Black projects: can we agree to disagree?

[quellish]

If you look at the picture compared to the 2002 one they've obviously been refurbished with new pavement out front. Why do that when all the Blackbirds are in museums?

They were in the 1968 photo as well:
http://www.fas.org/irp/overhead/a51-680828-1_3.jpg
No, the A-12s are long gone. Now those are used by various contractors for whatever they're working on at the moment. Originally they housed the A-12s, later, if memory serves the F-117 FSD aircraft, and after that other things. At one point, I'm told, Lockheed had 2 hangars to themselves, Northrop another, McD another, etc. If that was ever true I do not think it is now.

The Flankers and Fulcrums are housed in the north end of the base, where you see the F-16s regularly parked. The structures up there are the Red Hats hangars.

 

[Stargazer]

Thanks Quellish. You found the reference I'd forgotten to keep!

To continue on the subject of YF-24 (and in relation with the hypothesis of Fulcrums and Flankers), here is another reference I have kept from the web:

"From what I can remember, the F-24 designation was a cover name for one of the captured/defected MiGs that the US has. If you search at designations systems website, it shows that it is the designation for some classified air craft. That would lead me to believe that it is a Russian or Chinese fighter that is being evaluated by us."

Today that forum member goes by the name "AmmoCapt" but at the time I captured the page he used another alias and added this to his signature:

Air Force Munitions Officer 2003 - 2006
Air Battle Manager (in training Class # 07016) 2006 - Present

 

[Orionblamblam]

The development program for the A-12/SR-71 is over 40 years old. Can anyone reasonably expect no progress to have been made since?

Yea, actually. The next step up in capability for something like the SR-71 would require propulsion systems that have never been built (apparently). Scramjets have been on the drawing board for *more* than fifty years, and to this day, it seems that nobody has built a scramjet engine that produces useful levels of thrust at high mach numbers for more than a few seconds at a time.

Looks at rocket engines. The propellants in use today were well known in the 1960's. The rocket engines of the 1960's were not fundamentally different from those in use today. Why? Because by the mid 1960's, combustion efficiencies (the efficiency by which the rocket engine converts the chemical energy of the propellants into thrust) exceeded 90%. IIRC, the SSME, developed in the early 1970s's, has an efficiency around 95%. How much improvement can you *really* gain over 95%?

That's the problem. By the 1960's, aeronautical engineering knowledge was butting up against the exponential curve of "improved performance vs cost." The most advanced jetliner in the world, the Boeing 787, doesn't really look much unlike a 707... because the 707 *got* *it* *right.* The F-22 only looks out of place next to an F-105 or an F-4 because of some minor shaping issues for stealth. It has no need to go notably faster or higher.

 

[CFE]

Yea, actually. The next step up in capability for something like the SR-71 would require propulsion systems that have never been built (apparently). Scramjets have been on the drawing board for *more* than fifty years, and to this day, it seems that nobody has built a scramjet engine that produces useful levels of thrust at high mach numbers for more than a few seconds at a time.

Excellent point. It's conceivable that some Aurora-type aircraft could be built using some combination of turbines, rockets and/or ramjets, but its performance wouldn't be much better than anything that's been flown in public like the X-15 or SR-71. Even the mythical "pulse detonation wave engines" probably don't exist in the form that the Aurora mythos may suggest. The publicly-tested PDE's have been fairly tiny, and there's no reason to think that a significantly more powerful PDE has existed in secret for decades before the recent white-world PDE tests.

 

[bobbymike]

So from an engineering, platform, engine point of view the more things change the more things they stay the same. Maybe the only "revolutionary" advances are the internal electronic systems and the software that runs them?

I remember a Time magazine article - or Newsweek - shortly after Reagan's SDI speech. An opponent of missile defense said that to integrate boost phase, midcourse and terminal defenses you would need one million lines of computer code and that has never been done before and may never be done. I think, and please correct me if I am wrong, but a single F-22 has over 10 million lines of computer code. Is that revolutionary?

 

[SOC]

From what I can remember, the F-24 designation was a cover name for one of the captured/defected MiGs that the US has.

I thought it was pretty well established that all of the MiGs, when given YF- designators, used numbers between 112 and 116. Hence why when the SENIOR TREND was pursued, it became the F-117.

