Flying aircraft carriers

Was done in Russia as Zveno - up to five fighters attached to a bomber (Aviamatka), SPB with two was used militarily. Unlike the later US FICON they managed to dock again in flight, possibly because the airspeeds involved were lower.

Hutch wrote:Well, it isn't quite SHIELD'S Heli-Carrier....

Still, there is nothing inherently difficult in deploying a drone from the back of a C-130 (or C-141). The problem I think (and I watched the picture only, did not listen) is the recovery, getting a drone to land within the limited confines of another aircraft. I have no idea what the computing power would be for the frone to be able to accomplish that, but it would add weight and complexity to the mission.

Not to mention that the 'carrier' would probably have to travel at relativelty low speed and low altitude, which would make it a vunerable target to enemy anti-air.

Still, DARPA is the organization that is closest in spirit to "Horrible" Hemphill and "Oops" Foraker, so we'll see.

You're thinking about this the wrong way. You don't actually NEED to fly the drone into the aircraft. You only need a way for the aircraft to recover the drone whilst airborne. This kind of thing has been done before (but not with a drone). Picture this - at recovery time, the drone flies straight and level and deploys a balloon that is tethered to the drone itself. The recovery aircraft flies by and a capture system traps the line and directs it to the rear of the aircraft where personnel retrieve the line and pull in the drone. This is a slight modification of the Fulton Surface to Air Recovery System employed by the CIA during the Vietnam War... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system

WeberFan wrote:

Hutch wrote:Well, it isn't quite SHIELD'S Heli-Carrier....

Still, there is nothing inherently difficult in deploying a drone from the back of a C-130 (or C-141). The problem I think (and I watched the picture only, did not listen) is the recovery, getting a drone to land within the limited confines of another aircraft. I have no idea what the computing power would be for the frone to be able to accomplish that, but it would add weight and complexity to the mission.

Not to mention that the 'carrier' would probably have to travel at relativelty low speed and low altitude, which would make it a vunerable target to enemy anti-air.

Still, DARPA is the organization that is closest in spirit to "Horrible" Hemphill and "Oops" Foraker, so we'll see.

You're thinking about this the wrong way. You don't actually NEED to fly the drone into the aircraft. You only need a way for the aircraft to recover the drone whilst airborne. This kind of thing has been done before (but not with a drone). Picture this - at recovery time, the drone flies straight and level and deploys a balloon that is tethered to the drone itself. The recovery aircraft flies by and a capture system traps the line and directs it to the rear of the aircraft where personnel retrieve the line and pull in the drone. This is a slight modification of the Fulton Surface to Air Recovery System employed by the CIA during the Vietnam War... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system

Wrongo. Has to be under control. Hooking things in the air has never been the problem. The problem with pulling in is the same on all aircraft, slipstream vortices meaning vast flow disturbance. Pretty danged hard to get a wing into an aircraft, when at 200 feet from the aircraft the lift orientation is "up", but at 100 feet it is down and if it is off the center line of turbulence from below It now has a velocity differential of roughly 60mph in the case of a C130 type aircraft flying slow. So, one wing is flying at a tidy 200mph and the other side near instantaneously is now flying at 260, or 140, depending on orientation. The control transients required are out of this world, requiring exceedingly immense control surfaces along with the corresponding gigantic control actuators and its corresponding gigantic instantaneous power reqs. That in a nut shell is the problem. Why the experiment did ROUNDish objects only. It allowed them to spin uncontrolled on its central axis.

Obviously a drone, that actually has propulsion and ability to actually CARRY a useful weapons load is going to have to have WINGS.

NOW, if we could have the aircraft carrier AND the drone flying at supersonic speeds, this would actually be far EASIER to catch. Why? It allows lifting body which could rotate around its axis, now the final SHOCKWAVE transient breaking the sound barrier would produce a massive forward thrust/tensile force when it "enters" the mother ship. True of both scenarios, so would need arresting gear along with a "pulling" mechanism. Wonder what those G forces will look like... Yikes! Also allows swing wing, or mini folding wings, and on top of that possibly even ramjet making lightweight engines allowing greater payload of things that go BOOM instead of zoom and control.

Energy density calculations combined with system weights would have to be run. Still gets back to the very basic major major problem, a slow moving drone is an easy target, therefore it must be fast. Fast requires high propulsion speeds which also means high FUEL consumption which inherently means SHORT range, and now you have to actually carry a weapon? So, gets back to energy density of system as the "carrier" must be far enough away to actually be protected. Of course this whole scenario is predicated on the assumption that the air carrier in question can actually down incoming missiles. No such system exists. In fact an airplane of any make or speed/maneuverability is getting less and less able to survive in any environment.

