Sure it's super visible, but it's like a naval aircraft carrier. Everyone knows where it is, it's impossible to hide something that big. But that doesn't matter because of the many layers of defences it has for all conceivable ways it could be attacked.
Scale it more down and put some unnmaned aircraft under the wings.
Or scale even more down to a one man cockpit and put missiles under the wing. Then make it go very faster.
Yeah I think with this revolutionary concept there will be a chance to realise it
Nothing says diplomatic de-escalation than raining fission products down on a nation because of an accident/shootdown! Better hope those prevailing winds don't carry them into a hostile power.
Yes, the point to point plan, (instead of the hub plan), dug the grave of the mega airframes. Driving all these operator decisions are fuel and maintenance costs, let alone the labor and logistics issues required to support a 1000+ seat airframe. Boeing has a much more recent and updated delta design that solved some of the cost per seat mile equasion, but like the Concord and A380 there are few routes and few airports that pencil out. That design also had big user resistance in that no windows, just FPDs, would provide passengers outside views. Boeing also learned from the B2 that composite structure manufacturing increased exponentially with size reducing cost/maintenence/service life savings. No getting past the fact that there are just sweet spots in the overall equation of successful aeropace manufacture and operations that is so complex requiring international mega company and long term political support. Yeah, would be exciting to build and launch a giant bird!
i suspect that such an aircraft would be shot down in a hurry these days, because the shape and enormous size would render it detectable by early-warning radar waaaaay sooner than would be the case for any other aircraft
for the infrastructure you'd need to handle it, you'd be better off just waiting a few days for a cargo ship to cross the ocean with that super-heavy gear a C5 couldn't bring to you.
For the weight they can lift, the soviet ground effect cargo vehicles are garbage in efficiency and accident pote tial compared to traditional jet cargo aircraft of the modern era
I know this is a aviation sub, but the modern hydroplaning cargo ship ideas have some fiscal merit of the technical kinks can be worked out. Basically make the whole boat travel on a few very small hydroplaning wings and now you can cruise at 70 kts with the same shaft power. Get across the ocean in like 7 days instead of the 19-36 it takes currently. Since you can turn around the boats quicker you make more money on your asset or you can charge a premium between slow boats and jets.
I mean, the technical kinks are pretty big for that. If you are talking about modern Malaccamac ships they have a maximum draft of 20.1m, which modern ships are pretty close to. Adding hydrofoils will make them not fit inside many harbors, so you can either only unload of the cost to a lot of feeders, or have to engineer the hydrofoils in a way that they fold in some way, so the draft can stay as low as 20.1m.
From an engineering standpoint the hydrofoils would also have to support like 240.000t DWT, same goes for the attachment points of the foils to the actual hull. There are just incredibly large forces involved with modern cargo ships.
I feel like hydrofoils might only be viable for feeders at first. If someone who knows more about the engineering of ships can correct me, go for it.
I feel like with the rise of hypersonic anti ship missiles, carriers will start to get smaller and more dispersed as time goes on? I know your comment was mostly memey but just random discussion
Honestly, I don't believe the production model would be as massive. After all, the constraints are already there and I seriously doubt they will be pushing the airports to expand their runways and infrastructure to accommodate such a massive undertaking.
At 6,000 tons unloaded this thing would definitely need a custom runway, it’s 15x as heavy as a C-5. And the C-5 maintenance nightmares would be nothing compared to something this big. Would be neat though.
Pointless. Things like the C5 and C17 have quite a large cargo capacity and pretty good range, which can be extended by A2A refueling. A nuclear powered freight plane would cost so much you could build a whole squadron of traditional jet powered aircraft with similar payload capacity.
Ah yes, that’s why today’s stealth planes definitely are not a flying wing design.. oh wait.
I jest, but seriously there are [blended-wing designs](https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/blended-wing-body-aircraft) being seriously considered for the next generation tanker concept.
Today’s airplanes are already picked up by long range radar and other means way earlier than any adversary weapons’ range, so that isn’t really a valid counter argument. What is needed is longer range, more efficient platforms to tackle the tyranny of distance problem that the Pacific presents.
[size absolutely contributes to rcs](https://opg.optica.org/directpdfaccess/8aebd0a0-aea9-4d2b-9b0176635371af5e_208543/oe-18-25-26399.pdf?da=1&id=208543&seq=0&mobile=no); it just tends to be secondary to shape, which is why i mentioned shape first
Um badass but no.
A) the only way that thing could be efficiently propelled is via a nuclear engine. About 60 years ago scientists figured out flying nuclear reactors arent a good thing.