 

[Orionblamblam]

So from an engineering, platform, engine point of view the more things change the more things they stay the same.

Errrr... not quite sure what you mean there. But consider this:

This little varmint is "Cladoselache," one of the earliest sharks. It evolved in the Devonian era, about 370 million years ago. Now, it is clearly different from modern sharks in a number of important aspects (the jaw position, for one)... but the basic "design" of the shark is already there. It is clearly recognizable as a shark. There are no major structures that are obviously *very* different between Cladoselache and, say, a Great White.

Why is this? Is it because 370 million years ain't time enough to evolve neato new critters? No, it's because 370 million years ago, evolution damn near perfected the aquatic predator. All sharks since Cladoselache have been variations on the same theme. Physics, and the facts of terrestrial biochemistry, have limits. And there are optimum combinations to achieve certain ends. And grand experiments are expensive and difficult... both in evolution and in engineering.

So as with the shark, barring some game-changer in terms of materials or propulsion technology (materials that are lightweight, durable and retain strength at, say, 3000 degrees, coupled with scramjets that feed on metallic hydrogen granules, or antigravity, or practical atomic propulsion, or antimatter, whatever), military aircraft have probably reached something of a zenith. Because physics does not support *affordable* major improvements.

Also: witness the end of the line in pistol development:

The Colt model M1911. It's called the "1911" because it was designed in nineteen-friggen-eleven. Ninetry eight years ago, the modern pistol was created... and not *really* fundamentally improved upon since. Apart from the double-stack magazine and the lasersight, there's nothing really greatly different about modern pistols. When I go out and about, the pistol I carry is clearly derived from the 1911; and I have two actual 1911's and one double-stack copy of the 1911 at home. You'd think that a century would see major improvements... compare the 2011 pistol to the 1911 pistol to the 1811 pistol. Something happened. That somehting was... the perfection of the concept. So until laserpistols or C-beams or phasers come on the market... it will all be just variations on a theme.

The same goes for the automobile. For the most part, the car you drive today is not a substantial improvement over cars from the 1950s. Sure, fuel economy has improved, safety features have gotten better, lots of new gadgets... but it's still almsot certainly a metal box with four rubber wheels guided by a human holding onto a wheel, and powered by a fossil-fuel brning piston engine. Hybrids, electical cars, fuel cells, etc. are all clear possibilities for the realtively near future... but these propulsion systems aren't real useful for aircraft.

Maybe the only "revolutionary" advances are the internal electronic systems and the software that runs them?

Those are certainly the most important real advanced that aeronautics has seen. But even with computers so advanced that the pilot can be removed from the aircraft, the aircraft itself is little different than what one might hav eseen on the drawing boards forty five years ago.

 

[Andreas Parsch]

Wish I could remember... When it was put up on the web, I distinctly remember reading two distinct resumes of pilots quoting the YF-24 in their flying experience. I may even have saved them to my old computer, from which I lost most files unfortunately. But the two pages were from the same site, and similar in every way.

I'm rather sure that YF-24 was only mentioned in Lanni's biography. But your story sounds a lot like the references to YF-110 and YF-113 in the bios of Carlisle and Manclark - maybe you confused the two?

 

[Stargazer]

Actually not, Andreas. I remember seeing "YF-24" in two distinct pages...
This being said, human memory is never 100% trustworthy, and I would not stake an eyeball on it!

 

[shockonlip]

The development program for the A-12/SR-71 is over 40 years old. Can anyone reasonably expect no progress to have been made since?

Yea, actually. The next step up in capability for something like the SR-71 would require propulsion systems that have never been built (apparently). Scramjets have been on the drawing board for *more* than fifty years, and to this day, it seems that nobody has built a scramjet engine that produces useful levels of thrust at high mach numbers for more than a few seconds at a time.

I'm not giving up on it Scott !

I think it will happen!!

 

[Just call me Ray]

Also: witness the end of the line in pistol development:

The Colt model M1911. It's called the "1911" because it was designed in nineteen-friggen-eleven. Ninetry eight years ago, the modern pistol was created... and not *really* fundamentally improved upon since. Apart from the double-stack magazine and the lasersight, there's nothing really greatly different about modern pistols.

