USAF Launch Supersonic Bomb Firing Technology 257
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? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Release bombs at supersonic speeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The comparison should not be with WW2, it should be with the last bombing exercise. That's what we're improving over.
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Re: bomb accuracy in WWII (Score:3, Interesting)
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for the defense contractor selling the items, in that they
can miss at a higher sortie rate.
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Or could grandparent be referring to the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade?
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I'm saying that all of the precision guided munitions in the world are only as good as the intelligence that directs them. I
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Sorry about the confusion. I definitely agree here.
In other words, it doesn't matter if you can fly a 2000lb laser guided bomb into a window, if the people you really want to get are a mile away.
Then
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Huh? (Score:2)
This new system is probably needed because the rotary launcher used by the B-1 doesn't allow enough clearance for, or won't take the stresses associated with, the kicker systems used back then.
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Are they trying to say that they're firing the bombs backward to the direction of flight so that they end up with significantly lower forward-velocity and, thus, fall with a shorter ground track?
I can figure it must be merry hell trying to sight a target SO far ahead (at your given speed and altitude) that you have to drop
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Apparently from the F22 at mach 1.5 and 50,000 ft, these "falling" bombs can travel 24 nautical miles (45Km!) and hit a target (under test conditions). Thats at least 1.5 minutes travel time ignoring any real world physical constraints...
Pylons maybe, but not bomb bays (Score:2)
As another poster indicated, this technology would be useful for the F-22, which has to carry i
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Wrong. The A-12 launched its missles from bomb bays. The B-70 dropped its bombs from bomb bays. Then there is the F-102 and -106.
That's true for bombs/missiles dropped under gravity alone. That's not true for bombs/missiles ejected rather than dropped.
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How much did this cost (Score:2)
Great news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Rejoice for now we can drop food and medical supplies at supersonic speed! I can't wait to see the look on those African kids!
Re:Great news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Set a Man on Fire, and he is Warm for the Rest of His Life
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Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
this is *not* mine.
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Well (Score:2, Interesting)
Best example is GPS. No way a company was going to build something like that. Even a government wouldn't do that for civilian reasons. However the military felt it was worth it. Out of that we now have an awesome navigation system used the world over, and finally because of
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Your argument is ridiculous given the $5e11 dollars per year the US alone is spending on its military (without Iraq war funding!); compare that to the $3e10 that goes to NSF+NIH (the primary funding sources for research in the US). And this is just the US.
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Not to be outdone... (Score:4, Funny)
Next up, basketballs that bounce 10 times as high. Is gonna change the game!
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Try this one on for size.... stack up a small playground ball on top of a medium one anmd stack those on top of a large one... drop the 3 of them from about six feet and watch the little one hit the ceiling...
matroishka ;) (Score:2)
(I took russian many years ago in college, so please pardon any errors.)
This is a REAL sled. (Score:2)
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You're quite mistaken.. (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't do it like they used to
The B-58 could do this (Score:2)
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The B-58 typically carried a single nuclear weapon in a streamlined MB-1C pod under the fuselage. From 1961 to 1963 it was retrofitted with two tandem stub pylons under each wing, inboard of the engine pod, for B43 or B61 nuclear weapons for a total of five nuclear weapons per airplane
No mention of an internal bomb bay. I don't think that the pod was permanently attached either. IIRC, I've seen pictures of the plane without any external attachments.
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The mission scenario would have been for the B-58 to use the fuel in the pylon on it's way to the target, drop the pod & it's integrated nuclear weapon onsite, then use internal tanks to return to base.
As the B-58's range was severely impacted without the MB-1C's fuel tank & stocks of these expensive pods were limited, they were not expended unnecessarily.
In case anyone was wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe not as much fun as dropping real bombs out of a supersonic jet, but pretty darn close
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low priority (Score:2)
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Well, perhaps this is more reliable. It doesn't sound like it, as there seem to be way too many moving parts in a chaotic environment to be 100% reliable. In this case, any misfire or malfunction, and the plane blows up, not the target, so it's imperative to be rock solid.
