X-47B Completes First Pax River Flight

Naval aviation officials chose 11 a.m. on Sunday morning to make history as the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator made its first flight at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

The tailess, unmanned aircraft designed to land on aircraft carriers made a 35 minute flight taking off from Pax River and flying over the Chesapeake Bay reaching an altitude of 7,500 feet and an air speed of 180 knots. Navy officials considered Sunday’s first test flight a success.

The service’s first unmanned strike aircraft arrived from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., in June to continue its testing regimen. Pax River has a  simulated aircraft carrier environment to test the incredible feat of landing an unmanned aircraft on a carrier at sea. Navy leaders hope to make the first X-47B landing on a carrier in 2013. 

Read more: http://defensetech.org/#ixzz227Yjy73M 
Defense.org 

Pandora Box

For the last two years a Russian firm (Morinformsystem-Agat JSC) has been marketing a version of the Klub cruise missile that can be carried in a 40 foot (12.9 meter) shipping container. Called “Pandora’s Box”, the launcher and the missile have to slide out of the container before firing, thus limiting where it can be placed on a ship, particularly your typical container ship. Recently the manufacturer announced another version of this system with a smaller, slower, and presumably cheaper cruise missile. This unidentified weapon is described as weighing 520 kg (half a ton), having a 145 kg (319 pound) warhead, and being 3.8 meters (11.8 feet) long. Max range is 130 kilometers.

What worries counter-terrorism officials is that you could get many of these shipping container missiles on most cargo ships, turning the vessel into a warship. The shipping container can also be hauled around (like many such containers are) via truck or rail car and used to surprise someone you don’t like.

The system is all in one shipping container, which is equipped with four missiles, in sealed shipping/firing containers. Also in the container are communications and targeting equipment which the two man crew uses to program the missiles, operate the hydraulic system to raise the missiles, and fire them. The entire container is waterproof and contains a satellite link for receiving target data, or whatever.

The first version of Pandora's Box used the 3M54 Klub missile. This weapon was originally designed for the Kilo submarine. Each Klub weighs two tons, can be fired from a 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tube, and has a 200 kg (440 pound) warhead. The anti-ship version has a range of 300 kilometers and moves at up to 3,000 kilometers an hour during its last minute or so of flight. There is also an air launched and ship launched version (which is used in Pandora's Box). A land attack version does away with the high speed final approach feature and has a 400 kg (880 pound) warhead.

What makes the anti-ship version of the 3M54 particularly dangerous is its final approach, which begins when the missile is about 15 kilometers from its target. Up to that point the missile travels at an altitude of about 32 meters (hundred feet). This makes the missile more difficult to detect. The "high speed approach" (via the use of additional rockets) means that it covers that last fifteen kilometers in less than twenty seconds. This makes it difficult for current anti-missile weapons to take it down.

It’s unusual for a firm to offer something like Pandora's Box, which is designed for concealed transport on a merchant ship, truck, or rail car. So far none of the buyers have been identified. The manufacturer says there have been many inquiries from foreign nations (none were identified). While these missiles are of questionable effectiveness in wartime, they would likely be much more potent if used for a surprise attack on a military or civilian target. Estimated price for each cargo container of Klubs is about $6 million. The new version probably goes for less than $4 million per container. The fact that Pandora's Box is still being offered for sale after two years, and has just been upgraded, indicates that someone is buying, but who?

Read more at: http://www.strategypage.com/

Eurocopter's X3 — Would You Go to War in One?

By Graham Warwick 


This week, Eurocopter's X3 high-speed helicopter demonstrator wraps up its U.S. tour with a stop in Washington for military-customer demo flights from Fort Belvoir and a static display at the Pentagon on Thursday (July 26).



All photos: Mike Hirschberg, AHS

EADS North America is pushing the compound-helicopter's military potential and Steve Mundt, VP of business development and a former head of U.S. Army aviation, says the company is "very, very interested" in the Pentagon's Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative to replace the U.S. military's helicopters with a family of advanced rotorcraft beginning in 2030.

The X3 clearly offers more speed than a conventional helicopter—it has reached 232 kt. in level flight and 242 kt. in a dive—that's 50% faster than a conventional helicopter using just 80% of available power—but the U.S. military has been interested in speed before, and always ended up with conventional helicopters cruising around 150 kt.

The reason, says Mundt, is that more speed and range is great, but you still need to be able to maneuver with the agility of a helicopter when you get there. Especially when, as FVL plans, you are replacing the AH-64, AH/UH-1, UH-60 and MH-60. And the X3 can do it, he says, because it has a conventional helicopter main rotor to which are added two variable-pitch props at the ends of short wings, all driven from the same main gearbox.

he X3 takes off vertically and hovers like a helicopter, but push forward on the "coolie-hat" thumb switch on the collective lever and prop pitch increases, the helicopter accelerates into forward flight and flies—and climbs—like a fixed-wing turboprop.

Mundt sees military value in the X3's ability not only to accelerate and decelerate in a level attitude, but to point the nose up or down in flight to improve target tracking. Also, the props can be used to slow the aircraft in a dive— an ability to "hang" over the target that Sikorsky also claims for its X2 Raider coaxial-rotor compound helicopter.

But what about those big props? Are they vulnerable? No more than a tailrotor, Mundt says, and the X3 can fly with just one prop working. Do they get in the way? Yes, says Mundt, but only if you think in terms of loading and unloading through side doors."We need to change mentally. If we raise the tail and fit clamshell doors, troops can get in and out faster." The X3's ability to point its nose up or down also helps align the fuselage with the ground for slope landings, something a conventional helicopter can't do, he says.



The X3 is a technology demonstrator for something Eurocopter calls the H3—High-speed long-range Hybrid Helicopter—a concept that is scalable from 6 tonnes gross weight to "much more" than 14 tonnes, says Mundt. "We think it can replace the V-22 under FVL, where the desire of the DoD is to go for as much commonality as it can [across its fleet of rotorcraft]," he says.

Read more at: http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7