So, if IR sensors see shapes of aircraft(they do). Now add multiple lenses(allows light fall off due to either "jamming of the IR sensors") combined with near instantaneous ND filter ability(meaning IR lasers on incoming missiles just make another homing signal as now their power level must go up drastically) makes laser power need far far greater. Currently multispectrum lasers to increase power density is around the size of a good sized house. They are hoping to get a system onto a ship soon. Shrinking such a system to aircraft size? An aircraft size that already got gigantic to hold the drones?

Off hand, the only "air carrier" that seems possible at all is a sea skimming carrier with a wingspan around 1000-1500 feet. Look up Ground Effect. Allowing an aircraft to essentially fly with slat/flaps deployed constantly with a CL of ~3 at 500 feet off the surface. To T-Off/Land would have to land at an angle(skew) to velocity orientation to contemplate a land runway availability. Of course this then creates massive wind gust problems during TO/Landing.

Now I can see a possibility of a multitude of rearward "spikes" that ultimately widen the width of the "air" opening where the velocity turbulence is effectively even.

In short we are talking massive control problems compounded by a drone large enough to actually carry a war load.

This field of problems is so gigantic, it would require a vast integrated R&D effort. Something that has not been seen since the Manhattan project. "Nibling" around the problems are near to impossible. It is an all or nothing proposition.

Think I would start with a white paper position of LOW speed air carrier flying 500 feet off the ocean/land surface. A flying wing and therefore no body cross vortices. Well not as prominent cross vortices. Allows greater wing chord meaning the turbulence swirl off the rear will have a longer period equaling slower transient control response required. Start with diamond wing drone as the diamond allows the greatest degree of flexibility for gust loading(angle of attack increase) without vastly increasing the CL. Also gives one a low moment of inertia around its spin axis and therefore the control input transients can be proportionally larger. Might even be able to go so far as to employ impulse rocketry.

Of course if ones drone air carrier is flying 500 feet off the ocean surface, why catch it at all? Just land on the wings top surface. .... Baby steps required.

Relax wrote:Obviously a drone, that actually has propulsion and ability to actually CARRY a useful weapons load is going to have to have WINGS.

News article with pictures

Instead they propose deploying from the air smaller unmanned aircraft, each with different capabilities, to perform a mission before retrieving them mid-air so they can be used again.

The current proposal/study appears to exclude armed drones. The pictured "artist's conception" shows folding wings on a roughly tubular fuselage -- a shape that would satisfy your "spin on its own axis" requirement,

Was done in Russia as Zveno - up to five fighters attached to a bomber (Aviamatka), SPB with two was used militarily. Unlike the later US FICON they managed to dock again in flight, possibly because the airspeeds involved were lower.

Yes, and they have some sucsess in early wartime operations. The main idea was, actually, to use fighters as a dive-bombers; the heavy bomber (TB-3 usually), used as carrier, greatly extended the range of fighters (usually I-16) and their bombload. A few important targets were destroyed by "Zveno" attacks - the Germans simply did not expect the light aircrafts to appear so far from the frontline, and didn't bother themselves with low-altitude anti-air defenses. Eventually, the project was cancelled due to the shortage of heavy bombers. The production of TB-3 was stopped (and this bomber was pretty much outdated) and the newer TB-7 (Pe-8) was avaliable only in very limited numbers due to the troubles with production.

I look at the fictional SHIELD help-carrier and wonder just exactly why the flight path using the angle deck would actually want to cross OVER the forward/ port-side turbine used for the carrier's lift.
Am reminded of the term "great sucking sound" and the effects of all that air being pulled (at very high speed and over a greater area) through the turbine to generate lifting power with the likely effects of an aircraft attempting to fly off (or failing to be arrested in landing) that way and "discovering" massive Clear Air Turbulence. Said aircraft to shortly become Foreign Object Debris through said turbine and makeing it difficult for the carrier to stay flying.

Brigade XO wrote:I look at the fictional SHIELD help-carrier and wonder just exactly why the flight path using the angle deck would actually want to cross OVER the forward/ port-side turbine used for the carrier's lift.
Am reminded of the term "great sucking sound" and the effects of all that air being pulled (at very high speed and over a greater area) through the turbine to generate lifting power with the likely effects of an aircraft attempting to fly off (or failing to be arrested in landing) that way and "discovering" massive Clear Air Turbulence. Said aircraft to shortly become Foreign Object Debris through said turbine and makeing it difficult for the carrier to stay flying.

