December 2012 Archives

The United Kingdom's first Lockheed Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) underwent a functional check flight (FCF) at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, on December 18 in preparation for Royal Air Force and Royal Navy pilots starting training in January.

The aircraft was cleared for flight under an interim UK military flight test permit and was flown by US Marine Corps Lt Col Tye "OD" Bachmann from VMFAT-501. The second British F-35B is expected complete its FCF within the next few days, after which both jets will fly as part of the 33^rd Fighter Wing's daily operations.

"This will mark yet another milestone in the F-35B JSF Implementing Agreement for Initial Operational Test & Evaluation between the UK and the US," says Wing Commander Jon Millington, senior UK representative at Eglin. "The first two UK pilots are expected to commence flying with VMFAT-501 in mid January. Meanwhile, several UK maintainers have already started their on-the-job training on VMFAT-501, and thus commenced their exciting transition into living the life of a US Marine."

Lt Cdr Ian Tidbal and Sqd Ldr Frankie Buchler. USAF Photo by Maj Karen Roganov

33^rd Fighter Wing commander Col Andrew Toth says that in addition to the UK, the Navy and Netherlands will begin training at the seaside base in the New Year.

"Having BK-2 take flight Tuesday is special in that it marks the beginning of integrating our international partners into our flying operations," he says. "The pace will not slow in 2013 as the US Navy and the Netherlands look to take flight for the first time at Eglin."

The US Air Force hopes to keep its fleet of Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle multirole fighters in service into the 2030s, but it has no definitive plan to eventually replace those aircraft.

Read the full article here

The Strike Eagle is arguably the best multirole combat aircraft in the USAF's inventory. No other fighter offers the range, payload or breadth or depth of capability as the F-15E. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor was designed to replace the Boeing F-15C, but not the Strike Eagle. The Lockheed F-35, meanwhile, is designed to replace the Fairchild Republic A-10 and Lockheed F-16, but it does not have the range or payload to take on the Strike Eagle's role. At some point, the USAF will have to make a decision on what, if anything, will eventually fill the F-15E's mission space in the 2030s as those airframes inevitably wear out.

Industry sources are confident that a variant of the F-35 could one day replace the F-15E.  An extended range version of the F-35 can be built; it's already been studied. It would be particularly helpful if the Air Force Research Laboratory's Adaptive Engine Technology Development (AETD) program pays off with an engine that yields 35% or better fuel efficiency over the Pratt & Whitney F135. The same is true of a two-seat F-35 variant, industry sources say that it can be done--that is, if in fact, two-seats are needed. And there are options to increase the jet's payload. 

But analysts are less sure. They say that modifying the F-35 is going to require a lot of effort and it will be costly. The old Lockheed FB-22 concept that was based on the Raptor would have practically required a redesign of the entire aircraft (and there are questions about what kind of range the FB-22 could have yielded--the F-22's Achilles' heel is its range--only slightly better than an F-16). Another example is the Boeing F/A-18E/F, the Super Hornet is for all intents and purposes an entirely new airframe compared to the original A through D-model jets.

There could be a sixth-generation option--the USAF and US Navy have started looking at what an F-X and F/A-XX would look like. Or there could be other options like an unmanned aircraft tethered (line-of-sight data-links, possibly laser-based) to a manned platform such as a Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B). That would mitigate some of the comms issues inside an anti-access/area-denial environment. 

But any decision would have to be taken by the end of the decade at the very latest--it takes a very long time to develop and field a modern combat aircraft. However, given that there are so many competing resource priorities for the USAF, there must be serious consideration given to simply increasing the number of LRS-Bs to take over some of that mission space. It could be argued that if the LRS-B program were extended from 80-100 aircraft to a production run of 250-300 aircraft, one could recapitalize the entire USAF bomber fleet and forego an F-15E replacement.

There is, of course, a potential wild card. I suppose whatever the USAF is building out at Groom Lake could partially fill the deep interdiction role--if it exists and is designed as a penetrating strike/ISR platform. But as the Lexington Institute's Dan Goure points out, aircraft developed in the black world tend to be extremely high tech and extremely expensive boutique items. So, that's probably not a likely scenario.

In any case, if there is eventually a program to replace the Strike Eagle, it must be built in some numbers. It seems that every time the USAF embarks on a program, far fewer aircraft than expected hit the ramp at the end of the day (or two-and-a-half decades!). If the trend continues, the USAF's fleet of modern frontline combat aircraft will continue to shrink to potentially dangerous low levels, leaving a force of antiquated jets to face off against ever more capable foes.

