Secret aircraft programs that ALMOST changed the world

thank you [Music] since the very Inception of military Aviation the United States has invested heavily into Fielding game-changing military aircraft that leverage cutting-edge Technologies to provide a tactical or strategic Edge over the nation's competitors but for every one F-117 Nighthawk or B2 Spirit or F-22 Raptor there's a whole bunch of programs that get left on the scrap Heap sometimes these efforts don't make the cut because they're just too forward-leaning or too expensive but other times they're just the right jet at the wrong time let's talk about Uncle Sam's game-changing aircraft that got canceled before they could change the game I'm Alex Hollings and this is air power it's no secret that the United States places a massive emphasis on air power but a lot of people don't realize that the U.S has led the world in air power since its very Inception while there were a number of notable earlier efforts the Wright brothers are widely seen as the first to achieve any kind of real Success With A powered heavier than air flying machine starting in 1903 and the Skies over Kitty Hawk North Carolina but what fewer people know is just six years later the U.S army Came Calling purchasing the world's first military aircraft the right military flyer in 1909 by 1912 Colonel Isaac Lewis and Captain Charles de Forest Chandler became the first aviators ever to perform a gun run when they mounted a 25-pound machine gun onto the foot rest of one of the army signal schools right type B flyers and started making passes at a six foot by seven foot cheesecloth they hung up as a Target and it definitely didn't stop there the list of American firsts in air power is extensive from the first air-to-air refueling to the first pressurized cabin in a bomber to the first supersonic jet to the first supersonic bomber to the first Hypersonic aircraft to the first stealth aircraft and the list goes on and on but the truth is you can never tell which Technologies are going to define the next era of warfare and as a result maintaining that dominant Edge in air power has required broad investment into a number of different efforts aimed at developing or maturing a number of different types of Technologies some of these programs produce technologies that literally redefine the way air power is perceived and leveraged by Nations all across the globe While others end up on the Shelf either because their technology was just too expensive Sue in volume or because the problems that they solved weren't the problems America was prioritizing at the time you'll often hear people say these days that if you look at the most advanced aircraft in service the real technology the dod has tucked behind the classified Veil is 10 or 30 years further ahead and while this is usually said to suggest that the U.S has secret flying saucers tucked away at Area 51 or something the truth is this premise is fairly sound it just doesn't manifest the way most people might think it helps to think of these Cutting Edge aircraft programs as smartphones when a new iPhone hits the market it is not full of the latest and most advanced telecommunications technology on the planet instead it's full of components that Apple knows are reliable enough to last as long as the phone needs to last perform well enough to do what the phone needs to do and are cheap enough to produce and volume and sell at a price that the consumer will buy and while it may seem crazy for incredibly expensive programs like the F-35 Advanced aircraft aren't much different performance and capability are obviously vital considerations but so are reliability and cost in other words there are sure to be technologies that are far more advanced than those being fielded in the F-35 or even the ngad fighter but until those Technologies become reliable and cheap enough to be fielded in large volume these efforts get put on the Shelf likewise there are also programs that would offer genuinely new capabilities at costs that we may be able to stomach but if they don't fill a current Gap in America's overall strategic positioning these programs also get put on the Shelf until Uncle Sam sees a pressing need for them you just can't fund everything all the time even with the world's biggest defense budget so with that in mind let's talk about seven of these AV Asian programs that could have not just redefined air power in their era but likely even today as well as why these programs ultimately got put on the shelf and we'll start with Boeing's x-20 dinosaur born on a Germany's World War II efforts to create a bomber that could attack New York and continue on to the Pacific Boeing's x-20 dinosaur was to be a single-seat craft boosted into the sky atop American Rockets that's right in the 1950s the dinosaur would have been the world's first Hypersonic bomber in fact the dinosaur was very similar in both concept and intended execution to China's fractional orbital bombardment system that Drew headlines the world over after a successful test back in 2021 despite the x-20 program predating the launch of Sputnik so it's safe to say this effort was a fair bit ahead of its time after launch the X20 would soar along the Blurred Line Between Earth's atmosphere and the vacuum of space literally bouncing along the heavens by using a lifting body design and Hypersonic speeds to Skip Along the upper reaches of the atmosphere it would Circle The Globe releasing its payload over Soviet targets literally miles below before making its way back to American territory to come in for a gliding Landing not entirely unlike the space shuttle wood decades later the x-20 was a 1950s science fiction fever dream born out of the nuclear age and the earliest days of the Cold War but according to experts at the time it very likely would have worked by 1960 the space plane's overall design was largely settled leveraging a delta wing shape and small winglets for control in place