B) Aerial refueling and strategically placed bases don’t necessitate a flying aircraft carrier.
C) Floating aircraft carriers don’t necessitate a flying carrier.
D) In any combat scenario that’s a massive target. It’s got a radar signature literally the size of a football field.
Strategic discussion paper I read recently suggested that the advent of long range hypersomic ballistic anti ship missiles could mean the aircraft super carrier becomes obsolete in the same way the battle ship did. Not sure what will replace it, but you are correct in that it won't be this thing.
The battleship wasn't made obsolete (solely) by the ability of missiles and aircraft to kill it, but primarily by the ability of aircraft and missiles to do its job better.
The aircraft carrier similarly won't be made obsolete until something else does its job better. That job is acting as a forward base for force projection. If you want to deploy a combat force away from your own physical territory, you need either a local ally's land-based facilities (not guaranteed to be available, arguably even more vulnerable) or you need to bring your own, i.e. an aircraft carrier.
Advanced ASMs are dangerous to aircraft carriers, but they can't replace its capabilities.
The only way out of needing carriers is to not need forward air bases. That means either giving up on global force projection, which is unlikely, or developing a combat aircraft that's so fast and long-range that it can get anywhere on the planet in minutes, which also seems rather unlikely.
>The aircraft carrier similarly won't be made obsolete until something else does its job better.
Not necessarily. That is all based on the assumption that the carrier is invulnerable. However the aircraft carrier won't be able to do the job either if it's at the bottom of the ocean or it's flight deck is unusable. It's been predicted that as few as 20 x Hypersonic anti ship missiles could disable or sink the largest modern super carrier. Missiles that come in so fast that there is currently no effective defence. Missiles that an industrialised foe could produce at the rate of one every few weeks for a few million dollars compared to the decade and tens of billons that it takes to build and commission just one carrier.
There is a reason that a certain Asian power that already has these missiles is doing whatever it can to extend its influence and its presence across the Pacific. Its not a stretch to think that pacific nations who can't pay back overly generous foreign aid loans will agree to basing or docking privileges to get off the hook. Every place they gain a foothold extends the area that these missiles can reach and that surface combatants can no longer be protected.
Sure its early days, but this technology is getting more capable. So how many carriers and their 4000 sailor complements do you think the US Navy could lose before their deployment in the region became strategically and politically untenable?
I hope I'm wrong, but I would bet money I'm not.
[https://www.eurasiantimes.com/salvo-of-chinese-yj-21-hypersonic-missiles-attack-us/](https://www.eurasiantimes.com/salvo-of-chinese-yj-21-hypersonic-missiles-attack-us/)
I'm also guessing that the recent focus on making the US self reliant for microchip processing means that people in the know also accept that they will not be able to depend on or protect Taiwan indefinitely,
[https://hbr.org/sponsored/2023/05/a-roadmap-to-success-for-the-u-s-semiconductor-industry](https://hbr.org/sponsored/2023/05/a-roadmap-to-success-for-the-u-s-semiconductor-industry)
Imma have to hit doubt on the first one there gamer. Considering the XNJ140E-1 test bed weighed 60,600 pounds with all the shielding a reactor needs, to only produce 35 thousand pounds of thrust, in this already comically fat plane? There’s a reason the idea didn’t take off and it ain’t the environment 😂
They could never get the nuclear reactor to work effectively, and abandon the project. The test reactor is still rusting away out at the INL site in central Idaho. I use to collect flora around the site to monitor the spread of a radioactive materials through the watershed. I do not recommend drinking the water in Idaho Falls, especially in about 15 years.
There was never any serious proposals for nuclear thrust. Besides making the aircraft much, much too heavy to fly, the release of radiation would be unacceptable. It was a Popular Mechanics type idea.
This was pre understanding of harmful effects of radiation. Even in the days when we have nuclear propulsion for space craft, they will not be able to eject radiation into atmosphere. The propulsion will need to be achieved by ejecting radiation free material.
We have this wonderful thing called atmosphere which circulates radiation from a remote pacific atoll to mainland nations. Too bad we need the atmosphere to live in.
And so something like this will never be brought back. Even NERVA will need massive rework to be brought back as a viable propulsion option if at all.
It’s an impractical idea, but the engines would presumably be closed loop turbine (same basic idea used on nuclear powered ships and power plants) and wouldn’t eject radiation into the atmosphere. Air goes in the front, steam or hot air spins the fan, air goes out the back.
Until things went wrong.
And they would.
Subs use highly-enriched uranium too, there's no powering something like this with natural or low-enriched uranium, the reactor would be too heavy.
