Oh, the marvels of our modern age:
DARPA does some quietly interesting things. The latest is an autopilot that lets an aircraft perform air-air refueling
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Hands off tanking?16 comments to Hands off tanking? |
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You really want to know? UAV tanking other UAVs. Right useful for high-altitude aircraft.
Every time I hear that the Navy’s carriers are losing relevance in the “modern age” something comes along and makes them relevant again. Just after GWB was elected, they rolled some 100 year old man out of the Pentagon who said that we really didn’t need carriers anymore. Rummy and his whiz kids were starting to buy into it and then came September, 2001. All of a sudden, we needed to do some strikes into Afghanistan and the only way the Air Force could do it was with a) B-52′s b) B-2′s flying 20 hour missions or c) F-15′s and F-16′s from the west who flew 8 hour missions, used amphetamines to stay awake, and bombed Canadians. The Navy parked a few acres of steel south of Pakistan and started a bucket brigade of bombs going north.
Are UAV’s the wave of the future? You betcha.
Carriers obsolete? Not as long as there are countries in the world that don’t like us.
N
No agenda here… but how does the possability of UAVs tanking other UAVs with 50 to 100 hour mission profiles, or whatever you guys call it, not drive a stake into the heart of the carrier fleet…couldn’t most missions with these assets be launched from CONUS, NATO or SEATO bases? Best
Snake Eater,
The problem with that theory is the 50 to 100 hour mission. Aside from the changes to the situation on the ground from the time the mission launches to the time on target, you’d need an enormous number aircraft to put the same number of aircraft over target per hour as an aircraft carrier which would only be an hour or two away from the target.
CONUS bases – long time from mission launch to arrival over target
NATO & SEATO – you never know who will or will not allow you to use even your own base in their country or their airspace to launch attacks on a foreign nation. Then there’s the whole overflight of other countries along the way problem. For example – F111 raid on Libya in the early 80s – Launch from Britain and fly around France due to refusal of permission to overfly France enroute to target or on RTB.
Sorry for the double post, but thought of something else.
Carriers are wonderful diplomatic tools and are great for accomplishing missions other than putting warheads on foreheads.
Countries get much more attentive when they know that there’s a few acres of moving, armed US territory off their coast.
Other ways that carriers are useful are in humanitarian capacities – evacuations, sending aid in from the sea, etc.
Unrelated, mostly, to this post, but in watching the video I noticed that the tanker still had the old turbojets – I thought those things were outlawed in the 90s, which is why the KC135 fleet is now KC135R’s with the high bypass turbofans?
Jeff,
Outlawed? I think the issue is Stage 3 noise compliance, which the turbojets can’t do, but since Omega is a private contractor who does much/most of their flying out of military bases, I don’t think they sweat it.
I may be wrong though.
N
In late 97 in the Gulf we were doing a night recovery. A Hornet (An old Lot 10 for those keeping score at home) was doing a coupled (hands off) approach. The pilot was the XO of the squadron. About 1/2 mile from the ship the nose pitched down about 2 degrees. About a half second after that it pitched up about 2 degrees. The pilot let it ride because he figured he was passing through the burble. (Burble = disturbed air behind the ship caused by the ships superstructure). About 300 feet from touchdown the nose pitched down violently. The LSOs immediately signaled for a waveoff, the pilot immediately broke out of the coupled approach, staged the afterburners, and raised the nose.
If he didn’t have the presence of mind to lower the nose as he crossed the aft end of the ship, his hook and/or exhaust nozzles would have hit the rounddown. He stayed in burner and climbed to about 8000 feet.
Subsequent investigation by NAVAIR determined that there was a “0″ where there should have been a “1″ in some piece of code on some box that was interfered with.
Tanker demo was neato, but there was still a warm pink thing sitting in the front seat. What happens when the pink thing is gone and the 1 and 0 is swapped?
USAF UAV thing works because if you crash while landing on a 10,000 foot piece of empty asphalt, the only thing you loose is the UAV. I would not be too excited to work the already dangerous flight deck with Mr. Roboto coming aboard.
Also, will the UAV have visual landing capability? What happens when the PALS signal is jammed?
And most important, can they do a Sh*t Hot break?
