21st century

Before we got LCS, their were a number of concepts that involved the use of one or more motherships acting as the center for a large number fo smaller, and more expendable combat vessels-- can anyone point to a source for information and images about these earlier concepts?

Congress passed the FAA bill. http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=82075 "The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That...

Could a Russia-US rail tunnel be built?

To start this thread off, here's a recent article on Nuclear Merchant Ships (part of a series on the peaceful uses of Nuclear power). Includes information on the only four such ships to have been built so far: NS Savannah, USA; Mutsu, Japan; Sevmorput, Russia; and the Otto Hahn, Germany. Also...

I'm putting this here rather than Military or Naval projects because there is currently little or no hard information available about this subject. Basically this topic is a clearing house for any information (including RUMINT) that becomes available about designs and/or related studies to...

SecNav Posits Drone Ships Fueled by Sediment At a breakfast meeting with DC-based defense reporters today, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (now clearly not in contention to be SecDef) sketched a future force of unmanned ships pulling power from the sea floor. Office of Naval Research just did...

FTA: "A report published by China Aviation Journal, China has successfully launched its own space plane prototype" http://www.suasnews.com/2011/01/3610/russians-and-china-said-to-be-working-on-their-own-x37-type-craft/

At the dedication event for Spaceport America on Friday, Richard Branson made a surprise statement about VG's orbital ambitions. Jeff Foust's reporting of the event includes the following: It'll be very interesting to see what their orbital concept is and who they'll be working with. Burt...

Lockheed Martin HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) exoskeleton Source: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/hulc/index.html Videos of Lockheed Martin HULC exoskeleton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kat8I5UM_Vs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWumbs9MQdM...

Two artist's impressions of the Royal Navy's proposed future aircraft carrier (CVF) from 1999. These both show examples designed to operate STOVL aircraft. Source: http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvf2.htm

Fun. I liek the C-5A for scale. Clearly we need a folding wing C-5C to fit below decks. ;D

Story from NTM-A (Nato Training Mission - Afghanistan) Kabul, Afghanistan, May 15, 2010--U.S. Air Force Major Caleb Nimmo is the first American Mi-35 HIND attack helicopter pilot to fly in combat. He is deployed to Afghanistan advising the Afghan National Army Air Corps’ rotary wing squadron...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html April 26, 2010 We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint By ELISABETH BUMILLER WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was...

Textron Achieves More Than 100 Kilowatts with J-HPSSL High-Power Laser Final J-HPSSL Technical Milestone Reached (Wilmington, Mass., February 18, 2010) -- Textron Defense Systems, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced today that its Directed Energy...

In light of the wildly varying opinions on this somewhat polarizing topic I have a proposal that may require this being moved to Theoretical and Speculative or to Alternative History and Future Speculation. Not sure which. I would like to employ my considerable artistic prowess to creating a...

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=5079 Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s - you know, when there was actual progress in aerospace - aerospace companies and organizations had people on staff who were paid, skilled artists and draftsmen. Many of even the simplest presentations were thus filled with...

Three of a kind:- Photo 1 The McCulloch MC-34 from the U.S.A. Photo 2 The Chu CJC-3 from Formosa/Taiwan. Photo 3 The AISA IH-49 from Spain. Photo's 1 & 2 from The Aircraft of the World, Macdonald 1956. Photo 3 from Aeroplano magazine No14.

From a researcher at Johns Hopkins U Applied Physics Lab: http://techdigest.jhuapl.edu/td2703/mcNutt.pdf Fun facts: -- 100 year plan for solar system exploration, starting with manned mission to Callisto in 2050 and culminating in a manned mission to Pluto in 2110. -- multiple in-space...

Video at this link - http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation Think of the military applications for robotic technologies able to be this dexterous and this fast. Humans can think awfully fast but are limited by our physical...

The "hovertank" is a staple of science fiction novels and board games, yet in the real world fans and skirts never seem to have supplanted wheels or tracks. Does anyone have any projects or prototypes to share on proposed land-based hovercraft? Cheers, Matthew