Why DARPA is Pushing the XS-1 Spaceplane

Citing increasing U.S. launch costs and the “fleeing” of commercial customers to foreign launch service providers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing to push a bold strategy tied to a new, reusable spaceplane that the Agency envisions flying 10 times in 10 days for a cost of less than $5 million USD per flight.

The issue:

As defined by DARPA, the “Dramatic growth in U.S. launch costs since [the] early 1990s is driving much larger growth in space system costs.”

As part of DARPA’s “Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1): Aiming to Reduce the Time to Space and Cost to Space by Orders of Magnitude” overview (video and materials in L2), the program cites an annual DoD (Department of Defense) launch cost in excess of $3 billion USD, with small launches now cited as greater than $50 million USD each.

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DARPA is Returning to Turbine-based Combined Cycle Propulsion System for Routine Hypersonic Flight

A turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) propulsion system to enable routine hypersonic flight by a vehicle that can take-off and land from a runway is back on the agenda at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a five-year hiatus.

The experimenting agency has set a “proposers day” on 13-14 July for potential bidders of the Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) programme, which is scheduled to launch as a new-start effort in Fiscal 2017.

Combining a turbine engine with a ramjet in the same vehicle has been a dream for the aerospace industry since the early 1950s, when the US Air Force proposed adapting Republic’s concept for the XF-103 fighter with a ramjet to intercept Soviet bombers at speeds up to Mach 5.

But TBCC concepts are limited by a propulsion gap between the Mach 2.5 top speed of a turbine engine and the Mach 3-3.5 minimum speed for a ramjet engine.

In 2009, DARPA attempted to bridge that gap with a high-speed turbine and a low-speed ramjet under the Mode Transition (MoTr) programme, but the project was cancelled two years later. By 2013, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works organisation appeared to lobby for a revival of the research effort by releasing a concept for a Mach 6.0-capable SR-72 for high-speed surveillance missions, which was based on a similar TBCC propulsion system.

The AFRE programme now seeks to pick up where MoTr left off, leading to a ground demonstration of a fully integrated propulsion system capable of taking-off from a runway and accelerating beyond Mach 5. The system will include an off-the-shelf turbine engine and a dual mode ramjet/scramjet capable of operating with subsonic or supersonic airflows. Both engines share a common inlet and exhaust nozzle, but transition from turbine to ramjet power at a certain speed over Mach 2.5.

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DARPA Seeks to Build Command Center for Space Warfare

The area in the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere is a swarm of manmade objects, moving at tens of thousands of miles per hour and traversing a region hundreds of thousands of times larger than all of Earth's oceans combined. This complicates the operation of satellites for military use. DARPA has just announced its plans to come to grips with this chaotic region with the launch of a project aimed at revolutionizing the US military's command and control capabilities in space.

The first stage of the project, known as the Hallmark Software Testbed (Hallmark-ST) aims to design cutting-edge software architecture capable of supporting tools and data from a diverse range of sources.

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Why DARPA is Pursuing the XS-1 Spaceplane

Here’s a phrase that’s not repeated everyday in the space community:

“You’ve heard Elon’s comments … we want to go beyond that,” Brad Tousley, the head of the tactical technology office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said May 15.

Elon, of course, is Elon Musk, the optimistic, and some say visionary, founder of SpaceX with plans of eventually colonizing Mars. After landing three first-stage rockets, Musk has said SpaceX would inspect the rockets with plans to later re-fly most of them.

Tousley oversees DARPA’s space programs, which often handles the Defense Department’s most difficult development challenges. He described the landing of first stage rockets by SpaceX and Blue Origin as “very, very impressive accomplishments.”

But during a speech at the GEOINT 2016 conference here, Tousley said the agency’s experimental spaceplane, known as XS-1, also has ambitious plans.

“We want to launch again in 24 hours,” he said.

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Z-Man allows People to be Geckos on Glass

They call it “Z-Man” but only because “Spider Man” had already been taken and put under trademark, said Eugene Choi, Technology Leader for the climbing device developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The literature described Z-Man as designed to “enable the warfighter carrying a full combat load to scale vertical walls.”

Choi said the military already had a lot of gear to help with climbing in the field, but “we didn’t have a very good way to climb those surfaces” that troops would meet in city combat, such as glass, concrete or dry wall.