I know I'm just being pedantic but you're forgetting double-action pistols, internal hammers and materials construction.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I know I'm just being pedantic but you're forgetting double-action pistols, internal hammers and materials construction.

None of which presented a truly fundamental change in design or function. The differences between the modern hammerless double action polymer pistol, like the Taurus PT 145 I often carry and the 1911 are as *nothing* compared to the difference between the 1911 and the US Army's previous service sidearm, a .38 long Colt revolver. And compare *that* revolver to the cap-and-ball revolvers from the Civil War era of fifty years earlier, or to the single-shot flintlock pistols of fifty years before *that.*

There is an M1911 (*not* a 1911A1... an actual 1911, manufactured for the Navy in 1918) in my family. It runs great, uses the same ammo as my Taurus, hits just as hard (harder, since it has a longer barrel), and doesn't weigh much more.

The point is that given the limitations of physics, every form of technology reaches a peak, and changes after that point are at best minor adjustments to improve slightly or lower cost... or the changes come with some major breakthough and wholesale replacement of major components or design concepts. Aircraft are no different than pistols, shotguns (the Browning Auto-5 remained in production from 1900 to 1998, the Winchester Model 1897 is still in service today), automobiles, ships, rockets or anything else in that regard.

 

[quellish]

The point is that given the limitations of physics, every form of technology reaches a peak, and changes after that point are at best minor adjustments to improve slightly or lower cost... or the changes come with some major breakthough and wholesale replacement of major components or design concepts. Aircraft are no different than pistols, shotguns (the Browning Auto-5 remained in production from 1900 to 1998, the Winchester Model 1897 is still in service today), automobiles, ships, rockets or anything else in that regard.

Yes and no. There is the technology, and then there is it's impact. For example, UCAVs have the potential to really transform airpower. Not because they're cool and super stealthy or whatever. Because you can shrink wrap your air force and warehouse it until you need it. Because you can make more effective use of your pilots and fly longer missions. In peacetime you don't need to spend as much to keep the force ready (at least, in theory).

As far as the technology itself, there is still a ways to go with aircraft and spacecraft. There is still room for improvement in structures and manufacturing techniques (Bird of Prey and Polecat both demonstrated new things in those areas) and there are plenty of things that we don't know or are not practical when it comes to aerodynamics. Active laminar flow control and adaptive wings, for example, could both dramatically change the shape and capabilities of aircraft in the future.

But in general, yes, I agree.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Active laminar flow control and adaptive wings, for example, could both dramatically change the shape and capabilities of aircraft in the future.

Meh, maybe. Laminar flow control ideas have been tested since the 1940's, and adaptive wings since the 80's (maybe 70's). But they both have serious issues, not least of which is complexity. A single thin sheet of aluminum skin costs doodly squat next to a perforated skin hooked up to a LFC system, with all the requirements to keep it sparkly clean. So while these systems may eventually see use... I have a hard time expectign them to make a big influence anytime soon. Something that might help out here is advances in computer tech... not that computers will make LFC systems necessarily much different, but 3 decades down the line robots might be so advanced and so *cheap* that nanites might be used to keep LFC systems clean and pristine in real time. Shrug.

Of course, then the little bastards will mutate, break loose and devour all life on the planet. Oops.

 

[quellish]

Of course, then the little bastards will mutate, break loose and devour all life on the planet. Oops.

We'll just have to hope that the state of software development tools advances ahead of nanotech.

I'm just waiting for my flying car. It IS the 21st century. They're late!

 

[bobbymike]

Orionblamblam - So the question becomes how much evolution is needed to be a revolution. Your argument concerning pistols and cars is interesting. The problem is that it can be made no matter how advanced something gets if the "purpose" of the technology does not change.

For example, if 50 years from now we all have personal vehicles that self drive, get 200 miles a gallon and can travel on automated highways at 300 mph the cynic can simply say "it takes people from point a to point b, no different than the Model T". What you call "gadgets" is pretty impressive. My elderly parents just purchased a new car with GPS and Onstar. Last trip they took we were able to track them in real time from a laptop with wireless access. But that's no different than them stopping in every town and using a payphone to tell us where they were.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Orionblamblam - So the question becomes how much evolution is needed to be a revolution.

