[HN Gopher] DARPA wants to combine traditional sealift and airlift
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DARPA wants to combine traditional sealift and airlift
Author : RafelMri
Score : 69 points
Date : 2022-05-23 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| seclorum_wien wrote:
| Now we just need those hydro-fuel cell guys to wake up and drop a
| feed line somewhere hydro-dynamically convenient, and we can stop
| carrying fuel-tanks with us, forever ..
| detritus wrote:
| Aside: Many years ago I had an idea for something, which may or
| may not be plausible, and even bought a couple of books on
| invention and patenting, so I could perhaps develop it. I never
| did. Not my realm. BUT. My thought was:
|
| Could you have inflateable control surfaces on lowish-speed wings
| and aerodynamic surfaces, such that instead of bending and
| extending using hard surfaces, areas could instead be inflated or
| deflated to change the dynamic of the overall lifting surface?
| frontal edges, top and bottom, some trailing surfaces. Wings
| could become thicker or thinner, at different points.
|
| Only seems to make sense on slower, prop-driven haulages, such as
| here.
| trillic wrote:
| This you?
|
| http://inflatedwingsails.com/en/concept/
| detritus wrote:
| I wish!
|
| "IWS behaves like a muscle" is sort of what I was thinking
| though.
|
| Small deep cells, intermediate wide cells, large, flat sub-
| dermal cells, outer skin. All the cells being somewhat
| indivdually addressable in terms of pressure.
| funkaster wrote:
| inflatable surfaces already exist today, although not for
| control surfaces. De-icing boots are common in GA and some
| larger aircraft.
|
| Were you thinking to change the shape of an airfoil to affect
| the aerodynamics? that seems really risky and potentially
| unnecessary. For control surfaces, hard to picture something
| else than moving parts over a hinge, except maybe flaps that
| already change the shape of the wing.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Aeroelastic surfaces have been studied for some time, though
| I don't know of any production applications (yet). Here's a
| NASA F-18 fitted with them:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-06.
| ..
| irishjohnnie wrote:
| Are you referring to the ballpark "specifications" in the
| article? If so, I don't know of any material that can withstand
| the stresses of the weights and speeds mentioned in it ...
| unless you are going for really low wing loading (think
| dirigible).
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Osprey-style vehicles perform similar functions (move a lot of
| stuff or things up and then forward quickly enough)
|
| Ospreys can land on a carrier, these need a friendly dock
|
| This looks like someone trying to get on the cover of Popular
| Mechanics
| coenhyde wrote:
| I wonder if someone from DARPA reads my tweets..
| https://twitter.com/coenhyde/status/1443694051652423688
|
| Started thinking about this to solve the port congestion problem,
| which they obviously are too. + emission reductions.
| andbberger wrote:
| it's... not that radical of an idea...
| jpm_sd wrote:
| There's already a startup developing an electric passenger
| ground-effect seaplane, perhaps the design will scale?
|
| https://www.regentcraft.com/
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| The problem with batteries is they don't lose weight as they
| discharge[1]. With fuel powered aircraft the fuel is used up
| over the course of a flight, so that the average weight of the
| aircraft is substantially less than the starting weight. This
| means that as flight times increase the advantage shifts more
| heavily towards fuel powered aircraft.
|
| [1]: actually they do but it's a trivial amount.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you want to see what's left of the Ekranoplan:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rozqIdT6lLQ
| nimbius wrote:
| honestly DARPA would do better to just buy or license the Lun-
| class ekranoplan designs. The Lun makes the Boeing Pelican look
| like a grift. Lun is a far more capable and fully developed
| offering.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That's too bad. Wish it was in a museum instead.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Indeed, it's a real waste. Such a unique machine. What you
| can't really tell from the video is how high that thing is,
| the tail is incredibly high up.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Apparently it was on its way to a museum when it "escaped"
| it's water-tow and ended up permanently beached. Someone in
| another comment posted this which has the details from
| 2020:
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a3380838
| 1...
