From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #566 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 13 December 1995 Volume 05 : Number 566 In this issue: Help on H.A.L.E. aircraft. Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works Re: LADC and the YF-22 Off topic enquiry SENIOR CITIZEN unmasked ? Re: Help on H.A.L.E. aircraf Danish Stealth Technology Re: SENIOR CITIZEN unmasked ? RAND home page Re: Air speed Re: Air speed Re: Advanced Propulsion methods re: AW&ST Dec. 11, 1995 (preview) Re: H.A.L.E. aircraft. Re: Aurora sightings? Re: Beryllium and RAND Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works Re: H.A.L.E. aircraft. Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works 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: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 04:21:13 PST Subject: Help on H.A.L.E. aircraft. Does anyone have any data pertaining to the HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) RPV? Chuck ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 07:39:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works This is a smart portion of a article from a special issue of Popular Science (Aug. 94). Wing Over Russia by Bill Sweetman "...Western military analysts have often gone astray by confunsing the unsophistication of aircraft hardware with its actua capability. For example, when defector Lt. Victor Belenko landed his Mig-25 fighter in Japan in September 1978, some commentators mocked the plane's seeming technical crudity. Instead of being built with titanium alloys, the fighter was made of steel (not even stainless!) and the radar was full of vacuum tubes (how primitive!). These experts didin't realize that the welded-steel airframe of the Mig-25 was little, if any, heavier than a riveted titanium structure would be, and much less costly to build. It was a smart design choice. Western engineers had already tried and failed at using steel for high-speed aircraft. The missing ingredient was Russia's advanced welding technology-by far the best in the world. And when the Mig-25 radar was designed in the 1960s, vacuum tubes were still a logical alternative to solid-state electronics for such high-power applications. Again, the engineers had chosen what worked and could be serviced easuly. In short, Russian design philosophy has long stressed a different goal: strength, simplicity, and ease of repair on the flight lines of remote airfields." _________________________________________________________________________ May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 07:45:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: LADC and the YF-22 On Mon, 11 Dec 1995, Greg Fieser wrote: > Unofficially speaking, General Dynamics (excuse me, I "meant" to say > Lockheed Ft. Worth Company) did most of their portion of the YF-22 work > in what is (was?) known as Building 500, former home of the Dorito... er, > the ill-fated A-12 Avenger II program. A few of the A-12 people left after > the cancellation/layoffs/mass exodus probably ended up working on ATF too, > but I "can't say" for sure... But the A-12 Avenger was not made by Grumman??? (now Northop-Grumman). May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: Sick Puppy Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 08:01:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: Off topic enquiry Sorry for the off topic enquiry, but I is only a stupid dawg. The major achieevment of the Skunk works was learning me to reed and write. Several months ago somone posted a note on a meeting that would discuss time travel and mentioned a paper that was going to be published on the subject. If anyone knows where I can get a copy of that paper, please mail me at sikpuppy@maestro.com. Would like to get a head start on the topic before Discovery channel does its special program on the subject in April (not April 1st). If y'all see any stealth cats, please let me know. Sick Puppy, the Cat_Eating_Dawg Photonic & Tachyonic Systems Engineer of the Stealth Starship Dark^Matter -=:( Chained, whipped, beaten and severely abused in Katherine's Dungeon ):=- -=:( How could anything that feels so good be so wrong ):=- ------------------------------ From: "J. Pharabod" Date: Tue, 12 Dec 95 14:41:31 MET Subject: SENIOR CITIZEN unmasked ? I have just looked at http://www.portal.com/~trader/sc.html and saw the two drawings of the possible SENIOR CITIZEN (subsonic V/STOL). Sorry for my paranoid obsession, but they make me think of the Belgian "UFO". In particular, these drawings look very much like the drawing page 195 of the book "Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique", written in 1991 by the SOBEPS (Societe Belge d'Etude des Phenomenes Spatiaux). This last drawing has been made by one of the people who saw (or thought so) the Belgian "UFO" during an observation night organized by the SOBEPS (April 13-14, 1990). What is characteristic is that, in addition to the triangular shape, they noticed two fins looking very much like the fins on the above drawings of the SENIOR CITIZEN. This was not a sighting at close distance, but these people observed what they thought to be the "UFO" with binoculars. Now I am pretty sure that this SENIOR CITIZEN is the Belgian "UFO". It has been seen also over southern England and North-East of the USA (Pine Bush and possibly the "old" Hudson Valley sightings). Maybe also near Edwards AFB (see Popular Mecahnics, December 1991). It is very probably a rigid airship. I suggest two hypotheses: - - since the Soviet Union has collapsed, maybe the US-NATO