Anyways, I'm off to Canada for the holiday season, so DEW Line posts will be sporadic (at best) until the New Year. So I'll leave you all this to ponder--it's an MIT Technology Review article on a potentially unjammable radar based on the quantum properties of photons.

Happy Holidays!

This Lockheed aircraft design from 1951 is for a nuclear-powered bomber--which the United States and the Soviet Union had both explored developing during the Cold War.

According to Lockheed Martin, the L-225 design was the company's second attempt at a bomber powered by a small nuclear reactor.

Ultimately, neither the US nor the USSR actually built an operational nuclear-powered aircraft. It was probably too expensive and much too dangerous--given that if one these machines crashed, it would likely contaminate a very wide area--which is bad. But it was probably mostly the cost issues and numerous technical challenges that drove the US and USSR to abandon development of these things.

Apparently, a nuclear-powered aircraft's engines--other than the reactor--would have probably looked a lot like a regular jet. That is except that there would be no combustion chamber; instead there would be a heat exchanger where molten salt would be used to heat compressed air for the turbine section. Apparently, something like this was tested in 1954 and ran about 1000 hours.

 If I recall correctly, there was a Convair NB-36H that was actually built and flown over Texas with an operating nuclear reactor onboard between 1955 and 1957, but it was never actually powered by the reactor. The Soviets did something similar with a Tupolev Tu-95 Bear.

Just how well simulators work for fighter applications is debatable. The consensus is that sims are great for replicating large scale exercises with realistic weapons and visuals, but they are less effective at simulating close range visual engagements and building general airmanship.

Read my military simulation feature here.

One of the biggest limitations is that even with some level of motion, simulators cannot normally replicate the physiological effects on the human body. Simulators cannot train student pilots on aspects of flight such as experiencing G loading and the associated vestibular effects; nor can they replicate the "feel" of an aircraft, such as airframe buffet cues.

"Full motion is great, but you aren't pulling Gs or getting into situations where you can get disoriented due to your inner ear getting screwed up from accelerations you are feeling, but your eyes aren't seeing," says one highly experienced USAF fighter pilot. "This is a human factors discussion, but I've found full motion not to be that big of a deal for fighter missions."

But one company says they have found a way to add G forces and the associated vestibular effects. "We wish to introduce you to a capability which you may be unfamiliar with but that does produce the real physiological effects of flight with full motion, not just motion cuing and that we believe could be the partial, if not total solution to the training and financial challenges in the future," says Environmental Tectonics Corporation. "We would like to introduce you to our ATFS 400 PHOENIX - a dynamic motion platform that simulates tactical flight complete with full motion and all the real physiological effects of flight."

ATFS-400 Promo from ETC on Vimeo.

ETC DMO Video from ETC on Vimeo.

I also showed the videos to a highly experienced naval test pilot who actually completed his master's thesis in simulations. "They basically have a fancy centrifuge," he says. "No doubt it provides G awareness training benefits."

"It's probably very good for putting G on the individual in a realistic sim flying environment," the test pilot says. "But there is more to proprioceptive feedback (seat of the pants) than just G onset and G sustained."

Generally, there are two types of motion simulators--one of the types, like this device, does G onset and sustained G forces. Another type does six degrees of freedom--pitch, roll, yaw, sway, and surge.

"I don't know of one today that does both," the test pilot says. "The latter is what is important for all of the other flying tasks that don't involve G per se." That could include take-offs, landings especially on a carrier and short take-off/vertical landing flights, formations, aerial refueling and what not.

"The benefit they seemed to focus on is that you could take a pilot from their undergraduate trainer that was not a 9G airplane and put them in this as a work up to their 9G fighter," the test pilot says. Right now, the USAF uses the F-16 as a bridge to the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor for B-course students coming out of UPT and Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals.

"Currently there is no formal plan for a lead in trainer for the F-35, but that is not to say that might not be a decision in the future," the test pilot says.  "Given that the F-35C is a 7.5G and the F-35B is a 7G airplane, I'm not sure there would be much interest in this for those users."  

The US Navy is delaying its Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft program. The draft request for proposals has been delayed until the first couple of months of 2013, possibly due to the program's requirements being held up at the Joint Requirements Oversight Council.

