Enlarged tacit blue?

[chuck4]

It seems that appearance of stealth technology and very long range AAM will make life much harder for aerial tankers, AWACS, and other large and slow platforms. It seems to me there is a niche for a large, subsonic, low agility, long endurance stealthy aircraft that can function as basis of survivable tankers and radar platforms. Something like a 767 sized version of Tacit Blue. It doesn't need to be as stealthy as the B-2 since it won't try to actively penetrate defended airspace. What do you think?

 

[quellish]

It seems that appearance of stealth technology and very long range AAM will make life much harder for aerial tankers, AWACS, and other large and slow platforms. It seems to me there is a niche for a large, subsonic, low agility, long endurance stealthy aircraft that can function as basis of survivable tankers and radar platforms. Something like a 767 sized version of Tacit Blue. It doesn't need to be as stealthy as the B-2 since it won't try to actively penetrate defended airspace. What do you think?

I don't see why this would be attractive. Can you elaborate?

 

[saintkatanalegacy]

hmmm... elongated darkstar would have made more sense... if SAM's are that much of a threat

 

[chuck4]

It seems that appearance of stealth technology and very long range AAM will make life much harder for aerial tankers, AWACS, and other large and slow platforms. It seems to me there is a niche for a large, subsonic, low agility, long endurance stealthy aircraft that can function as basis of survivable tankers and radar platforms. Something like a 767 sized version of Tacit Blue. It doesn't need to be as stealthy as the B-2 since it won't try to actively penetrate defended airspace. What do you think?

I don't see why this would be attractive. Can you elaborate?

It seems to me that when two sides with substantial fleets of long range super-cruising stealth fighters fight, the sides can frequently sent their fighters to penetrate deeply into the other's defended airspace to degrade the other's overall effectiveness by directly taking out non-stealthy, non-maneuverable assets like AWACS and tankers, or force the other side to devote much of it's fighter force to form a dense cordon even a highly stealthy supercruiser have trouble penetrating.

It seems to me one way to protect against this is to make AWACS and tankers themselves hard to detect, thus reduce the chance that enemy stealth fighters penetrating own airspace will be able to find them.

 

[chuck4]

hmmm... elongated darkstar would have made more sense... if SAM's are that much of a threat

I had in mind aircraft that operates behind own lines to support own air operation like AWACS and tankers, so they should be relatively safe from SAM, but is now made progressively more vulnerable to enemy super cruising stealthy fighters that can penetrate defended airspace, as well as to extreme range air breathing AAM like the ones RUSSIANS are developing.

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Hey this ties in with an idea I had for an unmanned bomb truck. Keep it around as sort of a "1-800-Dial-A-Bomb" service for the boys n' girls on the ground when they need air support.

Nothing fancy, no turning and burning. Just a large slow-moving, long-loiter bomb truck with high-precision sensor suite. Something definitely in the 767-class.

Any takers?

 

[saintkatanalegacy]

hmmm... what about a long loiter unmanned gunship for ground support? ;D

btw... bobbymike just posted a vid of the globalhawk as tanker

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

I actually have an idea for just that application.

 

[quellish]

hmmm... what about a long loiter unmanned gunship for ground support? ;D

btw... bobbymike just posted a vid of the globalhawk as tanker

There are people in AF that are pushing for work on a large, unmanned bomb truck. It would just loiter and be called in by CCT, whatever, to put bombs on bad guys. It was described to me as a vending machine of death.

 

[quellish]

It seems to me that when two sides with substantial fleets of long range super-cruising stealth fighters fight, the sides can frequently sent their fighters to penetrate deeply into the other's defended airspace to degrade the other's overall effectiveness by directly taking out non-stealthy, non-maneuverable assets like AWACS and tankers, or force the other side to devote much of it's fighter force to form a dense cordon even a highly stealthy supercruiser have trouble penetrating.

It seems to me one way to protect against this is to make AWACS and tankers themselves hard to detect, thus reduce the chance that enemy stealth fighters penetrating own airspace will be able to find them.

There are a lot of issues with this idea, but I'll point out one of the biggest: If you have these 5th gen fighters, you have multiple, data linked AESA's flying around - a distributed AWACS. In general things are moving towards having many distributed sensors rather than a flying bulls eye like an E-3.

Making an AWACS hard to detect is not easy because of the high power output. WEDGETAIL should be better than an E-3 because of it's AESA, I'm not sure if that's LPI though. Even a large, beam steered LPI radar emits a large amount of energy, and that's detectable. When an AWACS warms up, garage doors open 2 countries over.
True story bro.

 

[Nik]

Slightly OT but when a couple of 'friendlies' did a 'Time over Target' training pass on our local airport just before what became 'Desert Storm', most of our lab's analytical equipment glitched horribly and rebooted...

 

[XP67_Moonbat]

Hey Quellish, great mind think alike.

 

[ouroboros]

This kinda feels like it should either be broken out into different subsets, or a network platform aspect.

If breaking out, you have an unmanned stealthy tanker, using sat links for position updates for general location, followed by perhaps visual approaches for final hookup (visual in this case being some sort of machine vision thing, so that extends in IR markers and short range laser comms?).