of a traditional tail in order to manage the incredible heat of re-entry the X20 would use super Alloys like the heat resistant Renee 41 and its frame with graphite and zirconia rods used for heat shielding on the underside of the aircraft now this wasn't just a paper plane this was a real developmental Concept in fact it was so promising that in 1960 the Pentagon tapped a group of elite service Personnel to crew this sub-orbital Hypersonic bomber among this group was a then 30 year old Navy test pilot and aeronautical engineer named Neil Armstrong of course Armstrong would go on to leave the program two years later for even greater Heights as a part of NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs and Armstrong's departure was a real sign of things to come you see after the launch of Sputnik the U.S had a bit of a freak out in fact these days we remember it as the Sputnik crisis at the time it not only appeared that the Soviet Union had secured the ultimate High ground but it also really looked as though their communist model had managed to field technology that no capitalist Nation could match obviously the U.S wanted to address both of these narratives so programs like the x-20 were canceled in favor of reallocating their funds and resources toward new space Ventures within America's fledgling NASA and the rest is Cold War history up next we have Boeing's model 853-21 quiet bird on December 1st 1977 lockheeds have blue technology demonstrator took off for the first time making a significant leap toward Fielding the aircraft's successor the F-117 Nighthawk just a few years later but more than a decade and a half before half blue ever saw a Runway Boeing's largely forgotten model 853-21 quiet bird was already making significant strides toward being the world's first operational stealth aircraft of course over the years there have been a lot of dubious claims about what was the first stealth aircraft in particular these days a lot of people think it was the Horton ho 229 now I had an entire episode of air power dedicated to the birth of this myth it was really born out of a claim made by one of the Horton Brothers in the 80s and despite there being no evidence those claims were substantiated by a pretty disreputable production company that made an entire documentary acting as though they'd confirmed them of course when I put together a video explaining how misleading their documentary was I immediately got hit by my first copyright strike levied by that very same production company because I used a clip from one of the commercials for their documentary let me know if you guys want me to repost that video with just their Clips blurred out because I do think it's an interesting discussion the truth is because stealth is a word we use to describe a whole array of Technologies it can be pretty tough to nail down exactly where it started but Boeing's quiet bird effort that began in 1962 likely holds the distinction of being the first aircraft design that prioritized stealth from the onset rather than trying to incorporate stealthy Design Elements later on down the road as we saw in platforms like the a12 and SR-71 though to be clear there are other aircraft competing for that title and depending on where you draw some lines in the sand some of them have very reasonable claims in fact you could make an argument in favor of another aircraft that we'll talk about later on this list but while most of these other efforts never made it off the drawing board the quiet bird did exist in a physical sense in fact that was sort of the whole deal you see the quiet bird effort began long before Dennis overholser at Lockheed Skunk Works would figure out a way to use Soviet mathematician pyotor ufimsav's work to calculate a radar return without actually building a design and sticking it in front front of a radar array and as a result that's exactly what Boeing did they built their quiet bird and stuck it in front of a radar array and then made changes to design cues or construction materials and stuck it in front of the radar array again to see if it got better or worse we're talking about a very expensive game of guess and check here now although Boeing's tests did indeed prove promising the US Army just didn't appreciate the value a stealth aircraft could actually bring to the fight and the program was ultimately shelved in 1963. if the Army had been more Forward Thinking the quiet bird may have offered a low observable Battlefield reconnaissance platform by the late 1960s kick-starting the stealth Revolution more than a decade earlier and almost certainly changing the way air power has matured in the decades since but all that effort wasn't for nothing Boeing would later incorporate Design Elements they developed with the Quiet bird into their agm-86 air-launched cruise missile to great success up next is the conveyor Kingfish which didn't make it all that far off the drawing board but is a very interesting exploration into an alternative for America's legendary SR-71 Blackbird you see back when the U2 spy plane first entered service Soviet air defenses were already capable of tracking it and American officials knew that it was just a matter of time before tracking turned into targeting so the CIA tasked both convair and Lockheed with developing a new reconnaissance platform that could fly at even higher altitudes and at significantly faster speeds they also wanted a reduced radar cross-section to minimize the chances of it being shot down now if you're watching this you probably know that Lockheed would ultimately meet those requirements with their a12 and subsequent SR-71 but the kingfish was its primary competitor until then and today it offers us a very interesting glimpse into what could have been if not for the unrelenting genius and budget mindedness of lockheed's legendary aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson who I would contend is the father of modern military Aviation now