America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back and Hypersonic

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/america-s-fastest-spy-plane-may-be-back-and-hypersonic

by adventured • 9 years ago

138 126 9 years ago

atonse• 9 years ago

Reading this, I just realized that I bet we do more and more testing of cutting edge aircraft in computer simulations nowadays, waiting until later in the stage to actually build prototypes.

This might also explain why we've got fewer "UFO" sightings than we used to even 20-30 years ago, in spite of all of us carrying cameras in our pockets (apart from the fact that many of these were hoaxes to begin with).

godelmachine• 9 years ago

I don't think even modern day smartphones are fast enough to capture objects traveling at hypersonic speeds. Just a guess, I may be wrong here.

Retric2• 9 years ago

Distance makes speed irrelevant. The moon is traveling 1km every second but that's hard to directly notice.

If you every watched a jet moving at ~600mph then I think we can agree something going 10 times as fast would still be easy to notice.

SEJeff• 9 years ago

Take something like an SR-71 blackbird... It flew subsonic until it was often near the edge of space. If it was vaguely near takeoff or landing, it would be possible to see with the naked eye.

If you're a fan of the SR-71, this hilarious interview with pilot Brian Shul is definitely worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmyAvRKDvJk

maxxxxx• 9 years ago

They are able to capture rocket launches so it should be OK. A hypersonic plane will be very high altitude so it won't move across the sky that fast. The ISS needs several minutes to cross the sky.

akhatri_aus• 9 years ago

It's not going to be hypersonic 100m from the earth's surface, or it'll burn up. So it wont be because of speed i'tll just be too far away.

Jtsummers• 9 years ago

For hypersonic it's been all about computer simulations. The costs are just too high. The tests for such aircraft are very expensive and typically result in catastrophic failure (complete loss of the system). Though they learn a lot about what works and doesn't in each test. A major driver for better CFD has been to better simulate hypersonic speeds and reduce the number of real test flights needed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hypersonic%20flight%20test%2...

phkahler2• 9 years ago

Someone in the FEA/CFD/Simulation industry upon seeing the SpaceX video on their capability indicated that no commercial product he was aware of could match what they were doing. Firewall won't let me confirm this link is correct:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk-VO1hzBY

SpaceX has best in class hypersonic combustion CFD capability that runs on a GPU. Written in-house.

Gravityloss2• 9 years ago

It's the political cost of failures that makes progress so slow.

Compare SpaceX and SLS / Ares.

tzs2• 9 years ago

This might also explain why we've got fewer "UFO" sightings than we used to even 20-30 years ago, in spite of all of us carrying cameras in our pockets.

At night, though, we can still see a lot better than the cameras in our phones.

For instance, I saw something weird one night. It was big enough and bright enough that I had no trouble seeing it, but my iPhone 6 plus camera just got a vague blob. This was not a UFO, since among other things it was on the ground, but it illustrates the limits of the cameras.

(In case anyone is curious, I'll describe what I saw at the end of this comment).

The most interesting current UFO reports I've seen (interesting in the sense that they are probably something real--not aliens or supernatural stuff of course, just either an unknown natural phenomenon or some manmade thing that is not well known) are where people see what looks like a star, but moving in a straight line (sometimes pausing now and then), that then suddenly changes direction and zooms off over the horizon very suddenly. No way is a phone camera going to capture that.

The weird thing I saw: this was the night before the 2017 total solar eclipse in the US. I was parked in a big field that had been turned into a car camping area for the eclipse and the day/night before.

A few rows down and a couple dozen spots to the left I saw what looked like two copies of a movie or TV show side by side, kind of wavy and translucent. It looked like either they had hung up a sheet and were projecting video onto it, or they had a couple of flat panel displays and there was a sheet between them and me.

Then what looked like an arm poked up. If they had been in a tent I would have said it looked like someone in the tent was pushing up on the top, stretching the tent--but tents were not allowed. (There were some trucks and vans that had tent-like extensions on top, so they may have had something like that). The arm moved back and forth a while, and then was apparently pulled down.