military want to create a fictitious extra-terrestrial threat, in order to get money (I don't really believe that, especially if some of the Hudson Valley "UFOs" were this craft [others were formations of small planes - sometimes said to have links with the CIA!], since it was before this collapse). - - maybe they made their craft look like an UFO, so nobody takes this matter seriously. That would be a good psychological warfare test, and is one of my favorite hypotheses. Such a craft would be a very good spy craft, protected (in advanced countries) by the ridicule. It could probably be used as a theater transport craft in war time (with lights off, of course: it has been noticed that it nearly disappears in the night when it puts off its lights - not very surprising! By the way, which kind of ordinary plane suddenly puts off its lights ?). J. Pharabod ------------------------------ From: "Matt Velazquez" Date: 12 Dec 1995 09:05:38 U Subject: Re: Help on H.A.L.E. aircraf Reply to: RE>Help on H.A.L.E. aircraft. >From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com >Does anyone have any data pertaining to the HALE >(High Altitude Long Endurance) RPV? > Chuck Uh, which one? The HALE acronym covers a lot of territory. NASA's ERAST program is funding quite a bit of HALE research through a consortium of General Atomics, Aurora Flight Sciences, Scaled Composites, and AeroVironment. The last aircraft to fly under ERAST auspices was AeroVironment's Pathfinder solar-electric aircraft, which made the papers recently by setting a new altitude record for solar-powered aircraft - see PopSci or Avleak for details. ERAST is also looking at getting a UAV design together using input from all 4 companies. It'll be interesting to see how the details get hammered out on that one. Here at Aurora we are getting ready to send the first Perseus B out to Dryden again to fly a payload from Harvard. That should happen sometime in January (everybody out there wave at the airplane when it goes by:o)#. We also have the Theseus prototype getting ready to fly. Theseus is a true HALE aircraft, with something like 5000 nm range at 65,000 ft over a 48-hour mission. The wing center panel just arrived here in Manassas, and boy is it huge! The chord is about 6 ft at the root. That aircraft is scheduled to be up on its gear and running on both engines before Xmas. (Incidentally, if any skunkers are in the area and want to get a tour of the facility, let me know and I'll be glad to show you around). Anyway, -T Matthew T Velazquez Aurora Flight Sciences ------------------------------ From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 07:35:41 PST Subject: Danish Stealth Technology Associated Press: Kristina Bischoff, age 5, of Broenden Denmark, amazed scientists when she shoewd off her naturally green cat. The Copenhagen university is testing fur samples to find the secret of the cats color. As is often the case with felines, the identity of the father is unknown. - -- Think about it. Cats hunt in grass. A stealth cat! Chuck ------------------------------ From: sschaper@mo.net (Steve Schaper) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 10:07:08 -0600 Subject: Re: SENIOR CITIZEN unmasked ? The Senior Citizen call sign was associated with a craft flying a fairly typical space shuttle re-entry profile. That doesn't square with a dirigible. ------------------------------ From: "Ted Drain" Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 08:57:17 -0800 Subject: RAND home page Hi all, For those of you interested in RAND, I suggest checking out their home page on the web. It has some interesting abstracts and I think you can order some of their non-classified research. http://www.rand.org/ Ted Ted Drain Jet Propulsion Laboratory ted.drain@zeus.jpl.nasa.gov ------------------------------ From: russellk@BIX.com Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 12:01:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Air speed This statement was made about the Lockheed UAV: >A Williams-Rolls FJ44 turbofan will propel DarkStar to a 130-knot cruise >speed (which is 300 knots true airspeed at 45,000 ft.). Can someone please explain to me how 130 knots cruise translates to 300 knots "true airspeed"? I know that airspeed vs. mach number varies according to temperature (and thus altitude), but this statement doesn't seem to make sense. Please enlighten. ============================================ Russell Kay, Technical Editor, BYTE Magazine 1 Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458 603-924-2591; fax 603-924-2550 russellk@bix.com ============================================ ------------------------------ From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 09:33:06 PST Subject: Re: Air speed The indicated airspeed is a function of the difference in static and dynamic air pressures. The airplane responds to dynamic pressure. The dynamic pressure varies linearly with density. Using std. atmosphere tables or a functional approximation you can convert from airspeed to velocity. Chuck ------------------------------ From: sschaper@mo.net (Steve Schaper) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 15:43:04 -0600 Subject: Re: Advanced Propulsion methods At 3:28 PM 12/11/95, Wei-Jen Su wrote: > > Yes, I know... Warp Engines!!!! > Just a little bit of Chrismas humor :P > > May the Force be with you > > Su Wei-Jen > E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu You aren't familiar with Miguel Alcubierre's work published early this year? It can be done, we just don't know how to build them