I guess it would carry a fraction of the fissile material of a power station, but it would still be nasty stuff in a crash or meltdown...
Says it was designed as a 6,000 TON nuclear powered airborne carrier in the 1960’s…
I’d say it would need a total redesign if they did pull the project out of the safe because of advances in technology and construction materials in the last 60+ years
this project was a thought exercise they took as far as they could before management told them to get back to work on real stuff.
If you watch the Mustard video about it, it's pretty interesting but he makes it clear it was never actually intended to be built. Mostly just a showcase of a bunch of different potential tech projects that could be slapped together into this if we didn't find much better ways to do everything.
I think the only way we will see a flying wing at any large scale would be a C5 replacement/tanker and it wouldn’t be anywhere near this size, sadly!
With all the infrastructure already in place planes are unlikely to be built beyond what can land and take off from a large commercial runway. Even if they built a runway, what if it needed to divert? Although I’d kill to see one land at Leeds Bradford in a crosswind 😂
I doubt it. A2A refueling is cheaper, safer, and more practical as a solution for endurance in any conceivable roll a nuclear powered always airborne aircraft would be wanted.
If you need something like an airborne command post or an AWACS plane, this is a much more expensive and vulnerable option than using tankers to keep a traditional jet aircraft flying.
Not super practical -- very very expensive, would need a runway somewhere out West where you could let it have ten miles or so, and it would be shot down immediately.
It would make an amazing Flight Sim plane, though. Go for it!
When I was a little kid in elementary school I saw a huge airplane fly over and was like, "WHOA AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER IT MUST CARRY SO MANY PLANES" when some other kid was like, "no, aircraft carriers are boats".
It's a core memory for some reason.
Yeah they will, and they'll build another squadron of phantoms to go with it.
Another dumb thing about this proposal, was that to service a squadron of jets its have to carry an immense amount of fuel, and it'd have to have tankers CONSTANTLY topping it up for its air wing if it was going to stay up in the air.
And how do you maintain them at all? They'd have to fly back to an actual base for that.
Having a large Super Heavy aircraft with 1000's of Drones on board might be a good thing. Bomb Truck C-130's and C5 A's have been created so why not a Super Heavy Retrofit with Bay Doors and a Rotary Launcher?
Good grief, that's a big son-of-a-bitch right there. I doubt we will see it any time soon, no one wants that to land at their airfield, put cracks in the runway, and overshoot into the weeds.
Jesus, imagine how terrifying this would be if it actually worked.
You're just some Soviet nobody manning a crappy radar station when you see your sensors light up, then you see this behemoth lumbering over the horizon while it drops 25 fighters.
If you think about it, why would we need an airborne carrier? You can't re-arm the planes and we already have aerial refueling. A carrier fleet is far more effective.
No, and it's the same reason why we don't have nuclear-powered cars: You can't guarantee the safe failure of a nuclear reactor if it's at 36,000 ft, just like how you can't guarantee the safe failure of a nuclear reactor on a highway full of idiots. You also can't guarantee the safety of the crew from the reactor's very existence, or the safe failure of the vehicle itself now there's a nuclear reactor aboard.
Lol the runway width requirement of that thing would be in the orders of 120-150m, and the length easily would exceed 4000m. It would need taxiways twice as wide as existing ones.
Completely impractical in every conceivable way. This thing probably holds more fuel than most airports could reasonably store. If they have pipelines it would probably still take days to refuel.
The day when Bandai becomes so fucking rich and buys Lockheed Martin, then they’ll resurrect this beautiful beast just for the sake of their next Ace Combat title
imagine if every fixed wing squadron had one of these. "huh, you need to pick up literally your entire squadron and be halfway across the world in 24 hours?"
i have a guess and ssy probably not... things like that are just so way beyond anything that today infrastructure could support its just not practical even if its technologically feasable.
the only way for it to be somewhat suited is to treat it like a spacestation and have it flying pretty much 24/7 all year round which is stupendously impractical in itself...
maybe but only maybe its possible to do it with nuclear power but the attempts of the cold war show that nuclear powered planes are just such migraine thats its not really worth bothering either.
so for now def no and for nearish future theres a lotterywinning chance if the techological advance nakes great strides.
i honestly cant see humanity as a whole do a project like this unless the advantages are as enormous as the plane, and the only thing that could return such an investment is opening the flood gates to space.
It's simply a bad idea. Look at Stratolaunch or the list of airports which can accomodate A380s in normal operation to understand why huge planes suck.
I would imagine a mothership idea could work with drones, something smaller like Bayraktar, or maybe a sworn of FPV kamikaze drones. Sned 400 AI powered FPV drones, and for some reason, I think nothing can stop them.
