US Army 2040 Plans With Iron Man-like Strength Enhancing Armor
August 21, 2023 by Brian Wang
The US Army Research Lab has presented general vision for 2040 which features giving soldiers Iron Man like powered full body armor with strength enhancement capabilities and creating new lighter tanks.
The US Army has been funding powered and unpowered exoskeletons to help soldiers lift loads and enhance performance.
Pentagon Eyes JetZero Blended Wing for Next Generation Air Refueling System
August 21, 2023 by Brian Wang
Jet Zero won the US Air Force $235 million blended wing demonstrator contract. Jet Zero will build a full scale demonstrator by the first quarter of 2027.
The prototype will be aimed at demonstrating at least a 30%-plus improvement in fuel efficiency compared to the Pratt & Whitney PW4000-powered Boeing KC-46, and a 30% increase in range. The project also targets a 70% increase in productivity compared to the C-17.
The Chinese navy is reportedly testing the planet’s most powerful coil gun which can accelerate a 124kg projectile in a firing test to a speed of 700km/h in less than 0.05 seconds. It was the heaviest known projectile to be used in a coil gun experiment. A normal torpedo move at 58 mph and have a 24 mile range. The China coilgun torpedo looks like it is 15 inches wide instead of the US coilgun system with 4 inch wide projectiles.
Above – The Chinese team developed a smart projectile equipped with sensors that are shielded from electromagnetic interference, allowing them to collect better data. Photo: Naval University of Engineering
B-21 Superstealth Bomber First Flight in Days and It Can Beat China’s Super Radar and Defenses
September 13, 2023 by Brian Wang
The U.S. Air Force announced today the B-21 Raider has started engine runs as part of its ground test program at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, California, facility. Engine testing is an essential milestone for the program as the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft continues on the path to flight test. A first flight in the next few days keeps the B-21 for operational capability in 2027. It will be able to beat China’s super anti-stealth radar, the YLC-8E.
China’s Top Navy Scientist Designs Nuclear Aircraft Carrier With Railguns and Lasers
September 25, 2023 by Brian Wang
China’s top naval scientist, Ma Weiming, has designed a nuclear-powered warship with rail gun, laser and high-powered microwave weapons.
US aircraft carriers have been nuclear powered for many decades and the newest Ford supercarrier has electromagnetic launchers. What is new in the Weiming designs are the extensive integration of rail guns, lasers, and high-powered microwave weapons. Weiming also looks more extensively at designing around electrical power.
Here is part of multi-page Transactions of China Electrotechnical journal article.
The paper describes transforming China into a railgun, laser equiped nuclear navy and having dual use with commercial ships, new high speed rail and electromagnetic space launch.
US Navy F/A-XX Sixth Gen Stealth Fighter for the 2030s
October 2, 2023 by Brian Wang
Youtuber Pilot Photog has renderings of the likely look of the US Navy’s planned F/A-XX 6th generation stealth fighter. The reason Pilot Photog can be quite confident that the F/A-XX will look like this is that a blended wing body (BWB) design. The BWB is what will be used for the Air Force NGAD (Next Generation Air Domination) 6th generation fighter.
As the age of the smart weapon continues, Northrop Grumman has been awarded a US Navy contract to develop a new self-guided 57-mm artillery shell for the Navy's Mk110 Naval Gun Mount medium-sized gun used on Littoral Combat Ships.
If you watch old movies or newsreels of naval combat, they tend to resemble gunpowder-besmirched storms with shot and shell blasting all over the place like steel rain. Today, things have changed as the major navies rely much more on precision rather than sheer firepower. Instead of massive salvos of giant shells packed with high explosives fired in the hopes of one of them landing close enough to the target to cause some damage, the goal nowadays is to shoot one round filled with not much explosives designed to land just where it can do the most good – or the most harm, depending on your point of view.
This one-shot-one-kill approach is behind the new 57-mm shell being developed by Northrop. Using technology similar to the kits the company makes to turn dumb iron bombs into precision munitions, the new shell uses a miniaturized and ruggedized version that incorporates seeker sensors to lock onto and home in on even a small, fast, agile target, and an aft-mounted directional system to steer it in for the final impact. In addition, the fuse can self-select for proximity or point-detonation mode for maximum effect.
The result is a round that can be fired at longer range yet still be able to engage and destroy a target no matter how many times it turns to evade. Also, the new shell can do this without any modifications to the existing deck gun.
DARPA and Aurora, subsidiary of Boeing, are making a breakthrough X-plane without regular flights controls. The Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program aims to design, build, and flight test a novel X-plane that incorporates Active Flow Control (AFC) as a primary design consideration. Crane seeks to optimize the benefits of active flow control by maturing technologies and design tools, and incorporating them early in the design process. Active flow control could improve aircraft performance by removing jointed surfaces, which currently drive design configurations that increase weight and mechanical complexity. Demonstrating AFC for stability and control in-flight would help open the design trade space for future military and commercial applications. In 2023, the aircraft received its official designation as X-65.
DARPA has contracted Raytheon to develop a practical version of a revolutionary air-breathing rotating detonation engine called Gambit, which would have no moving parts and could lead to lighter missiles with longer ranges at lower cost.
Gas turbines are remarkable power plants that have made possible modern air travel and many weapon systems, but they suffer from a number of disadvantages. They are complex machines that are heavy, have many moving parts that are costly to assemble and maintain, and they require exotic materials and special processing to handle the tremendous temperatures they operate at.
It's bad enough when such an engine is installed in an aircraft, but when it's part of a throwaway weapon like a cruise missile, this not only limits the payload, it runs into some serious money.
One alternative is the Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE), which replaces the complexities of the turbine with a peculiar property of burning fuel/air mixtures.
