Air Force to Test Aeroelastic Wings

firegate writes "The New Scientist is reporting that the US Air Force is planning to test a variant of the Wing Warping steering system used on the original Wright Brothers plane to steer new supersonic jets. They've invested $41 million in the project so far, and the first test flight will take place next month at NASA's Dryden research center in California."

Re:Test speeds.

[Ma$$acre]

INAE either, but "passing through" and "[testing] in" are two different things. Going through the sonic barrier and testing within it are two different things. Going through is stressful... testing on the edge of mach 1 introduces amazing stresses. Something that flexes a lot more than a standard wing could set up harmonic vibrations which would shatter the hardware. Passing through would actually stablize after the initial shockwave.

Old stuff, new twist

[Chris Johnson]

Aeroelastic is old. That's the way 747 wings were built, and 707s, the entire pedigree of Boeing swept-wing jets have aeroelastic wings. They use the podded engines to direct the bends of the wing so that they are bending in useful ways. Non-useful ways would include flutter and pitching up in a stall.

What's being talked about here is DIRECTED aeroelastic wings, even more elastic than the Boeing jets. Sounds like a neat idea :) sure as hell would result in control surface effectiveness! Not only no control surface gaps, but the whole damn wing's a control surface. In addition, this could also trim the wings to act as flaps, changing wing incidence on the fly.

Re:Air Force Times

[kryonD]

Sorry to pop your bubble, but E-1 to E-4 pay ranges from $1022.70 to $1752.30 per month depending on time in service (dfas.mil [dfas.mil]). This is on top of the fact that all your food, housing, electricity, water, trash, medical, dental, and training are provided to you free of charge. In other words, the only financial obligations you have are the ones you create yourself. Even if you take a loan out on a car($300/mo. + $100/mo. for expensive insurance + $50/mo. for gas/upkeep), get a cell phone ($50/mo with a ton of minutes), and get cable plus wide-band access (up to $100/mo) that still leaves over $400 pure spending cash for even a boot E-1. Average promotion times are 6 mo. to E-2, 8 more mo. to E-3 and an average of 18 months for E-4 depending on how good of a worker you are. Most folks straight out of high school with little to no work experience usually don't have it nearly that good. Also, starting Oct 1st, the Military pays 100% tuition assistance for undergrad education, so free college to boot!

Now, that being said, the military is still a tad behind the civilian world in overall fiscal compensation. But it's a bit too far to say that enlisted make "almost nothing". As far as the IT field goes, most military people suck up the free training and bail after the 4 year stint for better paying jobs. This rapid attrition rate allows those that stay in to reach the ranks of E-5 and E-6 faster. Benefits begin to increase in the form of priviledges which makes staying in just about as worth while as getting out.

FYI, the daily unclassified, non-critical networks that the E-1 through E-4's usually administer have terrible up-time rates and is usually directly attributed to the lack of experience and education. Most of these self-proclaimed IT wizards couldn't manage a Nintendo without their roomate's assistance.

Before the blasting starts, I enlisted 9 years ago and have worked my way to the officer ranks. I think I made plenty of money then and make plenty of money now with the increase in pay directly related to the increase in my education level and responsibilities.