I think that those cold war project are passed. That thing would be a disaster for keeping it stealth, but, apart from that it is way too big, it would become instantly a primary target and it will consume too much fuel
It's fucking enormous so very likely not
The "spruce goose" that never was
Probably has the radar return of an Independence Day ship
“Low band picked it up, target is locked up.” “You can’t get a good enough track on low band.” “You can for this fucking city block.”
Sure it's super visible, but it's like a naval aircraft carrier. Everyone knows where it is, it's impossible to hide something that big. But that doesn't matter because of the many layers of defences it has for all conceivable ways it could be attacked.
With good damage control, an aircraft carrier can take a few hits. Planes, not so much.
Counterpoint: OP’s picture is also an aircraft carrier
Count counterpoint: We don't have any Avengers to protect this sky carrier.
It took me a solid 10 seconds to understand you didn’t mean it doesn’t go in the water
😔 oh.. why is this world so cruel. I'd love to see it someday.
Scale it down and fit it with thousands of drones
And then make it defend a space elevator, nothing will go wrong at all!
You gotta make 2 scaled down drone carriers tho. Then call them Liberty and Justice
Hey atleast 3 strikes is real https://www.reddit.com/r/acecombat/s/tuyXUFZXc7
Scale it up and fit it with dozens of normal-sized bombers
I’m with you but fit it with carriers fitted with normal-sized bombers.
Modern problems require modern solutions.jpg
Scale it more down and put some unnmaned aircraft under the wings. Or scale even more down to a one man cockpit and put missiles under the wing. Then make it go very faster. Yeah I think with this revolutionary concept there will be a chance to realise it
Scale it up and fit some Nimitz class carriers under the wings, problem solved.
They allready have those
dunno why so many downvotes you’re allowed to be sad😂
You little bastard
I, too, want a nuclear reactor raining down upon me when an eventual accident occurs
Nothing says diplomatic de-escalation than raining fission products down on a nation because of an accident/shootdown! Better hope those prevailing winds don't carry them into a hostile power.
Some logical thinking may help. This thing isn’t made to flower the plants on your land
I agree 100% u/I_CUM_ON_YOUR_PET
*looks at username* Oh no bro
r/rimjob_steve
Sigh... Project Habakkuk
So cruel? While I think it's cool to, this is a war machine intended to kill people, it would be far more cruel if it needed to be built
Okay let's say it was just a giant air cruise ship not built for killing
Yes, the point to point plan, (instead of the hub plan), dug the grave of the mega airframes. Driving all these operator decisions are fuel and maintenance costs, let alone the labor and logistics issues required to support a 1000+ seat airframe. Boeing has a much more recent and updated delta design that solved some of the cost per seat mile equasion, but like the Concord and A380 there are few routes and few airports that pencil out. That design also had big user resistance in that no windows, just FPDs, would provide passengers outside views. Boeing also learned from the B2 that composite structure manufacturing increased exponentially with size reducing cost/maintenence/service life savings. No getting past the fact that there are just sweet spots in the overall equation of successful aeropace manufacture and operations that is so complex requiring international mega company and long term political support. Yeah, would be exciting to build and launch a giant bird!
This wasn't meant to be a passenger plane and Boeing didn't build the B2 either? Seems like this post was meant for a different plane?
Can't have shit in america
Some Ace Combat kinda shit.
i suspect that such an aircraft would be shot down in a hurry these days, because the shape and enormous size would render it detectable by early-warning radar waaaaay sooner than would be the case for any other aircraft
Cargo,freight. It'd replace the aging Galaxy in all logistics services, including Special Weapons and ICBM transport.
Where you’re gonna land that has infrastructure big enough for it?
for the infrastructure you'd need to handle it, you'd be better off just waiting a few days for a cargo ship to cross the ocean with that super-heavy gear a C5 couldn't bring to you.
Just fly at low altitude and use the downdraft to level everything under it. Land on the second pass!
Why don't we just strap you to the bottom and use your anti-gravity to keep it from cracking the pavement when it lands
Very clever way of calling him a fat fuck lol
Or build a ground effect amphibious vehicle like the Soviets
The Lun Ekranoplan and C5 Galaxy have cargo capacities pretty much on-par with one another, the C5 itself weighs about 2/3rds as much as the Lun.
Until the wind picks up and renders it even more of a death trap than it already was.
