Composite armour are less tougher vs titanium armour.. the good thing is less weight.
No just check it out on various sources, the Ka-52 could be downed with some lucky 12.7-20mm bullets through the armour plates.
It cant take the same beating as Mi-28 and Apache..

What i meant was that the twin rotors kind of stick high up from the airframe..
More than the Longbow antenna..

Thanks

Challanger tank has composite armour.. not all composites are brittle, fragile etc.. bullit proof glass is a composite.

As for the 787 composite structure I think new repair methods are still being developed and investigated as new composite materials and who knows maybe in the future the so called self-healing composites will answer all the questioning about their a bit demanding repair characteristics.

It is still too early days to think self healing composites will make a big impact beyond specialist cases where people are desperate to test it out. If it is anything like nanotubes it will stay in the lab with uni’s using it to leach/scam money from unsuspecting punters thinking they have the holey grail. 1 terapascal strength, hmm sure if you can get the damn things to bond to anything!

Self healing may work in bonded structures or for tertiary non critical structures..

Martinez what Russian Composites have you worked with? are they re-branded western materials or developed within the USSR in the 80s? Are they infact Russian or are they more Soviet, i.e. ukranian etc etc..

p.s. if you are tempted to drive a truck into a 787 or anyother aircraft, dont! it will be a costly repair and also a legal offense of some sort in any country!

hmm whole new world of data.. interesting..

http://www.viam.ru/index.php?section=160&language=2 << some data on KMU composites… :S

Thanks for your responses..just curious but would these still apply in the case of the B787 and its composite fuselage? Let’s say someone on the tarmac got careless and crashed his vehicle into the side of the plane, cracking the composite shell.

Well if you are talking of repairs its normally within the low impact energies or relatively small damage areas, composites may be stressed to live with between 25J – 80J of impact energy without damage growth. obviously depending on the thickness of the laminate the size of impacter and shape of impacter and also damage characteristics.

Something like a car raming the side of a 787 is a different story and higher energies.

Plus as martinez has mentioned it would depend on what the NDT’s guys came up with. the type of energies you describe (i.e. a car crashing into a 787) should be easily detectable by thermography, or shearography or other such techniques.

I am not sure but i do not think that even an aluminium frame would survive a run in.

So what you are saying, the Longbow version perform less vs AH-64 Apache(701C)?

Thanks

Think thats what i read.

Looking at the geographical landscape with China and Northern Pakistan border. Pretty massive mountans passage all over.

AH-64D Apache is a great gunship, but is it the best one for India..
Cant help thinking of the AH-64D Apache poor climb rate, fully loaded.
Wouldn’t it be required to do strikes over it own borders in case of an conflict?

Thanks

I know i have read pages on the UK having trouble with the performance of the AH-64D longbow. Unlike the US the UK went for the longbow radar on every helicopter which I think i have read causes significant performance degradations. I cant remember for sure but i think i have already read some place that for the UK the apache never met some of the performance criterion advertised.

The trouble for the Indians is that the Apache is most usefull with the longbow.

Only thing that would help the IA at altitude is the LCH, maybe HAL and DRDO are in partnership with foriegn firms to speed up the development phase?

FORCE November 2009
‘Kamikaze’ Strike
HAROP comes equipped with many of the usual UAV-related capabilities
By Prasun K. Sengupta

I dont get how paying 10million a pop for a modernised Harpy would have helped the IAF with in scenarios like Kargil, would not the new guided MLRS be better?

Lockheed Martin’s Guided MLRS Reaches New Distance Record In Successful Test

(Source: Lockheed Martin; issued November 5, 2009)

DALLAS, TX — Lockheed Martin successfully fired a U.S. Army Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rocket 92 kilometers in a recent test at White Sands Missile Range, NM. The flawless test highlighted recent product improvements of this battle-proven system to give it a longer reach, maintaining its accuracy and effectiveness while minimizing potential collateral damage.

Firing crews for the launch were from the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery from Fort Lewis, WA. This test firing of a unitary GMLRS met all mission objectives, which included:
— Verify production of GMLRS and HIMARS production lines;
— Validating rocket and launcher reliability;
— Proving performance of system software; and
— Obtaining performance, technical and reliability data.

“Lockheed Martin is constantly improving its products to give our customers more value and enhanced capabilities,” said Scott Arnold, vice president for Precision Fires and Combat Maneuver Systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “Operational feedback from deployed forces is providing us valuable insight so we can enhance our systems’ capabilities to better support the service members we rely on to defend our nations’ frontiers.”

GMLRS is a combat-proven evolutionary family of rockets that also scored numerous successes again in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, where more than 1,200 have been fired by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and British Army artillery in Afghanistan and Iraq. The GMLRS system, in combat, has maintained a reliability rating of over 98 percent.

GMLRS is the world’s premier long-range rocket artillery round designed specifically for destroying high-priority targets at ranges of 70 km and beyond. Successfully employed in both urban and non-urban environments, it is able to operate in all climate and light conditions while remaining beyond the range of most conventional weapons. Each GMLRS is packaged in a MLRS launch pod and is fired from the MLRS Family of Launchers.

The GMLRS rocket used in this test was fired from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher, the newest member of the MLRS launcher family. HIMARS can accommodate the entire family of MLRS munitions, including all variants of the Guided MLRS rocket and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles. Designed to enable troops to engage and defeat artillery, air defense concentrations, trucks, light armor and personnel carriers, as well as support troop and supply concentrations, HIMARS can launch its missiles and move away from the launch area before enemy forces locate the launch site.