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Why would you assume that? These are smart-bombs. They are programmed with a target. While I'm not certain, I'd wager that they don't arm themselves until they're in-transit.
I do think that a collision with the bomb would cause some damage, but it wouldn't "blow up."
Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
This current little trick is probably a proof of concept for a change to the F-22, which carries free fall bombs such as the JADM in a recessed bomb bay. The B-1b can only do about Mach 1.25 at altitude where the air is thinner. The B-1b was designed as low level penetrator to sneak under Soviet radars. With the end of the cold war, the B-1b started taking over as a high altitude bomber with GPS guided weapons, and not risk itself to ground fire to drop.
The F-22 can cruise at Mach 2 without using afterburners, and I believe it can only carry two Mk-82 JADM weapons. The ability to fly in at Mach 2 while being practically invisible to radar, AND not having to slow down to deploy weapons would be a huge advantage.
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Brett
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Interesting)
At sub-orbital re-entry speeds, you don't need an explosive to fark up a tank. And if you can hit it reliably you don't need to go boom, it just shatters because a big block of stuff just came through the top, out the bottom and into the dirt below.
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
Not rumor, fact [nytimes.com].
A 2000lb guided rock hitting a particular vehicle/tank is just as effective as a 2000lb MK-84.
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Yes, the kinetic smash is good, and if you had a chunk of something moving at some km/sec velocity, there'd be no point of explosives, but the speed of a free-fall air drop bomb doesn't get you that good of 0.5mv^2 such that you can get rid of the explosives.
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I don't know. You might need an unbreakable umbrella [real-self-defense.com].
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That meteorite that killed the dinosaurs didn't explode in the sense you mean, either, yet it managed to vaporize a fair bit of th
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Terminal velocity, even for a small compact object, falling from 60,000 feet isn't huge still.
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The purpose of the weapon is to destroy something else, or render it unseable. A tank, for instance. If it can be done without the big boom, so much the better.
Previously, you needed the explosion and shrapnel, because 'close' was a good as it got. If you can actually hit the object, you may not need the boom.
WWII, you needed an entire squadron of aircraft to take out one bridge. They'd drop a couple hundred bombs, in th
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That's a seriously funny thought. Looks like Einstein wasn't too far off the mark saying "World War IV will be fought with... stones". *Guided* stones!
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I wanted to say you could wrap the tungsten with something else (metal, composite, carbon nanotubes), but there's no need. There goes my "Killer Corn Dogs from Space" idea.
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
The F-22 can dogfight (maneuver at high-G and operate weapons) above Mach 1 which is a major advantage as most of it's contemporaries must be below Mach 1 to do much more than cover ground. Dropping JDAMS at high speed and altitude is another huge advantage which is, as you speculate, what this is probably intended to validate.
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the big poop is that, in fact, it probably can. I've read that the engines on that thing are so powerful that with afterburner the aircraft would be capable of Mach 3 but the airframe simply isn't strong enough to take it, so the flight control software intentionally limits the speed so the plane doesn't break up. It's a very aerodynamic design coupled to a fantastically powerful engine, and the result is that the F-22 is quite a burner. One has to wonder if there might be a covert block with a stronger airframe for reconaissance.
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.airplanes.com/forums/military-aircraft/1411-mach-2-0-supercruise-60-000ft-altitude.html [airplanes.com]
There, you have a claim by a Major Robert Garland to have flown the F-22 at Mach 2 in level flight.
If you google around, you'll find Air Force guys saying that this plane will do Mach 2.5, and, more than a few people have pointed out that the F-22 has a better thrust to weight ratio than the SR-71... thus, all things being equal, this ought to be one fast bird.
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Fixed geometry inlets (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with a fixed geometry inlet is that it is inefficient. At Mach 2.0 and above, a significant portion of the thrust from a properly designed inlet is coming from the inlet itself. The A-12/F-12/SR-71 cruising at Mach 3.0 gets between 55 and 60% of the total thrust from the inlet - this is accomplished by the positioning the shock wave just inside the inlet (the cons on the front of the engine can be moved in and out specifically for this purpose). One of the early issues with the Blackbirds was figuring out how to handle "unstarts" where the shock wave pops out of the inlet - and gives the crew a wild ride in the process - this was also a problem with the B-58.
