Monday, April 20, 2009

Avenger

Great Satan's fully crunk 30 years in the future military continues to march.

Meet Avenger.

She is sleek, sexyful, supersonic and semi stealthy.

"The Avenger's 17-degree sweep, 66-ft. span wing and tail are all aligned in plan view with one or other of the leading edges. This is the same shaping discipline used on classic stealth designs like the F-22 and B-2."

"Pratt has been developing an S-shaped exhaust system that both offers protection from radar and cooling to reduce the infrared signature. The engine is expected to provide an airspeed of at least 400 knots, but company officials say envelope expansion tests may prove the speed to be "considerably greater". The UCAV's operational altitude would be up to 60,000 feet"


She is a killer - the 2nd time Great Satan has christened her classically classy airborne angels with the nom d' guerre of "Avenger".

The original Avenger annihilated Japan's elite aircraft carriers at Midway and sweetly continued to inflict agony and pain on Nippon's Co Prosperity Imperial Sphere until Japan screamed "God! Please! Stop!"

New school Avenger totes over a ton of precision guided intelligent weaponry plus enough eyes to track whatever she wants

"Avenger's long, featureless underside further provides an ideal location for a sensor such as an all-weather, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. The wide-area surveillance system - to be provided by the U.S. Air Force - has yet to be defined."

Avenger looks to be designed for a wide variety of missions - recon plus attorney free targeted kills

"Avenger's weapons bay allows internal carriage of 500-pound bombs with GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions with GPS navigation and laser guidance kits attached. Given the aircraft's 41-ft length - which will increase by at least two feet in the second test aircraft - the weapons bay appears to be 10-feet long."

Avenger was designed from her inception so that the wing could be folded at the point where it cranks for storage in hangars or for aircraft carrier operations. The UCAV also comes with a tailhook, which suggests that carrier-related chicanery is sweetly sexplicit.

Oh Snap! Analysis means at the cost of loiter speed and time on station, a piston engine can be throttled back to reduce fuel consumption and extend loiter time, a turbofan operates efficiently only in a rather narrow power band (85-95%), which means Avenger cannot fly quite as slow as a Reaper, nor hang around quite as long.

It does mean she's way better at dashing from one point to another, which can be important when dealing with "time critical" targets (e.g., creepy intolerant high value enemies spotted in Swat Valley and Avenger is checking out the hood in Waziristan near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border).

She is a Predator.

She is a killer.

She is Avenger.


Pic "Avenger" by Scott Meade

3 comments:

Raedwulf said...

Now I know what to get you for Christmas!!

John Turner said...

The speed prior to envelope testing is listed at about 400 ktas, so unless GA greatly surpassed design criteria it may prove to be subsonic.

Winston said...

excellent blog