The Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 "Black Widow II"

The Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 "Black Widow II" — unofficially named by Northrop after its P-61 Black Widow — was a prototype fighter aircraft designed for the United States Air Force. It was passed over in favor of the YF-22 that has entered production as the F-22 Raptor. 

 Design and development 

The YF-22 and YF-23 were competing in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter program. Conceived in the early 1980s, to specify a replacement for the F-15 Eagle, contracts for the two most promising designs were awarded in 1986, with the YF-23 delivered in 1989 and the evaluation concluded in 1991. Many levels of subcontractors were lined up on each side of the decision, and some on the losing side did not survive long afterwards.
The YF-23 was designed with stealth as a high priority and was a highly unconventional-looking aircraft with diamond-shaped wings blended with the fuselage and a V-tail. The YF-23A met USAF requirements for survivability, supersonic cruise, stealth and ease of maintenance. However, the YF-22A was more maneuverable than the YF-23A and won the competition in April 1991. Another factor was that the YF-22A was also seen as more adaptable to the Navy's Navalized Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF), though as it turned out the Navy abandoned NATF a few months later.
Although the precise results of the evaluation are not yet public knowledge, it is often claimed that the YF-23 was faster and stealthier than its competitor, but the USAF chose the YF-22 due to simply being more conventional, higher subsonic maneuverability, longer range, and better warning systems. Others point out the YF-23's comparatively flawed weapons release mechanism wherein missiles are stacked on racks, and a weapons jam of a lower-positioned missile could prevent the firing of the missile above it. In any case, the decision is still widely debated. 

Testing 

Two aircraft were built. After losing the competition, both YF-23 prototypes were transferred from Norththrop to NASA's Dryden Flight Center, at Edwards AFB, California. The engines were removed; NASA had no plans to perform flight tests with the airframes, but did plan to use one of the two aircraft to study strain gage loads calibration techniques.
In the end, however, both aircraft remained in storage until the summer of 1996, when the aircraft were transferred to museums. Aircraft PAV-2 was in exhibit at the Western Museum of Flight in Hawthorne, California and PAV-1[verification needed] was recently moved to the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, where it sits along side the Boeing X-32 in the Aircraft Restoration Hangar. Aircraft PAV-1[verification needed] is now on display in an outdoor parking area at Northrop Grumman's production facility in El Segundo, California. 

Revival? 

In late 2004, Northrop Grumman proposed a YF-23 based design for the USAF's interim bomber requirement, a role for which the FB-22 and B-1R are also competing. Aircraft PAV-1 was moved from the Western Museum of Flight to Northrup's plant for refurbishment after being on outside display for more than a decade. Instead, Northrup used the aircraft to create a full scale model of its proposed interim bomber before restoring it back to its original configuration and returning it to the Western Museum of Flight. The interim bomber requirement has since been cancelled in favor of a more long-term, permament bomber replacement requirement; however, the same YF-23-derived design will likely be adapted to fulfill this role as well. 

General characteristics 

• Crew: one pilot
• Length: 67 ft 5 in (20.60 m)
• Wingspan: 43 ft 7 in (13.30 m)
• Height: 13 ft 11 in (4.30 m)
• Wing area: 948 ft² (88m²)
• Empty weight: 32,934 lb (14,970 kg)
• Loaded weight: 51,320 lb (23,327 kg)
• Max takeoff weight: 64,000 lb (29,029 kg)
• Powerplant: × General Electric YF120 or Pratt & Whitney YF119 , 35,000 lbf (156 kN) each

Performance 

• Maximum speed: 1,400 mph/mach 2.58 (2,240 km/h)
• Combat radius: 860-920 miles (750-800 nautical miles) unrefuelled (1,474 km)
• Service ceiling: 65,000 ft (19,800 m)
• Wing loading: 54 lb/ft² (265 kg/m²)
• Thrust/weight: 1.81

Armament 

• 1× 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon
• 6× air-to-air missiles, including the AIM-7 Sparrow, AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9 Sidewinder

Specifications
Contractor	Northrop / McDonnell Douglas
Mission	Competitor, along with YF-22, in the ATF competition
Length	67 feet, 5 inches (20.6 meters)
Wing span	43 feet, 7 inches (13.3 meters)
Height	13 feet, 11 inches (4.3 meters)
Maximum takeoff weight	64,000 pounds (29,029 kilograms)
Propulsion	2 Pratt and Whitney YF119 turbofan engines, or 2 General Electric YF120 turbofan engines
Speed	Mach 2
Range	865-920 miles (750-800 nautical miles) unrefuelled
-Armament	4 AIM-9 Sidewinder - internal bays in engine intake duct sides 4 AIM-120 AMRAAM - internal bays underneath air intakes
Crew	One
Unit Cost	Unknown
Inventory	Two:  1 on display at Western Museum of Flight, in Hawthorne, California           1 on display at USAF Museum USAF Test Center Museum at Edwards Air Force Base, California

Akaer released to Saab the first 3D model and production drawing of the Gripen NG in Sao Jose de Campos.

