Is DARPA Pursuing "Speed" Over "Lethality" for Military Hardware?

www.theblaze.com...

'PULSE DETONATION ENGINE TECHNOLOGY' CAUSED LOUD BANGS HEARD FROM ENGLAND TO NEW YORK
"Bhupendra Khandelwal, an aerospace researcher at the University of Sheffield in the central part of the United Kingdom, who is working on pulse detonation engine technology said the noise was a familiar one.

"Pulse detonation engine technology on which Khandelwal is working, uses the force of fuel and air-intake explosions to power planes five times faster than the speed of sound. So far, test flights using the technology have only lasted a few seconds but conspiracy theorists maintain that the engine will be used to power spy planes once it is fully developed – unless governments have already fully developed the pulse detonation engine without making it known to the public.

"Some have cited what they believe is an ongoing spy plane project called “Aurora,” a name mentioned by a report from the Pentagon in the 1980s but officials have denied the existence of such a project."

Some of the COMMENTS were priceless:

"How can it be an effective spy plane if everyone in two continents can here it coming?" (Gonzo)

"The Germans had it 70 some odd years ago. They found that technology sufficient to power their V-1′s ( buzz bombs) across the channel and into London. Who knows what their scientists are up to now!!" (Troonorth)

"This sounds remarkably like the startup sequence for an Orion style pulse engine. my guess would be a launch from the middle of the Atlantic." (jdelta1adams)

Sometimes it's the little unanticipated things that trip up these billion-dollar defense projects ...

news.yahoo.com...
THE USAF HAS TO RE-PAINT ITS TRUCKS BECAUSE THE F-35 CAN'T FLY ON WARM FUEL
"The F-35 can only fly on jet fuel under a certain temperature due to a range of heating issues attributed to the F-35B variant’s short takeoff and vertical landing engine. According to the USAF, the dark-green trucks that carry that fuel absorb too much heat from the sun to keep the planes in the sky."

"For the time being the Air Force is addressing the issue by painting the tanker trailers of the trucks a bright reflective white to repel sunlight absorption. That presents a whole new problem for the safety of the trucks, which will be necessary to support the Joint Strike Fighter on forward deployments where large white tankers full of highly flammable fuel could make easy targets."

“We painted the refuelers white to reduce the temperature of fuel being delivered to the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter,” Senior Airman Jacob Hartman of the 56th Logistics Readiness Squadron at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona said in an Air Force news report. “The F-35 has a fuel temperature threshold and may not function properly if the fuel temperature is too high, so after collaborating with other bases and receiving waiver approval from [the Air Education Training Command], we painted the tanks white.”

sploid.gizmodo.com...
THESE ARE NASA'S COOLEST AND STRANGEST AIRPLANES OF THE FUTURE

Not sure I'd want to climb in one of these needle-nose, flare-wing things, but the photos are cool.

a reply to: MKMoniker

How is that "tripping up"? That's what testing is for, to find things like that.

a reply to: Zaphod58

"How is that "tripping up"? That's what testing is for, to find things like that."

True. But it amuses me that in the midst of these billion dollar defense programs, like I said, it's the tiniest mistakes that can put a program back to Square One:

articles.latimes.com...
(2004) "GENESIS" CRASH BLAMED ON BACKWARD INSTALLATION OF A KEY SWITCH
"NASA's Genesis space capsule crashed in the Utah desert last month because a critical piece of equipment (that was supposed to trigger the release of two parachutes), was apparently installed backwards, NASA officials said Thursday.

"The finding, if verified, would be a blow to NASA and its major contractor on the $264-million Genesis mission: Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp., which was also involved in the 1999 loss of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter because of a mix-up between English and metric units."

(NOTE: Will be interesting to see how they paint the fuel trucks in a combat zone. To the best of my knowledge, there is no camo pattern in only-white.)

a reply to: MKMoniker

Because people are involved. No matter how good your design is people make mistakes.

It will be a simple matter of finding a way to cool the fuel. A modification to the truck to add a cooling unit, or pump the fuel through a unit to cool it. It's hardly the end of the world or the program.

a reply to: Zaphod58

"It will be a simple matter of finding a way to cool the fuel. A modification to the truck to add a cooling unit, or pump the fuel through a unit to cool it. It's hardly the end of the world or the program."

I was making a joke, but OK, I'm sure they'll find a way to make that jet fuel the right temp for those planes.

Gosh, everyone's so deadly SERIOUS about defense contractors and their products. I'd linked to an LA Times article dumping on Lockheed Martin. The following appeared the next day on multiple sites. So, in the sense of "equal time" and "fair play," here is a positive article on Lockheed Martin's accomplishments:

www.businessinsider.com...
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT LOCKHEED'S SECRET WEAPONS UNIT
"Lockheed Martin Corp's Skunk Works was the driving force behind development of many well-known U.S. military aircraft, including the famed "Blackbird" or SR-71 spy plane that could fly from New York to Los Angeles in just over an hour."

www.upi.com...

JASSM-ER CRUISE MISSILE ENTERS FULL-RATE PRODUCTION FOR AIR FORCE
"The U.S. Air Force has given the go-ahead for full-rate production of Lockheed Martin's extended range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.

"The cruise missile is armed with a dual-mode penetrator and blast-fragmentation warhead, an infrared seeker and Global Positioning System receiver, and has more than 2.5 times the range of the baseline JASSM, which is more than 230 miles.

"The full rate production decision demonstrates that our customer, at all levels of the U.S. Air Force, has confidence in JASSM-ER," said Jason Denney, long-range strike systems program director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. "JASSM-ER provides warfighters with a first day, first strike capability in an anti-access, area-denial environment."