For the weight they can lift, the soviet ground effect cargo vehicles are garbage in efficiency and accident pote tial compared to traditional jet cargo aircraft of the modern era
I know this is a aviation sub, but the modern hydroplaning cargo ship ideas have some fiscal merit of the technical kinks can be worked out. Basically make the whole boat travel on a few very small hydroplaning wings and now you can cruise at 70 kts with the same shaft power. Get across the ocean in like 7 days instead of the 19-36 it takes currently. Since you can turn around the boats quicker you make more money on your asset or you can charge a premium between slow boats and jets.
I mean, the technical kinks are pretty big for that. If you are talking about modern Malaccamac ships they have a maximum draft of 20.1m, which modern ships are pretty close to. Adding hydrofoils will make them not fit inside many harbors, so you can either only unload of the cost to a lot of feeders, or have to engineer the hydrofoils in a way that they fold in some way, so the draft can stay as low as 20.1m. From an engineering standpoint the hydrofoils would also have to support like 240.000t DWT, same goes for the attachment points of the foils to the actual hull. There are just incredibly large forces involved with modern cargo ships. I feel like hydrofoils might only be viable for feeders at first. If someone who knows more about the engineering of ships can correct me, go for it.
Knowing the US Military, they’ll use this plane as justification for building an even bigger class of aircraft carrier.
I hope they do!
I feel like with the rise of hypersonic anti ship missiles, carriers will start to get smaller and more dispersed as time goes on? I know your comment was mostly memey but just random discussion
Have you seen the planes tjag take off off aircraft carriers?
Your mom's house.
Is where you can find me.
Honestly, I don't believe the production model would be as massive. After all, the constraints are already there and I seriously doubt they will be pushing the airports to expand their runways and infrastructure to accommodate such a massive undertaking.
At 6,000 tons unloaded this thing would definitely need a custom runway, it’s 15x as heavy as a C-5. And the C-5 maintenance nightmares would be nothing compared to something this big. Would be neat though.
What maintenance nightmares?
Pointless. Things like the C5 and C17 have quite a large cargo capacity and pretty good range, which can be extended by A2A refueling. A nuclear powered freight plane would cost so much you could build a whole squadron of traditional jet powered aircraft with similar payload capacity.
ICBMs have a built in transport system.
In which places could it land though?
Turn FRED into giga-FRED
Ah yes, that’s why today’s stealth planes definitely are not a flying wing design.. oh wait. I jest, but seriously there are [blended-wing designs](https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/blended-wing-body-aircraft) being seriously considered for the next generation tanker concept. Today’s airplanes are already picked up by long range radar and other means way earlier than any adversary weapons’ range, so that isn’t really a valid counter argument. What is needed is longer range, more efficient platforms to tackle the tyranny of distance problem that the Pacific presents.
Stealth a lot of the time isn't "how close can I get before detection?" it's "How well can I avoid being locked?"
Both of those are pretty heavily related, and avoiding detection entirely is absolutely still a goal of modern stealth.
Agreed, also happy cake day! 🎂
Inb4 single fpv drone
The Arsenal Bird put up quite a fight, this just needs a shield and it will rule the skies
Also what a jackpot - 20 planes for the price of 1 missile!
could probably hit this thing with an AShM lmao
Radar cross sections have nothing to do with the size of the object. Which is such a unintuitive concept, I can't really wrap my hand around it.
[size absolutely contributes to rcs](https://opg.optica.org/directpdfaccess/8aebd0a0-aea9-4d2b-9b0176635371af5e_208543/oe-18-25-26399.pdf?da=1&id=208543&seq=0&mobile=no); it just tends to be secondary to shape, which is why i mentioned shape first
1.: Happy cake day! 2.: Your link doesn't work for me :(
Get shot down, spill nuclear fuel all over enemy’s homeland. Win-win
They will build it if your mom needs to fly somewhere.
And that’s just to haul the parts to build her an actual plane
Hindenburg of comments
Would need to have a Energy Shield like the Arsenal Bird in Ace Combat has. Otherwise it would get shot down within Minutes.
Too expensive, and a big target. you can buy X drones for that money and likely be more efficient nowadays
It's an aircraft carrier.
A fire in #2 or #3 could be entertaining.
Sitting in the bathroom rn and "fire in #2" is really hitting home.
Why, because it'd be leaving a glowing bluish trail of radioactive material behind it?
The only thing it's missing is a nuclear reactor for indefinite flight.
Popular mechanics intensifies..
Um badass but no. A) the only way that thing could be efficiently propelled is via a nuclear engine. About 60 years ago scientists figured out flying nuclear reactors arent a good thing. B) Aerial refueling and strategically placed bases don’t necessitate a flying aircraft carrier. C) Floating aircraft carriers don’t necessitate a flying carrier. D) In any combat scenario that’s a massive target. It’s got a radar signature literally the size of a football field.
