New Boeing Phantom Works UAV unveiled

I suspect GA has something close to flying already. They're big on the whole "oh, by the way, look what we built" thing.

Think they are playing a game of poker..Waiting for all the cards to be on the table before they show..

the intake is on top of the fuselage , the writing on the side has the "warning jet intake" with arrows pointing towards the top behind the eye level "slit" on the front

a reply to: truthnlies

Only the intake, according to conventional wisdom is far too small.

a reply to: Zaphod58

you talking about the slit or the proposed intake on the top near the rear landing gear. as far as I can see all the photos of the bird don't show the top of the fuselage for us to see.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

The slit, which is the same location the much larger UCLASS intake was.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i still say that slit is for something else. to me it seems the actual intake is on the top of the fuselage eclipsed from view in all the photos. it could have a door that shuts to keep detritus or rain out and only opens when the turbines in operation. the door could easily drop into the fuselage. if I'm right then it brings up the next question what's that slit for to bring in just enough air for the turbine to power up and taxi? a bypass? not for the turbine at all hides lenses or sensors?

according to the artwork depicted the u class the slits not in the same place as the turbine intake on the stingray. the uclass intake looks to be right behind the painted on project emblem in front of the rear landing gear. right where I'm saying the intake is possibly on the stingray. i just think it has a door that shuts flush to keep water and other stuff it wouldn't want getting into the intake if sitting on a carrier deck.

Im thinking a secondary powerplant intake or Ram air for cooling.Maybe to pressurise fuel system?

a reply to: Zaphod58

I take it you agree the slit is the intake?

a reply to: anzha

The slit on the nose? No way.

a reply to: RadioRobert

imagesvc.timeincapp.com...

Sure doesn't look like there's much else that could be an inlet otherwise...admittedly, that is a crummy photo, but...

a reply to: anzha

Unfortunately physics is an extreme problem for that theory.



Also, ...

Im not buying that the slit is the intake. Or its being concealed for some reason.

Unless Boeing has some new revolutionary power plant, I don't see that small intake being able to generate enough airflow to power even a smallish turbine. I mean the intake on the ALCM looks like it has more area.

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: spy66

m.aviationweek.com...

I read that earlier. I liked the fact that they had to run a C-130 in front of Tacit blue sometimes to generate airflow to get it started LOL. On a carrier, they always launch into the wind and can generate their own over the flight deck (30+ knots) but that intake still looks too small

Looking at the Bird of Prey, the intake seems much bigger. Its smaller than the YF-22 below it but its hard to decide how it would compare to the tanker. I'm assuming the tanker will be much bigger as The Bird of prey was powered by a Pratt & Whitney JT15D with 300 pounds of thrust and had a MTOW of 7,400 lbs.

originally posted by: FredT
Im not buying that the slit is the intake. Or its being concealed for some reason.

Unless Boeing has some new revolutionary power plant, I don't see that small intake being able to generate enough airflow to power even a smallish turbine. I mean the intake on the ALCM looks like it has more area.

There's some pretty easy math that says unless Boeing is using nonNewtonian magic for propulsion, that intake isn't for the engine.

(I guess it could be a ramair intake for cooling a jet engine, but one would assume it would be near the nozzle, not at the nose)

I'm guessing cooling for electronic goodies, of which there should be many possible configurations, especially if it was built prior to the latest shift in requirements.

Do you think it possible they made a "panel" which was almost 99.9% permeable to air whilst being 99-9% reflective to radar.

A bit like an old speaker cover mesh looks like a blank face.

So we are looking at what appears to be a solid spine, but its full of those carbon nano tubes letting air through?!

Probably more clever photography though.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Oh I would agree, except I would have also said the F3H-2 Demon's inlets were way, waaay, waaaay too small.

I recall a shark gill inlet test done for the F-86, but I am coming up empty on the image searches.

a reply to: anzha

You probably are thinking of the NAA YF-93. You want to look up NACA ducts. It leads to subpar and unpredictable pressures in the intake, particularly at AoA or yaw. And that doesn't matter much for a ram air cooling duct, but really puts a damper on engine-happiness and output.

Ironically, I think they'll have similar problems with the Whale-style submerged inlet, it seems they are using. Maybe it has giant aux-doors or some other trick to help, but I think it's bad news for carrier ops as is a single-engine for this application.

Problems with the intake and F3H as a comparison: The F3H intakes are much larger. Many, many times the volume of air of the small ram intake in the front of the Boeing bird. You can do some rough calculations I'd you'd like, but it's easy to eye-ball.
The way a jet engine works is pretty Newtonian. It shoots reactive mass out the back to transfer momentum. What is that mass? Air (and some fuel. Sometimes even water injection to get an extra boost of mass, but mostly it's compressed air. Lots of air). So sum of mass of the air and the mass of the fuel times the velocity of the exhaust.
So the F3H used a moderate amount of air by compression and combustion sped up to high velocities to produce under 10,000 lbs of thrust. It's pretty inefficient. That's why we've moved mostly to turbofans that move more air to lower velocities and still use less fuel. But regardless, we can look at the math and see simply the only way to get more thrust from a given amount of air is to increase the exhaust velocity or increase the fuel mass we shoot out the back. There are some mechanical/material limits on exhaust velocity. And I can't napkin math how much fuel you'd need to burn out the back to get the Demon's thrust figure with a much smaller amount of air without a lot more data, but we can see just looking at the equation, it's obviously unfeasible. We also probably need double that thrust for whatever the CBARS ends up being. So the answer is more air, not less.

It's the same principle if you showed me an Me-163 and told me it was being propelled by those little RAT blades in front. Could you purely in theory move enough air with tiny propellers to fly a plane that large? Yeah, but the blades would have to be turning incredibly (in the classic sense) fast to move the amount of air to produce the thrust necessary. The disc-loading would be obscene/unfeasible.

and somewhere at Boeing a PR with Photoshop skills is having a good LOL...

originally posted by: Blackfinger
and somewhere at Boeing a PR with Photoshop skills is having a good LOL...

Would not doubt that at all