Towards Fusion-Nuclear Military Aircraft

As mentioned, not a new thing.

LOCKHEED MARTIN HAS A PATENT FOR FUSION-POWERED FIGHTERS AND BOMBERS

Alex Hollings | October 25, 2022

Back in 2018, Lockheed Martin filed a patent for something it called a “plasma confinement system” — a device small enough to fit inside the fuselage of an F-16 Fighting Falcon that is capable of managing internal temperatures 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

This scalable device was designed to play a vital role in containing an approach to power production that some still consider science fiction: nuclear fusion. Now, recent advancements in the field are making fusion power look not just possible, but potentially even feasible. In the coming years, fusion could not only change everything about the way the world fights wars… it could even change the way humanity approaches conflict itself.

And it all might start within the shadowy confines of the Pentagon’s black budget.

Related: Why does the media report on secretive defense programs?

Nuclear aircraft aren’t a new concept

An air-to-air view of the Convair NB-36H experimental aircraft (s/n 51-5712) and a Boeing B-50 Superfortress chase plane during research and development taking place at the Convair plant at Forth Worth, Texas. (U.S. Air Force Photo)

As soon as mankind realized it could produce huge amounts of power by splitting the atom, efforts began to incorporate this new concept into just about everything, including airplanes. Using just a small bit of fuel, nuclear power could allow fighters, bombers, or reconnaissance platforms to stay airborne practically indefinitely. But despite several programs aimed at fielding such an aircraft propulsion system, atom-splitting fission reactors simply offered greater risk than reward when hurtling through the air at 50,000 feet.

Fission efforts did find a useful home in naval applications, with programs leading to today’s nuclear-powered submarines and supercarriers. But aviation efforts like Project Pluto’s nuclear-powered SLAM missile or Convair’s NB-36 nuclear-powered bomber, on the other hand, now come off as a bit crazy.

Nuclear ramjet from Project Pluto

Project Pluton’s Slam missile could have flown for thousands of miles, dropping hydrogen bombs and spewing radiation all along the way while producing such an intense amount of noise that scientists working on the program believed the soundwaves alone would kill anyone the missile passed over. The NB-36 could also stay airborne practically indefinitely to serve as an ongoing nuclear deterrent… but any crash or mishap could have led to an environmental disaster.

Today, the only publicly disclosed program, of any nation, aimed at fielding a fission-powered airborne platform is Russia’s 9M730 Burevestnik, or Skyfall missile. Despite a great deal of hype, however, it seems no closer to fruition today than when it was announced in 2018. And as if to prove the inherent danger of this enterprise, five scientists from the Russian Federal Nuclear Center were killed in 2019 in a mishap that was reportedly related to the ongoing effort.  ...  " 

Robotic Falcons to Deter Bird Strikes

 Novel Application.  might also deter birds eating key crops. 

Robotic Falcon Designed to Help Prevent Bird Strikes, By CNN, October 28, 2022

Collisions between birds and aircraft, known as bird strikes, can result in aircraft damage, as well as delays and cancellation of flights, costing the International Civil Aviation Organization a reported $1.4 billion each year.

Researchers at the University of Groningen (UG) in the Netherlands have developed a robotic peregrine falcon in a bid to prevent birds from colliding with aircraft.

The ground-controlled RobotFalcon imitates a falcon's movements to ward off birds, using propellers on its wings and a camera on its head to facilitate a "first-person view while steering."  ... 

UG's Rolf Storms said tests near the Dutch city of Workum showed the robot cleared flocks from fields within five minutes of taking off, with half the sites cleared within 70 seconds; a drone only managed to clear 80% of the birds from fields in the same time.  ... 

From CNN

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AI Fighter Aircraft

 With some interesting autopilot history, and here with some DARPA experience:

The Rise of A.I. Fighter Pilots  By The New Yorker, January 21, 2022

In a cloudless morning last May, a pilot took off from the Niagara Falls International Airport, heading for restricted military airspace over Lake Ontario. The plane, which bore the insignia of the United States Air Force, was a repurposed Czechoslovak jet, an L-39 Albatros, purchased by a private defense contractor. The bay in front of the cockpit was filled with sensors and computer processors that recorded the aircraft's performance. For two hours, the pilot flew counterclockwise around the lake. Engineers on the ground, under contract with DARPA, the Defense Department's research agency, had choreographed every turn, every pitch and roll, in an attempt to do something unprecedented: design a plane that can fly and engage in aerial combat—dogfighting—without a human pilot operating it.