One year ago an agreement was signed between Akaer and Saab regarding the participation in the Gripen NG development program. The purpose of the agreement was to lay the foundations for good cooperation between the two companies and to support Saab's development and production for the rear and intermediate fuselage sections, wings and landing gear doors for Gripen NG.

Immediately after the agreement signature, a team of Brazilian engineers from Akaer were stationed in Sweden to acquaint themselves with the NG project to participate in the development and to learn about Saab's requirements and methods in the form of technology transfer through 'on the job training'.

At the same time, facilities at Akaer in Brazil were prepared and certified for the work activities related to Gripen NG development, including special security controlled areas equipped with advanced network systems connected with Saab in Sweden.

During 2010 the Akaer team participated in the conception phase including design, stress, tooling and industrialization. The activity migrated to Akaer’s facilities in Brazil along the year.

The technical package including the 3D model and production drawings released today was sent to Saab’s data bank in Linkoping, Sweden through a secure datalink.

Akaer is leading the T1 Brazilian consortium that includes Inbra Aerospace, Friuli, Minoica and Winstall involved in the development of the Gripen NG intermediate and rear fuselages, wings and main landing gear doors.

If selected for the Brazilian F-X2 Program, the serial production of the Gripen NG segments for Brazil and export will be made, as a sole source, from a new facility to be established in São Bernardo do Campo.

Lennart Sindahl Saab Executive Vice President and Business Group Chairman Aeronautics says that “The release of this first drawing has proven the successful co-operation between our two companies proving Saab’s commitment and investment in Brazilian industry and as a future partner. We look forward to our further development together.”

Akaer CEO Cesar Augusto da Silva, Akaer CEO says: This is the first drawing release of a supersonic fighter aircraft ever developed in Brazil and demonstration of the successful technology transfer process conducted by Saab. Akaer is proud of its involvement and the capabilities demonstrated by its team to comply with such challenging task.

Akaer is a Brazilian engineering company and one of the major suppliers of development services to the Brazilian aerospace and defence industry both nationally and internationally.

Self Sufficient Military Robots

          Military nerds believe that they have developed IT tech which can “regenerate” autonomously, allowing it to self-repair in the face of shutdown attempts – and even to learn and develop its capabilities. More terrifyingly still, plans are afoot to put this technology into the US forces’ next generation of robotic weaponry.

Armed Robotic Vehicle, Assault, Light (ARV-A-L). You don’t want to meet ARV-A Heavy.

Attempting to flee in your puny conveyance is useless, humans!

Bow before your self-regenerating software overlords!

The “Self-Regenerating Systems” SRS auto-programming programme is the brainchild of the renowned Pentagon barmy-boffin bureau, DARPA, where they never saw a self-aware computer network hellbent on the extirpation of humanity they didn’t like. SRS has been underway since 2004 at the Information Processing Techniques Office.

According to DARPA:

The SRS program is to develop technology for building military computing systems that provide critical functionality at all times, in spite of damage caused by unintentional errors or attacks … The SRS program aims to develop technologies enabling military systems to learn, regenerate themselves, and automatically improve their ability to deliver critical services. If successful, self-regenerative systems will show a positive trend in reliability, actually exceeding initial operating capability and approaching a theoretical optimal performance level over long time intervals.

So far, so blah. Just because DARPA wants the moon on a stick doesn’t for a moment mean it’ll actually get it. The mere fact that the US Army is also planning to field a deadly robotic legion featuring heavily armed droid tanks, kill-choppers, hovering spy probes, man-sniffer sensors and so on shouldn’t worry us. The SRS tech will probably never work, and if it did there’s no way it could get control of the heavily armed bot horde.