Then what looked like a leg replaced it...but it was a huge leg. It looked to be about 2 meters long. The "leg" started moving rapidly back and forth along what would be the length of the vehicle. After it had done this a few times, it disappeared. (There may have also been an arm or two mixed in here).

Then a light rose up from the middle of the vehicle. I though it might be a flashlight. It then stopped rising, and started turning. It continued turning until it was pointing right at my car, and then it stopped turning for about 10 seconds. Finally, it resumed turning until it went all the way around, and then it descended, and things were dark, with no activity at that other vehicle.

I thought "what the hell was all that?".

Then the images came back, and the whole thing repeated!

The third time it happened I had my phone out and the camera recording. Unfortunately, all the recording shows is that there was some lights moving around in that direction.

debt• 9 years ago

Ah yeah. That is strange. I know what that phenomenon is though.

It's called you were on mushrooms bro.

itronitron• 9 years ago

I'm guessing a young child had a pool noodle under the tent and was moving it around as their last hurrah before bedtime, or maybe it was just hippies.

andrewla• 9 years ago

I don't think there are fewer "UFO" sightings than there were 20-30 years ago. I think there are way more. You don't have to dig very far on YouTube to find giant communities of people who are "seeing" UFOs. Video evidence of UFOs is easy to collect -- all you need to do is not identify the objects in the sky. And there are all sorts of weird things in the sky -- reflected lights and spotlights, weather balloons (and regular balloons), drones, sundogs, regular planes, satellites and the ISS, even the occasional actual meteor.

It's also much easier to ignore these things, since most of them are just ordinary things that the person who took the video doesn't know how to identify. If you made a great UFO hoax now, chances are nobody would ever see it who was the least interested in looking at it skeptically, because it would be lost in the noise of people seeing trash bags blowing in the wind.

So I think that https://xkcd.com/1235/ is premature about UFOs, though I think it's pretty conclusive about lake monsters and bigfoot (although if you look around, people see a lot of strange looking mangy bears that people think are bigfoot).

jandrese• 9 years ago

One thing that is getting harder is taking really shitty video that is impossible to interpret. Phone cameras are getting better every year so the kind of grainy shaky stuttery video you normally get with these cases becomes harder and harder to justify.

ggm2• 9 years ago

http://hypersonics.mechmining.uq.edu.au/facilities

there are still places which put models into chambers. (I know, I used to work behind this one, and we have a steel membrane punched through by the airblast to make the shockwave from the dumpster out back)

chrisbennet2• 9 years ago

”I know, I used to work behind this one, and we have a steel membrane punched through by the airblast to make the shockwave from the dumpster out back” I can’t parse this sentence. Could you explain? Thx

azernik• 9 years ago

And also of engines - one of the reasons relatively small companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin can design their own high-performance rocket engines is that they can simulate combustion and fluid flow using CFD techniques. Back in the F1 days they had to light up the engine and come up with interesting ways to observe the internal processes and debug instabilities; now many of those debug cycles (and associated manufactured test articles) are unnecessary. You still have to build the thing to catch some bugs, but that's gotten much cheaper.

Gravityloss2• 9 years ago

Also CNC and 3D printing have made iterating hardware more possible with less labor. One person teams now can get liquid rocket motors printed. Of course turbopumps are many levels from that.

ceejayoz2• 9 years ago

This seems a bit "reading the tea leaves" to me. The statements in the article are easily read as "the technology that would allow this is new".

jmngomes• 9 years ago

'a Lockheed vice president a “digital transformation” arising from recent computing capabilities and design tools had made hypersonic development possible.'

