US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

[SlothmanAllen]

Some interesting comments were made by Steve Trimble from Aviation Week regarding purported Air Force and Navy Long Range Strike Aircraft during the Check Six podcast on Friday, Aug. 22nd.

Specifically, he points out that in the Senate version of the budget bill it mentions a classified Air Force and a classified Navy long range strike aircraft. He seems very confident that the Air Force version is in development by Lockheed and is the aircraft that is responsible for the losses in the Skunk Works division.

Mr. Trimble further points out that two years into the EMD of the MQ-25 in 2021, the Navy decided to take away the ground control station design from Boeing and give it to Lockheed. This doesn’t really make any sense from the outside, unless you want a single standardized ground control station to control both of your unmanned aircraft and the Lockheed system was already further along.

He finally brings up that in 2020, the Navy said that 60% percent of the air wing would be unmanned. None of the publicly available development roadmaps at the time supported that at the time or since. One way to get to something close to that would be to have an air wing comprised of F-35, F/A-XX, Long Range Strike UAS and MQ-25.

The Podcast can be found here:

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[Nevermore]

The starship has successfully completed its test flight, and the cost of deploying satellites into low Earth orbit will become extremely affordable in the future. I wonder if, in the future, filling low Earth orbit with reconnaissance satellites could completely counteract fighter jet stealth capabilities and pinpoint the locations of aircraft carriers. Aircraft like the B-21 and J-20 could be tracked by satellites throughout their entire journey—from takeoff at the airfield to reaching their operational positions.

 

[Tomboy]

The starship has successfully completed its test flight, and the cost of deploying satellites into low Earth orbit will become extremely affordable in the future. I wonder if, in the future, filling low Earth orbit with reconnaissance satellites could completely counteract fighter jet stealth capabilities and pinpoint the locations of aircraft carriers. Aircraft like the B-21 and J-20 could be tracked by satellites throughout their entire journey—from takeoff at the airfield to reaching their operational positions.

That's the idea of space based AMTI, US is already researching such capabilities

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[Nevermore]

That's the idea of space based AMTI, US is already researching such capabilities

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If this technology is deployed by 2035, it will transform how superpowers conduct system-on-system warfare. High-end stealth bombers could become ordinary slow bombers, while sixth-generation fighters escorted by CCA systems would appear as clearly visible specks on radar.

 

[bebops]

What kind of satellites can track stealth? We just need a massive constellation of it.

 

[Nevermore]

What kind of satellites can track stealth? We just need a massive constellation of it.

Perhaps a small satellite equipped with infrared sensors, phased-array radar, and traditional optical sensors.The cost of launching low-Earth orbit satellites into space in the future is extremely low, and deploying hundreds of satellites can be accomplished in a very short time.

 

[Tomboy]

Perhaps a small satellite equipped with infrared sensors, phased-array radar, and traditional optical sensors.The cost of launching low-Earth orbit satellites into space in the future is extremely low, and deploying hundreds of satellites can be accomplished in a very short time.

Better hope Chinese launch providers can close the gap with SpaceX within the next 5 years.

 

[bebops]

China can use LM 10, which has 21 engines, to launch satellites.

By adding 12 more engines, then that would be a starship.

 

[Tomboy]

China can use LM 10, which has 21 engines, to launch satellites.

By adding 12 more engines, then that would be a starship.

LM-10A is basically a Falcon 9 equivalent, you don't simply just add engines without major design changes especially the full LM-10 has two side boosters making reusability more difficult. China has the LM-9 under development, but God knows what they are doing with that because the PPT for that changes every 5-10 months.

 

[gpt]

Perhaps a small satellite equipped with infrared sensors, phased-array radar, and traditional optical sensors.The cost of launching low-Earth orbit satellites into space in the future is extremely low, and deploying hundreds of satellites can be accomplished in a very short time.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1960099716966011125

There are definitely satellites that can already do this. Starshield is believed to have realtime video capability.
Check out this Starship Flight 9 launch taken by an experimental nanosat without a dedicated mercury cadmium telluride infrared sensor. The difficult problems: having complete custody of the object throughout it's entire journey and making your sensor sensitive enough to track fainter objects, can be solved by meshing together capabilities from a constellation of satellites.