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USAF Launch Supersonic Bomb Firing Technology
coondoggie writes "Boeing and the US Air Force today said they have tested new technology that for the first time will let military aircraft launch bombs from aircraft moving at supersonic speeds. Researchers from Boeing Phantom Works and the Air Force Research Laboratory used a rocket sled in combination with what researchers called "active flow control" to successfully release a smart bomb known as MK-82 Joint Direct Attack Munition Standard Test Vehicle (JDAM) at a speed of about Mach 2 from a weapons bay with a size approximating that of the U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber, Boeing said. Active flow control is a tandem array of microjets upstream of the weapons bay that, when fired reduces the unsteady pressures inside the bay and modifies the flow outside to ensure the JDAM munition travels out of the bay correctly."
Rejoice for now we can drop food and medical supplies at supersonic speed! I can't wait to see the look on those African kids!
It's not a matter of how fast a target on the ground may move. It's a matter of how fast:
.7.
A) SAMs move
B) Enemy fighters aircraft move
If a bomber can fly by at Mach 2 at a high altitude and kick out its load of smart bombs, it becomes much harder to hit it with either a SAM or an air-launched missile. Let's say you make your bombing run at 40,000 feet going Mach 2 and a SAM battery a few miles away takes a shot at you. You kick out the bombs and firewall the throttle for any more speed you can get, and punch out chaff. The SAM is going maybe Mach 5 and you're maybe now at Mach 2.5. At a closure rate of only Mach 2.5, the SAM may run out of fuel before it reaches you, even if it doesn't get fooled by the chaff. If you'd had to slow down to sub-sonic speeds to make your bombing run, the SAM would have a much better chance of catching you.
If there is a CAP up, it's going to have a lot more trouble catching and firing on a bomber going Mach 2 than a bomber going Mach
While these have not been particularly great threats recently (I believe the Viet Nam War was the last time an American heavy bomber was brought down by enemy fire), it wouldn't be wise to assume that the situation will always remain this way, so it's good to have that technology in our back pockets.
Even at lower altitudes, that would take a lot of light anti-aircraft systems off the table, and at least make it harder even for large SAM systems. Imagine being a guy with a shoulder-fired AA missile trying to get a bead on something going at Mach 2. Even if you get a successful lock on it and fire, it's unlikely your missile will be able to catch it even if it's on a low-level bombing run (something I wouldn't expect a B-2 to do, anyway).
The YF-12was a high altitude and high speed interceptor. It fired Air Intercept Missiles (AIM-7's)which are already aircraft in their own right. It did not drop free fall munitions at high speed.
This current little trick is probably a proof of concept for a change to the F-22, which carries free fall bombs such as the JADM in a recessed bomb bay. The B-1b can only do about Mach 1.25 at altitude where the air is thinner. The B-1b was designed as low level penetrator to sneak under Soviet radars. With the end of the cold war, the B-1b started taking over as a high altitude bomber with GPS guided weapons, and not risk itself to ground fire to drop.
The F-22 can cruise at Mach 2 without using afterburners, and I believe it can only carry two Mk-82 JADM weapons. The ability to fly in at Mach 2 while being practically invisible to radar, AND not having to slow down to deploy weapons would be a huge advantage.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
... upon hearing the news, the Russians have taken the concept to the next, logical extreme. Code named "Mamushka" the first supersonic plane will fire a smaller plane traveling twice as fast, which will fire yet another smaller plane traveling 4 times faster than the first one, and so on until the very last, smallest plane (traveling an nearly the speed of light) will fire a potato that will hit the original big plane in the back, thus demonstrating that like many other US expenditures, they are at least good for HUMOR.
Next up, basketballs that bounce 10 times as high. Is gonna change the game!
He's all like, "we've done that already, bitches", and I'm like "[citation needed]", and under my breath, I'm like, "bitches".
Sorry, but you fire photon torpedos from warp and proton torpedos from hyperspace.
The tagging beta includes the word sopwith, a reference to "Sopwith Camel", a game I used to place on an 8086 box as a kid :). Your goal was to drop bombs on ground targets in a simplistic side-scroller sort of map. You can install a modern-day Linux version (pretty close to the original) by doing "sudo apt-get install sopwith" on Debian-based distros.
:).
Maybe not as much fun as dropping real bombs out of a supersonic jet, but pretty darn close
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Dude, check your history. In WW2, we used to send hundreds of bombers (sometimes over a thousand), each of which dropped dozens of dumb bombs, all just to hit one ball-bearing factory or bridge. We'd lose 10-20% of the attacking aircraft, and we'd send the survivors (and their replacements) out again later that week because we still didn't hit the target.
Towards the end of WW2, we realized that the most efficient way of destroying target X was to drop enough incendiaries around target X that the resulting firestorm would sweep over target X, destroying it in the process. We killed as many people in the firebombing of Tokyo as we did a few months later using goddamn nukes.
I'm not saying we're perfect. I'm just saying we're a hell of a lot closer to perfection than WW2-era pilots (or even Vietnam-era pilots) could have dreamed of. We spend a hell of a lot of money every year making sure we miss as infrequently as possible. If we were willing to accept the levels of collateral damage our parents were, never mind our grandparents, this war would have been over in a week, and there would have been tens of millions of civilians incinerated.
Be angry that we miss as often as we do -- it not only keeps weapons designers employed, sometimes it's their motivation for their career choice. But be damn grateful that we don't miss anywhere near as often as we used to.
Why do you assume that investing in defense technology does *not* help the people of the US?
As I see it, any enemy we'd have to use this against would be throwing ICBMs with nukes at us. Why the fuck are we building bigger and better and more expensive bombs when all of our operations are counter-terrorist ops?
You're right, we should be like France before WWII and just invest all our military spending on a single type of defense because it made sense when we started building it. How stupid of us to diversify!
(When France started building the Maginot Line, it was actually impossible for tanks at that time to cross through the forested regions they decided to leave undefended; by the time war actually broke out, tanks could do it with ease and the entire installation was useless.)
Comment of the year
The first sentence is correct, the second is not.The problem with a fixed geometry inlet is that it is inefficient. At Mach 2.0 and above, a significant portion of the thrust from a properly designed inlet is coming from the inlet itself. The A-12/F-12/SR-71 cruising at Mach 3.0 gets between 55 and 60% of the total thrust from the inlet - this is accomplished by the positioning the shock wave just inside the inlet (the cons on the front of the engine can be moved in and out specifically for this purpose). One of the early issues with the Blackbirds was figuring out how to handle "unstarts" where the shock wave pops out of the inlet - and gives the crew a wild ride in the process - this was also a problem with the B-58.
The F-16 was also limited to Mach 2.0 because of the fixed geometry wing. OTOH, the F-104 was rated top speed was Mach 2.2, but it could easily achieve Mach 2.4, but at the cost of weakening the aluminum alloy in the airframe.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.