Perhaps. But the changes from wood and fabric to metal, from piston engines to jet engines were not some slow crawl, but a sudden revolutionary shift.

For example, if 50 years from now we all have personal vehicles that self drive, get 200 miles a gallon and can travel on automated highways at 300 mph the cynic can simply say "it takes people from point a to point b, no different than the Model T". [/quote

Perhaps. However, I doubt you'd find many who'd suggest that self-driving cars would not be a major evolution in electronics, at the very least. Of course, if you can retrofit a drivebot into, say, a 1944 Willies Jeep, then it's not really the *car* that has advanced at all.

As for 200 miles per gallon... there, again, we start running into the limitations of physics. You can only squeeze just so many kilowatts of mechanical energy out of a kilogram of gasoline. I've seen cars that got close to a thousand miles per gallon... but these cars weigh approximately nothing, had to drive where the winds were appropriate and had no cargo capability. A *real* car would, I think, never get to 200 miles per gallon.

 

[bobbymike]

Of course debating what the future may hold was not really my point. Whether a "real" car with get 200 miles to the gallon may in fact be "fantasy", however, 50 years is almost the same timeframe as Kitty Hawk to Sputnik. I do not have the same level of confidence that we will "never" get to 200 MPG, especially when a "test" clean diesel VW Jetta got close to 70 MPG recently.

 

[Ian33]

I hope this is OK to add, because I just wanted to say a few points. I have been interested in high speed flight for nearly 20 years, and over those years have scratched my head in wonder at some of the 'might of beens'.

SHARP is a case in point. A hypersonic air / space plane with zero ablation skin at mach 11 at height, and mach 7 at sea level. I watched it for a while, really excited, and then it was gone.

The same happend with LoFLYTE, HYTECH, and other such vehicles, and now Blackswift. Promise one second, then vanished.

Now I cannot think why all these promising technologies would get cancelled at the very ;point of where they seem to mature into useable tech, unless that is their use on airframes is secret.

 

[sferrin]

I hope this is OK to add, because I just wanted to say a few points. I have been interested in high speed flight for nearly 20 years, and over those years have scratched my head in wonder at some of the 'might of beens'.

SHARP is a case in point. A hypersonic air / space plane with zero ablation skin at mach 11 at height, and mach 7 at sea level. I watched it for a while, really excited, and then it was gone.

The same happend with LoFLYTE, HYTECH, and other such vehicles, and now Blackswift. Promise one second, then vanished.

Now I cannot think why all these promising technologies would get cancelled at the very ;point of where they seem to mature into useable tech, unless that is their use on airframes is secret.

Much of it can be boiled down to politics and fear of risk. The days of "let's try something and see if it's possible" are gone (unless it's throwing billions at banks and car companies anyway). Now it's "if we don't know that we CAN do it let's not try". Further more it's "if we don't know that we can do it cheap without any conceivable downside let's not do it".

 

[Stargazer]

Exactly. I think it goes beyond the mere defense circles, it's a societal trend.
Zero risk and maximum benefit are the rules. The time when bankers would back up a project, considering that if it failed, they were making up for lost money elsewhere, is gone forever. They do not lend a cent to anything that is not guaranteed to win... And in doing so, they back up those that already have power and credentials to the detriment of those who are poor yet imaginative. This happens worldwide unfortunately.

 

[Orionblamblam]

50 years is almost the same timeframe as Kitty Hawk to Sputnik.

A good point. We went from firecrackers and wood-and-fabric airplanes jsut barely capable of lurching into the sky, to the Soviet R-7 launcher is ust over fifty years. And just over fifty years *again,* we've gone from the Soviet R-7 launcher to.... well, the Russian R-7 launcher.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Much of it can be boiled down to politics and fear of risk. The days of "let's try something and see if it's possible" are gone (unless it's throwing billions at banks and car companies anyway). Now it's "if we don't know that we CAN do it let's not try". Further more it's "if we don't know that we can do it cheap without any conceivable downside let's not do it".

Society, and NASA in particular, have taken to heart the tragically flawed notion that "failure is not an option." Sadly, the world is not binary, with "Success" and "Failure" being the only options. There is at least a third option, called "Don't Even Try." Those who don't try don't succeed... but they haven't failed, either. Not trying is a hell of a lot cheaper than trying, so the safe, low cost option will always be to Not Try.