Didn't notice that. The whole idea is so batshit crazy that I kind of glossed over the detailed bits of insanity.

The thing appears to be about the size of a modern aircraft carrier, so let's call it 100,000 metric tons to account for the extra mass of the flight gear. You have to generate 100,000 metric tons of thrust to lift it off the ground. Air density at sea level is about 1.2 Kg per cubic meter; at 500 meters altitude it's about 9.85 Kg/m^3. Accelerating 1 cubic meter of air per second at 500 meters altitude to 10 meters per second generates about one kilogram of thrust.

The 4 lift fans appear to be about 34 meters in diameter, and the hubs look about 8 meters across. This gives a total working impeller area of about 3,500 square meters. I have done some rough calculations and estimate that they would have to push air through those impellers at about 540 meters per second to generate 100,000 tons of thrust at 500 meters altitude. That's about Mach 1.6. I did mention the batshit crazy part, right?
----------------------
It's reassuring to find that the world is crazier than you are.

Imaginos1892 wrote:
The thing appears to be about the size of a modern aircraft carrier, so let's call it 100,000 metric tons to account for the extra mass of the flight gear. You have to generate 100,000 metric tons of thrust to lift it off the ground. Air density at sea level is about 1.2 Kg per cubic meter; at 500 meters altitude it's about 9.85 Kg/m^3. Accelerating 1 cubic meter of air per second at 500 meters altitude to 10 meters per second generates about one kilogram of thrust.

Well, actually we could do something like that. The large - very large, probably about 200-250 meters wingspawn - flying wing with closed-cycle nuclear jet engines may do the trick. It is possible to create something like that with modern materials and technology. Of course, no fancy VTOL capabilites (we aren't SHIELD, after all!); this plane would possibly be a really large flying boat, capable of staying for weeks in the air with a squadron of fifth-gen fighters, fuel and supplies for them for a few days of operations.

After all, if we have aerial carrier, we do not need catapults, landing gears and onter systems. We could use just the trapeze to lower the airplane from internal hangar and use the same trapeze to lift him aboard after mission.

So, for my point of view, some sort of large, nuclear-powered mothership aircraft, capable of rapid deployment a squadron of fifth-gen fighters in any area of the world could be pretty usefull on some ocassions. The naval carrier need a few days to cross the ocean even on the top speed; the flying nuclear powered motherplane could do this in a few hours.

You could always use a skyhook recovery type system. With a flying drone it could just deploy a hook and fly into / attach to a base 'carriers' loop. Then be reeled into a bomb bay / deployment bay. Modern drones will be high flying jets so height and speed shouldn't be a problem. A B2 bomber with a swing wing drone should work fine. Or you could just deploy a refueling rig, unless you need to rearm it, maybe a rearming rig?


On the otherhand you could just deploy a swing wing missile or bomb with a drone option. Drone loitering missile or bomb that is deployed by the bomber then left to fly about until it acquires a target or blows itself up. Thing with drones is that they are expendable. Any missile or bomb dropped by a plane is considered expended. No one is going to land an armed bomb or missile. I don't think aircraft carriers land planes with armed bombs or missiles do they? maybe they do?

other thing with a drone bomb or missile is the option to inflight refuel.

Lord Skimper wrote:You could always use a skyhook recovery type system. With a flying drone it could just deploy a hook and fly into / attach to a base 'carriers' loop. Then be reeled into a bomb bay / deployment bay. Modern drones will be high flying jets so height and speed shouldn't be a problem. A B2 bomber with a swing wing drone should work fine. Or you could just deploy a refueling rig, unless you need to rearm it, maybe a rearming rig?
other thing with a drone bomb or missile is the option to inflight refuel.

This was more along my line of thought, no need for some balloon/parachute/trapeze garb, this isn't the 30's or Ringling Brother's. It's the 21st century here, just a robot arm (like on the Space Shuttle) with an inflight-refueling probe on the end & a refueling type coupling on the nose of the drone (or deployable from the top) the mother plane deploys the arm and flies strait and steady (just like inflight refueling) and the drone operator flies his drone into the coupler (just like refueling) then once coupled the arm is retracted & "clink" on the deck. how hard is that?

Lord Skimper wrote:I don't think aircraft carriers land planes with armed bombs or missiles do they? maybe they do?

Sure they do, if not used, they don't just jettison unused ordnance, that's expensive. - have heard some horror stories in the Navy, bombs or missiles coming loose on landing & skittering down the deck, but never saw it myself.