Submersable Plane

[scott t]

Short Article here]Navy Spy Plane[/url]








Edited By Scott T on 1155678902

[tom dougherty]

Hate to say it, but

Hate to say it, but this reminds me of the A-12 stealthy attack aircraft debacle back a few years ago. Stealth depends on special skin treatments & coatings that just don't go well with salt water. Also, any program that appears in the pages of Popular Science before the program is actually operational is usually doomed...

[davietait]

About the only thing this

About the only thing this would have going for it would be the small size of the craft , the stealth shape and probable low flight height. That would make it pretty hard to detect on radar. The big problem isn't launching the thing , there's plenty experience of launching missiles from PD by now so thats ok its the getting the #### thing back onboard!!!. About the only way I can see this thing getting back onboard is by deploying a parachute from 2000ft , somehow closing off the intake and exhaust ports for the gas turbine ( salt water and a hot GT makes for an explosive combination ) and recovery by ROV or diver. Either way the launch will be easily detectable on sosus type listening arrays giving away the position of the SSGN ( NOT something you'd want to do with a sub that big and that damned expensive !! ) as will the recovery ,the splash down of the craft will register and it will still take 10 minutes or so to recover allowing plenty time for an asroc type torpedo to be launched.

All in all I recon this this is just a paper exercise to p**s the russians off again and try to scare the s**t out of the Iranians lol.

Davie

[aeroengineer1]

From what I understand, this

From what I understand, this is not just a dream, but is already in production. There is a engineer that has worked on this system already, and I do know that the boats that they are intended to be used on are already deployed. At least one that is. As for stealth, something this small does not deed to have much fancy coatings to insure that it stays steathy, it is really small already and if it is built from composites (a likely material due to the opperating environment) then that material is already stealthy.

Adam