Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 29, 2008 By Tim Logan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What goes up must come down.
But maybe not for a very, very long time.
That's the idea behind a new project that Boeing Co. and two other aerospace companies are undertaking for the advanced-research arm of the Pentagon.
It's called "Vulture" and it's a bid to push the boundaries of aviation by trying to develop an unmanned aircraft that can stay aloft for five years.
In recent weeks, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Aurora Flight Services have received contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — known as DARPA — to study the concept. Soon engineers, including some at Boeing's St. Louis-based Advanced Systems and Phantom Works divisions, will begin tackling the host of challenges that come with flying for so long at high altitudes.
The idea is for a small, lightweight plane that would likely carry surveillance or communications equipment and circle at 60,000 to 90,000 feet over a given point for extended periods of time. It would have to be more flexible than a satellite, able to change course and move around the globe. But it would need to be just as hardy, with minimal need for refueling or repairs once it's in flight. And it needs to be made of lightweight materials that won't require much power to move, but also won't break down over time.
It is, to put it mildly, a challenge, said Tom Ehrhard, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
"It is a very speculative project," he said. "It's classically DARPA. It's very, very hard."
It might be a little too hard, Ehrhard said. Pushing for a five-year flight plan may keep some serious competitors out of the mix. The most ambitious unmanned programs today are shooting for a week. Vulture's goal is more than 200 times that long.
"This is way beyond anything that's out there right now," said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker.
By shooting for it, DARPA hopes to develop some technologies that could be put to use on other, more traditional aircraft.
Any plane that hopes to stay aloft for five years, for instance, would likely require frictionless bearings, says Ehrhard. Right now, those bearings are very heavy, which is a problem because such a plane must be as light as possible to conserve fuel. This is the kind of project that helps find a solution to that problem, he said.
It is also a project at the leading edge of where the Pentagon says it wants to be.
Unmanned vehicles are the fastest-growing piece of the aerospace industry. Spending on them will total nearly $55 billion over the next decade, driven largely by the U.S. military, according to a recent study by aviation consultants at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.
Just last week, in a speech to officers at Air University at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged the Air Force to embrace unmanned aircraft more than they previously have, especially for surveillance.
So far, he said, "it's been like pulling teeth."
But DARPA's job, Walker said, is to work on projects the services may not know they need yet. By the time they get built, the utility is clear.
And Vulture will be a long time coming.
The first stage, beginning now, will last a year. Each company will study what designs might best work, what materials and power supplies would be most effective and what kind of missions such a plane may fly.
Next, by 2012, they'll build a small-scale version capable of flying for three months. After that comes phase three: a full-scale plane and a one-year test flight.
In its designs, Boeing plans to draw on some of its past satellite programs and the unmanned X-45C fighter project, said spokesman Chris Haddox.
The biggest challenge, Haddox said, will be making those satellite systems workable for years in the heavier atmosphere of Earth. As for power, it'll likely be solar.
Boeing is partnering with QinetiQ, a British company behind the solar-powered Zephyr, one of the longest-flying unmanned planes on the market, and says it'll also use some of the technologies behind that aircraft.
But Zephyr flights are still measured in hours, not in years, and they still frequently take off and land and have teams supporting them on the ground.
The goal of Vulture is to design a plane that doesn't need those things, that can effectively sever ties with the Earth for years at a time, or, as a DARPA presentation puts it to "break the mind-set that aircraft are defined by launch, recovery and maintenance cycles."
"It really is a radical re-look at basic aircraft design," Ehrhard said.
April 29, 2008 By Tim Logan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What goes up must come down.
But maybe not for a very, very long time.
That's the idea behind a new project that Boeing Co. and two other aerospace companies are undertaking for the advanced-research arm of the Pentagon.
It's called "Vulture" and it's a bid to push the boundaries of aviation by trying to develop an unmanned aircraft that can stay aloft for five years.
In recent weeks, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Aurora Flight Services have received contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — known as DARPA — to study the concept. Soon engineers, including some at Boeing's St. Louis-based Advanced Systems and Phantom Works divisions, will begin tackling the host of challenges that come with flying for so long at high altitudes.
The idea is for a small, lightweight plane that would likely carry surveillance or communications equipment and circle at 60,000 to 90,000 feet over a given point for extended periods of time. It would have to be more flexible than a satellite, able to change course and move around the globe. But it would need to be just as hardy, with minimal need for refueling or repairs once it's in flight. And it needs to be made of lightweight materials that won't require much power to move, but also won't break down over time.
It is, to put it mildly, a challenge, said Tom Ehrhard, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
"It is a very speculative project," he said. "It's classically DARPA. It's very, very hard."
It might be a little too hard, Ehrhard said. Pushing for a five-year flight plan may keep some serious competitors out of the mix. The most ambitious unmanned programs today are shooting for a week. Vulture's goal is more than 200 times that long.
"This is way beyond anything that's out there right now," said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker.
By shooting for it, DARPA hopes to develop some technologies that could be put to use on other, more traditional aircraft.
Any plane that hopes to stay aloft for five years, for instance, would likely require frictionless bearings, says Ehrhard. Right now, those bearings are very heavy, which is a problem because such a plane must be as light as possible to conserve fuel. This is the kind of project that helps find a solution to that problem, he said.
It is also a project at the leading edge of where the Pentagon says it wants to be.
Unmanned vehicles are the fastest-growing piece of the aerospace industry. Spending on them will total nearly $55 billion over the next decade, driven largely by the U.S. military, according to a recent study by aviation consultants at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.
Just last week, in a speech to officers at Air University at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged the Air Force to embrace unmanned aircraft more than they previously have, especially for surveillance.
So far, he said, "it's been like pulling teeth."
But DARPA's job, Walker said, is to work on projects the services may not know they need yet. By the time they get built, the utility is clear.
And Vulture will be a long time coming.
The first stage, beginning now, will last a year. Each company will study what designs might best work, what materials and power supplies would be most effective and what kind of missions such a plane may fly.
Next, by 2012, they'll build a small-scale version capable of flying for three months. After that comes phase three: a full-scale plane and a one-year test flight.
In its designs, Boeing plans to draw on some of its past satellite programs and the unmanned X-45C fighter project, said spokesman Chris Haddox.
The biggest challenge, Haddox said, will be making those satellite systems workable for years in the heavier atmosphere of Earth. As for power, it'll likely be solar.
Boeing is partnering with QinetiQ, a British company behind the solar-powered Zephyr, one of the longest-flying unmanned planes on the market, and says it'll also use some of the technologies behind that aircraft.
But Zephyr flights are still measured in hours, not in years, and they still frequently take off and land and have teams supporting them on the ground.
The goal of Vulture is to design a plane that doesn't need those things, that can effectively sever ties with the Earth for years at a time, or, as a DARPA presentation puts it to "break the mind-set that aircraft are defined by launch, recovery and maintenance cycles."
"It really is a radical re-look at basic aircraft design," Ehrhard said.