For unmanned AWACS swarm, if you are comfortable doing moderate processing locally and forwarding to external controllers via satellite, you could potentially go for lower power on any individual platform, the aim being to reduce individual aircraft cost and approach "throwaway" status unlike current systems that are treated like crown jewels. If the data is collected stateside and crunched, you have a distributed AESA array at your disposal. There's always the thought of arming them with a pair or two of missiles for self defense, since the AESA could be used for that. No more defenseless platform

Then there's the classic bomb truck scenario ( I prefer 1-900-BIG-BANG myself) which is closer in and requires a somewhat stealthier platform. If this is dial-a-bomb usage, a mixed loadout would favor a rotary bomb rack, while something like a pure SDB stack would favor traditional vertical racks. I guess rotary would be preferred?


I kind of get the feeling of a Tier-3/W570 style airframe, with a small self defense bay, a small inbuilt AESA say in the wing leading edge, with a ventral deep V hull lending itself to swappable packs with a common airframe. You have the tanker package, which would have a fully retracting/concealed boom and probably a hose reel. The deep V frame makes that somewhat convenient, making the cap/doors for the retraction bay easy. For the EWACS type, the deep V hull as originally designed provides good positions for large side looking AESA. Finally for the bomb truck, the deep V makes doing the bomb bay doors easy.


I wonder if it's too much to ask for a common airframe? Especially if people are pining for something either 737 or 767 class sizes?

 

[RanulfC]

As an "FYI" thing, the AWACS are not exactly "defensless" targets you know! As a maintainer I and others were fascinated to discover a cable-connector box attached to the flight-engineer station that was labled "Offensive Missile Control interface" assembly which we found diappeared into the cockpit floor...

We were even MORE fascinated to be unable to find WHERE the HELL the damn thing went! Or what the "system" was in the first place! (It went into the cockpit floor but did NOT come out in the forward lower-lobe bay, nor anyplace ELSE we could find on-board the aircraft either )

No Tech-Order mentions or even shows the cable interface and no mention of any sort of system is found in any technical drawings, details, or references we could ever find but still it was a pretty well known "fact" that the AWACS had software to "take-over" guidance and control of long-range radar-guided missiles but no body would "admit" to any specifics

(On the other hand, as a cross-trained ex-AMMO troop I got to explain to a LOT of people who probably SHOULD have known better that there were no way in HECK the AWACS was ever equipped to carry and launch AIM-9 Sidewinders and the basic "differences" in use and abilities of radar guided versus infra-red guided missiles)

On the other-other-hand though there was quite good evidence that the AWACS could "shoot-down" an F-15 in close proximity as there was an incident where an escort wandered "too-close" to the AWACS when the radar powered up full-blast and promptly caused massive overloads in the majority of the F-15 electrical systems.... Opps...

Randy

 

[chuck4]

Even if an AWAC can take over the missiles, that doesn't make it more survivable against a stealthy assassin. It just makes it a brighter target as it tries to paint the attacking aircraft.

As to burning out the electronics, the other aircraft must open up some critical, unbuffered electronic aperture to the AWAC first. I doubt an aircraft intent on taking out the AWAC will do such a thing. Also, unless the AWAC uses a phased array, it won't really have the ability to shapen its beam for electronic attack aimed at overloading the sensor of the attacking aircraft. It will have to use its normal beam but at enormous power, which I am not sure is practical, and which in any case open the AWAC even more fully to homing in on jam.

Regarding distributed network AWAC, that is interesting, but subject to jam?

 

[ouroboros]

This kinda feels like it should either be broken out into different subsets, or a network platform aspect.

If breaking out, you have an unmanned stealthy tanker, using sat links for position updates for general location, followed by perhaps visual approaches for final hookup (visual in this case being some sort of machine vision thing, so that extends in IR markers and short range laser comms?).

For unmanned AWACS swarm, if you are comfortable doing moderate processing locally and forwarding to external controllers via satellite, you could potentially go for lower power on any individual platform, the aim being to reduce individual aircraft cost and approach "throwaway" status unlike current systems that are treated like crown jewels. If the data is collected stateside and crunched, you have a distributed AESA array at your disposal. There's always the thought of arming them with a pair or two of missiles for self defense, since the AESA could be used for that. No more defenseless platform

Then there's the classic bomb truck scenario ( I prefer 1-900-BIG-BANG myself) which is closer in and requires a somewhat stealthier platform. If this is dial-a-bomb usage, a mixed loadout would favor a rotary bomb rack, while something like a pure SDB stack would favor traditional vertical racks. I guess rotary would be preferred?


I kind of get the feeling of a Tier-3/W570 style airframe, with a small self defense bay, a small inbuilt AESA say in the wing leading edge, with a ventral deep V hull lending itself to swappable packs with a common airframe. You have the tanker package, which would have a fully retracting/concealed boom and probably a hose reel. The deep V frame makes that somewhat convenient, making the cap/doors for the retraction bay easy. For the EWACS type, the deep V hull as originally designed provides good positions for large side looking AESA. Finally for the bomb truck, the deep V makes doing the bomb bay doors easy.


I wonder if it's too much to ask for a common airframe? Especially if people are pining for something either 737 or 767 class sizes?

Sorry to drag this out again, but I had looked at a DEW Line blog article about UCLASS, and the Lockheed MRE UAV is surprisingly similar to Tacit Blue, and also features a deep V ventral hull.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/03/us-navys-wish-list-for-new-uav.html