In May 2015, for example, a V-22 crashed in Hawaii after its engines pulled in sand during a landing attempt. But it has been plagued by reliability and safety problems over its 30 years of development. The Defense Department’s only current hybrid craft is the V-22 tiltrotor, which combines elements of a helicopter and an airplane. The craft must be as swift and long flying as conventional-winged aircraft, yet durable and safe to operate. The Pentagon wants new vertical-launching rotorcraft that don’t require runways. It is capable of climbing to the edge of the upper atmosphere to boost small satellites into orbit.īoth these X-planes have military applications. The other is the XS-1 “space plane” that can reach speeds at least five times the speed of sound because of its powerful engines and advanced construction materials. One, a hybrid vehicle called “LightningStrike,” can take off and land like a helicopter but cruise like an airplane, thanks to its rotating wing and 24 small engines embedded inside its thick, oversize wing. “I hear DARPA talking about X-planes, the Navy talking about rapid capabilities.”ĭARPA alone is working on at least two new X-planes. airplane manufacturers, told National Defense, a defense-industry trade publication, in January. “I’ve been hearing about a paradigm shift,” Kevin Mickey, a vice president at Northrop Grumman, one of the top U.S. Their shared goal is to quickly produce many relatively inexpensive experimental aircraft and test them to determine which new technologies the military or civil aviation sector should embrace. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - the Defense Department’s main scientific division - are taking the lead in this new X-plane effort. It’s less expensive because an independent prototype lacks the overhead associated with a large program, which also shortens the timeline to delivery.” “It’s more flexible,” said retired Air Force Colonel Dan Ward, author of “The Simplify Cycle: A Field Guide to Making Things Better Without Making Them Worse, “and allows experiments to investigate a variety of situations, without having to wedge in to a predefined system or outcome. They don’t even need to be tied to any larger military or civil aircraft program, known as a “program of record.” The more X-planes flying that test out new ideas and hardware, the faster the military and industry can improve blueprints for production-model aircraft. They are the aerospace equivalent of science experiments. With this, the United States could reclaim its long-prized title as the world’s leader in high-tech aerospace developments - a title that Russia and China are now ferociously working to win.Ī new generation of experimental airplanes, or “X-planes,” could lead to profound advances in civil and military aviation, which would boost the American economy, as well as U.S. DARPA artist rendering of the new vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) experimental plane Phase 2 design.
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