yet. ------------------------------ From: ahanley@usace.mil Date: Tue, 12 Dec 95 15:50:19 ÿÿÿ Subject: re: AW&ST Dec. 11, 1995 (preview) Sounds like the A/F-117X again... I wonder if the AF isn't just being a tad bit optimistic in assuming that 15 years from now the Syrians will only have weapons that they can easily acquire today. If the Syrians are talking cash (and they often do), they should little problem in acquiring SU-35s or later, or Rafales well before then. Art Hanley Despite all appearances to the Contrary, my employers have nothing to do with any of the above ------------------------------ From: VVKW99B@prodigy.com (MR THEODORE CORMANEY) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 20:30:35 EST Subject: Re: H.A.L.E. aircraft. Chuck: There are three or four military HALE UAVs under development by DARPA, CIA and DARO. Most advanced is Lockheed/Boeing's "DarkStar" stealthy flying wing. Lockheed has another, faster, entry it is seeking funding for. Teledyne Ryan is in design stage for Tier Two Plus HALE UAV. There is an ACTD based on the old Amber design, called Tier Two Medium Altitude Endurance UAV, marketed as Predator. Tier Two has to exit the ACTD in June 96 and is seeking a leasing deal with OSD, since the operations costs of the system are prohibitive and no customer has been found in the Services. The CIA has earlier, very low capability Amber derivative that it blows hot and cold on. Anything else I can tell you? TC/DC - --[ ORIGINAL MESSAGE ]----------------- Does anyone have any data pertaining to the HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) RPV? Chuck ------------------------------ From: chosa@chosa.win.net (Byron Weber) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 14:06:54 Subject: Re: Aurora sightings? Jack Lockhart wrote: >Byron, > >I plan to visit Area 51 and Tonapah NV in the near future. I am somewhat >confused. I thought Area 51 was off limits. Would you please share what >parts of Area 51 are within limits. And what path/route did you take to get >to Tonapah, NV? What was the temps? I understand it is cold as hell >nowdays in that desert. > Clarification. I was in the vicinity of Area 51 and the Tonapah Test Range the weekend of Dec 2/3, lurking, so to speak. Area 51 is very much off limits, the Cammo Dudes were out and enforcing the boundry. Dont take the boundry for granted. The Area 51 Visitors Guide has a current map of the restricted area, available at the Rachel gas station. I spent some time in Tikaboo Valley, Tikaboo Peak, and surrounding areas. To get to Tonapah from Rachel take the 375 north to the 6 and then take the 6 east. It is absolutely beautiful this time of year, but very cold, near zero at night. ------------------------------ From: chosa@chosa.win.net (Byron Weber) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 18:12:09 Subject: Re: Beryllium and RAND Seems like I put my foot in it this time. I beg your indulgence on this non-skunky subject. I have been called upon to correct inaccuracies regarding RAND. The RAND Corporation File No: 00227537 File Date: 5/14/48 Mail Add: P.O. Box 2138 Santa Monica CA 90407-2138 Status: Active Type: Articles of Incorporation - Non-Stock (Nonprofit) Class: Public Benefit Last Complete Statement: 0266212 Statement Date: 6/15/1995 President: James Thomson 1700 Main Street Santa Monica CA 90407 Agent: Rae W Archibald same as President's Address source: California Department of Corporations Spring 1946- first study for the Air Force: Preliminary Design of Experimental World-Circling Spaceships. This was representative of typical RAND studies the first year, almost exclusively hardware. Initial Corporate Charter: 5/14/48, RAND's Articles of Incorporation provide dissolution of all assets will be distributed to the Ford Foundation. Individual who arranged initial finacing: H. Rowan Gaither (Gaither Family) Subsequent support: Ford Foundation, $100,000 interest free loan. In 1950 raised loan to $1,000,000 and later converted it to a grant. Splinter company: 12/1/57 SDC, System Development Corporation, assets recoverable by Air Force in event of dissolution, researches man-machine relationships. Interlocking relationship with MITRE. RAND sponsership: July 1948, ANSER, Analytic Services, Inc-technical evaluation of weapon systems and subsystems. source: The RAND Corporation Bruce L.R. Smith Harvard University Press 1966 Note: Obviously RAND is a different organization in 1995-as I previously posted, their www home page and 1994 report are full of interesting details. Byron ------------------------------ From: "Art Hanley" Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 19:58:06 +0700 Subject: Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works Wei-Jen, Thanks for the personal note. I agree totally with what Bill Sweetman said. One thing that is important to remember that to accomplish a similar task, there are a number of roads to get there. also, differing philosophies should always be taken into account when analyzing what others do. For example, the Soviets' use of tubes. It's true that solid state wasn't as advanced in the '60s especially over there. There's another reason why tubes might be used as well. Solid state devices, even over here, couldn't handle the large power loads the Soviets put through the transmitters of their radars. Whereas our philosophy was to use more sophisticated devices to "listen" very well, the Soviets' philosophy was to "shout" much louder. For this you needed tubes until the 1980s. Another difference in philosophy no doubt gave designers fits in their work in developing stealth technology. The Soviets and their client states didn't throw anything away. Their older ground based radars (and some not so old) used much longer wavelengths than later and Western radars. This was relatively inefficient, consumed a lot of power, and had higher downtime. On the other hand, they were easier to work on and saw a looong way. They weren't precise enough for weapons guidance, but they served in the early warning and search roles. The point of this is that it's reported that these radars can "see" stealth aircraft because of their long wavelength and because we chose not to spend the enormous extra sums to cover that area. This is probably a safe decision, since the radars that can actually do precision tracking and weapons guidance are covered in our designs. There is anecdotal evidence to confirm this. Some reports from the Gulf War talked about Iraqi Mirages being sent up to search for F-117s (I have no reliable way to confirm this). Naturally, they were always spotted and easily avoided. It was also apparent that the Mirage pilots didn't know where the F-117s really were. The disquieting aspect of this is that sending up jets with searchlights is a silly thing to do if you have absolutely No idea where the targets are. But, if the Iraqi long range search radars were of the older long wavelength type, they may have "seen" the F-117s well enough to aim the Mirages in the general area, and hope they get lucky with the searchlights. This would be really playing the odds and would at best only result in the loss of a plane or two, certainly not enough to make any militarily meaningful impact, but consider what they imagined the political impact might have been if they had gotten a couple of F-117s, the US' Wonderplane, in the early raids? They might have thought it worth the effort. Art ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 02:27:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: H.A.L.E. aircraft. On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, MR THEODORE CORMANEY wrote: > DARPA, CIA and DARO. Most advanced is Lockheed/Boeing's "DarkStar" > stealthy flying wing. Lockheed has another, faster, entry it is seeking > funding for. Teledyne Ryan is in design stage for Tier Two Plus HALE UAV. If I understand Lockhead had a design of a very fast classified UAV, but the goverment cancelled the fund. So, they built the "DarkStar" with some technologies from the faster UAV. If I am wrong, please correct me. May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 02:38:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Mig-25 and Skunk Works On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Art Hanley wrote: > Another difference in philosophy no doubt gave designers fits in > their work in developing stealth technology. The Soviets and their > client states didn't throw anything away. Their older ground based > radars (and some not so old) used much longer wavelengths than later > and Western radars. This was relatively inefficient, consumed a lot of power, > and had higher downtime. On the other hand, they were easier to work > on and saw a looong way. They weren't precise enough for weapons > guidance, but they served in the early warning and search roles. > The point of this is that it's reported that these radars can "see" > stealth aircraft because of their long wavelength and because we > chose not to spend the enormous extra sums to cover that area. This > is probably a safe decision, since the radars that can actually do > precision tracking and weapons guidance are covered in our designs. I remember that I read thatone time Western defense designers asked to the ex-Soviet (this is after Cold War) why they didn't develop Stealth aircraft (by that time he asked there is not ex-Soviet Stealth aircraft). He answer that they don't need it, USA has so few types of SAM (Hawks and Patriots only???), in others hands they have a large variety of SAM (maybe this is originate by the poor defense system agains spy aircraft). > > > There is anecdotal evidence to confirm this. Some reports from the > Gulf War talked about Iraqi Mirages being sent up to search for > F-117s (I have no reliable way to confirm this). Naturally, they > were always spotted and easily avoided. It was also apparent that > the Mirage pilots didn't know where the F-117s really were. The > disquieting aspect of this is that sending up jets with searchlights > is a silly thing to do if you have absolutely No idea where the > targets are. But, if the Iraqi long range search radars were of > the older long wavelength type, they may have "seen" the F-117s well > enough to aim the Mirages in the general area, and hope they get > lucky with the searchlights. This would be really playing the odds > and would at best only result in the loss of a plane or two, > certainly not enough to make any militarily meaningful impact, but > consider what they imagined the political impact might have been if > they had gotten a couple of F-117s, the US' Wonderplane, in the > early raids? They might have thought it worth the effort. > I remember that I read a story from a F-117 pilot saying that during Gulf War he was flying in the border of Iraq when suddenly a Mirage F-1 start to following him (the F-117 pilot though that he was track by the radar of the Iraqui aircraft). So, he make a change of direction and the Mirage is not longer follow him. May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #566 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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