The "digital transformation" part alone gives this up as vaporware...

irishjohnnie• 9 years ago

Video from SciTech conference https://livestream.com/accounts/6056055/events/8001237/video... starting at around 41 minutes

vpribish5• 9 years ago

the bombshell part is from 00:58:58 - 01:00:28 where his phrasing is as if the hypersonic plane has actually been built within the last 5 years, with a 3-d scramjet engine (and 3-d printed as well).

madengr• 9 years ago

I’d like to see the modified UH60 used in the bin Laden raid. The only hint of it’s existence is the remains of the tail section.

mhandley• 9 years ago

Interesting, I hadn't heard about that before, but here's a link to an article about it: https://www.defenceaviation.com/2011/05/stealth-uh-60-black-...

lostconfused• 9 years ago

Also https://theaviationist.com/2016/05/02/five-years-ago-today-t...

peterwwillis• 9 years ago

“We couldn’t have made the engine itself—it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago,” O’Banion said. “But now we can _digitally print that engine_ with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation.”

They made a computer model that wouldn't immediately destroy itself. Let's calm down a bit.

Robotbeat• 9 years ago

I'm not saying they've actually built it. But "digitally print that engine" sounds to me like they're talking about additively manufacturing the engine.

"Digitally print" is used as a synonym for "3D print" or "additively manufacture."

maze-le• 9 years ago

It is noted in the article that this airplane has no real mission profile. I mean hypersonic cruise speed is an impressive feat on its own, and may result in new methods and applications in space travel. But the military usage of a plane like this is questionable. Recon aircraft have long since been abandoned in favor of satellites, and a fleet of bombers might not be maintainable because of the huge costs involved.

Xylakant8• 9 years ago

Recon aircraft still exist. The USAF for example still operates U2 planes. Satellites lack the critical ability to stay in place and cannot necessarily move to a designated spot at short notice. While spy satellites are certainly more maneuverable than regular satellites, they still must obey orbital physics, a plane is not bound to those restrictions.

melling5• 9 years ago

How maneuverable are you at 6000 mph? You’ll flyover the US in 30 minutes.

dingaling• 9 years ago

Satellites can be re-oriented into different orbital inclinations but that requires fuel and in the absence of a Shuttle fleet they cannot be refuelled. So despite movie depictions they don't go swerving hither and thither to follow a camel up a mountain track.

Such limited manoeuvring also requires planning and 90 minutes between passes. Lots of opportunity for bad guys to push their missile back into a hangar.

An atmospheric aircraft can follow an arbitrary course to take in as many targets as required, can be rerouted on a moment's notice and can approach from unexpected vectors to catch the target out in the open.

ams6110• 9 years ago

Sure, but don't we have drones for that now?

The high altitude spy planes (U2, SR-71) were mostly to prevent being shot down; surviving to return the film to base.

Drones don't need to bring film back, and it's not such a big deal if a few of them are lost.

jfoutz• 9 years ago

I always imagined spy satellites in a 'string of pearls' kind of configuration. Rather than having 1 in some specific orbit, have 4 or more in the same orbit. your 90 minute return time gets cut to ~20 minutes or less. Obviously, i have no information either way.

vpribish5• 9 years ago

that's a weirdly specific shuttle refueling point, dingaling. satellite servicing of any kind was very rarely attempted much less regular refueling. We can and do change orbits using onboard fuel without ever refueling - sure it's limited. Saying the shuttles supported refueling and hence maneuvering spy satellites are no longer a thing is very far from reality.

valuearb• 9 years ago

What's the point of having people in this?

mr_overalls• 9 years ago

in the absence of a Shuttle fleet they cannot be refuelled.

Judging by the publicly-released payload specs for the DoD-operated Boeing X-37 spaceplane, it should be able to deliver about 2000+ L of hydrazine, compressed Xenon, or other suitable fuel in a single launch.

Edit: It looks like DARPA has been experimenting with "space gas station" experiments since at least 2007.

https://www.space.com/3644-prototype-satellites-demonstrate-...

outworlder2• 9 years ago

Satellites can be re-oriented into different orbital inclinations but that requires fuel

A LOT of fuel. So much so that even if lifetime wasn't an issue, it makes more sense to launch additional satellites in the proper inclination, rather than moving one.