| jacquesm wrote:
| I was trying to find it on Google maps but could not.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@41.940745,48.3794887,18z
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you!
| moffkalast wrote:
| IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM
| cronix wrote:
| Same with their Buran space shuttles. They're just sitting in
| decaying facilities.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7ZVXOU3kM
| Stevvo wrote:
| It doesn't even make sense; clean them up and move to a
| nice museum hangar and it would basically be free money. I
| expect they profit quite nicely already from fines and
| bribes from all people that go to visit the shuttle anyway.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's the ultimate example of 'you can buy it but you can't
| afford it'.
| gantron wrote:
| It's a little late to be brainstorming low-cost platforms for
| sea-based logistics (read: Pacific-based).
|
| First flight of a full-scale prototype by 2027? Not any of the
| legacy defense prime (Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed, etc.). They
| probably stopped reading at "low-cost design" anyway.
|
| Of the defense tech companies that CAN move fast enough and have
| the technical expertise (Anduril, Kratos, anyone else?), this is
| so far out of their wheelhouse and the $15M incentive is simply
| not worth it for the substantial chunk of their resources that
| they would need to stake on a large-scale program with no obvious
| path to operational relevance & Program of Record status.
|
| It's a cool idea, and the history of similar platforms is fun,
| but it's tough to see how this becomes real.
| cm2187 wrote:
| How would this thing behave in bad weather?
|
| Also read recently that european armies were relying on ukrainian
| cargo plans for transporting large items that A400M can't handle.
| And are now considering developping their own large cargo plane.
| These things are rare and apart!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Very poorly. If a wing hits the water, it's game over - the
| plane immediately cartwheels and aerodynamic forces rip
| everything to shreds.
|
| This is DARPA and some defense contractor wanting to cash in on
| Biden's big increase in military spending.
| Wohlf wrote:
| To be fair bad weather is a hard problem for existing sea and
| air lift.
| thunderbird120 wrote:
| This is not a pure Ekranoplan and can fly high enough to avoid
| most mountains, let alone large waves. It's most efficient
| flying lower but it can act more like a normal plane if
| necessary.
| _Microft wrote:
| In the embedded video it is said that they want the plane to be
| able to operate in high sea states and even to sustain flight
| at up to 10000 feet.
|
| https://youtu.be/IOnLpXVkkTU?t=50
| fintechjock wrote:
| Bad weather is the most significant hurdle here. The article
| references a few of the Soviet GEVs that were successfully
| developed, but it looks like they only operated regularly in
| the Caspian Sea and Black Sea (relatively calm water). Overall,
| major challenges to development are summarized pretty well
| here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-
| effect_vehicle#Advantag...
|
| Sounds like one big step already taken is in low altitude
| altimeter development. These folks did a good study on radio
| altimeter integration in GEVs:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147466701...
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| When ever the military get involved, its already too late.
| finiteseries wrote:
| There is already a seaplane capable of efficient theater-range
| transport of large payloads at speeds far exceeding existing
| sea lift platforms?
|
| Because this is an article about DARPA asking for a new sea
| plane capable of efficient theater-range transport of large
| payloads at speeds far exceeding existing sea lift platforms.
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| Well, sometimes the hard part is the part _between_ "We got
| it to work a couple times in the Caspian Sea, kinda,
| sorta..." and "we carried this tracked anti-aircraft missile
| truck from Hawaii to Guam."
