USAF Launch Supersonic Bomb Firing Technology

coondoggie writes "Boeing and the US Air Force today said they have tested new technology that for the first time will let military aircraft launch bombs from aircraft moving at supersonic speeds. Researchers from Boeing Phantom Works and the Air Force Research Laboratory used a rocket sled in combination with what researchers called "active flow control" to successfully release a smart bomb known as MK-82 Joint Direct Attack Munition Standard Test Vehicle (JDAM) at a speed of about Mach 2 from a weapons bay with a size approximating that of the U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber, Boeing said. Active flow control is a tandem array of microjets upstream of the weapons bay that, when fired reduces the unsteady pressures inside the bay and modifies the flow outside to ensure the JDAM munition travels out of the bay correctly."

Release bombs at supersonic speeds?

[Finallyjoined!!!]

We miss often enough at sub-sonic speeds. Great.

Re:Very very incorrect.

[twiddlingbits]

I seriously doubt that. F22 airframe is mostly titanium and it's got to take 9G turns which are much more stressful then Mach3 level flight. The PW119 engines are very powerful but only about 25% more than what is on the F16 and the plane is much bigger. The benefit of these engines in their high efficency which allows supercruise w/o afterburners which saves 40% on fuel consumption. Go look at http://www.f22fighter.com/ [f22fighter.com]

Re:Wow, very much incorrect.

[Gerhardius]

The B-58 could drop at supersonic speeds, and the A-5 Vigilante may also have had this capability. During the 50's the USAF had a serious hard-on for all things supersonic. Given the generally limited supersonic capabilities of aircraft from that era the ultimate utility of the concept must have been called into question. The supersonic cruise ability of the new generation of aircraft has simply re-awakened a dormant idea. Much like the fashion industry, the institutional memory is so limited that many folks inside have no clue what has been done before.

Re:Afghan workers die in US-led attack

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he didn't. He conscripted thousands of your friends and neighbors to do it for him.

Re:Release bombs at supersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

> We miss often enough at sub-sonic speeds. Great.

Dude, check your history. In WW2, we used to send hundreds of bombers (sometimes over a thousand), each of which dropped dozens of dumb bombs, all just to hit one ball-bearing factory or bridge. We'd lose 10-20% of the attacking aircraft, and we'd send the survivors (and their replacements) out again later that week because we still didn't hit the target.

Towards the end of WW2, we realized that the most efficient way of destroying target X was to drop enough incendiaries around target X that the resulting firestorm would sweep over target X, destroying it in the process. We killed as many people in the firebombing of Tokyo as we did a few months later using goddamn nukes.

I'm not saying we're perfect. I'm just saying we're a hell of a lot closer to perfection than WW2-era pilots (or even Vietnam-era pilots) could have dreamed of. We spend a hell of a lot of money every year making sure we miss as infrequently as possible. If we were willing to accept the levels of collateral damage our parents were, never mind our grandparents, this war would have been over in a week, and there would have been tens of millions of civilians incinerated.

Be angry that we miss as often as we do -- it not only keeps weapons designers employed, sometimes it's their motivation for their career choice. But be damn grateful that we don't miss anywhere near as often as we used to.

Re:Very very incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than likely the fact that the airframe is heavily composite, and at Mach 3 the expoxies would simply come apart from being baked in flight.

Re:Wow, very much incorrect.

[Somegeek]

The B-58 had no internal bomb bay to launch bombs out of, which is the whole point of TFA. It's one thing to detach a weapon on a pylon that is already in a supersonic airstream, it's another to try to force one out of a stagnant weapons bay into a supersonic airstream.

real *sigh*

[toddhisattva]

Why the fuck are we building bigger and better and more expensive bombs

These are better, which means they will use the smaller ones. Small enough for counter-terror ops, maybe even the explosive-free kinetic rock bombs. A Bone can get one where it's needed in a hurry. Okay, it can get quite a few where they are needed, without decelerating for each drop. Saves gas. Saves lives. Good thing.

Re:Very very incorrect.

[Brett Buck]

The (very substantial) energy has to go somewhere. At some point the yield from the kinetic energy alone exceeds the yield from any explosive. And to get a high terminal velocity, you need to make the projectile as dense as possible - and high explosive is not nearly as dense as tungsten, tantalum, DU, etc. So putting in explosives is actually a loss.

        That meteorite that killed the dinosaurs didn't explode in the sense you mean, either, yet it managed to vaporize a fair bit of the ancestral area around the Yucatan peninsula.

          The collateral damage advantages should be clear as well. The same energy, and smaller dispersal, provides very high energy density in the target area and far less flying debris.

        The only thing missing from the 50's/60's experiments was the accurate guidance, and the fact (still true) that nuclear weapons needed no guidance to speak of, and are extremely cost-effective.

          Brett

Re:Very very incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the reason recent anti-tank rockets are fired upward, and will attack the tank in a descending trajectory (hitting the top armour, not the front or side armour).

Ah, good ol' trusty mortars ... all simple, reliable, easily maintainable, WWII old tech, fast firing, hitting from above, wide range, hard to locate without fancy, expensive, specialized radars, reaches entrenched enemy, destroys tanks, easily mounted on pickup trucks and or tractor trailers,.. the best friend light infantry unit can have!

Re:Fixed geometry inlets

[cmseward]

the F-104 was rated top speed was Mach 2.2, but it could easily achieve Mach 2.4,

Mostly straight down, unfortunately.