HIMARS can be transported by C-130 “Hercules” aircraft, which allows HIMARS to be deployed into areas inaccessible to heavier launchers, and is a force multiplier to the units it supports. GMLRS is an international cooperative program among the United States, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Other international customers include the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2008 sales of $42.7 billion.

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Skinning the F-35 fighter
Fasteneing the all-composites skin on the Lightning II requires machining and drilling technology that is optimized for cost-efficiency.

Article from: High Performance Composites, Jeff Sloan, Editor-in-Chief
Article Date: 10/19/2009

Click Image to Enlarge

This F-35 on the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics assembly line inside the Fort Worth facility awaits the carbon fiber-reinforced skin that will sheath the finished craft’s fuselage and wings Photo below shows the conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) version. Source: Lockheed Martin

The CTOL version of the F-35 Source: Lockheed Martin

An automated drilling system bores one of the 1,500 holes that will accommodate fasteners in the forward section of the F-35’s forward fuselage. Source: Lockheed Martin

A close up of the drilling head. Source: Lockheed Martin

The DST machining center removes sacrificial material to help F-35 skins meet tolerance targets. Source: Lockheed Martin

A wingskin for the F-35 rests on its tooling, following exit from the DST machining center. Some holes on the skin are drilled by the machining center, using AMAMCO’s specialized drilling tool (see sidebar, below). Source: Lockheed Martin
When the Obama Administration announced earlier this year that the F-22 fighter jet program would be cut from the 2010 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) budget, sentiment among Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. employees at the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility was bitter and sweet. The cavernous plant — 1 mile/1.6 km long and 0.25 mile/0.4 km wide — is the assembly point not only for the F-22, but also the forthcoming F-35 Lightning II, an unscathed survivor of the DoD’s budget-cutting process.

From a budget perspective, the DoD’s preference for the F-35 — or Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) — is understandable. Its flyaway cost of $83 million (depending on variant), is a relative bargain compared to the F-22’s $143 million. And codevelopment of the plane with cost-sharing partner countries ensures a long orders list — Lockheed Martin plans to deliver more than 3,000 F-35s through 2036.

Unlike the air-to-air F-22, the F-35 is a multirole craft, designed for air-to-air and the air-to-ground combat that U.S. airmen are more likely to face, going forward. The multirole design makes the F-35 highly adaptable. It comes in three variants: the F-35A for conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL), the F-35B for short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL), and the F-35C for carrier-based landing (CV). Multirole capability enables it to replace the F-16, A-10, AV-8B and the F-18 in the U.S., and the Sea Harrier and GR.7 in the U.K. In the U.S., it will complement existing F-22 and F-18E/F fleets. From the manufacturing perspective, the variants share a common design for more than 20 percent of the airframe structure, thus reducing program cost.

Dozen-year development
Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the F-35, having won the bid in October 2001. Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are the principal partners on the project. The three companies are more than halfway through a 12-year System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase, which includes production and testing of 19 aircraft. Composites have been a major part of the manufacturing effort. Northrop Grumman makes the center fuselage at its Palmdale, Calif., plant; BAE Systems produces the aft fuselage and tails at its facility in Samlesbury, U.K. ATK (Magna, Utah) makes the wingskins; Lockheed Martin makes the forward fuselage and assembles finished aircraft in Fort Worth. The first F-35, a CTOL variant, flew for the first time on Dec. 15, 2006. All SDD aircraft are in production or on the flight line for testing; the first 14 production-model F-35s have started assembly.

HPC was recently invited to tour the massive Fort Worth facility and see firsthand how composites are being shaped for this next-generation fighter.

Big job on a tight budget
One of the challenges of manufacturing a fighter that is marketed, in part, as budget-friendly, is that special care must be taken to cost-optimize every component of the plane. This is perhaps most true for the F-35’s carbon fiber composites, which comprise approximately 35 percent of the structural weight and most of the visible surface on the fighter. And with fuselage sections, wings, and tails coming from different suppliers, the biggest challenge Lockheed faces is managing the aircraft’s composite skin thickness.

Don Kinard, technical deputy, JSF Production Operations, at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, says the company spent considerable time evaluating a variety of material types — composites, aluminum, titanium and steel — for the aircraft frame and skin to establish a cost/benefit ratio that was the most cost-effective.

“Can we make an all-composite fighter jet?” asks Kinard. “Sure, but we don’t do something just because we can. Everything is a cost-benefit analysis. Where are the best places to most efficiently use composites?” He notes that composite substructures were evaluated for the F-16, F-22 and F-35, but didn’t provide the weight savings needed to justify cost. “We needed to save a lot more weight for composite substructures to make sense,” he says. Also, he notes, in composites substructures, “z-directional properties are the problem. The strength of resin will have to be significantly improved. There’s a lot to overcome.”

As a result, composites on the F-35 are used almost exclusively in skin applications. Kinard notes that Lockheed, wherever in-flight service temperatures allow, uses carbon fiber/epoxy from Cytec Engineered Materials (Tempe, Ariz.), but much of the plane’s skin requires higher heat resistance, where Cytec’s CYCOM 5250-4 bismaleimide (BMI) is used. Although Lockheed is evaluating the new crop of out-of-autoclave (OOA) resins for special applications, Kinard foresees no near-term changes in the matrix.

From high performance composites. I hope people start to see the light because comparing % weight of composites in an aircraft is getting a bit old.