Liberty Sized Lifter, a DARPA proposal

 This is something that I snagged from the Aviation stuff that shows up in my email from 3rd party sources.  This has interesting ramifications especially with China as a peer adversary in the near future and the Pacific being a big waterpark, and the islands we control are far less than there were during WWII. The ability to deliver freight and goods over water quickly has strategic implications, but also having control of the strategic airspace is a factor, can't have one of these things shot down by a "Chinese J20" or something similar would be bad.

 

New DARPA projects come about for various reasons, but sometimes they start with an impossible question. Five years ago, Alexander Walan, a program manager for the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, started asking if it was possible to design an ocean-crossing cargo vessel with a 100-kt. cruise speed.

“The short answer was: not really,” Walan tells Aviation Week.

• Liberty Lifter concept unveiled by DARPA
• Daylong Pacific crossings sought with 80-ton loads

By pursuing that line of inquiry for several years, however, Walan settled on what became the newly unveiled Liberty Lifter concept. Starting with a $31 million budget request for fiscal 2023, DARPA hopes to demonstrate a C-17-size, seagoing strategic airlifter by 2028.

In fact, DARPA’s proposed design calls for a hybrid configuration. The Liberty Lifter would be a wing-in-ground-effect aircraft that skims on a ground-effect air cushion over the tops of waves at up to 200 kt., but would also be a flying boat capable of ascending up to 10,000 ft.

If the Liberty Lifter concept works in five years, the U.S. military would have the option to field a new type of cargo transport and amphibious assault ship. The seaborne airlifter would cross the Pacific Ocean in about a day—not 2-3 weeks, as required for a seagoing freighter. The DARPA concept also could land and take off from bodies of water rather than the easily targeted runways and dirt strips used by Boeing C-17s.

That unique operational profile is the entire point for a military reorienting itself to strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific area, but it also creates an organizational dilemma. As the project gets started, DARPA officials are not yet clear on whether the operator for the Liberty Lifter should be the Air Force’s aircraft-focused Air Mobility Command, the Navy’s ship-oriented Military Sealift Command, or both.

“We’re probably doing something right if the services like it but can’t figure out where it fits,” Walan says. “That means it’s new and different. So that’s an opportunity and a risk.”

The concept evokes the Cold War-era “ekranoplan” fleet, which included the Soviet Union’s A-90 Orlyonok transports and Lun-class anti-ship missile launchers, but the Liberty Lifter comes with a major difference. Due to a design limited to ground-effect flight only, the Soviet vessels were limited to flying over calm seas.

DARPA’s concept calls for operating in ground effect over waves up to 18 ft. high, covering about 85-90% of maritime conditions, Walan says. Moreover, if the military decided to move a Liberty Lifter from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, it would be better to fly overland rather than around the tip of Florida, he adds. So DARPA added a requirement for up-and-away flight to 10,000 ft.

Bidders for a Phase 1 study could propose alterations, but DARPA came up with a design for a Stratolaunch Roc-style twin-fuselage arrangement, with canards in front of a long wing powered by 10 turboshaft engines positioned on the trailing edge. Most ekranoplan designs position engines in front of the wing to stimulate the ground-effect airflow, but DARPA rejected this approach. Mounting the engines on the wing’s trailing edge protects the blades and turbines from corrosive saltwater spray, and the Liberty Lifter’s wings can generate enough of an air cushion for ground-effect flying anyway, Walan says.

As the concept blurs the line between aircraft and boat, so does DARPA’s concept for the structure. The Liberty Lifter should be built from medium-grade aluminum, splitting the difference between lighter aerospace alloys and cheaper, heavier metal forms used in ships. A risk reduction project by DARPA manufactured a center section wing using 3D-printed aluminum panels, which were joined using friction stir welding, Walan says.

The proposed amphibious aircraft will need an advanced control system, including fly-by-wire and wave-monitoring sensors. Any given sea state involves more than simply the height of the waves,  including the distance between the waves and the interaction between them. “If I know what the waves look like—not only the crests, but also wavelength, etc.—I can optimize how high I want to fly,” Walan says.

The DARPA project comes amid a revival of interest from startup companies in wing-in-ground-effect vehicles. Although Flying Ships and Regent have held discussions with DARPA, both companies say they are not participating. For his part, Walan expects industry teams composed of aviation and maritime companies.

“We kind of gave a heads-up last year that this might be coming,” Walan says, “to let people start working those relationships.”

 

Possible Plan of the President.... Endgame.?