I know that, in one instance, a company wanted to use the moon's gravity to change a satellite's inclination, as it was cheaper to all the way to the moon and back (and then circularize again). That maneuver seems to be patented, though.

ForHackernews• 9 years ago

Yeah, but a low, slow, cheap drone has all those advantages anyway. There's no need for a hypersonic space plane.

stcredzero• 9 years ago

1. How big a fleet does one need for a useful 1st strike capability? Perhaps not so many.

2. Higher resolution imaging could still be quite useful. For example, if we could possibly find all of the Chinese DF-21B anti-ship ballistic missile launchers, this erodes the deterrent effect of that weapon, which then increases the value of the US aircraft carrier groups.

philip1209• 9 years ago

Why would a propulsion system like this not be put on missiles first? Seems like there are many more tactical applications.

ceejayoz2• 9 years ago

Some missiles already travel at these sorts of speeds.

csours• 9 years ago

Turn it around: Why would a propulsion system like this be put on a missile?

Missiles are generally powered by rocket motors - they don't need air intake.

Missiles are also generally one-time-use - you send it somewhere and don't expect to reuse it (also it usually explodes)

I suppose it might be possible to increase payload per fuel efficiency, but the only reason the military would probably care about that is cost, and the rocket engineering is already paid for and proven.

hammock• 9 years ago

Are you a disinfo plant? Recon aircraft still exist, perhaps more than ever when you consider the use of drones. And of course bombers are still a critical part of US global defense strategy

jerkstate• 9 years ago

here's a hint at one possible mission profile: https://taskandpurpose.com/kinetic-bombardment-kep-weaponry/

JumpCrisscross• 9 years ago

But the military usage of a plane like this is questionable

I could see utility in being able to rapidly deploy a team of special ops, or specialized unanticipated equipment, to a faraway location. That it can do things a missile can without being a missile is also useful. (Suppose you need a bunch of drones over a random location. You could launch a missile and risk (a) breaking your birds in launch and (b) someone thinking you're flying nukes. Or, you could use this plane.)

gaius4• 9 years ago

I could see utility in being able to rapidly deploy a team of special ops, or specialized unanticipated equipment, to a faraway location.

This won't be landing on any improvised airstrips, and a hypersonic configuration won't be able to go slow enough to drop paratroopers.

arca_vorago• 9 years ago

This was my first thought too, because I've heard they've been working on deployment systems to get groundpounders to an AO very quickly, for example one of the rumored applications of the x37b being for HALO insertion.

Galus, what do you base your claim on that a hypersonic config can't go "slow enough"?

killjoywashere• 9 years ago

Considering the DoD's track record on ship and aircraft acquisitions, utility is pretty low on their priority list.

indubitable• 9 years ago

The military has to have contingencies in place for if all satellite communication were disabled, through some method or another. Should symmetric warfare between modern nations ever break out, satellite comms would be one of the most valuable and ostensibly poorly defended targets. You can't really assume much of anything about the status quo in planning for war.

chiph• 9 years ago

The advantage that recon aircraft have over satellites is that they're not in predictable orbits. Assuming any new aircraft has better stealth than the SR-71 (say, on the order of what the first-gen stealth F-117 had), it can overfly the area of interest before anything can be moved under cover.

bactrian2• 9 years ago

“However, Aboulafia noted, such a capability could also be considered a destabilizing development if a U.S. adversary decided to react preemptively to such an aircraft’s existence.”

In other words China and Russia may contemplate fighting WW3 now rather than waiting to be leap frogged. Fun.

melling5• 9 years ago

China is already working on hypersonic weapons. They aren’t waiting for anyone.

bactrian2• 9 years ago

China is always “working on” whatever the US is. Issue comes down to timing.

Top19• 9 years ago

I won an essay contest in college that NASA set up regarding the future of supersonic and hypersonic aviation.

Even back then, supersonic, let alone hypersonic, aviation was such a pipe dream for civilian aviation. Not saying it can’t be done, but I can’t imagine the breakthroughs that need to be made would be made outside of any context short of a World War.