 

[bobbymike]

50 years is almost the same timeframe as Kitty Hawk to Sputnik.

A good point. We went from firecrackers and wood-and-fabric airplanes jsut barely capable of lurching into the sky, to the Soviet R-7 launcher is ust over fifty years. And just over fifty years *again,* we've gone from the Soviet R-7 launcher to.... well, the Russian R-7 launcher.

Sure technological progress is never a straight upward line. The history of mankind has had long dark periods (e.g. the Dark Ages ) However a recent re-look at that period disclosed that it, in fact, laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment. The last 50 years may have shown a dearth of advances in aerospace technology but was a boon to computer technology. I think now we can say that these two technologies are creating incredible technological synergies. And in this case I am not talking just about avionics and such systems but computer programs that can, through rapid simulated prototyping, develop materials and test them in virtual wind tunnels with much greater rapidity than the sliderules of old. I am a technological optimist I look forward to the next fifty years.

 

[Ian33]

My only problem is this; the engines are there, the heat resistant materials for the shell are there, computer technology is there, the money is there, so where is the airframe? I remember in the early 1980s when it all started with the pulsing fast lights heading over Nevada..

its nearly 30 years now!

Goodness me what a sorry situation for the aviation world to be in.

 

[sferrin]

And in this case I am not talking just about avionics and such systems but computer programs that can, through rapid simulated prototyping, develop materials and test them in virtual wind tunnels with much greater rapidity than the sliderules of old.

Yes and no. Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker. Ask yourself if we'd be able to go from an idea in someone's head to the Blackbird today in what, 5 years? Never happen. Hell, if they decided they wanted to make a new assembly line for the SR-71 I'd bet it'd take TWICE as long as it did to come up with the thing in the first place and they already have the design.

 

[Tuomasn]

I think that it should be fairly obvious given the current activity at Groom Lake (construction of a new hangar, 1200-1300 vehicles parked at the McCarran Janet terminal every day [though admittably part of the Janet flights go to TTR] etc.) that either there are some projects being worked on at Groom, or it is quite large a deception operation. Everyone can of course pick whichever alternative he finds more likely

Regarding the actual secret airplanes, I think you could probably find few planes in the F-117 and Bird of Pray class, and then a subsonic flying wing UAV, and a subsonic flying wing UCAV, and yeah, maybe another subsonic flying wing UCAV... but no hypersonic stuff.

I would highly recommend reading the Area 51 researcher Peter Merlin's comments on a similar discussion over at Dreamlandresort.com forum:
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/forum/messages/29063.html
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/forum/messages/29065.html

And, especially
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/forum/messages/29096.html

 

[Ian33]

I would dearly love to see some thing manned some thing.... anything, ... please? am begging here!

Or if thats too much, maybe a big fat book of all the old projects that went into the 'paused' folder.

 

[AeroFranz]

Sure technological progress is never a straight upward line. The history of mankind has had long dark periods (e.g. the Dark Ages ) However a recent re-look at that period disclosed that it, in fact, laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment. The last 50 years may have shown a dearth of advances in aerospace technology but was a boon to computer technology. I think now we can say that these two technologies are creating incredible technological synergies. And in this case I am not talking just about avionics and such systems but computer programs that can, through rapid simulated prototyping, develop materials and test them in virtual wind tunnels with much greater rapidity than the sliderules of old. I am a technological optimist I look forward to the next fifty years.

I worry that great generations of engineers who worked on countless projects in the 1950s-1980s timeframe, and amassed invaluable experience by actually designing, building, and testing scores of aircraft and spacecraft cannot be replaced. What does an engineer fresh out of college have to look forward to? At Lockheed, for example, he might spend his or her entire career supporting just one type, like F-35 or the next model of Hercules.
Sure, we might be getting better at doing FEA and pretty pictures, but there is little substitute for actually doing things.
If you want to build the next Blackbird, it sure is nice to have around a guy who built them. If we wait fifty, sixty years between iterations, you are guaranteed not to have that resource.