I was working the airplane...it is nice when they cooperate with me and I don't have to say unkind things to them...Anybody that has a background on Customer Service will understand this.  Anyway..I was thinking about what the presidents endgame is....He is going out of the way to marginalize the GOP, blaming them for everything that has transpired..despite his hand in the events and he has a complicit media to assist him in his desires.   There was a news on Yahoo I saw earlier that has now vanished where President Obama wants to replace the democrats with his SUPERPAC, Apparently the democrats are having funding issues and Obama is flush with cash and wanting to create another group that will charge $500,000 to be part of this panel for access to the President.  Nothing like loading the warchest with more cash...Wait he can't run for a 3rd term...?   Well to let me continue...I believe that President Obama wants to marginalize the GOP to such an extent that the democrats will retake the house in 2014 and that they will be PERSONALLY beholding to him.  Nothing like getting the 22 amendment repealed(the one that limits a presidential term). 
     What the President will not realize or doesn't care is that right now the people that don't like his policies have the outlet of voting..it is a pressure release valve.  If they realize that voting is totally ineffective due to the machination of voting fraud and total suppression of the conservative votes, they will realize that voting is no longer effective, they will take more active approaches to their dislike of the policies of the President.   That is already a movement in the conservative atmosphere(for lack of another word.. I am an airplane mechanic, not a writer...so there....) to no longer vote, it is ineffective in stopping the federal government juggernaut.    As long as people believe that voting matters, there will be peace.  Once most of the conservative people realize that voting will no be effective then violence will start.

 I wonder if this is the endgame of the president..either mold the United States to his vision by political force...or start off a shooting war to compel people people to submit to his vision of utopia...the future of America.

Our future under Obamacare..

I saw this from one of the British newspapers that I read.

     The British NHS is the standard that the people that espouse Obama-care want, the single payer(read tax-payer-funded) system.  The system that will be full of government employees that cannot be fired for being incompetent because they are part of a union which contribute to democrats.    The system that will reward sloth and multiculturalism. not empathy and competence.  

     Our future under obamakare

Julie saw how the heroic kindness of a few good nurses and doctors was over-ridden by the careless, the bullying and power-hungry

The room was grubby, cramped and windowless, and Julie Bailey had been summoned to it by a hospital doctor. He clicked his fingers to demonstrate how swiftly her mother’s condition could decline, warning that the end would not be merciful. ‘Your mother will die a painful death,’ he said. ‘It is best that you leave her here with us.’

She did not hear the medical explanation that ensued. She was mute with shock; confounded. Then the doctor slid a piece of paper towards her. It was a Do Not Resuscitate form. Quietly but firmly, he urged Julie to sign it. Suddenly she was alert, defiant. ‘Of course I will not allow my mum to die!’ she said, refusing to sign the form.

For Julie, 50, a café owner from Stafford, the incident was pivotal. It marked the moment when she resolved that she would never again leave her mum Bella, 86, alone in the hospital; the moment her faith in its staff evaporated entirely.
‘Before I left the room, I told the doctor: “As long as my mother is in this hospital, she will have her family with her. I have no trust in you. She is not safe here”,’ Julie recalls.

Thereafter, for the next eight weeks until Bella Bailey did indeed die, with a degree of pain and terror that could have been avoided, her daughter remained at her bedside, day and night.

On the rare occasions when Julie — a divorcee and mum to Laura, 23, and Martin, 33 — left her post to go home for a night of unbroken sleep, other family members rallied.

And during the round-the-clock vigil, the scenes she witnessed were harrowing. The ward was filthy; patients sounded their buzzers in vain. Julie, unable to ignore the chaos, stepped in. ‘I emptied a bowl of vomit; scrubbed blood from walls; helped a patient onto a commode. I washed faeces from the hands of one elderly woman who had been left in the same soiled clothes for four days.

‘There was one confused patient who was so parched with thirst because she had no water that she drank stagnant water from flower vases.

Read more:here

Thanksgiving 2012.....

I shamelessly lifted this here, a great site and worth a book mark,,,Thanks OldNFO

Thanksgiving 2022

Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world",Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.

And that was the year they took all the guns, since "hunting" was officially outlawed under the same act, so there was no need to have any guns.  The NRA was disbanded as a terrorist organization, and their entire membership list was added to the terrorist watch list, put on GPS monitoring and most lost their jobs, as they were restricted to no more than 2 miles of travel from home.  Winston absently rubbed his ankle, remembering those two years until he 'proved' he was safe.

And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to  officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster. Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold.

Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats - which were monitored and controlled by the electric company - be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

         

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited", explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

         

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

         

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists."

         

Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

         

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example", she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children.  He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

         

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner", but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually

worthless as a result of QE13.

         

The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

         

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential.

Hearing the roar of a big Detroit V8, riding in a convertible, going to the range for friendly competition, actually LISTENING to one's parents, cooking a real steak on a grill; oh man, now all they get is what the government 'lets' them do.

         

Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought. Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.