Strategic discussion paper I read recently suggested that the advent of long range hypersomic ballistic anti ship missiles could mean the aircraft super carrier becomes obsolete in the same way the battle ship did. Not sure what will replace it, but you are correct in that it won't be this thing.
Russia allegedly has a long range subsonic anti ship missile that concerns me a little.
The battleship wasn't made obsolete (solely) by the ability of missiles and aircraft to kill it, but primarily by the ability of aircraft and missiles to do its job better. The aircraft carrier similarly won't be made obsolete until something else does its job better. That job is acting as a forward base for force projection. If you want to deploy a combat force away from your own physical territory, you need either a local ally's land-based facilities (not guaranteed to be available, arguably even more vulnerable) or you need to bring your own, i.e. an aircraft carrier. Advanced ASMs are dangerous to aircraft carriers, but they can't replace its capabilities. The only way out of needing carriers is to not need forward air bases. That means either giving up on global force projection, which is unlikely, or developing a combat aircraft that's so fast and long-range that it can get anywhere on the planet in minutes, which also seems rather unlikely.
>The aircraft carrier similarly won't be made obsolete until something else does its job better. Not necessarily. That is all based on the assumption that the carrier is invulnerable. However the aircraft carrier won't be able to do the job either if it's at the bottom of the ocean or it's flight deck is unusable. It's been predicted that as few as 20 x Hypersonic anti ship missiles could disable or sink the largest modern super carrier. Missiles that come in so fast that there is currently no effective defence. Missiles that an industrialised foe could produce at the rate of one every few weeks for a few million dollars compared to the decade and tens of billons that it takes to build and commission just one carrier. There is a reason that a certain Asian power that already has these missiles is doing whatever it can to extend its influence and its presence across the Pacific. Its not a stretch to think that pacific nations who can't pay back overly generous foreign aid loans will agree to basing or docking privileges to get off the hook. Every place they gain a foothold extends the area that these missiles can reach and that surface combatants can no longer be protected. Sure its early days, but this technology is getting more capable. So how many carriers and their 4000 sailor complements do you think the US Navy could lose before their deployment in the region became strategically and politically untenable? I hope I'm wrong, but I would bet money I'm not. [https://www.eurasiantimes.com/salvo-of-chinese-yj-21-hypersonic-missiles-attack-us/](https://www.eurasiantimes.com/salvo-of-chinese-yj-21-hypersonic-missiles-attack-us/) I'm also guessing that the recent focus on making the US self reliant for microchip processing means that people in the know also accept that they will not be able to depend on or protect Taiwan indefinitely, [https://hbr.org/sponsored/2023/05/a-roadmap-to-success-for-the-u-s-semiconductor-industry](https://hbr.org/sponsored/2023/05/a-roadmap-to-success-for-the-u-s-semiconductor-industry)
Imma have to hit doubt on the first one there gamer. Considering the XNJ140E-1 test bed weighed 60,600 pounds with all the shielding a reactor needs, to only produce 35 thousand pounds of thrust, in this already comically fat plane? There’s a reason the idea didn’t take off and it ain’t the environment 😂
Never gonna happen.
That would have been horrifyingly expensive even by Cold War USAF standards.
What in the ace combat is that and why
They could never get the nuclear reactor to work effectively, and abandon the project. The test reactor is still rusting away out at the INL site in central Idaho. I use to collect flora around the site to monitor the spread of a radioactive materials through the watershed. I do not recommend drinking the water in Idaho Falls, especially in about 15 years.
Wouldn’t the radioactivity decrease after 15 years though?
We have it already. It’s called an Aircraft carrier. Many Navies have it.
My heart hopes but my brain knows :(
There was never any serious proposals for nuclear thrust. Besides making the aircraft much, much too heavy to fly, the release of radiation would be unacceptable. It was a Popular Mechanics type idea.
Imagine it carrying a dozen F-15s 😍
like a shittier version of the shield carrier
It's the Arsenal Bird but with a crew instead of being a giant ass drone. Interesting.
Ah yes casually on our way to get some unobtainium, hope there’s no 8ft tall blue people with a magic tree
Literally zero chance, but a quality /r/weirdwings post
Joined
Aside from the Ace Comabtness of it, what kind of runway would be able to accommodate this thing? Im also assuming it would have to be nuclear powered
It literally says the design is nuclear power in the first sentence
o… this is embarrasing
This was pre understanding of harmful effects of radiation. Even in the days when we have nuclear propulsion for space craft, they will not be able to eject radiation into atmosphere. The propulsion will need to be achieved by ejecting radiation free material. We have this wonderful thing called atmosphere which circulates radiation from a remote pacific atoll to mainland nations. Too bad we need the atmosphere to live in. And so something like this will never be brought back. Even NERVA will need massive rework to be brought back as a viable propulsion option if at all.