The exercise was an early step in the agency's Air Combat Evolution program, known as ACE, one of more than six hundred Department of Defense projects that are incorporating artificial intelligence into war-fighting. This year, the Pentagon plans to spend close to a billion dollars on A.I.-related technology. The Navy is building unmanned vessels that can stay at sea for months; the Army is developing a fleet of robotic combat vehicles. Artificial intelligence is being designed to improve supply logistics, intelligence gathering, and a category of wearable technology, sensors, and auxiliary robots that the military calls the Internet of Battlefield Things.

Algorithms are already good at flying planes. The first autopilot system, which involved connecting a gyroscope to the wings and tail of a plane, débuted in 1914, about a decade after the Wright brothers took flight. And a number of current military technologies, such as underwater mine detectors and laser-guided bombs, are autonomous once they are launched by humans. But few aspects of warfare are as complex as aerial combat. Paul Schifferle, the vice-president of flight research at Calspan, the company that's modifying the L-39 for DARPA, said, "The dogfight is probably the most dynamic flight profile in aviation, period."

From The New Yorker

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Plasma Jets may Propel Aircraft

Some of the interesting details in the link below.

Plasma Jets May One Day Propel Aircraft
Plasma thrusters could help jet planes fly without fossil fuels
By Charles Q. Choi in Spectrum IEEE Energy

Jet planes may one day fly without fossil fuels by using plasma jets, new research from scientists in China suggests.

A variety of spacecraft, such as NASA’s Dawn space probe, generate plasma from gases such as xenon for propulsion. However, such thrusters exert only tiny propulsive forces, and so can find use only in outer space, in the absence of air friction.

Now researchers have created a prototype thruster capable of generating plasma jets with propulsive forces comparable to those from conventional jet engines, using only air and electricity.

An air compressor forces high-pressure air at a rate of 30 liters per minute into an ionization chamber in the device, which uses microwaves to convert this air stream into a plasma jet blasted out of a quartz tube. Plasma temperatures could exceed 1,000 °C.  ... " 

All Electrical Aircraft Delivered

The problem was recently mentioned here, is it practical to have all-electric commercial scale aircraft?  Here a first test underway:

NASA takes delivery of first all-electric experimental aircraft   by NASA in Techexplore

The first all-electric configuration of NASA's X-57 Maxwell now is at the agency's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

The X-57, NASA's first all-electric experimental aircraft, or X-plane—and the first crewed X-plane in two decades—was delivered by Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero) of San Luis Obispo, California on Wednesday, Oct. 2, in the first of three configurations as an all-electric aircraft, known as Modification II, or Mod II.

The X-57's Mod II vehicle features the replacement of traditional combustion engines on a baseline Tecnam P2006T aircraft, with electric cruise motors. The delivery is a major milestone for the project, allowing NASA engineers to begin putting the aircraft through ground tests, to be followed by taxi tests and eventually, flight tests.  .... " 

New Kind of Flexible Aircraft Wing

Remarkable idea for manipulable surfaces.

MIT and NASA engineers demonstrate a new kind of airplane wing
Assembled from tiny identical pieces, the wing could enable lighter, more energy-efficient aircraft designs.

By David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

A team of engineers has built and tested a radically new kind of airplane wing, assembled from hundreds of tiny identical pieces. The wing can change shape to control the plane’s flight, and could provide a significant boost in aircraft production, flight, and maintenance efficiency, the researchers say.

The new approach to wing construction could afford greater flexibility in the design and manufacturing of future aircraft. The new wing design was tested in a NASA wind tunnel and is described today in a paper in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, co-authored by research engineer Nicholas Cramer at NASA Ames in California; MIT alumnus Kenneth Cheung SM ’07 PhD ’12, now at NASA Ames; Benjamin Jenett, a graduate student in MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms; and eight others.

Instead of requiring separate movable surfaces such as ailerons to control the roll and pitch of the plane, as conventional wings do, the new assembly system makes it possible to deform the whole wing, or parts of it, by incorporating a mix of stiff and flexible components in its structure. The tiny subassemblies, which are bolted together to form an open, lightweight lattice framework, are then covered with a thin layer of similar polymer material as the framework.  ...... "

A Plane with No Moving Parts

Still a prototype only suitable for drones, but  quite a development.

MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts
The silent, lightweight aircraft doesn’t depend on fossil fuels or batteries.

Watch Video  Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office  .... "

Since the first airplane took flight over 100 years ago, virtually every aircraft in the sky has flown with the help of moving parts such as propellers, turbine blades, and fans, which are powered by the combustion of fossil fuels or by battery packs that produce a persistent, whining buzz.

Now MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind” — a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight. ... "