Let me list the problems:

1. Materials Science. Very hard to design materials that survive those kind of stresses, and that you know will last 30+ years. Airplanes routinely have 60 year life cycles, so 30 years of material survival is the minimum. The stresses on these things are huge. The Concorde would actually expand 10 inches from head-to-tail during flight because of the heat.

2. Overpromising dating back 40 years. My favorite example is Ronald Reagan promising an “Orient Express” that would be 90 minutes New York to Tokyo. That was in his 1986 “State of the Union”.

3. Acceleration. Flying Mach 6 is one thing. Having a plane that can accelerate up to that speed fast enough that the flight doesn’t already end, AND THEN slow down an equal amount, is another thing.

4. Sound. This sounds like a nuisance thing, until you hear one of these aircrafts in action. THEY ARE SO DAMN LOUD. It’s a health and safety issue almost. I would compare it to being around artillery fire, maybe worse. It stays with you for days.

The Japanese and Australians from time to time do some good work on this kind of aviation. Boeing had a civilian supersonic project in the 70’s, but it’s all been given up except for the occasional private jet or military experiment.

gaius4• 9 years ago

supersonic, let alone hypersonic, aviation was such a pipe dream for civilian aviation. Not saying it can’t be done

One word: Concorde.

AmVess• 9 years ago

This has been known for a while. Seismologists discovered it and tracked one at 5000 MPH. The ability to be anywhere in the world in a very short time is a compelling tool for the military.

thatcherc• 9 years ago

Can you elaborate on that? I'd be very interested to see how seismologists tracked a plane. Can you pick up high-altitude shockwaves from seismographs?

vpribish5• 9 years ago

1992: 4,000mph, Los Angeles http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-17/local/me-607_1_spy-pl...

USGS on seismographs and sonic booms generally: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/sonic-booms.php

dsnuh• 9 years ago

There was something about the SR-71 Blackbird that really captured the feeling of the time. Whenever I drive the 215 past March AFB and see the one they have on display, it reminds me of the age of movies like Firefox and War Games.

kazinator• 9 years ago

I can't see how even America's seventh fastest spy plane could be anything less than hypersonic, let alone the fastest one. :)

linkmotif5• 9 years ago

This is obviously cool on many levels but fundamentally this is very sad. This, while places in the US don’t have clean running water. The best national defense is creating a next generation that’s healthy, worldly and educated. Instead, this.

rayiner3• 9 years ago

I’m not sure what your point is. We already spend more on education and healthcare per capita than almost every other developed country. At what point is it appropriate to spend the incremental dollar on defense instead?

linkmotif5• 9 years ago

I was with you until you called it the "incremental dollar". We spend 3x more on defense than the nearest competitor[0]—0.6 trillion dollars per year. Given that we only collect $3 trillion per year[1], after debt service we're not really left with that much.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

[1] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

trhway• 9 years ago

in my view the first stage of SpaceX Falcon is the thing which is most close to the hypersonic transport today. One can imagine that such reusable stage would accelerate the high-altitude/suborbital plane thus solving the task of having engines for different regimes. Cost-wise - the few millions such a reusable stage launch would cost isn't that far from ~$35K/hour costs of SR71 on missions of 10+ hours.

vpribish5• 9 years ago

Having a degree in aerospace engineering and being a lifelong air and space fan this discussion is mostly disappointing. hacker news comments are of distinctly poorer quality outside the subjects of software and startups - sensation, urban legend, and ignorant story-telling is rising to the top instead of explanation, context, and insight. 8 of the top 10 comments are inane (UFOs! Movies! tinfoil-hats! Sophomore-year economics!).

Makes one wonder how much the mainstream hacker news threads are suffering from similar problems that I just can't perceive.

touristtam• 9 years ago

is that the follow up to the Aurora project ? https://www.defenceaviation.com/2007/06/sr-91-aurora-aircraf...

America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back and Hypersonic

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