The return of X-33 Venture star, it seem that the Hypersonic air breathing for ISR or Strike don't work well, come back to the Rocket Engine.
They are serious since a long time about this concept. New rocket tech are mature , Vertical landing is mature , Scramjet seem to be still away for a supersonic/Hypersonic Bomber or to difficult to make this tech mature..
A falcon 9 lands every two days, 280 consecutively in a row successfully. 640 altogether at almost 99% success.
Nothing in common
More like a VentureStar with a belly full of instrumented Mk4A or Mk5 RBAs, since those are the dimensionally smallest in the arsenal. Optionally, a rack full of M829A4 darts, possibly with sabots. And the rack has enough force to deorbit the items.
This time a contract will be given in 30/45 Days with a 4 August deadline , it look like they are in a hurry for this capacity. The concept is floating since decades this time could be the good time.
Nothing aids trauma recovery like pulling 8g.
Mobility seems just as bizarre a mission concept, though at least they spelt it right. I'm none too sure about air dominance, either - time on station isn't a requirement that mixes well with hypersonics.
Ignoring problems with landing first, they cant just... catch it and then lay it on its belly? Put it on a rack? Hang it off the roof? Design it so it can be stored like a normal plane with structure bearing frames for laying on the spine or belly and then tilt it upright for a launch?
All of which increases the necessary infrastructure that the unit has to trail around with it, decreasing any advantage of being semi-runway* free.
Really, the more one thinks about it, the wilder it gets. The presentation image shows it on the deck of a ship--imagine a fully fueled one of these tipping over on a rolling deck, and the deck crew trying to secure it with dozens of load straps in between launches to prevent it.
I see something similar to the SNECMA Coleoptere being the only reasonable method. A trolley for movement, and which tilts it into a vertical launch position.
You may need a cleared area, but would a full runway be needed? Even if your staging area remains the same area, you may not need a couple thousand feet runway. Instead youd just need a flat clearing to launch right?
The problem here is LNG and liquid oxygen are cryogenics, you need tankage that can keep them cool, and there may well be an associated MASINT signature, either from temperature, or from boil-off. And that problem is doubled if you're generating them onsite.
Even a B-52 can only carry six, AGM-183 is not small.
Yeah, the greenwashing here is something else. I'm not sure what's weirder, touting the eco-friendliness of your intercontinental strategic strike bomber, or trying to sell concentrated methane as climate-friendly. It's roughly 80 times stronger of a greenhouse gas than CO2, which is why burning it to expel tons of CO2 instead is considered more eco-friendly than releasing it into the atmosphere directly, which is definitely not going to happen due to mishaps or even as a result of routine handling.
OTOH the relative quantities involved make that like comparing stowage of small arms ammunition to stowage of mass amounts of aircraft ordnance.