Z-Man prototypes consisted of hand-held devices that stick to any surface and bear loads of more than 300 pounds. The handhelds have ropes that attach to the feet of the climber and literally allow the climber to walk up the wall.

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DARPA's XS-1 Progress

DARPA has received authorization to spend $146 million on the next phases of the program, which is enough to select one of the three companies and move forward. It’s not enough to finish the program, so the selected company will need to come up with funds of its own. DARPA hopes to down select by the end of the year.

Boeing, Masten Space Systems and Northrop Grumman are the leads for phase 1 of the program. However, phases 2 and 3 are open to all U.S. aerospace companies. DARPA had an industry day for the project on April 29.

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DARPA Awards 8 Contracts for First Phase of Ground X-Vehicle Technology for Future Armored Fighting Vehicles

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded technology research contracts to eight companies under the agency’s Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program, seeking to deliver crew/vehicle survivability through means other than traditional heavy passive armor solutions. DARPA expects these capabilities will be applicable to future ground combat vehicles, improving their combat efficiency and reduce cost.

“We’re exploring a variety of potentially groundbreaking technologies, all of which are designed to improve vehicle mobility, vehicle survivability and crew safety and performance without piling on armor,” said Maj. Christopher Orlowski, DARPA GXV-T program manager.

“DARPA’s performers for GXV-T are helping defy the ‘more armor equals better protection’ axiom that has constrained armored ground vehicle design for the past 100 years, and are paving the way toward innovative, disruptive vehicles for the 21st Century and beyond.” Orlowski added.

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Norhtrop Pushing Hard to Join Launch Industry Through XS-1 Contracts

Northrop Grumman might be "playing to win" the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's XS-1 programme, but the aerospace firm's interest in a reusable spaceplane for rapidly launching small satellites runs far deeper than any one project or contract.

The company's vice-president of space systems resiliency Doug Young tells Flightglobal that Northrop will likely press forward with its XS-1 concept through "other ways and means" if it isn't downselected for the programme's $140 million demonstration phase.

Northrop is one of three industry teams sponsored by DARPA to bring its competing concept up to the preliminary design review stage. It's teamed with Virgin Galactic but wouldn't confirm if it is using the company's LauncherOne system as an expendable upper stage.

The other teams are Boeing – with Blue Origin – and Masten Space Systems, partnered with XCOR Aerospace.

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DARPA's Robot Sub Hunting Boat Starts Testing

This afternoon, Deputy Defense Secretary and robotics booster Bob Work will christen the largest unmanned surface vessel in history. At 130 feet long and not quite 140 tons displacement, DARPA’s Sea Hunter dwarfs previous robotic boats, giving it the ruggedness and fuel capacity, about 70 days’ worth, to cross oceans on its own power without a manned mothership. But Sea Hunter, aka ACTUV, is still much smaller than the Navy’s smallest manned warship, the Cyclone-class coastal patrol boat — 179 feet and 380 tons — let alone a frigate or destroyer. At just over $20 million apiece, it is vastly cheaper than manned craft, too.

Sea Hunter‘s size and cost open an intriguing new niche in naval operations. Imagine swarms of small, inexpensive, and above all expendable unmanned craft scouting ahead of or escorting traditional task forces. If the roboats get blown up, it costs no lives and relatively little treasure. If the roboats survive, their sensors provide invaluable intelligence to the fleet, and intelligence can win wars.

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DARPA Awarded Phase 1 Contracts for Gremlins UAV Programs

DARPA has awarded Phase 1 contracts for its Gremlins program, which seeks to develop innovative technologies and systems enabling aircraft to launch volleys of low-cost, reusable unmanned air systems (UASs) and safely and reliably retrieve them in mid-air. Such systems, or “gremlins,” would be deployed with a mixture of mission payloads capable of generating a variety of effects in a distributed and coordinated manner, providing U.S. forces with improved operational flexibility at a lower cost than is possible with conventional, monolithic platforms. The Phase 1 contracts have been awarded to four teams whose proposals cover a spectrum of technical approaches to this challenging mission.

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DARPA's new Injectable Brain Implant

The tiny injectable machine could turn your noodle into a remote control.