The F-16 was also limited to Mach 2.0 because of the fixed geometry wing. OTOH, the F-104 was rated top speed was Mach 2.2, but it could easily achieve Mach 2.4, but at the cost of weakening the aluminum alloy in the airframe.
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9G turns require the aircraft to withstand kinetic loading, with Mach 3 flight, heat is the problem. Mach 3 generates so much heat that it starts to dictate the entire design: you'll need fuel that won't boil off inside the wing, you need to cool the cockpit, electronics, bomb bays, etc. At Mach 2 it's much simpler: you can get away with using simple materials and fuels, and you don't need a
Re:Very very incorrect. (Score:4, Informative)
First off, you're forgetting that the F-22 has two of them. The F-16 only has one, capable of about 29,000 lbs of thrust. Each Pratt&Whitney power plant puts out over 35,000 lbs each (w/ afterburner), so that means 70,000+ lbs total thrust.
Second, they're completely different aircraft with completely different goals. So don't compare the two. The F-22 was designed to be an air-superiority fighter to replace the F-15 (they're about the same size). The F-16 is light multi-role fighter with shorter range and payload. Have you ever seen an F-16 next to an F-15? BIG difference... the F-15 is a mammoth, the F-16 is a lawn dart.
Despite this difference, the F-22 has a much larger thrust-weight ratio due to having 2 powerplants (~1.26) compared to the F-16 (~1.1, with updated engine). Fascinating fact: the YF-23 (the ATF competitor to the F-22) had a thrust/weight ratio of over 1.36, which could theoretically push the bird into Mach 3 at altitude (though its top speed is still classified).
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the aircraft would be capable of Mach 3
Highly unlikely. Large, fixed geometry wings and an apparent lack of variable inlets precludes that sort of speed. An example of what is required to attain Mach 3 is the Blackbird; those large cones at the inlet of each engine adjust to control the shock front of incoming air. This is a requirement of extreme velocity jets and the F-22 simply doesn't have this or anything equivalent. This is qualified by the fact that not every aspect of F-22 design is public.
The F-22 is a fast aircraft, but not in the
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A less than 20% error is fine for government work...
wouldn't bet on that (Score:2)
It's possible that most pilots don't know. They may be prohibited from exceeding the unclassified limits. The plane might even normally be restricted by software.
Laymen's terms? (Score:3, Funny)
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Or eight small-diameter bombs [af.mil].
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Interesting, from TFA "wind tunnel testing indicated that without active flow control, the JDAM munition would have returned to the bay."
I think that would classify as having a bad day
Re:Wow, very much incorrect. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is very handy (Score:5, Informative)
A) SAMs move
B) Enemy fighters aircraft move
If a bomber can fly by at Mach 2 at a high altitude and kick out its load of smart bombs, it becomes much harder to hit it with either a SAM or an air-launched missile. Let's say you make your bombing run at 40,000 feet going Mach 2 and a SAM battery a few miles away takes a shot at you. You kick out the bombs and firewall the throttle for any more speed you can get, and punch out chaff. The SAM is going maybe Mach 5 and you're maybe now at Mach 2.5. At a closure rate of only Mach 2.5, the SAM may run out of fuel before it reaches you, even if it doesn't get fooled by the chaff. If you'd had to slow down to sub-sonic speeds to make your bombing run, the SAM would have a much better chance of catching you.
If there is a CAP up, it's going to have a lot more trouble catching and firing on a bomber going Mach 2 than a bomber going Mach
While these have not been particularly great threats recently (I believe the Viet Nam War was the last time an American heavy bomber was brought down by enemy fire), it wouldn't be wise to assume that the situation will always remain this way, so it's good to have that technology in our back pockets.
Even at lower altitudes, that would take a lot of light anti-aircraft systems off the table, and at least make it harder even for large SAM systems. Imagine being a guy with a shoulder-fired AA missile trying to get a bead on something going at Mach 2. Even if you get a successful lock on it and fire, it's unlikely your missile will be able to catch it even if it's on a low-level bombing run (something I wouldn't expect a B-2 to do, anyway).
