From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #362 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 22 July 1995 Volume 05 : Number 362 In this issue: Re: Reference to "Aurora" in St. Louis Post Dispatch Re: Reference to "Aurora" Stealthy Apache and autohover... Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: gaia.usc.orst.edu.: host not found) (fwd) Re: Stealthy Disclosure 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: David Windle Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 11:26:03 Subject: Re: Reference to "Aurora" in St. Louis Post Dispatch Aurora Flight Sciences of Va are involved mainly in the development of high altitude UAVs..none of them painted black or travelling at hypersonic speeds. According to the AW&ST feature on UAVs,their projects include: Chiron - A sea skimming UAV for the ONR. Theseus - A UAV for NASA Perseus A+B - UAVs for NASA and the Dept.of Energy That's my bet on the "Aurora" being referred to in the awards....of course an operational hypersonic spy plane should, in an ideal world win an award or two..alas we live in imperfect times :) Hope this helps, thanks for the post anyway - you never know.... David ____________________________________________________________________________ Kathy wrote: > 4. Aurora Engineering Supplier Team > with the name of Frank Penrose listed. > > >So, does anybody know what this "Aurora" reference is about? > >Kathy Rages > ------------------------------ From: "Matt Velazquez" Date: 21 Jul 1995 08:10:47 U Subject: Re: Reference to "Aurora" Reply to: RE>>Reference to "Aurora" Hmmmmmm. It's not us, I don't think. I've never heard of an Engineering Support team around here; I suppose I should know, I AM the engineering support team (well, there's five of us, but don't tell them that). T Velazquez Aurora Flight Sciences (no, not that Aurora) ------------------------------ From: Corey Lawson Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 12:06:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Stealthy Apache and autohover... An auto-hover system is part of the xH-60 yHawk helicopters (x=U,M,S, y=Sea, Night, Black, etc.)... - ------------------------------+-------------------------------------------- Corey Lawson +Never Before You will ignore csl@booster.u.washington.edu +Never Again I will pretend - ------------------------------+-------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: blacksun@netcom.com (stealth) Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 14:53:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: gaia.usc.orst.edu.: host not found) (fwd) > My office is just down the street from the Skunk works and the Lockheed > Credit Union. Yesterday they had a van outside selling Skunk works items > such as t-shirts, mugs, photos, videos, etc. > > The guy working the mimi store gave me a copy of a in house zine that the > Skunk works puts out called "STAR". The issue of Jun 30 had a fantastic > photo of the new Darkstar with several more photo's inside and a two page > poster of it in flight. > > There is a store open to the public and they also have a catalouge of > itmes with the Skunks Works logo on them. > > Info on the zine can be found at: > > 1-800-7925067 > > Skunk Works store: > > L.E.R.C Employee Store > 1011 Lockhead Way Unit 12 > Palmdale Ca 935599 > Phone 805 5722201 > Fax 805 5722747 > > Cheers! > > Blacksun > > ------------------------------ From: MITErebent@aol.com Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 22:12:21 -0400 Subject: Re: Stealthy Disclosure While manufactured things generally get cheaper the more you make (for the reasons already elaborated), there are limitations when it comes to airframes. During the Reagan arms buildup in the 1980s, several defense reform questions were raised, including what is the most efficient rate and lot size for defense weapons system procurement. A GAO study of several different DoD procurement programs showed that about the best you can hope for with airframes is about 10% savings for producing them at an efficient rate (this figure is generally corroborated by other studies as well). With higher-rate items like munitions you can get up to 50% decrease in costs from higher production rates, while low-volume items like warships show neglegible gains from higher production rates. Of course, in the case of a B-2, 10% off of $1B is still a lot of money to pay for 1 aircraft. There are several reasons why there are small economies of scale in airframe production. One is that you can't get down much of a learning curve when you only have a total production of 50-500 aircraft. Also, airframe production involves more than just 1 assembly line (those of suppliers, etc.), so it's kind of hard to squeeze out a lot of extra efficiency from such a complex system. Aircraft are still pretty much assembled by hand, so you can't get rid of very much labor content the way you can in high-volume industries where automation pays for itself. Finally, it costs a lot to procure expensive things in big batches. That's why congress still hasn't made much progress in procuring things like aircraft in "efficient" numbers. For instance, producing 4000 B-2s would consume the entire GNP of the U.S. for a year. Eric ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #362 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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