 

[Orionblamblam]

My only problem is this; the engines are there,

What engines? We have turbojets that are much more fuel efficient, but limited to much the same speeds. Our ramjets aren't notably different. Rockets... hell, we've virtually *regressed.* Scramjets don't exist, practically. Neither do nukes, PDEs, PDWEs, etc.

the heat resistant materials for the shell are there,

As they were in the sixties. The shell that was to go on X-33/VentureStar was essentially the same as was meant to go on Dyna Soar: it could take the heat, but it's expensive and fragile, and don't you *dare* come down in the rain.

computer technology is there, the money is there

Whose money?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Yes and no. Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker.

That's a good deal of the problem, right there.

1950's: We're not sure of the physics here, so we'll build things and fly them till they break, and learn from that.
2000's: We're pretty sure of the physics. So if we build something and it breaks, we'll look stupid and Congress/corporate headquarters will cut our funding. So let's analyse the hell out of it until we are Absolutely Certain that it won't break under any situation.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I worry that great generations of engineers who worked on countless projects in the 1950s-1980s timeframe, and amassed invaluable experience by actually designing, building, and testing scores of aircraft and spacecraft cannot be replaced.

They cannot. There's more to even the simplest rocket motor than just the blueprints (as I've seen personally, and related hereabouts till people get sick of it).

What does an engineer fresh out of college have to look forward to?

Ding, fries are done....

 

[bobbymike]

And in this case I am not talking just about avionics and such systems but computer programs that can, through rapid simulated prototyping, develop materials and test them in virtual wind tunnels with much greater rapidity than the sliderules of old.

Yes and no. Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker. Ask yourself if we'd be able to go from an idea in someone's head to the Blackbird today in what, 5 years? Never happen. Hell, if they decided they wanted to make a new assembly line for the SR-71 I'd bet it'd take TWICE as long as it did to come up with the thing in the first place and they already have the design.

What about the Bird of Prey (no it is ABSOLUTELY not close to a Blackbird) but was it not designed and developed in a very short time? The great line in "The Right Stuff" was "Hey Ridley ya got any Beemans", no just kidding it was - for me - "No bucks no Buck Rogers". I agree 100% with sferrin it is the political and corporate culture that is holding us back. I bet if you gave Skunk Works totally open parameters and said "go for it" we would have a hypersonic bomber within a decade or less. I often think that if the US invested another fifty to one hundred billion purely in these types of technologies there would be nothing we could not do. There's the optimist in me.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Ask yourself if we'd be able to go from an idea in someone's head to the Blackbird today in what, 5 years? Never happen.

What about the Bird of Prey (no it is ABSOLUTELY not close to a Blackbird) but was it not designed and developed in a very short time?[/quote]

Yes, but:
1) It was designed with very limited performance
2) It was designed to test a very limited range of New Stuff
3) It was not designed for production
4) Congress had little to no oversight

#4 is the most important. Had Bird of Prey simply flopped over and gone SPLAT on its first flight, there would be little to no public or bureaucratic oversight, and the designers knew this. Now compare to the outcry when the early F-22 went buggo and crashed.

I bet if you gave Skunk Works totally open parameters and said "go for it" we would have a hypersonic bomber within a decade or less.

Agreed, so long as you also got LockMart Corporate drones out of SW's hair. But this combination of miracles is very unlikely to occur.

 

[Stargazer]

Gosh, this topic is getting more and more interesting!

Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker.

The notion of "trial and error" that has been at the core of natural evolution for millions of years has been discarded by well-meaning bureaucrats and replaced by all manners of computer simulations. Yet the years when there were no computers and LOTS of errors made technology make more gigantic leaps ahead than the computer age ever has...

Ask yourself if we'd be able to go from an idea in someone's head to the Blackbird today in what, 5 years? Never happen. Hell, if they decided they wanted to make a new assembly line for the SR-71 I'd bet it'd take TWICE as long as it did to come up with the thing in the first place and they already have the design.

Exactly. Remember the moon? Kennedy sets the pace in 1961 and eight years later Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on our satellite. Today in eight years you may get your design to the sub-scaled model stage in wind tunnels if you're lucky...

either there are some projects being worked on at Groom, or it is quite large a deception operation. Everyone can of course pick whichever alternative he finds more likely

Quite so! And this is EXACTLY what this topic was about when I started it!