The Pentagon is attempting what was, until recently, an impossible technological feat—developing a high-bandwidth neural interface that would allow people to beam data from their minds to external devices and back.

That’s right—a brain modem. One that could allow a soldier to, for example, control a drone with his mind.

This seemingly unlikely piece of technology has just gotten a lot less unlikely. On Feb. 8, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the U.S. military’s fringe-science wing—announced the first successful tests, on animal subjects, of a tiny sensor that travels through blood vessels, lodges in the brain and records neural activity.

The so-called “stentrode,” a combination stent and electrode, is the size of a paperclip and flexible. The tiny, injectable machine—the invention of neurologist Tom Oxley and his team at the University of Melbourne in Australia—could help researchers solve one of the most vexing problems with the brain modem: how to insert a transmitter into the brain without also drilling a hole in the user’s head, a risky procedure under any circumstances.

Based on existing stents that doctors use to clean blood vessels, the stentrode includes sensors and a tiny transmitter. Entering the bloodstream via a catheter, the stentrode swims in the bloodstream.

Doctors monitor the stentrode on its journey through the circulatory system. When the device reaches the brain, the physicians command it to expand against the blood vessels’ walls and hold station. There it remains for potentially months at a time, recording and relaying the subtle electrical signals that flow from the brain to the rest of the body.

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Stealth Saga #33: Meet the B-21

B-21/Long Range Strike Bomber:

Meet the B-21.  This is the first official rendering of the new bomber.  No word when they will release other images or unveil a prototype.  IMO, they really ought to have named it the B-3. The obsession with the '21st century' is sooooo 90s.  ;)

Senator McCain is very unhappy with the prospect of the first LRSB contract being a cost plus contract rather than a fixed price. Note: the production contact is a fixed price, but the development contract is cost plus.

At the unveiling, the air force replied to McCain as well.

In general, despite McCain's anger, Congress is supportive of the nuclear triad revamp.  Maybe, just maybe, we have something so important they'll stop being stupid. The B-21 is amongst those programs.

Here's some more background info on contracting something like the B-21.

It also seems the air force brass is stating one of the older bomber types will have to be retired (B-1 or B-52) when the LRS-B comes online.

Minor Update:  The Air Force brass will be asking to raise the number of bombers planned from 100 to 175, maybe, 200.

Minor Update: Boeing and Lockheed have signaled they will not be suing (and again) over the B-21 contract.

VTOL Stealth Drone:

DARPA is looking at funding a VTOL X Plane.  Some sources are stating this is the second coming of VARIOUS.

Sixth Generation Fighter:

The US Air Force is looking at new missiles for the 6th gen, including SACM.

F-35:

General Bogdan has stated it is possible for Australia to do a block buy of the F-35 before the US does.  The US cannot do a block buy until at least LRIP 13's batch.  The international partners have six months to decide on whether or not to do a block buy for them.

However, Australia is now considering other platforms than the F-35 (paywall) for the 2030s time frame for its strike capabilities.

The Dutch F-35s will be flying to the Netherlands soon.

PAK-FA:

More sources have started calling the PAK-FA a '5th gen fighter in name only.'

ATD-X/X-2:

The X-2 gets a quick profiling ahead of its maiden flight.

Chinese 5th Gen VSTOL:

The J-18 VSTOL fighter, the equivalent of the F-35B, is something of a will o'wisp.  Reported here.  Reported there.  Rumored periodically.  Never with any real substance.  However, it is clear the Chinese want one, whether or not they have even a prototype now.

DARPA's Aviation Shopping List: Drones, X Planes & Hypersonics, oh my!

DARPA is up to mischief again. In some cases, mischief that has been delayed by budgets and elsewhere.

1. AFRE (Advanced Full-Range Engine) seems to be taking over from the old MOTR. Both were/are engines that were supposed to work from subsonic all the way up through high supersonic or even potentially low hypersonic speeds. This sounds a lot like the concept Lockheed's SR-72 was supposed to work with. This is at the the (re)kick off stage with a request for $9 M.