Read the full story here

But the Navy still wants the aircraft on the carrier flight deck by 2020. It probably won't be operational in the traditional sense, but a senior Navy official told me earlier in the year that the goal is to have six of the aircraft train onboard a carrier with the ship's air wing by then. However, the UCLASS wouldn't be deploying with the ship on its cruise.

For industry, this program is a pretty big deal since it's the only large new start developmental program on the horizon for the time being. All of the major contractors are hoping to secure this project. The incumbent is Northrop Grumman with its X-47B Unmanned Combat Aircraft System Demonstrator--the design of which will be modified into an actual combat aircraft and not just a demonstrator. But earlier in the year, Naval Air Systems Command said that it would make the government-owned technology from the program available to all of the UCLASS contenders.

Other contenders are Lockheed Martin's Sea Ghost. A new Boeing design that draws lessons from the X-45C Phantom Ray, but it might not be a flying wing. And General Atomics' Sea Avenger--based on the Predator-C.   

This video is a few months old, but it's still pretty cool. It shows some interesting concepts that industry has been exploring with swarming techniques and airborne networks. Also of note is the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), which is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that is current scheduled to be tested next year at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The US Navy has started deck-handling trials for the Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat aircraft system demonstrator onboard the USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75). The Navy has released some high-resolution shots and video of the event. If everything works out as planned--testing on the ship and shore-based testing with catapults and arresting gear--the X-47B will starting flight testing on the Nimitz-class carrier next year.

Read the full story here

The United States isn't the only country to have trouble with new developmental aircraft. According to the Russian newspaper Izvestia, the country's recently acquired Sukhoi Su-34 strike fighters have significant operational limitations due to various manufacturing defects. Of the 16 jets in service, each one has its own unique set of problems.

Read the article here... my Russian is almost non-existent--to be charitable--and Google translator is never 100% accurate, so this is the gist of it.

The most serious problems affect the radar and navigation systems, Izvestia says citing anonymous Russian air force pilots. Apparently, the glitches are not just due to software but there are also some hardware issues.

Maintaining the Su-34 also sounds like a nightmare for the ground crews--as each aircraft is different, and apparently a lot of the wiring is poorly soldered. The worst of the jets are the first two planes which were delivered in 2006--which are basically only there to decorate the airfield according to a senior Russian air force official Izvestia spoke to. But the three newest jets are a lot better, which is not unexpected.

As the Sukhoi rep points out in the story, almost every new aircraft has teething problems. It's just part of life in the aviation business--early examples often have flaws. They'll fix it, I'm sure. It'll just take time and money.

Brazil, an emerging economic powerhouse, has been steadily developing its aerospace industry since it established Embraer in 1969. Over the years, Embraer established itself as a serious player in the commercial aviation sector where they make regional airliners and business jets.

They also build some military hardware such as the EMB-314 Super Tucano turboprop counterinsurgency aircraft and they had a hand in the Italian-Brazilian AMX light attack jet. But in 2006 the company launched one of its most ambitious projects to date--the KC-390 tanker-transport. The aircraft, the largest Embraer has ever built, is expected to take to the air for the first time in 2014 and enter service two years later in 2016.

In this video, company engineers discuss wind tunnel testing their design.

China is upset at being called out for reverse engineering the Shenyang J-15 carrier-based fighter from the Russian Sukhoi Su-33 Flanker. The Chinese argue in the People's Daily--a state media organization--that the J-15 is more advanced than the Su-33.

Read the People's Daily article here

"Su-33 is equipped with old-fashioned ARINC429 discrete avionics system of one-way low-speed data bus, while J-15 adopts joint avionics system of bidirectional data bus," the report reads. "TS-100, the Su-33's fire-control computer, has a computing speed of only 170,000 times per second, while the J-15's fire-control computer has an estimated computing speed of over several million times per second."

It's curious they know the exact specs of the Su-33's avionics-- very curious indeed. You'd think they'd gotten their hands on one or something. Also, it's apparent that the Su-33's computer--to use a technical term--sucks.

The People's Daily also argues that the J-15 has a better radar than the Su-33. "Due to its backward avionics system, the Su-33 can only serve as interceptors, and is incapable of air-to-ground precision strike," the Chinese Communist Party organ says.

The Chinese claim that the J-15 is constructed out of more advanced materials and is produced using better techniques than its Russian progenitor. Perhaps most significantly "the J-15 is powered by home-made Taihang (WS-10) turbofan engine, which is more powerful than the Su-33's engine," the People's Daily says.

