From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #52 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 14 January 1993 Volume 02 : Number 052 In this issue: Re: Skunk Works Digest V2 #51 Re: U-2 U-2 still in use.................... Re: U-2 U-2 still on duty. Mildenhall TR1's Re: Video notes JDW AURORA Article Summary (last one) U-2 Incident See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: randy@halcyon.halcyon.com (C. Brandon Gresham, Jr.) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 00:59:37 -0800 Subject: Re: Skunk Works Digest V2 #51 Rick sez: > Yes, the U2R is still flying. Does anybody know if it is still in > production? I can answer a third of the question. I participated in the reopening of the U-2 production line. The U-2R was the baseline for the design but the resulting A/C was the TR-1. - -------------- Randy randy@halcyon.com * * * Data is not information is not knowledge is not wisdom. ------------------------------ From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 06:23:53 MST Subject: Re: U-2 randy@halcyon.halcyon.com (C. Brandon Gresham, Jr.) writes: >Rick sez: >> Yes, the U2R is still flying. Does anybody know if it is >>still in production? >I can answer a third of the question. I participated in the reopening of >the U-2 production line. The U-2R was the baseline for the design but the >resulting A/C was the TR-1. Nice! I think the line has now been closed for a while now, although TR-1s still come in to LADC Palmdale on a fairly regular basis for maintenance/upgrades. Here is some info from my 1991 Janes AWA: After a three-phase production history spanning 34 years, the final aircraft of the U-2/TR-1 family (TR-1A 80-1099) was delivered to USAF on October 3, 1989. Production totaled 55 U-2As in 1955-60, 12 U-2Rs in 1967-68, and in 1988-89: 7 U-2Rs, 1 U-2RT, 25 TR-1As, 2 TR-1Bs, and 2 NASA ER-2s. Three TR-1s were later converted to U-2Rs. - -dean ------------------------------ From: wlhadley@swift.mitre.org (William L. Hadley) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 08:10:03 EST Subject: U-2 still in use.................... tslage78@Calvin.EDU (Thomas Slager) writes: >Stupid Question to follow: No, not really.......... >Is the U.S. still currently using the U-2 for recon? I have read twice in the >past week, once in Newsweek and once in the local paper, about information >gained by "sattelites and aerial recon." If not the U-2, then what else would >they be using? I too was wondering about this until a few weeks ago. I was looking through back issues of Avaition Week and Space Technology and saw a small item about a U-2 that had crashed into the Sea of Japan while on a "surveilance" mission. The crash happened early in Jan of 1992 (Jan 15 maybe - I can check when I get home and look at the magazine). The item was only a few sentences long and didn't really give much more information than I have already typed here. Bill Hadley ------------------------------ From: justin@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Justin Ridge) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 01:40:32 +1000 Subject: Re: U-2 Folks, I've noticed a fair bit of comment on U-2's lately, or should I say speculation. I received a book about a month back (published Oct '92) which details every aircraft, every unit, and every base of the USAF. Through this book, I may be able to shed some light on what happened to the U-2. To quote from the last paragraphs: "Both U-2Rs and TR-1As were heavily involved in the war with Iraq, flying constant reconnaissance missions before, during and after the conflict to monitor ground movements and communications. Although a costly program, the high-flying 'Dragon Ladies' are still regarded as a crucial reconnaissance asset... "During December 1991 the Air Force decided to abandon the TR-1 designation. Therefore, the TR-1 became the U-2R, while the TR-1B changed to U-2RT." The U-2 is operated by the 9th Wng (formerly the 9th SRW), based at Beale AFB, and has been since transferring from the 100th SRW at Davis-Monthan in 1976. The TR-1 was assigned to the 9th Wng in 1981. This info from: US Air Force Air Power Directory. Pub: Aerospace Publishing (UK), Airtime Publishing (US) I hope someone hasn't already said this stuff!! Regards, JR - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justin Ridge, | Phone: +61 02 202811 Computing Centre | Fax : +61 02 231772 University of Tasmania | Email: Justin.Ridge@cc.utas.edu.au - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Stefan Skoglund Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 16:43:33 -0100 Subject: U-2 still on duty. TR-1A is still on duty. I think two is in the UK based at Mildenhall. They belong to NATO. Mildenhall has one HAS for each. Imagine that : An hardened air shelter for an airplane with about 40m wing-span. That one is probably the biggest one in the Western world. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Stefan Skoglund I Home : 0500 450878 sp2stes1@obelix.his.se, I ----------------- University of Skoevde, Sweden I +46 500 450878 Int ------------------------------ From: seb@tadtec.co.uk Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 16:55:58 GMT Subject: Mildenhall TR1's TR1's still occasionally float over Cambridge, which is just a few miles from Mildenhall. I haven't seen one for a few weeks but I've not read anything in the local papers about them returning home (and the local papers *did* tell us about the Blackbirds departing). The Mildenhall F-111's have been reported as departing, and I saw two of them just yesterday. Please, could we get an Aurora operating from Mildenhall? Pretty please? Steve Barber My thought & statements are all my own. ------------------------------ From: Geoff.Miller@Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 09:55:22 PST Subject: Re: Video notes Dean writes: >There was a program on Discovery Channel last night called "Spytech" that >was rather interesting. There was a brief scene in which Kelly Johnson was shown writing something on a blackboard. I couldn't make out very much of it, but the last three words were unmistakably "...to Area 51." Also, as an aside, there was a short segment on the Lockheed Aquila RPV. I participated in this program when I worked for Lockheed, first in the test program at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, and later in the training program at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, in the mid-Eighties. My manager at the time, Bill Fox (the guy with the red Lockheed cap) was interveiewed for the segment. All in all, a pretty good program. - --Geoff ------------------------------ From: serafini@nas.nasa.gov (David B. Serafini) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 93 11:44:57 -0800 Subject: JDW AURORA Article Summary (last one) From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 23:43:04 -0800 > From: larry@ichips.intel.com > (A summary for purposes of discussion) > (I can fairly say that I also made the description a bit more understandable) > > Radical Engine Technology > Written by Bill Sweetman. [...deleted...] David B. Serafini writes: In paper 90-3284 by Petley (NASA Langley) and Jones (Lockheed) entitled "Thermal Management for a Mach 5 Cruise Aircraft Using Endothermic Fuel" (thanks again George A. for the copy) they show an over-under (turbojet over the ramjet duct) turboramjet design with both the ramjet duct and the turbojet's compressor being fed from the same 2-D inlet. >[In '81, a design for a Mach 5 plane proposed by Lockheed had a >turbojet and a ramjet with separate flow paths fed by one inlet, with >a door in the inlet feeding the turbojet which would be closed around >Mach 3 or so. These are basically the same design. It's been bouncing around for a long time. NASA/Lewis has tested it twice in the 11ft superonic wind tunnel. For the benefit of the rest of the list let me briefly quote a paragraph from the 1990 Mach 5 study about the 1985 Mach 5 Lockheed/NASA/P&W study: "The propulsion system concept incorporated in this (1990) aircraft was derived from a Mach 5 penetrator study done in the mid-1980s as a joint effort between NASA, Lockheed California, and Pratt and Whitney. That system consisted of an over/under turbo/ramjet design that utilized a F-100 class turbofan integrated with a two-dimensional ramjet. That system was designed for liquid methane fuel. The system designed for the current concept is similar to the Lockheed P&W concept in that both use a two- dimensional mixed compression inlet design with a variable geometry ramp system scheduled to position the shocks for efficient operation." I called Petley to see if there was a paper available on the propulsion system for the 1990 paper. He said no. He did tell me that a similar system was the subject of a paper at this weeks (?) Reno conference. That system was integrated into a waverider. I heard that Pegg was the lead on that paper. That system also uses an endothermic fuel. >NASA has been testing the ramjet part of the engine >inlet for years, but just recently starting looking into the turbojet >path. There are concerns that the ramjet inlet path won't work as >long as the turbojet path is open. Does the problem you mention also exist in the above studies? The problems are with the over/under concept, so they exist in any design using that concept. There are several waverider designs floating around NASA these days. I know at least one uses an over/under engine design, but the impression I've gotten is that the engine systems haven't been looked at in very much detail yet. (I'm not familiar with all the designs, so this may not be a valid generalization) Are you referring to one shock being used for both inlets, and how pressure changes (door closing, unstarts, transients) in one or both paths could change the shock position and therefore the performance? Yeah, pretty much. The ramjet flow path can be pretty sensitive to pressure and mass flow, so if the low speed path diverts too much mass flow or causes the pressure to change too much at the cowl lip, it could have a very bad effect. Can you share what the concern is? Part aerodynamic, part structural. The over/under concept has never been tested in a supersonic inlet that I know of, so we don't really know if it will work. I only know of some preliminary aero simulation that was done very recently for NASA/Lewis, but it's neither comprehensive nor conclusive. I don't know if anyone has addressed the structural issues. The structural issues are the strength of the structure given the large aerodynamic forces at that speed, and the integrity of moving parts given the high temperature. How about a wrap-around concept? Axisymmetric designs seem to be out of favor for high speed inlets. I don't know why. Probably the difficulty of building them. The SR-71 inlet was very complicated, and only had to function at Mach 3+. The stresses at Mach 5-10 are much higher. NASP's Mach 20 is even worse. > Anyway, Lockheed dropped the whole >project a long time ago. > (Or did they? :-)] Paul Czysz has heard Billig's engine run!! It did beat at a low frequency!! But that was on a test stand. I'm not saying it's the pulser but it's interesting! Certainly is. Larry - -David ------------------------------ From: Christopher Paul Diehl Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 21:23:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: U-2 Incident During the world news report tonight on our short air operation run today in Iraq, it was briefly mentioned that the Iraqis attacked a U-2 recently while on an announced overflight. No other details were given. Has anybody heard more info on this? Chris Diehl ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #52 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". 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