in.

Obama was a deep-state sponsored pupped, even his early academic career was funded by an evil Saudi prince..Tawaleed.

Tawaleed is now imprisoned and his fortune confiscated...Certainly a Trump arranged action.

Tawaleed was the major owner of Twitter and many other leftist outfits.

His funding went to many house and senate members, such as McCain et al

He was BFFs with Hillary

Tawaleed

[lurk]

Sort of a misleading headline. We’re talking about C-130’s with drone launch and retrieve capabilities. Not that amazing. Just another bolt-in system.

[NorseViking]

In fact the losses were minimal with devastating effect. Generally fighters could approach high value targets more safely than bombers of the time and hit them more accurately. These were delivered over Black Sea with a ‘sow’ taking off in Odessa and releasing ‘hogs’ some 20 miles from the Romanian coast. They were hitting carefully selected targets like oil terminals, docks and bridges and flew away to Yevpatoria base in Crimea. The Nazi initially could not understand there the fighters appeared from mistaking them for their own because distances from Soviet bases were prohibitive and the Soviets didn’t have carriers.

[blam]

A flying aircraft carrier for drones, no people?

[MrEdd]

Yup.

Just like those loons back in the sixties who actually thought they could go all Buck Rodgers and fly a rocket ship to the moon.

[Waverunner]

In addition to the Goblin fighter, they tried the RF-84 as part of Project FICON, fighter conveyor. Averyone should go to Wright-Patterson Museum and see how big a B-36 really was.

[Olog-hai]

False comparison. Especially given the limited range of human space exploration, not to mention the practicality of a flying aircraft carrier versus floating. Some things will stay in the manga/anime/comic book realm.

[upchuck]

I had a Gremlin once :)

[az_gila]

And even earlier with airships in the 1910’s and this around 1925.

And in the US in the 30’s. These tests were described as successful. Hanging under the USS Macon.

[grobdriver]

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahaha! ! ! ! ! ! !!

[Flick Lives]

n fact the losses were minimal with devastating effect. Generally fighters could approach high value targets more safely than bombers of the time and hit them more accurately. These were delivered over Black Sea with a ‘sow’ taking off in Odessa and releasing ‘hogs’ some 20 miles from the Romanian coast. They were hitting carefully selected targets like oil terminals, docks and bridges and flew away to Yevpatoria base in Crimea. The Nazi initially could not understand there the fighters appeared from mistaking them for their own because distances from Soviet bases were prohibitive and the Soviets didn’t have carriers.

---

Interesting stuff. I like the term “sow” and “hogs”.

[MrEdd]

Ah. You’re Khan. I didn’t know you were on this forum.

[pabianice]

It never worked. Air Force junked the idea after trials. There is one in the USAF Museum.

[NorseViking]

Yes, original configuration tested in 1931 included a carrier and five fighters. During flight tests they have managed to both disconnect and connect back to a carrier midair. The air force generally distrusted the concept calling it ‘a Vachmistrov flying circus’ after a guy who lobbyed it. When finally deployed there were two fighters per carrier and the idea to dock back to carrier was dropped in favor of extra fuel tanks for ‘hogs’.
As for postwar period I believe air refueling made an idea of flying carrier absolete.
For the drones it has to be viable though.

[PAR35]

Beat me to it, but I'll post anyway:

Aircraft operations from a flying aircraft carrier, 1930s.

[Chainmail]

"About half of one percent of the military budget if I did my math right."

While I applaud your enthusiasm, $2.87 Billion is really big money in the context of the DoD budget. Our Battle Lab in the Marine Corps had a budget of $25M per year and we made that money work very hard to innovate and develop useful things.

DARPA was an entity I worked with occasionally and competed with often. As I said before, they were very light in anyone with military experience or maybe even had seen a war movie. I will take your word that DARPA spearheaded things like the Predator and the internet but they have also wasted huge amounts of money on things that failed miserably when they hit the real world. They also count on getting industry involved early, which doesn't do much for saving money.

My personal favorite was Non-Line of Sight Missile (NLOS-M) which featured a set of small missiles, arrayed vertically in a shipping container which were meant to be used as precision fire support. The idea was that the forward observer would transmit the target grid, the missile would be selected and fired straight up, then orient towards the target and fly briskly to hit it.

The part they missed was 1. small missiles have small warheads and small warheads just make the enemy mad. 2. Things fired vertically from an enclosed container have recoil - so mounting the container on a HMMWV was a non-starter and if they lose GPS lock on launch, they come right back where they started. 3. Containers without wheels stay where they are set down - a disadvantage if the enemy changes locations. 4.Little missiles take a long time to get there if fired at long ranges. Nine minute times of flight require an enemy to stand still for an unreasonable period of time. And 5. Little missiles cost more than a quarter million each shot. Not supremely cost effective: however big the defense budget is, we don't have that much money.

Like I said before, very little real-world expertise, huge budget. Would be a lot more efficient if the services expanded their battle laboratories and had responsibility for R&D themselves.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I guess your view of the size of their budget depends on your frame of reference. To me yes $2.8 billion is huge, but the entire military budget is over $600 billion.

[Eternal_Bear]

to intercept Stalin’s flying tanks?

[Chainmail]

You’d be amazed at what that kind of money could buy, if spent with some care.

Our tiny $25M per year brought the Burro autonomous logistics helicopter, the Dragon Drone UAV, a fully networked long distance combat exercise over 150 miles, an over-the-horizon communications hub, handheld communications and navigation systems, a new medical suite, a new fast-clotting bandage, a large-scale urban combat experiment, and my baby, a fully automated artillery system plus a host of others.

Hence my contempt for inefficiency and a lack of grounding in military operations.