Except that yesterday DARPA banged out this announcement (pdf), in which it says:

DARPA is requesting information from vendors who have developer’s access to high value, hard real time, mission critical, military information systems … The goal … is to explore the technical feasibility of dramatically improving system survivability and reliability with technology and techniques that DARPA has recently developed under the Self Regenerative Systems (SRS) program.

In other words, the SRS programme’s unshutdownable, self-repairing awareware is ready to go, and traitorous DARPA boffins (doubtless the robots are holding their families) want to put it into things being built now. The horribly beweaponed robot kill-choppers and crewless tanks of the Future Combat Systems force, for instance, or the new “Predator” missile-packing unmanned hunter-killer planes which need no human piloting even by remote.

We’ll just have to pray that rival US military brainboxes – even now toiling on humanity’s trump card in the future war against the machines, the circuitry-toasting electro magnetic pulse bomb – can be ready first.

The hunt for a sixth generation fighter plane

The hunt for a sixth generation fighter plane officially began today at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. An office of the US defence establishment (Aeronautical System Center) today put out a capability request for information (CRFI) calling for concepts before December 17 to support a Capability Based Assessment (CBA) on a next generation tactical aircraft that can achieve initial operational capability by 2030. The request is being seen as the first step towards a replacement for the only operational 5th-gen fighter today -- the F-22 Raptor.

The CRFI [doc] puts down that the primary mission in the future Next Gen TACAIR definition is Offensive and Defensive Counterair to include subset missions including Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD), Close Air Support (CAS) and Air Interdiction (AI). It may also fulfill airborne electronic attack and intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance capabilities... The future system will have to counter adversaries equipped with next generation advanced electronic attack, sophisticated integrated air defense systems, passive detection, integrated self-protection, directed energy weapons, and cyber attack capabilities. It must be able to operate in the anti-access/area-denial environment that will exist in the 2030-2050 timeframe.

Some of the technologies the US gov wants to know more about include non-kinetic weapons, secondary power generation, heat rejection and optionally manned systems.

Suddenly the whole fourth generation vs fifth generation argument seems to ... well, dwindle.

So we'll finally, hopefully, know what it looks like, and how different (if at all) it will be. The DRDO's curtain-raiser statement for Aero India 2011 suggests that it will be displaying models of the air force and navy TEJAS Mk.2. There has been little clarity over the real design changes likely to be incorporated in the Mk.2, so to specifically mention the Mk.2 in its list of model displays suggests that there will be something to talk about. Will it have canard foreplanes? We do know that the aft fuselage will undergo changes to house the GE-F414 turbofan, but that's pretty much all we really know. Will update this post over the next few hours with more.

Hadn't thought of using the totally unofficial fan-art image above until now. It was sent to me by someone last year, but I've misplaced their details. So if you recognise your image, please let me know so I can credit you!

Modern warfare

Modern warfare

           .

          although present in every historical period of military history, is generally used to refer to the concepts, methods and technologies that have come into use during and after the Second World War and the Korean War. The concepts and methods have assumed more complex forms of the 19th and early-20th century antecedents largely due to the widespread use of highly advanced information technology.

Although total war was thought to be the form of international conflicts from the experience of the French Revolutionary Wars to the Second World War, the term no longer describes warfare in which countries or nations use all of their resources to destroy another country's or nation's organized ability to engage in war. The practice of total war which had been in use for over a century, as a form of war policy has been changed dramatically with greater awareness of tactical, operational and strategic battle information.

Main article: Total war

The most identifiable consequence of total war in modern times has been the inclusion of civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets in destroying a country's ability to engage in war. The targeting of civilians developed from two distinct theories. The first theory was that if enough civilians were killed, factories could not function. The second theory was that if civilians were killed, the country would be so demoralized that it would have no ability to wage further war. However UNICEF reports that civilian fatalities are down from 20 percent prior to 1900 AD to less than 5 percent of fatalities in the wars beginning in the 1990s.

With the advent of nuclear weapons, the concept of full-scale war carries the prospect of global annihilation, and as such conflicts since WWII have by definition been "low intensity" conflicts, typically in the form of proxy wars fought within local regional confines, using what are now referred to as "conventional weapons," typically combined with the use of asymmetric warfare tactics and applied use of intelligence.

Main article: Battlespace

More recently the US Department of Defense introduced a concept of Battlespace as the integrated information management of all significant factors that impact on combat operations by armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including information, air, land, sea and space. It includes the environment, factors and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly forces; facilities, weather and terrain within the operational areas and areas of interest.