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| So military equipment has a constant, it keeps going up in
| weight so I'm not surprised they are asking for this, but the
| total equipment weights need to come down and nobody is
| seeing this. When the weights go up the effectiveness goes
| down. Thats why special forces can use what they want instead
| of standard issue equipment.
|
| This image highlights this fact perfectly.
| https://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/08/the-beach-recovery-
| ve...
|
| The other thing you may not know is various military's will
| develop equipment for what if scenarios. The Hippo aka the
| Beach Recovery Vehicle in the link above is designed to push
| out assault landing craft that have got beached. One of the
| what if scenarios is a war which involves attacking from the
| sea. Now that Hippo is based down at Instow at the Royal
| Marines depot where its tested on Saunton Sands which is
| pretty good for surfing and thats where the photo was taken.
|
| The contract the UK MOD agreed was so tight it put the
| manufacturer out of business which meant they had to be
| bought up because sometimes govt's can get value for money
| for taxpayers contrary to media reports.
|
| So to answer your question, it depends on Crimea & Russia
| because Crimea has the 4th largest oil deposits on this
| planet so there might be a need, how soon is hard to tell,
| not that they make these things quickly, but they could if
| pushed. Now I cant help but notice that British oil companies
| have made record profits which will be useful for buying up
| foreign oil companies and investing overseas, me thinks there
| might be some investment going into Crimea soon but it
| depends on Russia and how that goes.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Full scale conventional landwars in mainland Europe and seaplanes
| back in production. What century is it again?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Come on hacker news, this is basically that big russian behemoth
| aircraft. It should be the first link in the comments.
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a33808381...
|
| So disappointed. HN let me down.
|
| Joking aside, how do these compare?
|
| Edit: jacquesm had it posted!
| reactjavascript wrote:
| I believe an electric, ground-effect ferry is being planned for
| Hawaii
| rektide wrote:
| Found this, very recent, May 11th:
| https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/hawaiian-invests-in-re...
|
| I definitely think the commercial application of wing-in-ground
| / wing-in-sea is the most interesting. Plowing through water
| takes a ton of energy. Reducing the energy input it takes to
| stay in the air sounds wonderful.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Or you can just use hydrofoils, which are an established,
| proven technology and have been for half a century.
| rektide wrote:
| It depends on your requirements. This is the description
| from the Nemesis, a cost-is-no-concern ultra-yatch:
|
| > _The NEMESIS ONE will be the World's Fastest Luxury
| Foiling Sailing Yacht, able to break the 50 knots speed
| barrier, while flying on computer controlled hydrofoils._
| [1]
|
| So a breakthrough fantasy hydrofoil is trying to reach 50
| knots. I suspect that, looking at significant figures &
| complexity of build, for anyone wanting to be able to get
| to 75 knots (88 mph) there'd be nearly no one justifying
| hydrofoils. Even at a reduced speed like 45 knots, I
| suspect the control problems & additional drag of running a
| foil start to be pretty unruly & inefficient, and that
| wing-in-ground very quickly gains appeal for simplicity &
| efficiency both.
|
| Once we start thinking about wing-in-ground, with denser
| air, it makes even more sense to start looking at ideas we
| explored earlier in aviation, like lifting bodies, where we
| can reap yet more efficiency.
|
| The best counter-example to myself I can come up with is
| the VT Halter Marine Mk Mod 2 High Speed Assault Craft[2],
| specs unknown. But I tend to think of hydrofoils as more
| like the 180t Sea Slice[3], powered by two 3840 hp diesel
| engines, capable of 30 knots. My eyes & intuition all tells
| me flying is more effective at speed, and that we have a
| lot of efficiency we could be gaining from wing-in-
| ground/sea.
|
| [1] https://nemesisyachts.com/nemesis-one
|
| [2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27350/the-u-s-
| navy-has...
|
| [3] https://www.industrytap.com/lockheed-martins-naval-
| vessel-se...
| detritus wrote:
| The thing I like about ground-effect over-sea vehicles is
| that, unlike hydrofoils, they're not majorly reliant on
| very fast blades chopping through whatever comes across
| their path in the topmost layer of the ocean, where life
| tends to dwell.
|
| As a species, we really need to start considering our
| maritime-based cousins a bit better. The last few decades
| have been hellish for them, noise and all.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Just look at the Soviet "Looney" MD-160.
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