The MKV system consists of a Carrier Vehicle loaded with a complement of small intercepting kill vehicles, each about the size of a loaf of bread. The exact number of kill vehicles carried is restricted information, but can be substantially greater than 10 when MKV is launched by a Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor.

Cluster SAMs 😮

Buy 22 Tomcat’s, get a free carrier 😀 http://www.navy.mil/management/photodb/photos/060310-N-6410T-001.jpg

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.

I found some pics here http://www.avrovulcan.org.uk/903/index.htm

Close-up of the starboard RB199 Tornado installation on Vulcan B1 XA903. Having served as the flying test bed for the Olympus 593, a new nacelle on 903 was constructed by Marshalls of Cambridge to carry a single RB199. 593 first flew in this configuration in 1972. A Mauser cannon was at one time fitted to the nacelle and 903 became the only Vulcan ever to fire a gun.

L Braithwaite collection. © Rolls-Royce

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.

Ames-Dryden-1 (AD-1) oblique (pivoting) wing demonstrator http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/AD-1/index.html

Colani Cygnus. High capacity airliner designed for Aeroflot in 80s. It was powered by two screw-like blowers.

But in all honesty, if you want really serious weird designs, there is only one place to go, have a chat to Burt Rutan.

Colani + Rutan = Scaled Composites White Knight 🙂 http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm

The biggest problem encountered by fighter newcomers like Israel and China, but also by Sweden and the Eurofighter-countries as well as LM with the F-22 were control system configuration. UCAV need even more knowledge of controls and avionics, so they are even further out of reach. Additionally they don’t have the flexibility needed by small economies, where the fighter needs to fight bad clan’s people the one day and make an appealing appearance at the “Dear Leader’s Birthday” the other day.

Fair comment about the lack of flexibility a simple UCAV would have but I disagree that ”UCAV need even more knowledge of controls and avionics, so they are even further out of reach.”

High tech fighters need advanced control systems because they are aerodynamically unstable and have a wide speed range, a simple UCAV that operates like a reusable cruise missile doesn’t need to be unstable and doesn’t need a wide speed range.