Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Gigantic, spying flying machine





To design some giant flying robotic-plane that can fly of its own for minimum two days and spy everything in the air and on the ground for miles, Air Force has signed up all major aerospace companies. As per expectations, we can now actually see incredible design pouring out of the best minds working on it and among them one is the diamond-shaped shuriken that looks like a Boeing. Nevertheless, according to Defense News, Air Force has to embed sensors themselves on the wings of this plane as per the requirements.

To make it lighter, the wings of this SensorCraft are kept empty from inside and can stay in the air at 60,000 feet altitude. Some other designs in the next 5 years unveil designs like B-2-esque flying wing that will consume approximately $12 million. All the planes will be gigantic, whereas the linear distance between the extremities of an airfoil in the area will be around 200 feet with 90,000 pounds or more gross takeoff weight.

According to the industry analysts the designs require good size to sport the king-sized, low-frequency high precision antennas fabricated on to the mid section of the aircraft those are especially designed to bestow ‘high gain and foliage penetration radar capability... to defeat extreme difficult targets.’

Defense News further quotes that an ultra high frequency radar system can form fraction on the outboard wings (at least in the Northrop design) to record long-range moving targets in the air, whereas an X-band radar system with antennas planted at the trailing edges of the inboard wing can facilitate planes to spy in the air targets with accuracy.

Therefore we can assume that sensors have to function twofold because they spy and support plane too for smooth actions. It seems that sensors can perform more functions then this but I think that their functions can vary according to aircraft design. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that these flying spying machines will definitely help to record the data that is essentially important for security reasons and to keep an eye on enemies and on their activities.

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