That last part is actually quite a significant development, if it is true. China has not had an easy time of building jet engines. Most of its previous efforts have fallen flat with engines exploding in mid-air and the like. If the Chinese have learned to build their own engines, that could mean that they will not be dependent upon Russian hardware for much longer. However, building reverse engineered engines is one thing, coming up with and building your own design is quite another.

Interestingly, the Chinese seem genuinely aggrieved by suggestions that they copied the Su-33 almost bolt-for-bolt. And, frankly, it's true--the J-15 is for all intents and purposes a bolt-for-bolt copy like the Tupolev Tu-4 was of the Boeing B-29. All the Chinese have done is performed what amounts to a mid-life update to the reverse engineered Su-33 design-- but the airframe, at its core, remains a Flanker. Simply upgrading a design after stealing the intellectual property does not make an original design.

Perhaps the Chinese genuinely don't get the concept of intellectual property? This is a problem in other industries too.

The US Air Force has embarked upon a new Long Range Strike family of systems--one component of which is the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B). But even as the USAF proceeds with the new program in complete secrecy, there are new details emerging about the previous ill-fated Next Generation Bomber (NGB) effort that was cancelled by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2009.

Northrop Grumman, which built the B-2 Spirit, is one of three potential contractors who are likely to be building the new LRS-B. While the NGB was terminated, many of those technologies are certain to find new life on the LRS-B. The DEW Line has unearthed a patent filing by Northrop that details some of the features of their old NGB design--it could provide some hints as to what the company is cooking up for the new project.

The aircraft, as can be seen in the drawings, shows family traits common to the US Navy X-47B unmanned aircraft demonstrator. In many respects, at least to me, it looks like an X-47B that has been scaled up by a factor of 10 with an added cockpit and more engines. It has the same cranked kite planform--but the (retractable) canards are new. Apparently, they would have only been used during take-offs and landings according to the patent filing text. Also of note, the bomber design has four engines. Interestingly, one of the big innovations was that it was designed for modular construction--which could make it less ungodly expensive.

If the rumored Northrop Grumman ISR/Strike aircraft that is purported to be flying does in fact exist, it could share a very similar configuration.

Hopefully more on the LRS family on Monday.

Canada's National Post is reporting that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is pulling the plug on that nation's embattled plan to buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

Sources tell the Post that the Harper government is making the move because of the imminent release of an independent audit by KPMG that will peg the total projected life-cycle cost of Canada's 65 F-35s above $30 billion. That price tag pushed the cabinet operations committee to decide on Tuesday to bail out of the gargantuan nine-nation (led, of course by the United States--we're actually paying for the overwhelming bulk of the program as one would expect) defense procurement, sources tell the Post.

The KPMG estimate aligns closely with figures reported earlier by Canada's parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, who predicted a cost of $30 billion over a 30-year life-cycle.

The F-35 procurement plan--by far Canada's biggest military program ever--has long been a political hot potato since a damning auditor general's report found that the government misled the Canadian public on how much the stealth fifth-generation fighter actually costs.

Canadian auditor general Michael Ferguson's report found that the $9 billion figure cited by the Harper government for 65 planes--$15-billion if life-cycle costs are included--was $10 billion below the Canadian Department of National Defence's internal projections. But even that $25.1 billion figure only took into account a 20-year life-cycle rather than the projected 36 year life-cycle of the F-35.

Canada's public works minister, Rona Ambrose, who is responsible for managing the Canadian F-35 buy has been signaling recently that she is unhappy with how the aircraft's requirements were drawn up.

Another newspaper, the Globe and Mail (roughly the Canadian equivalent of the New York Times) is disputing the National Post Report. "The story is inaccurate on a number of fronts," a senior official tells the Globe and Mail.

We should find out for sure some time tomorrow... there is another cabinet meeting that should clarify matters.

UPDATE: Per the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it looks like the F-35 is not quite dead (probably) in Canada--but it looks like other jets will be considered. These could include the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab Gripen. I suppose the F-15SE Silent Eagle could be considered too, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

US Air Force Lt Col Lawrence Spinetta and M.L. Cummings make an interesting point in this Armed Forces Journal piece, edited by my former editor at Defense News and good friend Brad Peniston.

