Project Mayhem: The US Hypersonic Bomber

well this video is brought to you by surfshark Safety and Security online are critically important and you could protect yourself online with surf shark more on them in just a bit [Music] what do you get when you cross a ballistic missile with a turbojet aircraft capable of precision bombing any Target on Earth from a range of over 10 000 miles in a little more than an hour well let's introduce Project Mayhem the effort of the U.S Air Force research laboratory to build an aircraft engine with the speed and power of a rocket and the flexibility of a turbojet an engine for a Mach 10 plane such an aircraft would be capable of flying at a stupefying 3430 meters per second or over 7 000 miles per hour which would cover the distance between New York and London in under 30 minutes it would be capable of bombing any point on the globe from any other point and be back in time for t to describe Hypersonic speed speeds above Mac six or six times the speed of sound as fast is perhaps not giving the concept of speed it's due in the airspeed is not just about getting from one place to another when a plane moves well in excess of the speed of sound itself the air around it becomes a dense superheated fluid and the aircraft behaves less like a plane and more like a meteor always on the verge of disintegrating in the air when pilot branchal pushed his SR-71 to over Mach 3.5 to avoid a barrage of Miss also the Gulf of Sidra in Libya in 1986. he became the fastest pilot on Earth to attain this speed which was well above the plane's Ray to Performance limit the engines of the SR-71 sucked in an incredible 100 000 cubic feet thus almost 3 000 cubic meters of air per second the speed of air rushing past the airframe heated it to as much as 400 degrees Celsius or 900 degrees Fahrenheit the heat of the glass just inches from Shaw's face was as hot as an electric stove top it was believed then that the limits of extreme speed might have actually been reached after all the laws of aerodynamics dictate that as your speed increases the wind resistance you face increases even faster speeds of mach 10 were believed impossible for a self-powered vehicle not only because it was extremely difficult to create enough thrust to reach those speeds but also because any material subjected to the 2000 degrees Celsius or 3600 Fahrenheit that a plane would experience at that speed from Air friction would be hot enough to melt titanium and yet this is exactly what Lockheed Martin plans to do with the sr-72 son of Blackbird it's going to be shielded by NASA pioneered home materials made from carbon ceramic and metal Composites and backed by a revolutionary new engine design from the U.S Air Force research laboratory part of the secretive Project Mayhem foreign which we actually covered last year on this channel was first officially announced while Lockheed Martin in 2018 before being quietly reclassified during the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine according to unofficial rumors it will be the first production plane to use a turbine-based combined cycle tbcc engine being developed by the U.S Air Force and Lockheed this is going to function as a turbojet engine at low speeds and a scramjet at Supersonic and Hypersonic speeds this will allow the sr-72 to function more like an ICBM than a traditional Hypersonic jet the tbcc engine will allow a plane like the sr-72 to operate largely the same way a stealth bomber would operate at lower altitudes and lower speeds before reaching the upper atmosphere where reduced wind resistance would allow it to gain enormous speed thanks to its scramjets unlike a typical jet engine which uses an air compressor to create an explosive mix of fuel and air that is shot out of the back of the engine a scramjet foregoes this compression step and instead are relies on the natural accumulation of immense pressure measures that the air experiences as it enters the engine at Hypersonic speeds therefore a scramjet is not capable of operating below speeds at which this compression occurs which is why scramjets have typically only been used in boost guide missiles which are either fired high speed or a launch from land or sea using a thirst stage rocket booster similar to an ICBM this is where the tbcc engine comes into play unlike the sr-71's prata Whitney j58 axial flow turbojet engines which had to be towed into the air by a guide plane because it was not capable of achieving maximum thrust at lower speeds an sr-72 powered by a tbcc engine will be able to transition between a traditional jet engine and a scramjet depending on how fast it's going this will allow the plane not only to reach targets quickly but also to loiter over the Target or potentially even slow down enough to be refueled and re-armed in the air before returning to Hypersonic speeds allowing for much greater operational speed of flexibility the difficulty of this design task can't be overstated Engineers are having to invent a single engine which can change the source of its thrust in the air and do it all in a plane that maintains a smaller radar footprint as possible no one outside Lockheed and the Pentagon Knows What technological leaps were necessary to achieve this however project may end engine seems to be on track to debut in the sr-72 in 2025. up until now with the exception of planes like NASA's x-43a Hypersonic jet which reached back 9.6 in 2007. the US has used scramjet engines exclusively in guided missiles however at upwards of 100 million dollars per piece nearly as much as a new F-22 a scramjet-powered missile is a very expensive weapon to only use once the U.S Air Force hopes that the sr-72 will be able to employ Project Mayhem scramjet technology in a multi-flight system conferring the advantages of a cruise missile in speed and altitude with the benefits of a human piloted bomber aircraft with stealth features at lower speeds alright welcome back to our video in just a second but first quick word 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such as the infamous B2 stealth bomber or the legendary F-22 Raptor or F-35 lightning that rely on computer-controlled targeting systems and their own invisibility to enemy radar to get the job done such planes may not be particularly fast but they are highly maneuverable and equipped with weapon systems that can strike targets from a vast distance long before they come into visual range of an enemy yet this may be changing we now may be entering a new era much like the 1960s when the early development of guided missile systems made speed and altitude the most important factors for a successful offensive mission in truth although technological progress has played an important role in this Balancing Act the real driver has been geopolitics the 1980s and 90s saw the Cold War end and ushered in a new era when american-led NATO air superiority was taken for granted around the world with few enemies capable of Fielding Advanced anti-air weapons like supersonic missiles the US has instead focused on two strategies stealth and autonomy drones to manage risk and achieve its military goals around the world today though this picture is Shifting potential adversaries like Russia and especially China are quickly modernizing their own Naval and Air Forces and developing anti-air defense systems which can contend with American offensive planes the development of machine vision-driven self-guiding missiles means that an era in which radar and lasers could be defeated by stealthy designs and materials maybe near an end new ground to Air Base systems from China and Russia that are purported to be able to reach Mach 5 and above nearly twice as fast as an old SR-71 mean that if the NATO allies planned field manned bombers in a future conflict they must have the capability of outrunning the super smart and supercharged new weapons systems and that's not the only challenge new Boost Glide missiles which are able to rise High into the stratosphere and then bore down on a ground target from above at an incredible Mach 20. a thought to already be in testing or possibly even operational in Russia or China NATO needs a sufficient answer for such a dazzling offensive capability this is because unlike Russia NATO does not rely on a large inventory of tactical nuclear weapons that could be fired from land or sea Precision targeted conventional bombs combined with air superiority are essential to NATO's defensive strategy to defeat these terrifying new weapon systems an Unholy Alchemy of speed and stealth must be achieved [Music] the hybrid stealth sr-72 is really just the main focus of a larger effort one that has seen the U.S Air Force explore many new options in Hypersonic technology for both manned and unmad aircraft scramjet-equipped multi-cycle engines are believed to be capable of producing more than 58 000 Newtons of thrust which translates to something like 20 000 horsepower that's over twice the thrust of a Boeing 737 Max one of the largest engines commercially available and we're talking about a plane that is a fraction of the size of a commercial passenger debt a hybrid scramjet really does deliver the power of a rocket engine or with the capabilities of a jet the scramjet's enormous speed would allow the sr-72 to operate at much higher altitudes than a traditional stealth jet as air friction would help keep the plane stable the old SR-71 had a tendency to Tumble horrifyingly end over-ended altitudes higher than 25 000 meters or 80 000 feet but Mayhem will enable the sr-72 to turn at these altitudes while retaining full control the ability to fly this high and remain in control is really what makes it possible for a plane to reach speeds of Mach 10. as revealed in a Contracting document from the Air Force research laboratory in late 2021 Project Mayhem has been given the official name of hypersonic multi-mission ISR and strike the stated goal of the program is to provide payloads of five times the mass and double the range of current technology capability systems another Loki element seems to be reusability and cost project according to Marilyn Houston former Lockheed Martin CEO will enable manufacturers to offer reusable Hypersonic stealth bombers and drones for as little as a billion dollars which for some perspective is a lower inflation-adjusted price than a B2 stealth bomber and this is going to be a plane that is far faster and more capable in pretty much every way as part of this effort the Air Force has been splashing out on a variety of Aviation startups and aircraft design competitions including exersonic which is a Hypersonic Aviation startup working on a drone prototype the craft combining elements of a cruise missile with a predator drone would have a modular payload capacity and be capable of taking off from existing Air Force runways around the world fitted with its own Hypersonic missiles the craft could potentially penetrate denied airspace or heavily defended territories delivering accurate strikes before defenses could be alerted to the threat in an interesting blend of Science Fiction and reality the US Air Force even allowed Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works to assist in the design and construction of the mock-up for the fictional aircraft in the film top gun Maverick which was originally produced in 2018 before the sr-72 was reclassified the film premiered a whole four years later due to the covid-19 pandemic which allowed audiences to get a look at Darkstar the aircraft that resulted according to a statement from Lockheed in June 2022 when the top gun Maverick team was looking to push the envelope and stand true to Maverick's Need for Speed Skunk Works was their first call with the Skunk Works expertise in developing the fastest known aircraft combined with a passion and energy for defining the future of Aerospace dark star's capabilities could be more than merely fiction they could be reality many have taken this as a signal from Lockheed and therefore ultimately from the Pentagon Who provided the planes pilots and locations to the film either for free or phenomenal thieves as a publicity exercise that the Dark Star really is the vaunted sr-72 or something very much like it which will be the result of the Innovative work of Project Mayhem [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 472,589

Keywords: us secret hypersonic bomver, us hypersonic bomber, hypersonic missile, hypersonic missiles, hypersonic jet fighter, hypersonic weapons, hypersonic aircraft, hypersonic, supersonic, jet fighter, 6th generation fighter, us bomber, bomber, fighter jet, 6th generation fighter jet, military tech, united states, jet, super, united states air force, aircraft, air force

Id: UWcC2aFIO40

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 26 2022