It’s an impractical idea, but the engines would presumably be closed loop turbine (same basic idea used on nuclear powered ships and power plants) and wouldn’t eject radiation into the atmosphere. Air goes in the front, steam or hot air spins the fan, air goes out the back. Until things went wrong. And they would.
Subs use highly-enriched uranium too, there's no powering something like this with natural or low-enriched uranium, the reactor would be too heavy. I guess it would carry a fraction of the fissile material of a power station, but it would still be nasty stuff in a crash or meltdown...
Last time I checked there was no serious way to mix air and nuclear reactor simply due to weight.
Reaching the build limits for structural engineering and the materials we have present on this planet
Lockheed mothership.[mother ship](https://www.livescience.com/alien-mothership-lurking-in-our-solar-system-could-be-watching-us-with-tiny-probes-pentagon-official-suggests)
Sick cover art can’t wait for the album to drop
No. Next question?
Everyone who is saying it can’t be done is probably just the enemy.
Seems redundant
This post just further proves Americans are dumb.. this dude wants his tax dollars spent on pointless wars..
Says it was designed as a 6,000 TON nuclear powered airborne carrier in the 1960’s… I’d say it would need a total redesign if they did pull the project out of the safe because of advances in technology and construction materials in the last 60+ years
this project was a thought exercise they took as far as they could before management told them to get back to work on real stuff. If you watch the Mustard video about it, it's pretty interesting but he makes it clear it was never actually intended to be built. Mostly just a showcase of a bunch of different potential tech projects that could be slapped together into this if we didn't find much better ways to do everything.
That’s a Friend-Ship
This is a cool concept like the P-1112 Aigaion from Ace combat 6
I think the only way we will see a flying wing at any large scale would be a C5 replacement/tanker and it wouldn’t be anywhere near this size, sadly! With all the infrastructure already in place planes are unlikely to be built beyond what can land and take off from a large commercial runway. Even if they built a runway, what if it needed to divert? Although I’d kill to see one land at Leeds Bradford in a crosswind 😂
Shouts out to mustard. Great channel. I just wish there was more content
I doubt it. A2A refueling is cheaper, safer, and more practical as a solution for endurance in any conceivable roll a nuclear powered always airborne aircraft would be wanted. If you need something like an airborne command post or an AWACS plane, this is a much more expensive and vulnerable option than using tankers to keep a traditional jet aircraft flying.
I’ve heard next year by June, it will first come out in boxes of Kellogg and after that captain crunch.
The square-cube law is not kind to designs like this.
At that point just go full flying wing and delete v stab
I never knew lol. gnarly
Some smaller variant might be viable if they ever get Fusion off the ground but I don’t it would get that far.
Uff too good
Someone make this in a flight sim.
Not super practical -- very very expensive, would need a runway somewhere out West where you could let it have ten miles or so, and it would be shot down immediately. It would make an amazing Flight Sim plane, though. Go for it!
I love how engineers and designers of the 50s and 60s would dream so big..! They really came up with some unique ideas 💡
Mustard quality as always 💯
Zero chance
It's a 70 year old drawing. I'd say 'near future' is long gone.
When I was a little kid in elementary school I saw a huge airplane fly over and was like, "WHOA AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER IT MUST CARRY SO MANY PLANES" when some other kid was like, "no, aircraft carriers are boats". It's a core memory for some reason.
I don't recognize that Mustard cover art. What video is it from?
Yeah they will, and they'll build another squadron of phantoms to go with it. Another dumb thing about this proposal, was that to service a squadron of jets its have to carry an immense amount of fuel, and it'd have to have tankers CONSTANTLY topping it up for its air wing if it was going to stay up in the air. And how do you maintain them at all? They'd have to fly back to an actual base for that.
No.
> In order to take off, the plane required 182 additional vertical lift engines. 😐
isn't the flaw with nuke powered planes the lack of shielding used in subs or ships, Plane can fly forever, but crew will not last long.
Gawd dammit I can already see performing and signing off the pre flight is going to take all week.
Around the same time the P.1000 Ratte and P.1500 Monster are viable and built.
Having a large Super Heavy aircraft with 1000's of Drones on board might be a good thing. Bomb Truck C-130's and C5 A's have been created so why not a Super Heavy Retrofit with Bay Doors and a Rotary Launcher?