N (I’m old and I fear change.)
Nose, Again no agenda… only speculating… the UAVs can’t and never will be designed do a Sh*t Hot break( I’m assuming thats what the XO did in your comment). UAVs in the long haul will eventually replace manned aircraft and with them the need for the Aircraft Carrier. The resulting savings will more than pay for “enormous number of UAVs” referred to in Parrothead Jeff’s comment # 4 above. Thankfully, I don’t think I’ll be around to see it…but its comming. Best
Savings? ROTFLMAO! UAVs are NEVER cheap. An unmanned aircraft doesn’t get a waiver to the laws of aerodynamics. It has to do EVERYTHING a manned aircraft must…except that you are using several million lines of software to do it, as well as a costly ground station.
UAVs are great…but not omnipotent. They are special purpose systems for very high risk (either technical or political) or very long endurance missions. Or dirt cheap man-portable systems.
I don’t think that argument is that UAVs (or UCAVs or UASs, or whatever they’re calling them these days) are cheap, but rather than they’re cheapER than manned combat aircraft.
You can remove everything from the airframe that is only there to keep the pilot alive and functioning. This includes the support systems on the ground and associated personnel. Removing the human pilot also negates the need for limiting the max stress on the airframe, thus increasing the maneuverability and survivability of the UAV.
Lastly, if one gets shot down, you only have to build a new machine, not machine and pilot. I’d wager that it’s a heckuva lot quicker to build a new UAV than to train a new pilot.
I agree with Nose on the human control element, but it doesn’t mean that the pink thing has to be onboard. As someone who works with computers day in and day out, too many of the errors we see approach the realm of metaphysics, with no logical explanation, and you’ve got to have a human in the loop.
Nope. You don’t want to know just how hard it is to produce the software to control an autonomous UAV…or how expensive.
The Navy parked a few acres of steel south of Pakistan and started a bucket brigade of bombs going north.
Devil’s Advocate posit here…How far and how long did the big wing tankers have to fly (and how vulnerable were they to being shut down by being beholden to politically sensitive ramp, runway, and airspace) to make this possible?
Sid,
Good question/good point. Answer, I don’t know. I think they MIGHT have been in PAK as the non-refuelable air wing assets landed there on the way in and out to take a sip.
N
Autonomous Refueling is Here – NOW…
DARPA COMPLETES AUTONOMOUS AIRBORNE REFUELING DEMONSTRATION
System Performs “Better Than a Skilled Pilot”
May 3, 2007 – NASA Test Pilot Dick Ewers and Flight Test Engineer Leslie Molzahn enjoy the ride during the final flight of the Autonomous Air…
Coming in here late I reckon.
Nose- you have been superseded. Airlines are next! MikeM is 100% right about the intensive sw… but redundancy and backup autonomous decision (near artificial intelligence) making by the UAV “computer” SW will respond faster and better than an LSO or pilot ever could (supposedly). All that “What if” brainstorming we spent at sea, when we weren’t thinking about what we were going to do in Perth or Palma, becomes code..Get it? Oh yeah- that code ain’t cheap.
Sid- Lex should be able to answer that question on OEF- he was there. One helluva bucket brigade I’ve heard-especially the first few “innovative” weeks…Without S-3 tankers at 8 per squadron-5 on the roof available then, we might not never be able to accomplish a task like that again- as well….er….efficiently……
O’course I am always so “persistent” on this topic, ain’t I? LOL.
A couple weeks back we had a Hornet midair and after some “stuff” at the ship (interesting stuff Nose) one of the Hornets had to do a 600+nm, gear down divert to Guam..No mention on how he refueled enroute (not routine I’ll tell ya), but I think CVW-9 dodged a bullet possibly, by luckily still having S-3′s aboard for the last time..O’course I could be wrong (LOL)…. perhaps a SuperHornet tanker accompanied..but that doesn’t seem, well….
Feasible.
Just a question o’time before someone takes a dip! And, of course, this topic will never be on the agenda at Reno next month….
Snake- I can’t wait for lawyers to be superseded by UAV-like machines..but it’s gonna be hard to write code to recreate evil, mean and greedy! Just kidding Pops! Don’t shoot.
b2