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Hypersonic Transport/Long Range Airlift

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posted on Sep, 3 2004 @ 11:10 AM
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When I heard of Bush's plan to return 70K troops from overseas to be stationed stateside over the next 10 years, it made me wonder about the cause and intent behind the plan.

At first, of course, I thought it would be in order to better facilitate martial law and internment of undesirables when the # goes down but....

Then I remembered reading here on ATS when I first showed up about an Air Force/Skunkworks project to create a very high capacity supersonic or hypersonic airlift vehicle and a deployment system that would allow placement of troops and equipment anywhere in the world in very short order.

It would make sense to me that there were at least a few black projects being fully and/or over-funded right now, as large amounts of money are flowing pretty freely these days, with hardly the budget oversight to keep up with the spending.

If so, I'm all for the idea. I think we would do well to have a rapid mass-deployment platform with stealth capability on hand in case of need in the future.



posted on Sep, 3 2004 @ 02:43 PM
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There are a lot of different future transport options, the ULA (ultra large airship), the HyperSoar, the Pelican ULTRA, and the GRA (Global Range Aircraft).

The ULA would be able to carry a 750 ton load
but would be subsonic, yet still much faster then ships (which usually transport the majority of equipment).
ULA

Then there is the HyperSoar - probably the most advanced concept in study. It would be a Mach 10+ recce/strike aircraft though, with secondary aplications as a transport/frieghter
HyperSoar




The Pelican ULTRA would be a low flying supertransport the size of a football field in length (100 yards) utilizing ground effect to increase efficiency.
Pelican ULTRA



The GRA (Global Range Aircraft) Would use a blended wing body to deliver 150,000 LBS of payload 12,000 NM.
GRA



There are a lot more concepts out there, but these are the more exotic ones. Over all, I see the Pelican ULTRA as the next step in transportation because of this:



The Pelican currently stands as the only identified means by which the US Army can achieve its deployment transformation goals of deploying one division in five days, or five divisions in 30 days, anywhere in the world. If necessary, he said, the Pelican could carry 17 M-1 main battle tanks on a single sortie. Commercially, the aircraft's size and efficiency would allow it to carry types of cargo equivalent to those carried by container ships, at more than 10 times the speed.



 
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