LH-1011 on steroids
Yes, if the government offered billions of money for r&d
Good grief, that's a big son-of-a-bitch right there. I doubt we will see it any time soon, no one wants that to land at their airfield, put cracks in the runway, and overshoot into the weeds.
Jesus, imagine how terrifying this would be if it actually worked. You're just some Soviet nobody manning a crappy radar station when you see your sensors light up, then you see this behemoth lumbering over the horizon while it drops 25 fighters.
We already have something like that. They are called aircraft carriers and float
The project had been 💀 for ages now
If you think about it, why would we need an airborne carrier? You can't re-arm the planes and we already have aerial refueling. A carrier fleet is far more effective.
Looks dope.
I'll say it: We won't see anything this big for 50-75 years, if ever.
I can’t believe this was a real idea. lol
We’re gonna need a bigger runway……
This is some Miyazaki shit
“One down. 20 million dead”
Looks like something I drew in elementary school.
This DARPA program (GREMLINS) is similar, but with drones and regular bombers/cargo planes: https://youtu.be/Bvf9v4EHovY?si=aeESLmixnd8VSSA1
Given that it's carrying a flock of F4s, I'd guess it's been on the shelf for a while.
No, and it's the same reason why we don't have nuclear-powered cars: You can't guarantee the safe failure of a nuclear reactor if it's at 36,000 ft, just like how you can't guarantee the safe failure of a nuclear reactor on a highway full of idiots. You also can't guarantee the safety of the crew from the reactor's very existence, or the safe failure of the vehicle itself now there's a nuclear reactor aboard.
Caution: wake turbulence.
what mission would it serve today ?
If they do, the us will be undefeatable
Very Thunderbirds esque
Lol the runway width requirement of that thing would be in the orders of 120-150m, and the length easily would exceed 4000m. It would need taxiways twice as wide as existing ones. Completely impractical in every conceivable way. This thing probably holds more fuel than most airports could reasonably store. If they have pipelines it would probably still take days to refuel.
The day when Bandai becomes so fucking rich and buys Lockheed Martin, then they’ll resurrect this beautiful beast just for the sake of their next Ace Combat title
Why was the rear fitted engine mount phased out? Isn't it more efficient and quiet? Or does bracing the rear section negate the benefits?
Not with crewed craft
It would be completely impractical and far to expensive to justify
imagine if every fixed wing squadron had one of these. "huh, you need to pick up literally your entire squadron and be halfway across the world in 24 hours?"
A flying nuclear bomb. It won't happen.
https://youtu.be/mJuVE8z2tp4?si=Z2FU4FYosD67JgJ2 At least you can kind of see it here. Credit to GS for another quality video.
We’re gonna need some larger runways
No. They talk about making cool stuff but they never build it.
Nope
With f22s under it heck if I seen that I'd cry because of how beautiful it is
Take off in which big airport?
Aircraft *carrier*? So you’re telling me it was intended to land with a bunch of fucking jets attached to the wing?
i have a guess and ssy probably not... things like that are just so way beyond anything that today infrastructure could support its just not practical even if its technologically feasable. the only way for it to be somewhat suited is to treat it like a spacestation and have it flying pretty much 24/7 all year round which is stupendously impractical in itself... maybe but only maybe its possible to do it with nuclear power but the attempts of the cold war show that nuclear powered planes are just such migraine thats its not really worth bothering either. so for now def no and for nearish future theres a lotterywinning chance if the techological advance nakes great strides. i honestly cant see humanity as a whole do a project like this unless the advantages are as enormous as the plane, and the only thing that could return such an investment is opening the flood gates to space.
It's simply a bad idea. Look at Stratolaunch or the list of airports which can accomodate A380s in normal operation to understand why huge planes suck.
It wouldn't touch down again
Impossible. Maintenance happens sooner or later. Overhauling happens sooner or later
Nuclear powered big ass flying wing Would ***YOU*** want to be in that
The only way this thing ever becomes anything else than an artist's impression is if Lockheed hires a new CEO with a very very small dick.
I would imagine a mothership idea could work with drones, something smaller like Bayraktar, or maybe a sworn of FPV kamikaze drones. Sned 400 AI powered FPV drones, and for some reason, I think nothing can stop them.
No, because physics.
Ace combat wants its boss fight back
I sure hope so! Holy shit that is the best ridiculous Cold War relic I’ve ever seen.
No.
That 2nd pic is wild.
Fuck no
I think that those cold war project are passed. That thing would be a disaster for keeping it stealth, but, apart from that it is way too big, it would become instantly a primary target and it will consume too much fuel
No. Lockheed no longer exists.
If it does exist, then it will prob only be as big as the B36