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Brett
* from speed alone. I think the recent Israeli attack on the Syrian weapons facility indicates another approach to consequence
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I love the SR-71. Really, I do. It's in my eyes the most beautiful aircraft ever. While the Swedish airforce never engaged the SR-71 for obvious reasons, they managed to intercept (and get missile lock on) it a number of times with the Viggen aircraft and, had the situation been different, could have engaged it. See for instance this post [space.com] corroborated by the Swedish Air Force's own magazine here [www.mil.se] (pdf in swedish).
To th
Re:Anyone know (Score:4, Informative)
I think most supersonic fighters already have that capability, since the missiles they fire tend to travel much faster than the jets they are chasing down (even the old AIM-9 sidewinder hit mach2.5+), and when launched, are already under power and moving forward in the supersonic flow relative to the aircraft and can thus navigate themselves clear. See Here [army.mil], scroll to SRAM, and that was 1969.
The challenge with dropping bombs at supersonic speed is to get them to clear the bomb bay or wing pylon without the shock of the surrounding air flow blasting it back into the aircraft or otherwise tossing it about or ripping it apart. Not to mention designing a bomb bay and aircraft that can withstand the supersonic shock when the doors are opened.
Tm
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Re:soon enough... (Score:4, Funny)
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If I remember correctly during the beginning of the war in Iraq, some cruise missiles were thrown off target when they were jammed by GPS jamming devices. What is to say that technology in the future wont advance to also include jamming the dro
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The laws of physics.
You can't jam such a highly directional signal, unless you're located directly between the drone and the satellite... in which case, you can probably think of better options.
The only real option is to disable the satellite, which isn't an easy proposition.
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Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
As I see it, any enemy we'd have to use this against would be throwing ICBMs with nukes at us. Why the fuck are we building bigger and better and more expensive bombs when all of our operations are counter-terrorist ops?
You're right, we should be like France before WWII and just invest all our military spending on a single type of defense because it made sense when we started building it. How stupid of us to diversify!
(When France started building the Maginot Line, it was actually impossible for tanks at that time to cross through the forested regions they decided to leave undefended; by the time war actually broke out, tanks could do it with ease and the entire installation was useless.)
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For what it's worth, I do have a plan to develop that domain name into a site, I just don't have the free time to do it. In the meantime, it's on Sedo so someone can make me an offer if they want it. If you looked at my Sedo account, you'd see I own less than 10 domains; I'm not a "domain spammer" by any stretch of the imagination.
(But I also don't see anything wrong with being one; with the current domain registration rules, you can make a lot of cash that way. If you want to get rid of "domain spa
real *sigh* (Score:2, Insightful)
Standoff airstrikes save infantry lives (Score:2)
any enemy we'd have to use this against would be throwing ICBMs with nukes at us
No, they'd just have to have good anti-aircraft capabilities defending what we're attacking - much more common than nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Think: the U.S. attacking Iran, N. Korea, Pakistan-gone-rogue (GULP - trust me, I try not to think about those possibilities. No ICBMs yet, just long-range intra-continental BMs and known early-generation fission weapons. Whew, we're safe!)
It seems to me that this would allow U.S. airs
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It's ironic...
It seems like half the country condemns the US military for preparing to fight the last war, while the other half, like yourself, condemns them for preparing for anything different than the last war.
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How many billions are going to American consumers to buy neon toothbrushes instead of being spent to win a war we happen to be in? Soldiers are "at work" 24/7, and getting paid maybe $2500/mo with all the combat zone bonuses. Many aren't making minimum wage, because they're working >100 hours a week, and the military is exempt from minimum wage laws. The VA is denying claims for injured vets, because they don't have th
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As I see it, any enemy we'd have to use this against would have armies of hundreds of thousands like back in the Civil War - these planes are too feeble and trivial to have any impact on a conflict between nations. Besides, look at the Philippines, the Spanish-American War, and the Boer War - why the fuck are we building bigger and better and more expensive bombs when all of our operation
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