The Navy’s Swimming Spy Plane
It floats, it flies, it eliminates enemy targets—meet the water-launched unmanned enforcer
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.
This is no easy task. The tubes are as long as a semi trailer but about seven feet wide—not exactly airplane-shaped. The Cormorant has to be strong enough to withstand the pressure 150 feet underwater—enough to cave in hatches on a normal aircraft—but light enough to fly. Another challenge: Subs survive by stealth, and an airplane flying back to the boat could give its position away.The Skunk Works’s answer is a four-ton airplane with gull wings that hinge around its body to fit inside the missile tube. The craft is made of titanium to resist corrosion, and any empty spaces are filled with plastic foam to resist crushing. The rest of the body is pressurized with inert gas. Inflatable seals keep the weapon-bay doors, engine inlet and exhaust covers watertight.
The Cormorant does not shoot out of its tube like a missile. Instead an arm-like docking “saddle” guides the craft out, sending it floating to the surface while the sub slips away. As the drone pops out of the water, the rocket boosters fire and the Cormorant takes off. After completing its mission, the plane flies to the rendezvous coordinates it receives from the sub and lands in the sea. The sub then launches a robotic underwater vehicle to fetch the floating drone.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is funding tests of some of the Cormorant’s unique systems, including a splashdown model and an underwater-recovery vehicle. The tests should be completed by September, after which Darpa will decide whether it will fund a flying prototype.
By: Wanshan - 23rd November 2006 at 21:47
Well, I wonder if the recover would work during bad weather!! 😉 :p
Doubt if you notice bad weather underwater much.
By: fightingirish - 23rd November 2006 at 19:08
I can see how it is supost to get out of the water, but how is it going to be taken back into the sub?
Also, wouldn’t such a mission endanger the sub, by giving away his position to an eventual ASW warplane in the area?
Video: Lockheed Martin swimming Cormorant submarine-launched UAV from Skunk Works
http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/11/23/Navigation/177/210750/Video+Lockheed+Martin+swimming+Cormorant+submarine-launched+UAV+from+Skunk.html
Well, I wonder if the recover would work during bad weather!! 😉 :p
By: SteveO - 12th March 2006 at 12:35
Hangars generally are a pain in the butt. Read up on the Halibut class and Regulus/Regulus II. Also by launching from a tube an Ohio could carry 22 of these UCAVs (though one does have to wonder how they are rearmed and refueled). To make a hangar that was big enough to hold 22 UCAVs, water-tight, and pressure resistant would be more than a challenge and add immensly to drag and flow noise. Also you’d have to surface to use it unless you don’t mind flooding the whole thing everytime you open the door.
Good points, but I don’t think it would be practical for a submarine to operate more than two of these MPUAVs. An Ohio SSGN could launch 22 Cormorants but I think it would have a very hard time recovering them all.
Future submarines will probably be fitted with a hangar for special ops equipment anyway, so operating something like the Cormorant or Dragonfly out of them shouldn’t be that hard.
I see these submarine launched MPUAVs as the equivalent of a frigates or destroyers helicopter rather than a attempt to make submarine aircraft carriers possible.
By: Super Nimrod - 11th March 2006 at 23:32
I can think of all sorts of reasons why this is just not sensible to retrieve it to the sub that launched it. I think it should be expendable.
By: sferrin - 11th March 2006 at 22:51
I like the idea but I don’t think this is the best way to do it.
It’s interesting technology and is worth developing, but if it floats to the surface to launch wouldn’t it be better to place it in a deck hangar rather than squeezing it into a Trident tube?
A deck hangar would allow for a more efficient MPUAV design, better in and out handling and make it possible for other classes of submarine to operate them.
Hangars generally are a pain in the butt. Read up on the Halibut class and Regulus/Regulus II. Also by launching from a tube an Ohio could carry 22 of these UCAVs (though one does have to wonder how they are rearmed and refueled). To make a hangar that was big enough to hold 22 UCAVs, water-tight, and pressure resistant would be more than a challenge and add immensly to drag and flow noise. Also you’d have to surface to use it unless you don’t mind flooding the whole thing everytime you open the door.
By: SteveO - 11th March 2006 at 16:17
A waterproofed version of the Boeing X-50 Dragonfly Canard Rotor/Wing might make a good submarine based MPUAV 🙂 http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/x-50.html
By: SteveO - 11th March 2006 at 16:07
I like the idea but I don’t think this is the best way to do it.
It’s interesting technology and is worth developing, but if it floats to the surface to launch wouldn’t it be better to place it in a deck hangar rather than squeezing it into a Trident tube?
A deck hangar would allow for a more efficient MPUAV design, better in and out handling and make it possible for other classes of submarine to operate them.
By: SOC - 11th March 2006 at 02:44
I can see how it is supost to get out of the water, but how is it going to be taken back into the sub?
I can think of a few options. The most logical I think would be for it to close off the intake and exhaust and drop by parachute into the ocean. Then divers can throw a switch, fold it back up, and pull it into a small hangar bay for refueling and rearming. Then just pop it back into the tube. Something along those lines might be made to work.
Also, wouldn’t such a mission endanger the sub, by giving away his position to an eventual ASW warplane in the area?
Not necessarily. Remember, it’s floated out of the tube, a far quieter procedure than ejecting it or firing it straight out of the tube, so the sub can be a bit away before it fires off. Plus, these are Ohio-class subs we’re talking about. They’re not that easy to find even if you do know where to look :diablo:
By: Forestin - 11th March 2006 at 00:38
I can see how it is supost to get out of the water, but how is it going to be taken back into the sub?
Also, wouldn’t such a mission endanger the sub, by giving away his position to an eventual ASW warplane in the area?
By: Super Nimrod - 9th March 2006 at 21:58
But its 22 days until April 1st 😀
By: SOC - 9th March 2006 at 20:11
No B.S. This is the end result expected from Lockheed’s morphing UAV demonstrator thing.
By: Prowlus - 9th March 2006 at 19:47
Reminds me of how the Transformer “Soundwave” used to carry some of his spying robots around with him like Laserbeak and Rabat
By: Ja Worsley - 9th March 2006 at 18:14
It’s ugly, looks like something out of a bad sci-fi movie
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March 9, 2006 at 5:58 pm
