DARPA pushes limits of unmanned aircraft capability to extremes

DARPA pushes limits of unmanned aircraft capability to extremes

www.flightglobal.com...

Ultra-long endurance and ultra-fast deployment are the targets of new US programmes to demonstrate technology for future autonomous aircraft

Whether it is an aircraft that will stay aloft for its entire five-year life, or be rushed by rocket to fill a surveillance gap half the world away, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to push the boundaries of unmanned aviation to extremes.

Exploring the outer limits of technology is DARPA's charter, and the agency has its successes and failures, but the stated goals of its latest UAV programmes are raising eyebrows. (visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 3/8/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Now this looks like a UFO. If I saw it flying up in the sky I wouldn't have recognized it as "ours".
www.darpa.mil...

www.flightglobal.com...
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 3/8/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Here's where they are breaking the paradigm.

Ordinarily, we'd think 'self-repairing'.

But DARPA has this in mind (from the OP link)

...a modular vehicle where pieces can fly home to be repaired and replaced and an aircraft that can be serviced and replenished while remaining on station.

Quite clever. It's both more elegant and less technologically dependent than a 'self-repairing' system.

The only things that really need to be designed is the undocking and docking of the modules.

I could forsee a layer system.

The top layer of a section of a wing would detach and then fly home, leaving the bottom layer, but in small enough of a section so as not to compromise the airframe.

Then the top repaired layer could return, over fly and settle in and redock.

Then, repaired, with perhaps some additional reinforcement, it would take over the wing function and the lower half would detach at almost the exact same time as the top re-docked.

That piece would fly home, be repaired, but made into the old style top section, then overfly and repeat. That way it's replacing the top and bottom layer, but from the top. There'd be no reason to try and dock from underneath, which could be cumbersome.

Since this would be more-or-less constantly happening during a repair cycle, it wouldn't take a lot of time until the repair was complete.

In fact it could be a staggered sequence, landing and detachting like a flock of butterflies. The pieces could be about the same size as a large monarch butterfly's wing, or bigger, depending on the stability.

The constants would be the weight and the repairs might be minimal, maybe parts of the solar panels.

As the repair continued, any design improvement could be incorporated until at the end of the five years, the craft could even look significantly different.

It would be like human skin that repairs itself and sloughs off.

In fact the old pieces might not need to fly home, but could just slough as the new components arrived.

Now this is just one way they could do it. They could also have a modular approach, having a whole wing section or strut section replace. There'd really be no need for a long time gap where a piece was flying around. Most of the time it would be adding a new piece to replace the worn out module.


Just a thought.

Originally posted by Bigwhammy

Now this looks like a UFO. If I saw it flying up in the sky I wouldn't have recognized it as "ours".
www.darpa.mil...

www.flightglobal.com...
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 3/8/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Yeah, exactly I think I stand firm that it always has been man making these flying saucers, it just became such an infatuation of the people that man exalted himself to status of god and continued deceiving the people with all of his clever technology. I often times wondered what it meant in Daniel about the last kingdom on earth being the iron and the clay, now I think I know. Man and technology. I posted this in my other post about how the spaceships and even the aliens themselves have pogressed over the years, they went from very primitive to ultra high tech, if they were 'real' they would have always been high tech, does anyone consider this?

Good catch BW