the kingfish developed out of what remained of convair's first attempt known as the first invisible super Hustler or fish which all sounds like the name of an unpopular professional wrestler from the 80s but the use of the word invisible in that acronym also points to why this program also is in contention for being the first intentionally stealth design even if it didn't make it all that far the fish would have been carried Aloft by a modified b-58 Hustler before being launched and powered by its own onboard ramjets to speeds in excess of Mach 4 but with concerns about the complexity and cost of this fish concept Khan bearer was instructed to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new design built around the Pratt and Whitney j58 turbo Ramjet the same propulsion system that would ultimately power lockage a12 and SR-71 the resulting Kingfish design was pretty forward-leaning for its time tucking its two j-58s deep inside the aircraft's angular fuselage to limit the radar return they could produce and its delta wing design bore a striking resemblance to the stealth aircraft that would follow decades down the road but it was also that emphasis on stealth that may have ultimately done the kingfish in Pentagon officials spurred in no small part by criticisms from the same Kelly Johnson feared the kingfish Incorporated too many untested Technologies to be built tested and operated within the program's assigned budget Johnson was outspoken in his views that the kingfish design compromised performance in favor of stealth now that's something that was seen as a mistake at the time despite becoming pretty commonplace in stealth platforms today ultimately lockheed's proposal won the day and the kingfish was relegated to the what if file up next we have the joint effort for from McDonald Douglas and General Dynamics in the a12 Avenger 2 which would have been a stealth fighter on American aircraft carriers all the way back in the 80s not to be confused with lockheed's a12 from the 1960s the a12 Avenger 2 utilized a flying wing design that was reminiscent of the B-2 Spirit that was an act of development at the time but it was obviously much smaller and came with much sharper angles in fact that sharp triangular shape eventually earned the a12 the nickname flying Dorito now that a prefix denoted an attack emphasis in this a12 design but interestingly enough it actually would have met the design criteria to be considered a fighter including an onboard radar array and the ability to leverage a variety of air-to-air missiles as a result this a12 with its attack prefix would have been the world's first actual stealth fighter as the F-117 Nighthawk which was secretly already in service had not either onboard radar nor the ability to engage Airborne targets outside the realm of hypotheticals discussed on podcasts that's right the Air Force's F-117 wasn't really a stealth fighter but the Navy's a12 actually would have been for a while it really seemed as though the a12 Avenger 2 program was going off without a hitch but then seemingly without warning it was canceled by defense secretary and future Vice President Dick Cheney in January of 1991. it was only later revealed that the a12 Avenger 2 was way overweight way over budget and way behind schedule it would ultimately take another 26 years to get a stealth fighter onto the Navy's flat tops in the form of the f-35c up next is one of the most controversial and to be honest one of my favorites the Boeing 747 cmca which would have been the most cost effective bomber in American history back in the 1960s the U.S began Fielding increasingly capable icbms and slbms or submarine-launched ballistic missiles and with America's defense posture primarily oriented toward deterring Soviet aggression at the time these new methods of delivering nuclear payloads led to many within both the public and politics to question the need for expensive new bomber programs and this pervasive line of thought ultimately led to the Carter Administration canceling the B-1 bomber program in 1977. Boeing recognized that this cancellation could leave a gap in America's strategic capabilities so they set to work developing an extremely cost-effective bomber of sorts to meet this need at a much lower price point the result was the 747 cruise missile carrier aircraft or cmca now this 747 would have been armed with 72 agm-86 air-launched cruise missiles carried in nine internal rotary launchers which would have allowed this commercial people carrier to serve as a long-range Arsenal ship capable of wiping out targets from 1500 miles out now don't get me wrong I understand why this might sound crazy but in truth it was actually extremely practical and a number of important ways with an unrefueled range of 6 000 miles the ability to carry 77 000 pounds of ordinance in pre-existing Global infrastructure already established for the 747 this cmca concept would have produced the most cost effective bombing platform in modern history today the B-52 Stratofortress costs about 88 thousand dollars per hour to fly the B2 Spirit rings in at around 150 000 and the b1b Lancer Burns through about 173 thousand dollars per hour but the 747 on the other hand costs just about thirty one thousand dollars per hour to fly and all while carrying a larger payload than any of America's in-service bombers of course this program would never come to fruition with the Reagan Administration pulling the B1 bomber out of mothballs and the B2 Spirit entering service shortly thereafter but today we have seen the U.S revisit this concept in a way with rapid Dragon which is a palletized cruise missile launch system that allows the US to turn its fleets of cargo aircraft into very similar sorts of missile packing Arsenal ships then before anybody chimes in to say that it would be irresponsible to use commercial platforms for military service because it could paint a Target on Commercial aircraft you should know that there are already a bunch of commercial aircraft in service including Boeing 707 which is the basis for the kc-135 and the 747 itself which is the basis for the e4b national Airborne operations center up next is the convair nb-36 Crusader which would have been a nuclear powered bomber with near Limitless range the nb36 was based directly on the absolutely massive convair b36 Peacemaker and when I say massive I mean it you could take one of today's B-52s and lay it on top of the b-36's Wings and still have enough room to throw a super hornet in for good measure thanks to this massive size the B-36 could carry 86 000 pounds of ordinance and in the 1950s maybe at the height of American nuclear hubris the Air Force experimented with leveraging that massive payload capability to equip this bomber with its own onboard nuclear reactor the nb-36 carried a one megawatt air-cooled nuclear power plant that hung on a hook inside its cavernous weapons Bay this reactor then had to be lowered through the Bombay doors into a shielded underground facility for storage between flights now in theory a nuclear-powered bomber could literally stay airborne for weeks at a time time if not longer and could reach any Target on the planet without the need to land or refuel now today that may not sound like a pressing priority but at the time the U.S maintained a state of constant Readiness for its nuclear bomber fleets to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression in fact just a few years later the U.S would kick off Operation Chrome Dome which would see nuclear-armed B-52s in the air 24 hours a day for eight straight years and as you can imagine this policy was expensive but it would be a whole lot cheaper if you didn't have to pay for jet fuel the nb-36's htre3 nuclear reactor would power 4 GE j47 nuclear converted piston engines each pushing out about 3 800 horsepower now those nuclear engines would be augmented by four additional turbojet engines that ran on good old-fashioned jet fuel so that you could get the aircraft into the air before switching to nuclear power obviously a nuclear-powered engine would work a lot different than an internal combustion one and this direct Cycle System pulled air into the compressor of the turbojet and threw a plenum an intake that led to the core of the reactor where that air served as coolant from there the superheated air would travel into another plenum that led to the turbine section of the engine before exiting as exhaust out the back basically it replaced a jet engine's usual combustion section with a nuclear reactor housed inside the fuselage of the aircraft now the nb36 really did conduct a series of test flights with its nuclear reactor on board but always using its jet fuel powered turbojet engines for propulsion ultimately though this program was scrapped in 1961 because of the obvious risks inherent to Flying a nuclear reactor over literally any populated area and last but certainly not least we have lockheed's x-24c which would have been a scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft in service all the way back in the 1960s these days buzzwords like Hypersonic or scramjet are almost always used in reference to cutting-edge Technologies the media acts like the world is still trying to wrap its head around but the truth is Hypersonic flight and the Exotic propulsion systems required to get there have been an active part of American defense efforts for decades in lockheed's l301 program which led to the unofficially dubbed x-24c is just one example this effort would have seen the x-24c carried Aloft by the lr-105 rocket engine that was powering the Atlas series of rockets at the time and in execution the x-24c would launch in a very similar way to today's Hypersonic boost Glide weapons but while those weapons are unpowered during their Hypersonic descent the x-24c came packing a pair of scramjets these scramjets or supersonic combustion ramjets would Propel the x-24c to stain speeds in excess of Mach 6 and Peak speeds higher than Mach 8 or around 6130 miles per hour the aircraft itself resembled the lifting body design leveraged by the Martin Marietta x24a and B programs that tested unpowered re-entry flight characteristics in a real way the l301 program and its x24c could be seen as the precursor to ongoing legends about Lockheed Martin's combined cycle turbofan scramjet sr-72 the Air Force research laboratory's Mayhem program and even hermes's combined cycle turbofan Ramjet Hypersonic aircraft efforts had the x-24c program continued it would have given the U.S a scramjet-powered Hypersonic aircraft in the 1960s of course instead the US now appears to still be a few years away at best from Fielding a reusable air breathing Hypersonic aircraft but by the end of 1977 the l301 program and its x-24c were canceled in favor of a different game-changing military aircraft program one that would change the value proposition associated with speed for decades to come that effort of course was have blue and the game-changing development that would result was stealth and it will never not be interesting to me that simple budgetary decisions like this can change the very trajectory of Aviation development for the entire planet for years to come and on that ends yet another edition of air power from sandbox news I'm Alex Hollins make sure to swing by sandboxnews.com today and every day for all the latest in news entertainment and motivation from all around the force if you got anything out of today's video make sure to click like And subscribe down below and leave me a comment so I know what I should cover next and of course don't forget to tap on that Bell icon so you never miss a drop from sandbox news foreign

Channel: Sandboxx

Views: 225,821

Keywords: airpower, aviation, stealth, stealth fighter, hypersonic, supersonic, top secret, classified, air force, cold war

Id: Y2OJf4pA_hQ

Length: 26min 18sec (1578 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023