I would dearly love to see some thing manned Sad some thing.... anything, ... please? am begging here!

Wouldn't we all, really?

Or if thats too much, maybe a big fat book of all the old projects that went into the 'paused' folder.

Wow. Just the thought of it... And I'm sure that part of not knowing about some programs is not due to their still being hush-hush, but that nobody out there even thinks or cares about disclosing the stuff because it's old.

I worry that great generations of engineers who worked on countless projects in the 1950s-1980s timeframe, and amassed invaluable experience by actually designing, building, and testing scores of aircraft and spacecraft cannot be replaced. What does an engineer fresh out of college have to look forward to? At Lockheed, for example, he might spend his or her entire career supporting just one type, like F-35 or the next model of Hercules.(...) If you want to build the next Blackbird, it sure is nice to have around a guy who built them. If we wait fifty, sixty years between iterations, you are guaranteed not to have that resource.

This is one major concern. I once read that the sole reason why the Moon was reached in less than a decade was because the older engineers at NASA (some of which had worked for Nazi Germany) had all the knowledge and calculations in their minds, and that when they died, it is a whole field of knowledge that went with them... to the extent that if we want to send people to the Moon now, it will require at least twice as much time because everything has to be reinvented and reassessed... What a pity!

1950's: We're not sure of the physics here, so we'll build things and fly them till they break, and learn from that.
2000's: We're pretty sure of the physics. So if we build something and it breaks, we'll look stupid and Congress/corporate headquarters will cut our funding. So let's analyse the hell out of it until we are Absolutely Certain that it won't break under any situation.

Yes, and therefore do nothing, because zero risk is just not possible. It's not even natural!

I agree 100% with sferrin it is the political and corporate culture that is holding us back. I bet if you gave Skunk Works totally open parameters and said "go for it" we would have a hypersonic bomber within a decade or less.

Yes, but let's not forget that within a few decades, public opinion have shifted from a mostly pro-military and trustful attitude towards government to an anti-war or at least "cut-the-spendings" kind of attitude with defiance towards red tape. Many of the politicians that (are supposed to) represent their interests therefore follow suit because they want to keep their seats!

I often think that if the US invested another fifty to one hundred billion purely in these types of technologies there would be nothing we could not do. There's the optimist in me.

And I believe that the pharaonic costs that are quoted by officials and defense contractors are all largely overestimated. Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne is evidence that when you cut the crap, you can do things for a small fraction of the price. Considering that core research on aerodynamics, propulsion and armament was pretty much established by the late 1960s, and we are merely adding improvements here and there, I strongly believe that if ALL the accumulated knowledge from the industry and the federal agencies were gathered and put to use in a single direction, much of the cost in developing and testing new solutions could be cut drastically. Remember what someone recently posted about a Lockheed employee stating that the company had done virtually everything that could possibly be imagined?

 

[sferrin]

Yes and no. Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker.

That's a good deal of the problem, right there.

1950's: We're not sure of the physics here, so we'll build things and fly them till they break, and learn from that.
2000's: We're pretty sure of the physics. So if we build something and it breaks, we'll look stupid and Congress/corporate headquarters will cut our funding. So let's analyse the hell out of it until we are Absolutely Certain that it won't break under any situation.

In the mean time:

Step 1. The program moves to the right because "we're behind on the analyzing".
Step 2. Cost goes up starting the finger pointing and corner cutting.
Step 3. Media gets involved and the competance of the involved parties called into question.
Step 4. Budget gets cut moving the program further to the right and driving costs up.
Step 5. More finger pointing and recriminations.
Step 6. Program is cancelled, accomplishing very little that will still be around 30 years from now when they try it again and everybody who did it the first time around has moved on or retired.

Rinse and repeat until it costs billions of dollars to accomplish nothing.

 

[sferrin]

And in this case I am not talking just about avionics and such systems but computer programs that can, through rapid simulated prototyping, develop materials and test them in virtual wind tunnels with much greater rapidity than the sliderules of old.

Yes and no. Back in the day they'd get things maybe 90% there and then go fly. Now days they'll use the computers to endlessly tinker. Ask yourself if we'd be able to go from an idea in someone's head to the Blackbird today in what, 5 years? Never happen. Hell, if they decided they wanted to make a new assembly line for the SR-71 I'd bet it'd take TWICE as long as it did to come up with the thing in the first place and they already have the design.