2. Hypersonic weapons! DARPA has two hypersonic weapon programs requested. HAWC (Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept), a hypersonic scramjet powered cruise missile as I understand it and has requested $49.5M for completing the first CDR and ground tests of the hydrocarbon powered scramjet. DARPA has also asked for $22.8M for TBG (tactical boost glide weapon): an air launched, rocket powered hypersonic boost glide warhead. They want to launch from existing aircraft and be compatible with the Navy's VLS system. The TBG is intended to be test launched by the end of 2017.

3. Despite rumors of the XS-1 being canned in December, due to fuel danger problems, it seems DARPA has requested an additional $50.5M for the small sat launcher.

4. DARPA has also requested $52M for a VTOL X Plane with a selection on source *this* quarter and have a flying demo by the end of 2017. Is this something leaking in from the Black? Should we call the move from the black to white world 'white washing?'

5. TERN gets another $12M for CDR and assembly of the VTOL Predator equivalent for shipboard use on destroyers, cruisers and frigates.

6. Finally, at least for this post, Gremlins, the effort to design and build UAVs that can be launched and recovered in the air gets an additional $36M requested.

I am really intrigued with the VTOL X Plane. If its jet powered, I'd be really surprised given the time frames. Maybe its not?

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Northrop Wins $93M for DARPA TERN Drone

Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. Aerospace Systems, El Segundo, California, has been awarded a $93,076,636 Other Transaction Agreement for prototype project - Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (Tern) program, Phase III. The Tern program will design, develop, and demonstrate enabling technologies and system attributes for a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned air vehicle and shipboard-capable launch and recovery system allowing operations from smaller ships. The Tern Phase III program will focus on the design, fabrication, and testing of a prototype Tern Demonstration System. The face value of the OTA is $132,473,192 with a contractor's cost share of $39,396,556 and the total estimated government share of $93,076,636. Work will be performed in El Segundo, California; Newport News, Virginia; Benbrook, Texas; El Cajon, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; East Aurora, New York; Dulles, Virginia; Mojave, California and Spark, Nevada with an estimated completion of November 2017. Fiscal 2015 and 2016 research and development funds in the amount of $29,563,813 are being obligated at time of the award. DARPA, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (HR0011-16-9-0003).

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Northrop is Developing a Flying Wing Tailsitter for DARPA TERN

Northrop Grumman revealed a flying-wing tailsitter design as the company’s offering for an experimental unmanned air system that can bring Predator-sized payload and endurance to naval ships smaller than aircraft carriers.

The design concept forms the basis of Northrop’s proposal for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tern programme. DARPA plans to award the contract in January to build and fly a full-scale prototype from a barge or decommissioned navy ship, says Chris Hernandez, senior vice-president of research, technology and advanced design for Northrop.

At DARPA’s request, Northrop is not releasing pictures or drawings of its Tern concept, but displayed a model of the aircraft on a 11 December tour for journalists in Los Angeles.

Northrop’s unmanned Tern design harkens back to the manned Lockheed XFV-1 concept of the early 1950s, which also featured a tailsitter configuration with nose-mounted counter-rotating propellers to provide vertical thrust for take-off and landing and forward thrust in horizontal flight.

But Northrop adds to the tailsitter approach by combining the engine with a pure flying wing design, a hallmark of several of the company’s bomber and surveillance aircraft since the mid-1930s.

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DARPA Cancels ALASA Responsive Micro Sat Launcher

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has scrapped plans to launch small satellites from a modified F-15 fighter jet after two tests of a new rocket fuel ended in explosions this year.

Instead DARPA will spend the next year studying how to harness the volatile nitrous oxide-acetylene propellant and, in parallel, modifications to existing small rockets that would enable the agency place small satellites on orbit on 24 hours notice at a cost of less than $1 million.

In March 2014, Boeing Defense Space and Security of Huntington Beach, California, won a contract potentially worth $104 million to build and demonstrate the Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) system. The program was intended to demonstrate the capability to launch up to 45 kilograms of payload into low Earth orbit on short notice for as little as $1 million.

ALASA is one of a number of DARPA efforts to reduce the cost and turnaround time for launching national security satellites.

Boeing’s design featured a small expendable rocket launching from underneath a modified combat aircraft that would take off from a standard airport runway. Such a system would allow the Defense Department to launch from almost anywhere, DARPA said.

