I assumed your design was for world wide use,cheap powered flight ,not as a quick scramble get to height to defend your country type machinery.At a guess an anti aircraft shell passing close to it would be enough to disable it .

How many AA gun fire at 34 km altitude ?

Oh is that all!

You have some good ideas and please accept the criticism in the spirit that it is intended.
I’m not sure why the mods decided that GD was the place for this rather Commercial Aviation. Perhaps they thought that GD had people in it that knew what they were talking about !

I understand this is so well ahead of the present culture that is better to be discussed here.

You can discuss more at my forum, that I just created !

Welcome aboard everyone !

http://solar-flight.60934.x6.nabble.com/

I agree..but will it beat this; http://gizmodo.com/the-aluminum-airship-of-the-future-has-finally-flown-1301320903 ????

That’s true of any aircraft though.

I think topspeed’s aircraft have bigger problems than getting shot down. Getting in the air in the first place would be the main one.

Solar powered AWACs or fighter carriers or passenger aircraft flying at over 100,000ft is simply not feasible.

You have a point there..unless the awacs could be made differently than today.

From whom or what? Sweden ….? Russia?……ah still harbouring the 20th century fear of the Bear. Now I understand the drawing above. Don’t let Putin see what’s in your mind!! He might have to reposition his missile array!

I have no idea from whom….there is a sea about 5 km from where I live and admiral Nelson was shelling the town not so long ago. USSR is no longer there…also this town had gunfire against Wehrmacht no so long ago. Soviets bombed several blocks to the ground few years earlier. Swedish king had a garrison/fortress and entire masterplan done here. Even the danes tried to rule us before swedes. Czarist garrison was disarmed and shelled about a century ago. Plenty of reasons to try to stay neutral.

I am concerned how we gonna do it in the future…staying neutral that is.

Perhaps all the solar panels on this plane type thingy should be used for something more realistic and useful.

Panels could operate the hydraulics and pressurisation…new accus have come a long way from what they used to be.

Small GM-1 could get 5.8 hp solar power on peak hour…not enought to fly…but perhaps enuf to operate all electrical systems ?

Mach 3 without engines? Straight down then. 🙂

AWACs aircraft require lots of power, cooling, carry large radar arrays with the associated drag and now they have to carry aircraft with all the associated systems and have to be pressurized to operate at 111,000ft!

Your solar powered aircraft are interesting and innovative but you are well and truly in the realms of fantasy now.

Right I have no glue about operating an AWX.

Rob, look up the Missileer concept. Never went very far.

Topspeed,

While I can only applaud thinking outside the box, this is nonsense.

IF you need fighters to defend your AEW plane, you did something wrong. That plane should be far behind, and protected by other means. I think we could safely say that an E-3 over the Channel can see as far as the Med.
AEW systems are not low cost, small nation hardware.
Your light fighters are probably well suited for light attack / asymetric warfare. Not as interceptors. An interceptor needs a lot of power to be able to catch the bad guys as far as possible out. Or your high value assets (in this case the AEW plane) will be destroyed. Who cares about stealthy ? Being visible could end up in a soft kill, of the aggressor aborts the mission. Plus, the AEW plane is not stealthy.
And last question. What happens to the interceptor and its pilot once he’s done with the mission? It surely does not have the range to land at home, and hooking to a mothership, well, look up what happened to parasite fighters before.
Sorry, but you make no sense.

From 34 km the fighter can attack enemy at supersonic speed ( mach 3 max ) and reach an airstrip in Finland…without using the engines at all. As long as the mother ship flys above Finland.