What about the Bird of Prey (no it is ABSOLUTELY not close to a Blackbird) but was it not designed and developed in a very short time? The great line in "The Right Stuff" was "Hey Ridley ya got any Beemans", no just kidding it was - for me - "No bucks no Buck Rogers". I agree 100% with sferrin it is the political and corporate culture that is holding us back. I bet if you gave Skunk Works totally open parameters and said "go for it" we would have a hypersonic bomber within a decade or less. I often think that if the US invested another fifty to one hundred billion purely in these types of technologies there would be nothing we could not do. There's the optimist in me.

Back in the 60s they'd have McGuivered it out of frickin' WOOD in their spare time for FUN. (See the first flying lifting body story.)

 

[quellish]

4) Congress had little to no oversight

#4 is the most important. Had Bird of Prey simply flopped over and gone SPLAT on its first flight, there would be little to no public or bureaucratic oversight, and the designers knew this. Now compare to the outcry when the early F-22 went buggo and crashed.

Ah, but that's half the point of making something a special access program. The number of elected officials with the appropriate knowledge to do their oversight duties is very, very limited.

TIMBERWIND would never had gone beyond paper outside of the special access world. Contractor initiated projects like Bird of Prey are even more immune to traditional oversight. In the last 10 years there have been more and more of those out at DET 3. One of the things I have not yet found out is who has direct oversight responsibility for the Special Projects Flight Test Squadron as a unit rather than on a project by project basis. It appears to not fall under the umbrella of AFFTC. One office/set of offices in USAF provides logistic and administrative support for that unit and the other permanent tenants at DET 3 and TTR, but does not appear to have any oversight connection with any of them.

 

[bobbymike]

Special Access Programs - A little off topic but I hope one exists for continued design and development of nukes because I cannot believe so many politicians would so willingly unilaterally disarm through neglect of the Triad.

 

[martinbayer]

A few personal (and as an aerospace rather than electrical/electronic engineer almost certainly extremely biased/opinionated) observations related to the general topic rather than any specific posts (well, almost ) after two decades of work on the space side of the aerospace industry both in Germany and the USA:

The immediately impending demise of crewed combat aircraft due to absolutely breathtaking advances in automated systems/guided missiles/UAVs/UCAVs etc. has been confidently forecast by its proponents ever since over a half century by now, starting at least with the infamous Duncan Sandys white paper of 1957. The main emphasis as well as actual tangible progress today seems to be on ISR systems, where miniaturization is definitely an option, since the size of the payload is scalable and assets, especially with real time transmission, are pretty much expendable, as the final product is information. But for fully reactive combat aircraft there are physical limits, both due to the need to shlep along missiles with warheads or more or less smart bombs to do actual damage that can't be downsized with the snip of a finger, as well as the demand for smarts to interactively deal with unforeseen obstacles and adversaries. There the main impediment is the progress (or lack thereof) in the field of artificial intelligence. As a more or less interested layperson in this area, I personally classify AI as a 'rainbow technology', meaning that it always looks like an alluring bright promise on the horizon, but it consistently remains equidistant from you, no matter how much effort you put into moving closer to it to recover that fabled pot of gold. BTW, in my personal playbook SSTOs with chemical propulsion fall into the same category. The bottom line is that if you look at the cold hard equations governing fundamental aerospace performance, such as the Breguet as well as the Ziolkovski equation, the basic behavior is not just governed but dictated by propulsion, structural and, in the case of atmospheric flight, aerodynamic efficiency. Electronics, bandwidth, frequency hopping, memory capacity, encryption algorithms, pattern recognition ability, compression ratios, neural nets, etc. don't even enter the picture, so believing that progress in computer technology will ultimately move the goalposts in atmospheric as well as spaceflight is in my view simply and absolutely misguided and completely misses the point of basic physics.

That being said, on the other hand I believe there is ample (albeit admittedly circumstantial) objective evidence (although no tangible positive proof), such as the recorded LA basin sonic booms in the nineties, that at least in the USA there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our official philosophy to date.

Martin