Lockheed S-3 Viking Variants and Projects

Naval Post Graduate thesis on the development of the S-3B Weapon System Improvement Program (WSIP)

S-3B Thesis

Also mentions a shortage of Viking airframes as the larger Nimitz's came into service, causing the squadron size to drop below 10 planes. An interesting read if you have a spare ~30 minutes.
 
American Secret Projects 3 has an entire section about COD proposals, including S-3 variants. It's well worth a read, and it includes S-3 COD proposals from the 70's (including a trijet version), to the latest proposals of the early 2000's.
 
Wyvern said:
American Secret Projects 3 has an entire section about COD proposals, including S-3 variants. It's well worth a read, and it includes S-3 COD proposals from the 70's (including a trijet version), to the latest proposals of the early 2000's.
Click to expand...
Coauthored by Aim9XRay on this forum.... Mark
 
Mark Nankivil said:
Wyvern said:
American Secret Projects 3 has an entire section about COD proposals, including S-3 variants. It's well worth a read, and it includes S-3 COD proposals from the 70's (including a trijet version), to the latest proposals of the early 2000's.
Click to expand...
Coauthored by Aim9XRay on this forum.... Mark
Click to expand...
All credit and complements for their great work goes to them.
 
Foo Fighter said:
I take it that there are still no concrete plans for a replacement?
Click to expand...
No direct replacement unfortunately…
But, “we” have new P-8s that can be extended by Air Force tankers, a unified MH-60R fleet, and eventually MQ-8B/Cs. Ideally, MQ-25s will be fitted with sonobuoys pods and other ISR/SIGINT goodies but that won’t be for a few years.
 
The MQ-9 reaper has been tested for ASW. So they could use the drone will replace it in the MQ Next program.
 
Last edited:
Lc89 said:
The MQ-9 reaper is tested for ASW. So they could use the drone will replace it in the MQ Next program.
Click to expand...
Indeed - though this is just a nice image:

5FQIEJJDFNH5BJY6JDZFFBXVMA.jpg
 
Mark Nankivil said:
Allyson, how does this one look now?

Enjoy the Day! Mark
Click to expand...
His wings are back on and it's sitting on a displa
Mark Nankivil said:
Allyson, how does this one look now?

Enjoy the Day! Mark
Click to expand...
His wings are on and sitting on a display cabinet at the Ft Worth Aviation Museum. Needs finish work and will be good as new. Wings are foam and the fuselage is 500 pounds of bond (heavy as can be), but there are steel rods inserted to keep the wings from separating again.
 
isayyo2 said:
Naval Post Graduate thesis on the development of the S-3B Weapon System Improvement Program (WSIP)

S-3B Thesis

Also mentions a shortage of Viking airframes as the larger Nimitz's came into service, causing the squadron size to drop below 10 planes. An interesting read if you have a spare ~30 minutes.
Click to expand...
In various reference volumes I have seen S-3 squadrons listed as "10 aircraft", and had always wondered why aboard CV-61 Ranger in 1986-87 for 2 trips to Korea and one Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf tanker escort deployment we only had 8.

So real life meant 8 per while the paperwork continued to claim 10.
Thanks for this (I missed it when originally posted).
 
Mark Nankivil said:
Greetings All -

I did not find a previous thread looking at AEW variants/proposals of the S-3 so started up this one. This model is in the possession of the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas, TX. This is a Vought/LTV proposal for an AEW variant of the S-3. Makes sense coming from Vought as they did the Navy acceptance qualification work for the original S-3 and obviously had far more navair experience than Lockheed. Not bad looking either....

Any other proposals out there to replace the E-2? There's the joined wing Boeing design in another thread but what else might be out there?

Enjoy the Day! Mark
Click to expand...
Any idea about the antenna and consoles into the S-3 Viking AEW? The regular Viking had 4 crew and the pilots.
 
Some excerpts from Spangenberg on the S-3 that I found interesting:

Well our contract on the S-3 was going to be a fixed price incentive contract for
the R&D quantity, I think it was nine airplanes, and then fixed price ceiling options for a
total buy of up to 200 aircraft and with variable lot pricing included through all of the lots.
It's a tough kind of a contract and one that gives an overwhelming advantage to the
government. We got that contract all negotiated and were ready to close it up and then
about the same time or maybe even earlier while all that was going on another part of
OSD, Assistant Secretary Ignatius, he decided that 200 airplanes weren't enough to be
worth buying anyway and so then we had to show him that well, we could buy a lot more
if the airplane was a success as we expected it to be. We could buy a Q version and a
COD version. We could also buy a training version, early warning version and so on.
But that again took another two or three weeks while we made up new viewgraphs and
showed him what those airplanes might look like.
Click to expand...
I've often thought the S-3 could have been a CSA, and it looks like that was planned for. I'd really love to get a look at those viewgraphs, but I suppose they are long gone.
On the whole the S-3 then turned out to be a good program. We had some flying
quality problems basically because the airplane in order to meet the long time endurance
requirement had to have a lot of span and then it had too little drag in the landing
approach condition. That was probably the major flying quality problem then, getting
enough drag on the airplane so it would get down on the deck.
Click to expand...
This is new to me.
Then, ironically, of all those modified airplane versions which we'd been forced to
show before we were allowed to proceed, none were approved. OSD forced the Navy to
accept inferior solutions to both tanker and COD mods.
Click to expand...
Missed opportunities -
Looking back at the time the requirements were started it would have been easier
to do a COD version of the airplane for example if we'd had a little more space in the
original airplane.
Click to expand...
This is also interesting. Again, I've thought a slightly bigger S-3 would have made a better base airframe for a CSA.

------

The rest of the S-3 material is also worth a read. It's illuminating on the changes to contracting that were happening at the time, and how there was more interference from the bureaucracy on the procurement process.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Oh, wow!

I've never seen a model of that before. Didn't realize that the plans were to use the upper wing box out to the engine mounts.
Click to expand...
I don't think they settled on a specific design. I've seen images with a lot of different configurations and locations for attaching the engines, from ones like this to conventional tail mounts like on bizjets.
 
I always considered the A-10 a blood relative of the S-3. The Viking had the better engine variant. Surprised they didn't adapt them to the Warthogs after retirement.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom