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Summary

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Boeing Condor

It is paradoxical that the USAF developed in the seventies are several unmanned reconnaissance equipment type HALE (Combat Dawn, Arrow and Compass Cope Dwell), but all have different reasons phased out. After the Compass Cope took the initiative, DARPA and the end of the seventies has created its own program called Teal Cameo. This included a number of development initiatives related to the development of unmanned aircraft with great stamina in the air. Under him were three high-priority projects. The first of these was the Teal Rain, focused on research subsonic propulsion technologies for large heights. The other two were made with regard to operational use in the U.S. Navy: Amber Teal, in which originated under the baton of the brilliant Israeli designer Abraham Karema tactical unmanned reconnaissance aircraft category and MALE UAVs huge project with lasting a few days, whose task was to protect the maritime fleet early detection Soviet bombers Tu-22M Backfire, armed with missiles protilodn�mi missiles.

Shortly after his appointment as Minister for the Navy in 1981 by John Lehman began to aggressively pursue a strategy to be a battle group of ships the Navy should move directly to the Norwegian and Barents Sea, where they faced the Soviet fleet in their own territory. Major threat to this plan, however, highlighted the Backfire bombers. It had been assumed that in the event of military conflict, the Soviet Union launches an almost mindlessly hundreds of missiles with cruise missiles, to ensure destruction of the American fleet. Their release had yet to take place away from the operational scope of air cover from aircraft carriers. Raised the question of how to protect their own forces from attack bombers. It is at this moment came in very handy acumen DARPA strategists who have already begun in advance of the project reconnaissance aircraft type large hall. Restricted to be involved with the project Lockheed and Boeing machine Enchantment of the majestic Condor resources. Lockheed proposal foresaw a huge machine with a wing span of more than 90 meters. The drive should procure special turbohriade\u013eov� dual cycle engines. At the start, climb to flight level and the operational at pritst�t� would function as a two-lane conventional engines, while in summer a large amount would be remitted to the turbohriade\u013eov�ho driving the huge propeller with a diameter of 14.3 meters. In order for aircraft to take off, the propeller was during the launch and landing fixed in a horizontal position. For further work, however, was chosen by Boeing machine.

Condor is designed for long-patrolling at high altitudes of up to seven days. He had to provide a continuous overview of the situation in the air and if the enemy attack deleted and guide anti-aircraft missiles with a special ram drive Soviet bombers so that they are shot down before removing its missiles protilodn�ch. In addition, innovative drive, which allowed to remain in the air at that time an incredible time, a further element of innovative use of advanced composite materials. They make the whole body weighed in spite of its size only 3630 kg. Estimated unit price, including sensor equipment at $ 40 million price level in the mid-eighties gives guessed what had to be a sophisticated control system is fully autonomous. The overall concept of the machine while the maximum benefit from the program GPX Senior Pine from the turn of the 60th and 70 years, developed under contract from the Office of Naval Research. Were studied while three supersonic and subsonic five variants.

Its margin of 61 m and two six-cylinder, water-cooled Teledyne Continental propulsion units to be built until the largest unmanned aircraft which he has made several unofficial records. The design is widely applied composite materials. consisted of the takeoff weight of more than 60% of the fuel carried exclusively in the wing. Themselves while on the wing might end bend in the range up to 12.5 meters ! Engine power is transmitted via the speed gearbox trefoils composite propeller with a diameter of 4.9 meters. Flight tests in the range of eight flights were conducted from Moses Lake in Washington and as a means to demonstrate their endurance in the air for more than 60 hours and available to 20 420 meters. Flew while the pre-programmed route refinement without your GPS location. Performance and reliability of autonomous control system perfectly verify the mechanical error of a test flight when the rudder on the tail blocked at maximum deflection. Software while now adapted displacements and other maneuvering areas by ground guidance system with the aircraft landed safely. At such a critical situation on board was available for a separate computer. The remaining two years of follow under normal conditions. Source code taken and adapted from nuclear missiles SRAM (Short Range Attack Missile), yet only had 60 000 lines of programming, which is a fraction compared to current systems.

Lufthansa never reached operational service, but it was nevertheless a valuable development platform for new technologies. In this way, and reached a maximum value for funds invested, as its operational career would be questionable anyway. Discharged directly from the idea of \u200b\u200banti-aircraft missiles means was quickly condemned because of the disproportionate demands on the weight of the payload. So the question arises, which then kills the Soviet bombers protilodn�mi missiles as U.S. Navy range fighters to simply not enough. One suggestion was for example used Condor to establish their position and direction of the data and then use a laser to send the forward submarines, equipped with anti-aircraft missiles. Similarly, the number of copies was a big lottery. The original, extremely optimistic plans for 200 machines operating Navy eventually Deputy Minister Melvin Paisley skresal only 9 specimens. The controversial program was to eventually become a victim of budget cuts in the U.S. Congress. Condor has a short time Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has served as a platform to develop systems to track enemy ballistic missiles at the start that ended up in Hiller Aviation Museum in San Francisco. Overall, the program allocated $ 300 million from DARPA budget (with the original program manager for the Boeing Company spent only for the actual development and production of fuselage sections), so that Boeing remained open an account for another 100 million that had to invest its own resources, mostly development of management software.

Even after the Condor Boeing has continued to study similar type of sensor platforms HALE until the early 90th years.


Sources

http://www.hitechweb.genezis.eu

http://www.hitechweb.genezis.eu