“The magic” in Boeing’s design, as DARPA officials described it, was the powerful nitrous oxide-acetylene propellant, also known as NA-7. The propellant would be “pre-mixed” to reduce the plumbing needed on the rocket, enabling it to carry more payload.

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LRASM Flight Testing Started on F/A-18E

The US Navy (USN) has begun airworthiness testing of Lockheed Martin's Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet carrier-borne strike fighter.

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DARPA to Start Testing Autonomous Submarine Hunting Drone Ship

Early next year, DARPA will begin testing a 132-foot unmanned submarine-hunting ocean drone in San Diego. Slapped with the cumbersome title of Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), it’s designed to do exactly that: track stealth submarines from the surface, quietly and autonomously.

The ACTUV is currently under construction at a facility on the Oregon coast, where it is 90 percent complete. When finished, DARPA hopes it will be able to withstand months of autonomous operations at sea. It will weigh 140 tons, and will be able to hone in the quietest submarines in the water from the surface, and automatically trail them.

The vessel is so far not necessarily being touted explicitly as a weapon, but, according to DARPA, it will have the capacity to "carry a payload" and “enable independently deploying systems.” On the US DoD’s science site, the vessel is being compared to naval destroyers, which are currently tasked with trailing—and are outfitted to eliminate—submarines. (According to DARPA, one of the ACTUV's chief selling points is that it will be much cheaper than a naval destroyer: The drone boat costs as little as $15,000 a day to operate, versus the destroyer’s $700,000 per day price tag.)

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DARPA Completes Persistent Close Air Support Testing

PCAS is a package of technologies designed to speed close air support to soldiers on the battlefield, enabling ground troops, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) and combat aircrews to share real-time situational awareness and weapons systems data. Executed in three phases, the four-and-a-half year program included flight testing during the first six months of 2015.

"The PCAS program was able to reduce close air support response times from nearly one hour to less than six minutes," said Tom Bussing, Raytheon vice president of Advanced Missile Systems. "By speeding critical information to decision makers, PCAS could save lives in the battlespace."

During the U.S. Marine Corps' Talon Reach V exercise in March, the program demonstrated end-to-end, fully digital weapons release of a Griffin missile from a modified MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. In May, an A-10C Thunderbolt II attack aircraft and a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) on the ground, both using PCAS' real-time digital communications and situational awareness capabilities, successfully employed 10 GPS- and laser-guided weapons in a second series of flight tests.

The PCAS system is designed to be platform-, digital radio-, sensor-, and weapons-class agnostic, and to be portable from platform to platform. The two main parts of the system are PCAS-Air, which consists of smart launcher electronics and a pilot tablet, and PCAS-Ground, which comprises the equipment used by the JTAC.

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DARPA Mission Adaptive Landing Gear Program Gets Criticism

There’s been some breathless coverage of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment with what look like mechanical insect legs to replace the usual wheels or skids helicopters land on. One article called the Adaptive Landing Gear nothing short of “incredible.” The video DARPA publicized is certainly fun to watch (see above), but there’s a lot less utility there than meets the eye — at least for now.

“The only thing that I can see it would have an advantage over what we have in a skid is on a slope,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, who won the Medal of Honor and a ton of other decorations for saving more than 5,000 wounded in more than 2,500 combat missions as a rescue helicopter pilot in Vietnam. The Encyclopedia of the Viet Nam War calls him the conflict’s top helicopter pilot. “Looks like a big grasshopper,” Brady said of the leg-like landing gear, developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology on a roughly $1 million DARPA grant.

Another Vietnam vet, retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Greene, who logged 1,900 combat hours flying South Vietnamese and U.S. troops into action in UH-1 Hueys, said the idea is “interesting” but that’s about all. “I love DARPA,” Greene said, “but this is probably not one of their better things.”

The goal is to make it possible to land on slopes or uneven or rocky terrain of the sort combat helicopter pilots often confront and end up hovering over instead of landing on or to put a bird down safely on a rolling ship deck. DARPA program manager Ashish Bagai explained in a briefing to the American Helicopter Society International’s yearly conference last May that, “The feet have tactile feedback; they have pressure feedback. Each foot is individually operated. When you encounter an obstruction, the foot that first contacts the obstruction allows the leg to bend until everything else has contacted terra firma.”

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