In the spirit of the EATS-1, ATS-1 and BTS-1 thread, I propose we try to envision/design the next generation of fighter aircraft. Instead of working
around present day technology (as in the other threads), I suggest we look at technologies and parameters appropriate for a 2030-2060 time-frame.
Possible issues and technologies to consider:
Manned, AI
Ramjet, Scramjet, Aerospike, Turbofan, Rocket
Hypersonic regime
Powerplant (mixed mode propulsion?)
Suborbital/orbital regime (SSTO?)
For deorbiting, active cooling, passive cooling, TPS?
Thermal regime and how to deal with it
Fuel (CH4, LOX, LH2, Boron?)
Weapon delivery (Directed energy weapon?)
Avionics
RAM, steath, plasma?
Electronic warfare
VTOL, STOL, S-STOL?
Net-centricity
Vehicle heath monitering and self-repair
Survivability
Aerodynamic controls
Controls for use in space (RMS Thrusters?)
Pilot abort modes
Please post your ideas!!!
It might also be a good ideal to settle on a few basic parameters first.
TTS-1 stands for Transcend Top Secret-1
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U have to remember that we are only touching those technologies. We might have a experamental UCAV by the year 2030. But i don't think we'll have
hypersonic engines until about 2100. But that is just what i think.
Falcon out.
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we already have experimental ucav's
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The difficulty with your idea is that no one would know where to start because there is no information since none of this has actually happened. It is
WAY WAY too early for us, the members of ATS to be designing something that might pop-up 50-60 years from now, I doubt we have the technical know
how.
Shattered OUT...
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Skyblue,
Remembering that the principle purpose of a pure 'fighter' is to engage other airborne threats with secondary missions in air to ground also
possible, the responsibility, as threat author, must fall to you to describe the social, technological and political conditions by which war is still
fought in 2100.
This is not simply a 'threat' statement or evaluation, it is a trended emphasis on what you want /policy/ to accomplish and how (or where) that
policy might engender such hard feelings as to require a military resolution.
I personally believe, for instance, that we will be well on our way to one of three conditions by 2100-
1. Ethnic and Credo based polyglot with no real 'national' boundaries except as a function of corporate priveleges and rules maintained for the
benefit of direct company holdings. The ultimate in cyberpunk gone mad.
2. Sticks and Stones. Combinations of wild temperature flux and weather changes along with pandemics abetted if not engendered by the resulting
starvation, lack of sanitation and general unrest. And of course some tiny rogue nation deciding the nukes means it has a say in world politics. In
combination with general overpopulation and resource depletion, this will lead to a very 'green' society. But one whose warmaking capabilities are
orders of magnitude less capable than they are today. Region factionalization has occured in all the superpowers and this destroys much of the
nationalist/centralist view by which organized conflict occurs, even though local ethnic cleansing and resource struggles may still lead to extremes
of vigilantiism and general banditry between state level 'border war' combattants.
3. World Government.
In which society functions on a quota system of assured wealth (at least for the upper classes) and every nation has a working wage slave populace but
none are allowed to be independent because that might infringe on 'harmony' of a collective trying to rule through a set of common laws, commercial
as much as statuatory. Nukes are centrally held and war is considered to be a policing action dependent on unlimited pursuit of the 'criminals' who
engage in it.
SOMETHING like what I wrote, along with a brief precis on martial and particularly propulsion technology status (do we have fuel cell tech? Fusion?
Is hydrogen our principal renewable energy source? What about electrogravitics? Beam weapons?) will go a long ways towards defining how far you want
to go with this notional concept.
CONCLUSION: Resources, Need. Define war along pretty linear (over) population lines. We are already fighting over energy. When we start to fight
over food and clean water, we will have gone too far for organized 'sport' conflict systems to probably recover the societal norms by which _peace_
is preferrable. At which point the only option left will be a descent to a lowest common denominator of supportable society through conflict and mass
casualty. It is only a function of how long it goes on and how much is left (nuclear facilities left unmonitored poison whole regions with meltdown
events etc.) as to what tools you 'end up' needing to stand over the corpse of your last enemy.
KPl.
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