Read the AFJ piece here

The two authors assert that the USAF risks irrelevance in future conflicts by what they perceive as the service's abandonment of unmanned aircraft in favor of traditional air power capabilities. Without former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to twist the USAF's arm, the service is "rolling back the inroads made by unmanned aircraft," they argue.

They cite the USAF's move to cull the problem-plagued RQ-4B Block 30 Global Hawk from the service's fleet as one example of this. They cite the USAF's decision not to move forward with the MQ-X next generation unmanned aircraft as another such move (but no mention of the USAF's explanation of why that decision was made). And they point to the Air Force's decision to cut General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper production in half from 48 to 24 as yet another example.

"The Air Force's abandonment of its UAS Flight Plan not only squanders this promising growth opportunity, it unwisely conjoins the service's future to the life cycle of manned combat aircraft," the article reads.

The men damn the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor for not having flown a single combat mission to date, citing US  Senator John McCain, who called the stealthy fifth-generation jet "largely irrelevant to the most predominant current threats to national security -- terrorists, insurgencies and other non-state actors." But they heap praise on the Predator and Reaper.

Spinetta and Cummings  appear to take as gospel the air power theories of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates--which are privately (or sometimes quite openly--one particular retired officer had some choice words to describe Gates' views on air power) derided by many former USAF leaders. Spinetta, particularly, is known as a vocal advocate of unmanned aircraft.

Moreover, the authors seem to be largely focused on the types of conflicts that the United States has been fighting over the past decade--mostly the counterinsurgency type of fight. They don't seem to take into account the strategic pivot towards the Pacific that US President Barack Obama announced earlier in the year. There is no mention of the challenges current unmanned aircraft would face in the anti-access/area denial environments found in the Western Pacific. Nor do they seem to acknowledge the challenges than even a next generation stealthy unmanned aircraft might face in those environments--communications being one such example.

Just recently, speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Air Combat Command chief General Mike Hostage told a crowd of Washington DC think tank analysts and defense reporters that the current fleet of unmanned aircraft is irrelevant as the US shifts its gaze towards the Pacific theatre.

"We are now shifting to a theatre where there is an adversary out there who is going to have a vote on whether I have that staring eye over the battlefield 24[hours], seven [days a week], 365 [days a year], and pretty certain they are not going to allow that to happen," he says. "The fleet I've built up--and I'm still being prodded to build up too--is not relevant in that new theatre."

Read the full article here

Retired US Air Force General Chuck Wald recently (relatively speaking) flew Sierra Nevada Corps/Embraer's A-29 Super Tucano in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The Brazilian-designed counterinsurgency aircraft is a contender for the service's Light Air Support (LAS) tender to supply the Afghan Air Force with some sort of fixed-wing light attack capability. The Tucano had been selected last December for the 20 aircraft contract, but that award was immediately challenged by rival Hawker Beechcraft, which had pitched an AT-6 derivative of its Texan II turboprop trainer.

The USAF eventually scrapped the original program when it discovered that its internal documentation for the contract were not in order. The error was only uncovered during the initial phases of a lawsuit Beechcraft had filed to overturn the award. Earlier this year, before he retired, former USAF chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz mentioned that people had been fired for the screw up. He also mentioned that the LAS was an "urgent requirement" for the Afghan Air Force, and that the relaunched program would proceed quickly...  And yet, here we sit a year later--so apparently not.

Wald, who was responsible for air operations during the initial stages of the Afghan war, made some interesting comments about the A-29 and its capabilities. "I think if we'd had this in the inventory at the beginning of Afghanistan, it would have led the way for all the things we are doing there," he says.  "It's not for a high-threat environment, but Afghanistan isn't. It's for close air support and staying close to the target.  It has a lot of endurance."

While the LAS program was intended to supply Afghanistan with a fixed-wing light attack capability, the USAF never intended to buy the aircraft for itself. The Air Force had a separate program called Light Attack Armed Reconnaissance (LAAR) to buy 15 similar light attack turboprops (initially, it started off as 100 aircraft which the service might have used during actual combat operations) to help instruct/build up less developed foreign partners, but that program appears to have died a slow death.

For what it's worth, it should be noted that Wald works as a consultant at Deloitte and is the company's director for its defense practice. Here is another marketing video. 

A Lockheed Martin F-35B short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) joint strike fighter dropped a second weapon at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, on December 3, earlier in the week.

