DARPA/SOCOM Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT)

yasotay said:
The fan in wing drastically improves the flexibility to the logisticians and operational commanders with its fixed wing range, speed, with the flexibility of landing sites too. It does not however solve the CSAR/Medical Evacuation and to a lesser extent a set of the Special Operations missions.
The issue, I believe that while the fan in wing will likely not have the downwash velocities of a Harrier or F-35, I believe it would have greater down wash velocities than some of the missions called for. Higher than the current M/CV-22B. The Ospreys down wash velocity is already considered at the edge of viability for safe operations away from prepared surfaces. Certainly, the ability to land at much lower speeds on unimproved surfaces compared to a C-130 for instance, is a significant enhancement. However, mission sets that require prolonged VTOL, such as fast rope or foliage penetrator for CSAR seem very high risk. VTOL landing to small unimproved restrictive landing areas likewise would seem exceedingly high risk. This is more pronounce in those terrains where the bearing ratio of the land is that of a plowed field or less. While VTOL aircraft can overcome this challenge by maintaining hover and not putting the full weight on the landing gear, anything much higher velocity than the Osprey will likely begin to sling dirt and rocks in doing this. If I recall correctly there was a bit of Harrier lore from BAOR days about them "digging their own grave" on unimproved terrain and that the RAF had very effective engineers who could quickly establish "semi-improved" landing sites. While this might be a viable methodology still, I suspect that the ubiquitous ISR of our information age makes this higher risk. Roads and car parks in the parts of the world most likely to see this sort of operation tend to be high traffic volume areas, further exacerbating the observation challenge.
The ability of the fan in wing platform to move significant (C-130 sized loads[?]) over larger distances and perform VSTOL to roads and car parks is a drastic improvement over current runway dependent aircraft. I certainly hope to see the successful development of this concept for those reasons. I just do not see it fulfilling all of the mission sets that I have seen put forward for this HSVTOL program.
Click to expand...
I think CSAR is going to be limited to V-22s and V-280s for a long time.
 
yasotay said:
….. If I recall correctly there was a bit of Harrier lore from BAOR days about them "digging their own grave" on unimproved terrain and that the RAF had very effective engineers who could quickly establish "semi-improved" landing sites. ….
Click to expand...
The RAF liked to lay pressed steel plates to “improve”’short-term forward operating bases for Harriers.
During the Falklands War, they built a PSP landing strip over-looking Falkland Sound. There is a video of a Harrier approaching the PSP in a slow, forward hover. It’s down-wash inflated a few sections of PSP and peeled them upwards. The forward operating strip was “shortened” for a few weeks until engineers could replace the damaged PSP.
So PSP is a huge improvement for forward airstrips, but not available for landing near targets forward of your front line.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom