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The V1 Flying Bomb

Further out from the epicentre walls, roofs and window frames were ripped out exposing the contents and innards of the house. Further out still, all the windows were blown out and roofing slates blown off. Every time a Doodlebug landed hundreds of houses were damaged. Ranging from total demolition to  minor damage.  This was a freezing, drenched summer and repairs would take several months. Londoners were de-housed in their tens of thousands or shivered in cold, damp and roofless houses. The blast area of a V1  extended across a radius of 400 -600 yards in each direction.

Anyone unlucky enough to be close to the impact site would be blown apart or suffer crush injuries from falling masonry. Others would be trapped below collapsed buildings and have to be dug out. Further away from the impact site awful injuries were inflicted by shards of flying glass.

During the course of the attacks the nature of the injuries changed somewhat. At the beginning people were caught unawares on the street and  injuries from flying glass were widespread. Later on, people had understood the necessity of shelter in safe (er) areas of their home e.g. under the stairs. However, this had the effect of less flying glass injuries but more crush injuries from people being buried in the ruins of collapsed houses.

The toll of human suffering was appx. 6184 people killed by V1's and 17981 seriously injured and maimed. Tens of thousands of others received lesser injuries. Countless more would suffer the pain of bereavement or from the loss of their home and treasured possessions.

The suffering and grief endured by Londoner's during this period must never be forgotten.

The German Flying Bomb

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2) Top Gun

3) Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag

4) Iron Eagle

5) Behind Enemy Lines

• Navy preparing to launch new carrier catapult technology
• Jet Engines – How they work
• Mach Loop – Speed and scenery heaven
• Media's perspective of Red Flag

•  historynet.com
• imdb.com

The post Our favorite military aviation films! appeared first on Afterburner - MiGFlug's Magazine.

Small Margins

The U-2 Dragon Lady. Notice its huge 31.4 m wingspan!

Introduced in 1957, the U-2 is remarkably still in use today. This puts it on the list of very few aircraft that has flown with the USAF for more than 50 years. It has a service ceiling of 21,000m and has therefore been very effective when surveilling the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and Cuba. But how can it be able to fly this high? The answer is its light air frame, large wing span and big engines. The later model, TU-2S,  features the 84.5kN General Electric F118. This might not sound much, but since the whole U-2 only weighs 18.1 tons (max weight) the engine is perfect for its mission. The U-2 can fly for 12 hours without refueling, covering a distance of 10,300 kilometers with a cruise speed of 690 km/h and a max speed of 805. The speed that it had to reach to be able to climb to this altitude (ie the ideal speed) was only 19km/h under its stall speed. This means that if going 19km over the ideal speed the engine would stall, breaking the super fragile aircraft to pieces, and going under the limit would make it drop in altitude to a level where enemy anti-aircraft defences were within firing range. Therefore the pilots called this range of 19km/h the “coffin corner”.

Great glider becomes horrible lander

The aircraft is built to be easy to control at high altitudes, but at lower height the air has a higher density and so the U-2 gets very hard to control. It requires a lot of physical strength to steer it at the low altitudes of the runway, and due to its great glider capabilities, it floats over the runway, making the landing extremely hard. Usually there is a chase car and a second U-2 pilot assisting the pilot of the descending U-2 with information such as angle of descent and declining aircraft height. Since these cars need to have high speeds it is actually not any special-built Air Force vehicles but normal Chevrolet Camaros and Ford Mustangs.

The "unbalanced" aircraft

A U-2 at touchdown showing its "bicycle" landing gear.

The U-2’s landing gear is of a rather unusual configuration since it only features two wheels - one in the front and one in the back, making it look like a bicycle. Before taxiing the ground crew installs extra wheels called “pogos” under each wing who are then disconnected from the aircraft right after takeoff to reduce weight. When landing, the wings have a titanium skid at the very tip, protecting the wings from damage. When the aircraft has come to a complete halt, the ground crew once again installs pogos under the wings and begin to taxi the U-2 to its hangar. The rear landing gear is coupled to the rudder and so the pilot can provide some steering during taxiing.

The crew (ie the pilot since the U-2 is a one-seat aircraft) wears a special pressurized suit, just like on the Blackbird, in case of a pressure fall in the cockpit. The pilot can take both drink and food with him in small special containers when having long duration flights however many of the pilots choose not to, and can therefore lose as much as 6 pounds of body weight on a single mission. When the Dragon Lady was new, it was possible to bring a suicide pill when going on a mission, capable of killing you within 15 seconds. The reason was the danger of being shot down and captured flying over the USSR or Eastern Europe. However after an incident when a pilot almost swallowed his pill due to its resemblance to a piece of candy, it was removed.

50 years of U-2 development

As you would expect of an aircraft that has been in service for more than 50 years, there has been a wide variety of models and improvements of the Dragon Lady. Some of the most important improvements with their new designations are displayed in the table below:

A Dragon Lady without underwing pods indicating that it is a U-2H (not showed in table) or earlier.

End of the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady

The competitors - A RQ-4 Global hawk (front) together with a two-seat U-2 (back).

As you can see the Dragon Lady was a beast at its introduction and is still a great aircraft that has served with the USAF as well as with NASA and CIA. It was a lifesaver for American intelligence gathering services during the Cold War and made it possible for the Americans to spy on the Russians well out of range of anti-aircraft defence. But as with all great inventions there will come something greater eventually. To the U-2 that might be the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk. The Global Hawk is an UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) which has a service ceiling of 18,000 meters and can stay in the air for 28 hours. This change, which was made public in 2001, is to start taking place in 2016. However some politicians have made complaints about this as they claim that the U-2 will still be more cost-efficient than the RQ-4.

Additional Reading:

• Read the first article of the series (about the Blackbird) here.
• Interested in naval warfare? Learn about different designations of vessels here!
• Read about a giant Russian bomber project from the 30's here.

Sources:

• Militaryfactory.com
• Pedlow and Welzenbach 1992
• Blackbirds.net
• LAtimes.com
• Flightglobal.com
• Invention & Technology Magazine, Volume 22 by Huntington, Tom
• www2.gwu.edu
• NYtimes.com

The post Remarkable airplanes – #2: Lockheed U-2 appeared first on Afterburner - MiGFlug's Magazine.

The successor of the Blackbird

The Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird

It will succeed the SR-71, serving the same primary purposes: surveillance and intelligence gathering. Other areas of use will be to cover the gap that currently is between surveillance satellites and subsonic manned aircraft within the USAF. The defining feature of the unmanned SR-72, just as with the SR-71, is pure speed. With its assumably Mach 6.0 capability, it will be able to penetrate enemy airspace, drop a bomb (for this it will have to be equipped with special equipment) or monitor before the enemy has time to intercept it. The SR-72 will be a brand new type of aircraft. Since its speed is so tremendously high, being spotted by the enemy will not matter (Only SR-71 has had this as its main feature before). This is what Lockheed Martin wants to accomplish.

Scramjet - The engine of tomorrow

The engine of it is one step up from the Blackbird’s. The engines needed to reach speeds of Mach 2.2 are called turbojets. The engines that will be used to reach the top speed of the SR-72 are called scramjet engines (although they can hypothetically reach speeds of over mach 15). Because of the fact that a scramjet does not work at speeds of lower than mach 1, the aircraft will feature a turbojet as well to accelerate it to the speed to where the scramjet can take over. The scramjet is still conceptual and there has not been any actual aircraft using one (expect the X-51, see further down), this is why Lockheed is collaborating with Aerojet Rocketdyne and Boeing to make the new engine, together currently leading the development of a scramjet. How the engine of the SR-72 will work however is currently not known to the public - and it is an extremely complex piece of machinery featuring both a scramjet and a turbojet. The project might however have a rough time ahead as Lockheed Martin had, by the time of the concept unveiling, not yet secured the fundings needed to build this kind of scramjet, the complexity and therefore the pricetag being two possible reasons.

Cheaper solution to the problem

Northrop Grumman RQ-180 in flight

Another reasons for them not receiving funds might be that they have competitors, one of them being the classified Northrop Grumman RQ-180 which is also a surveillance UAV being funded by the United States secret military budget. Northrop has skipped the whole speed part and instead concentrating on a stealthy drone to do the ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance). This project has gotten more positive feedback both because of less risky technology will be used (compared to the SR-72 which will have to develop an entirely new kind of engine) and that it can be put into service already by 2015.

Going hypersonic in the near future

The Boeing X-51 under a B-52

The scramjet engines will be tested in Boeing’s X-51 project which is an unmanned, single engine aircraft. It is projected to be, in the near future, flying at mach 6.0. The aircraft is actually the record holder of “The world’s longest scramjet flight at hypersonic speeds” title after it held a speed of over mach 5.0 for 210 seconds in may 2013. It has gotten a nickname, the WaveRider, because of it using its own shockwaves to add extra lift. The aircraft did not have a turbojet installed so to get to the supersonic speeds needed to use the scramjet it was carried 15km into the air by a B-52 bomber, then released and falling untill reaching proper scramjet speeds. The SR-72 will probably not be the first aircraft to use the engine when it is done, as missiles are proposed to use it as soon as in the 2020s.

SR-72 - 2x the speed of the fastest

Conceptual deisgn of the SR-72

But if Lockheed Martin manages to make a hypersonic engine and propell an aircraft to a speed of mach 6.0 it will be an achievement about as big as the SR-71 back then. With more than twice the speed of any other air breathing aircraft ever built, it will earn its place in the history books. These kinds of engines might lead into an entirely new age of aircraft with Lockheed Martin at the very edge. Lockheed Martin has a long way to go and a lot of obstacles to pass, but if anyone should take on this risky but rewarding mission it is them, with tons of successful, first seeming impossible creations, such as the SR-71, F-117 and F-22. But at the current stage all we can do is to watch while the experiments continue and maybe, just maybe, we will one day see the SR-72 with its brand new engines astonish us all, just like the Blackbird once did.

Additional reading:

• Read about Russia's new mach 4.0 interceptor here.
• Read more about the SR-71 here.
• Read about the trillion dollar project here.

Sources:

• Extremetech.com
• Lockheedmartin.com
• Aviationweek.com
• Wired.com
• Rusi.org

The post The SR-72 – a new Blackbird? appeared first on Afterburner - MiGFlug's Magazine.

* = It is not known to 100% how many drones the US actually operates.

Military spendings per year by the US, China and Russia in billion dollars (2013)

If we start at the top of the table we see that there is an enormous difference in number of aircraft. This is simply because the US spends so much more money than Russia on its military forces. The United States of America spend about $640 billion while Russia spends a mere $78 billion each year. There are many reasons why the US has such a big military budget. The economic strength, the conflicts they are involved in, especially with the "War on Terror". That costs a lot of money, for instance in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second reason is that they have such a bigger GDP, the US spends 2.4% of their yearly income while Russia spends over 4%! The last reason is that they have a military complex of always being the top producer and always having the latest technology - they were first with both stealth aircraft and aircraft carriers for example.

Same area but still so different

Russia structures its aircraft forces quite differently from the US. Russia has put (almost) all of their aircraft under the term “air force” and so it is their air force that takes care of their airplanes while the US has done completely different. The US divides its aircraft among different branches — the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force — each operating their own fleets. In terms of comparison this makes a huge impact because the inventory of US Air Force’s aircraft compared to all of its military aircraft is very big, for instance there is a tremendous difference in the difference in attack helicopters (488 compared to 0), while Russia does not have a big difference at all between aircraft of the air force and total air fleet.

The reason the United States has nearly three times as many fighters as Russia is mailbecause of their budget differences. The fighter department of the USAF takes up a huge part of the military budget and is so capable of keeping and building new fighter jets all the time. Russia is doing its best with its small budget and manages well, mainly because they upgrade and keep old aircraft instead of buying new.

United States World Police Force

The SIkorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is the most used US utility helicopter.

Another big difference between the Air Forces are the utility helicopters. To understand the difference we need to understand what a utility helicopter is. A utility helicopter is used to transport troops and military equipment in a fast way when no runways for fixed wing aircraft are available. They are therefore used very extensively in foreign countries, just like tankers and cargo transports. Because of this Russia has a smaller need of those kind of aerial vehicles than the US, as the table below suggests:

Note: The countries are involved to different degrees in these conflicts, this could be supporting a side with weapons and know how, for example.

Drones are the future

The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV

The last part i am going to bring up in this article are UAVs. As i said previously the United States of America wants their military to be the most advanced one in all aspects. That is why they are spending such tremendous amounts on drones that are currently used as surveillance in conflicts such as the one in Afghanistan and as replacements for old aircraft such as the manned reconnaissance Lockheed Martin U-2. Russia also has drones but they are less developed and currently there is no data of how many they are actually operating. The Reason for why Russia has fewer drones is that due to their (relatively) small budget they choose to spend money on things that they know work, for instance their famous Mi Mil helicopters and Sukhoi aircraft.

Now we have gone over the main differences in Air Forces between two of the biggest military powers in the world. However to be able to see the whole picture of how strong the military are of these countries compared to each other it is important to also think of their naval fleet and ground troops. That will be covered in an article coming soon, stay tuned! One last thing to be said is that with the fast increase in India’s and China’s military spending and new stealth fighters (such as the Russian Suchoi T-50 PAK FA) and other technologies, the balance of power might be rebalanced soon - only time will tell.

How the Russians see it:

To get an even deeper understanding of the structure between the Russian Air Force and the USAF, feel free to read the USAF And Russian Air Force - A Comparison which compares the Russian and US Air Forces or go look at any of these articles about everything you need to know about Aircraft Carriers:

• Part 1 - The History
• Part 2 - The Exterior
• Part 3 - The Interior

 Source: 

• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
• Flightglobal.com
• Globalfirepower.com
• AF.mil
• Israeli-weapons.com

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F-22 shooting out flares - training over Japan

Fighter jet, bomber or transport aircraft - Which of them is the most expensive?

Grumman B-2 Spirit

[...]F-35 Lightning II [is], the most expensive defense project in history. The wildly over budget Joint Strike Fighter project will cost around USD 382 billion after several cuts. That’s near the 2011 GDP of South Africa (USD 408 billion) and above Thailand's GDP (USD 345 billion).

C-17 refuels over the Pacific

The future of military aviation

• Time Magazine’s list of the top 10 most expensive military planes.
• B-2 Spirit overview by the Federation of American Scientists.
• A huge C-17 Globemaster III takes off and lands on an unpaved runway. Great video!

The post The most expensive military aircraft appeared first on Afterburner - MiGFlug's Magazine.

• USAF General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon (replaced by F-35 A)
• USAF Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II (replaced by F-35 A)
• US Navy Boeing A/F-18 Hornet (Carrier variant F-35C)
• US Marines McDonnell Douglas AV8B jump jet (replaced by F-35B, the STOVL variant)

More drone pilots trained this year in the USAF

Fighter Jets for Airshows only?

• The last manned fighter, article in "The Economist"
• MiG-29 supersonic flights
• The invincible F-22 Raptor? Think again.
• X-51 Waverider: Unmanned hypersonic jet
• The fastest plane in the world

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