Lt Cmdr Michael Burks released an inert 500lbs GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb from aircraft BF-3 over the Atlantic test ranges. Burks was flying at Mach 0.8 (or 485 knots) at an altitude of 5000 ft for the test.

"Today's release of the GBU-12 builds on our team's first-ever drop earlier this summer," says US Navy Captain Erik Etz, flight test director for naval F-35 variants.

According to the Navy, this is the second weapons drop for the F-35B, but the fourth drop for the program as a whole. So far, the F-35 has released the 500lbs GBU-12s, the 1,000lbs GBU-32, the 2000lbs GBU-31 and the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM).

 "We're expanding the envelope for the fleet," Burks says. "The GBU-12 is a critical weapon in the F-35's arsenal and will be vital in our mission to support the troops on the ground."

Is there a stealthy intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)/strike aircraft secretly under development at the US Air Force's facility in Groom Lake, Nevada?

It's hard to say for sure--and to be perfectly frank, I don't know. But there have been rumors (which I've mentioned before in passing here on DEW Line) flying around about some sort of secret stealth ISR/Strike aircraft being built by Northrop Grumman (But I've also heard it could be someone else... Lockheed or Boeing are possibilities) that's being tested at Groom Lake. Just recently, fellow defense aerospace scribe, the esteemed Bill Sweetman--who has been covering the black world for a very, very long time--mentioned such a program in this piece he wrote. Read Bill's story here...

So the common elements of the various rumors are that it is a fairly large stealth aircraft--with a wingspan roughly comparable to a Boeing 737 (or Global Hawk as Bill says). The planform is supposedly a flying wing design, possibly similar in concept to Northrop's X-47B. Allegedly, it has weapons bays to hold a fairly substantial payload and it has all of your various ISR sensors installed. Supposedly, it has either a single engine or multiple... If it's a very long range aircraft, might make sense to have the redundancy of a twin engine configuration. If any of it is true is, of course, open to debate.  

Depending on who is telling the story, this alleged secret aircraft is either manned or unmanned. I suppose it could be optionally manned. It would make sense if this aircraft was designed to operate inside heavily defended airspace--given that maintaining control (not to mention getting the reams of data back to the Distributed Common Ground Station for analysis) of an unmanned aircraft inside a communications degraded/communications denied environment is a problem that the Defense Department continues to wrestle with. The USAF's aspiration for its Long Range Strike Bomber is for it to be optionally manned...

Anyways, these are all just rumors. Nothing solid--the only concrete evidence that suggests this thing might exist is that I've seen some Google satellite imagery showing some new hangars that could hold such a craft at Groom Lake. I suppose--and it is supposition--that it could be for some sort of test bed.

But developing an aircraft in complete secrecy is not unprecedented. There were a couple of operational squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-117 operating in secret in Tonopah, Nevada, for more than decade before anyone knew for sure they existed. A more recent example is the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 unmanned aircraft...

I've been chasing this particular wild goose for three years, and it could be complete hogwash. But who knows?

US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced earlier today during the inactivation ceremony for the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65) that the third Gerald R Ford-class carrier, CVN-80, will also be named the Enterprise. CVN-80 will be the ninth Navy warship to bear the name Enterprise, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Good choice--sure beats calling it the Gabby Giffords or something (Look up Littoral Combat Ship if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Mabus says he selected the name Enterprise to honor CVN-65, which became the Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier when she was first commissioned back in 1961. "The USS Enterprise was the first of its kind, and for 51 years its name has been synonymous with boldness, readiness and an adventurous spirit," Mabus says. "Rarely has our fleet been without a ship bearing the name.  I chose to maintain this tradition not solely because of the legacy it invokes, but because the remarkable work of the name Enterprise is not done."

An earlier World War II carrier, CV-6, also called Enterprise became a legend in the Pacific theatre fighting the Japanese. She played a key role in the pivotal US victory at Midway, and she earned 20 battle stars by the time the war ended. If I recall correctly, the Enterprise was one three Navy carriers built prior to December 7, 1941, to survive the entire war.

Incidentally, CVN-79, the second Ford-class ship will be called USS John F Kennedy--he has stature as a naval hero and President of the United States. He also had a previous carrier CV-67 named after him.

According to the Navy: "The Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be 1,092 feet in length and have a beam of 134 feet.  The flight deck will be 256 feet wide, and the ship will be able to operate at speeds in excess of 34 knots."