8 février 2024 | International, Aérospatial
The Waid 1 and 2 drones share distinctive features — wing stabilizers, pitot tubes, fuselages — with Iran’s Shahed-131 and -136, according to the agency.
8 octobre 2024 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
The Hera mission will investigate the result of NASA’s asteroid redirection test, in which the U.S. agency rammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos.
3 juin 2019 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is freeing up another $10 billion to apply to its top priorities in its next five-year budget plan, according to the service's undersecretary. “We are about to slap the table on the [program objective memorandum] here by no later than the middle of June,” Ryan McCarthy told a group of reporters during a May 29 media roundtable in his office. As part of a rigorous review of programs and spending, the Army set out to find $10 billion within the budget that could be reallocated toward priorities in its fiscal 2021-2025 program objective memorandum. The money shook out through another round of what the Army informally calls “night court,” a review process that freed up $30 billion in the last budget cycle to get ambitious modernization programs off the ground. The night court process was inspired by similar reviews conducted under Robert Gates when he was defense secretary. Rather than make $182 billion worth of decisions in a few hours, the process is meant to establish a deliberate route to applying funds against priorities, McCarthy said. For example, if a program didn't contribute to a more lethal battlefield or to one of the Army's six modernization priorities, it was canceled or downsized. The Army set up a new four-star command — Army Futures Command — last year to tackle the service's top six modernization priorities: long-range precision fires, the next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift, the network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality. The review was conducted with the Army chief, vice chief, secretary and undersecretary at the head of the table last summer. But this year, to establish a more sustainable model, leadership fell to the major four-star commands and civilian heads in charge of major offices like acquisition and manpower. “Every dollar counts in this environment,” McCarthy said. “And so what we've done is we've realized that it's not a sustainable model to have the entire Army leadership hunkered down every summer, but should delegate to the appropriate echelon of authority.” Only the most difficult decisions will be brought to the top four Army leaders, he added. When it comes to finding another $10 billion across the five-year planning period to apply to priorities, McCarthy said, “we are in very good shape there.” The Army is also working to shift spending so that 50 percent is applied to new programs and 50 percent to legacy systems in the FY24-FY25 time frame. In FY17, the Army was applying 80 percent to legacy programs and 20 percent to bringing on new capabilities. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/05/31/army-freeing-up-another-10-billion-for-priorities/
2 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By Guy Norris A team of European hypersonic researchers are preparing for wind tunnel tests of a Mach 8 concept that is designed to prove technologies for the development of future ultra-long-range, high-speed commercial vehicles and air-breathing space launch systems. Funded under Europe's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Stratofly (Stratospheric Flying Opportunities for High-speed Propulsion Concepts) is targeted at fostering hypersonic capabilities for a 300-seat passenger vehicle cruising above 30 km (19 mi.) to TRL (technology readiness level) 6 by 2035. The project builds on the Lapcat waverider concept developed under earlier programs by the European Space Agency/European Space Research and Technology Center. Using the 310-ft.-long Lapcat II MR2.4 version as a reference vehicle, the 30-month Stratofly effort is focused on classic hypersonic technology challenges such as propulsion integration, hot structures and thermal management. In addition, with environmental concerns at the forefront in Europe, the project also includes sustainability considerations such as fuel-burn efficiency, noise and emissions reductions, as well as operational issues such as life-cycle costs, safety and certification. Coordinated by The Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, the project team believes that sustainable hypersonic travel is feasible through the use of liquid hydrogen fuel and new trajectories that would enable flights from Europe to Australia in 3 hr. Specific targets include 75-100% CO2 reductions per passenger kilometer and 90% reductions in nitrous oxide (NOx) compared to current long-range transport aircraft. A version of the vehicle could also be adapted into the first stage of a two-stage-to-orbit space launch system, says the group. Other members of the 10-strong consortium include the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium, which is focused on propulsion and noise; the Netherlands Aerospace Center, NLR, which is also part of the noise study; and CIRA, the Italian aerospace research center, which is conducting high-speed flow analysis. Propulsion systems and climate impact input is provided by Germany's DLR research organization, while ONERA, the French aerospace research center, is focused on emissions as well as plasma-assisted combustion in the vehicle's combined-cycle propulsion system. Sweden's FOI defense research agency is also part of the plasma combustion study. The French National Center for Scientific Research is also evaluating the vehicle's potential climate impact, particularly in areas such as the effects of water droplets from the exhaust in the upper atmosphere. Studies of the overall business plan, human factors and hypersonic traffic management are being conducted by the Hamburg University of Technology, while the Spain-based Civil Engineering Foundation of Galicia is focused on structural analysis and optimization. Like the original Lapcat design, the Stratofly MR3 waverider configuration is dominated by a large elliptical inlet and an integrated nozzle aft located between two canted tail fins. For takeoff and acceleration up to Mach 4.5, the vehicle is powered by six air turbo ramjets (ATR, also known as air turbo rockets) in two bays of three, each fed by secondary inlets in the primary intake. Above this speed, sliding ramps cover the ATR inlets as the vehicle accelerates and transitions to a dual-mode ramjet/scramjet (DMR) for the next phase of the flight. The DMR is housed in the dorsal section, nested between the ATR ramjets, and is designed to operate in ramjet mode to above Mach 5 and scramjet mode up to Mach 8. The scramjet will incorporate a plasma-assisted combustion system to maintain the stability of the flame front and prevent the potential for flameouts. Tests of the plasma system in a combustor will take place later this year at ONERA, where supersonic combustion testing also took place for Lapcat. The tests will be conducted in November-December at ONERA's ATD5 facility and will focus on inlet conditions at Mach 3.7. Also planned for later this year is a test of the full vehicle in the high-enthalpy wind tunnel at DLR's Gottingen research facility. Testing at DLR will run through September 2020 and is expected to target similar free-stream conditions as those tested on Lapcat II—around Mach 7.8. The work will assess aerothermodynamic characteristics and be used to validate the results of earlier computational fluid dynamics analysis of the MR3 design, which incorporates external and internal differences against the reference vehicle. “We elevated the canard [a retractable feature for lower-speed flight] and redesigned the vertical tails,” says Davide Ferretto, a research assistant on the Stratofly team from The Polytechnic University of Turin. “We also redesigned the leading-edge radius of the inlet for increased efficiency as it feeds both propulsion systems.” As part of the redesign, the enclosed passenger compartment, which was divided into two sections running along each side of the vehicle, has been combined into a single cabin in the lower lobe of the fuselage. https://aviationweek.com/propulsion/european-hypersonic-cruise-passenger-study-set-new-tests