Mindblowingly insane secret projects

[Avimimus]

Bobby Mike's 2) Insane in concept. I mean, the AAFSS always seemed like an expensive suicide device (and submarine launched is getting into the fever dream territories).

As for arsenal ships - I always thought they made strategic sense: Your enemy *has* to attack them as priority targets (even though they're fairly cheap). Surrounding them with a defense of ASW and air-defense units gives you a chance to slaughter enemy's anti-ship capacity.

 

[sferrin]

Bobby Mike's 2) Insane in concept. I mean, the AAFSS always seemed like an expensive suicide device (and submarine launched is getting into the fever dream territories).

As for arsenal ships - I always thought they made strategic sense: Your enemy *has* to attack them as priority targets (even though they're fairly cheap). Surrounding them with a defense of ASW and air-defense units gives you a chance to slaughter enemy's anti-ship capacity.

Having a large portion of your production run tied up in one target means it can only be in one place at a time and also means one "*BOOM* and there goes years of production.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Bobby Mike's 2) Insane in concept. I mean, the AAFSS always seemed like an expensive suicide device (and submarine launched is getting into the fever dream territories).

The only hubris (self important over confidence) I can see is that written above (which I've bolded). Annular wings may look strange but they are not "insane". Many aircraft have been designed with them and even some have flown. They work just fine and real aerospace engineers can use them in their aircraft when the performance requirements demand them.


http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,12884.msg127242.html#msg127242


As for basing from submarines there has been from time to time a real military requirement for submarine aircraft carriers. There are many difficulties to overcome in such a design. One of which is launch and recover of the aircraft. Making a compact VTOL aircraft ideal for such a boat.


http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2390.msg37462.html#msg37462


I find it rather strange that someone would frequent an internet forum dedicated to shining the light on unbuilt projects and yet display such a rejection of unfamiliar concepts. I would have thought the two are mutually exclusive.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Having a large portion of your production run tied up in one target means it can only be in one place at a time and also means one "*BOOM* and there goes years of production.

That's why you build hundreds of 'em.

 

[marauder2048]

It didn't have the same environmental challenges as ICEWORM, but MX MPS and Racetrack was pretty stupendous in scale too. It would have consumed half of US concrete production for years (three? seven? I can't remember). The most interesting part was the USAF's admission that the 200/4600 system might not last, and that they might need 9200 shelters by the mid-1990s, and more thereafter.

So there seems to be three 'general' categories; 1) Insane in scale, 2) Insane in concept, 3) Both scale and concept

Would you add 'Densepack' into the mix of ICBM deployments concepts? Come to think of it the MX basing thread probably has a few 'concepts' that could be classified insane??

A novel ABM technique known as "Dust Defense"

"Dust defense relies on buried nuclear weapons to raise dust clouds to a high altitude in the path of incoming Re-entry Vehicles (RVs).
When an RV flies through such a dust cloud, its heatshield becomes eroded and it cannot survive reentry."

Naturally, the enemy's ability to conduct damage assessment or launch a second strike is impaired while you can harden your missiles or enable them to maneuver around the dust clouds during boost.

 

[Avimimus]

I find it rather strange that someone would frequent an internet forum dedicated to shining the light on unbuilt projects and yet display such a rejection of unfamiliar concepts. I would have thought the two are mutually exclusive.

Ah, well it is not so much a rejection of the unfamiliar as being deeply tempted by such an idea. To this day I think it is a wondrous concept with considerable technical merit.

The thing which makes me uncomfortable is mainly the idea of trying to use a tail-sitter for close air-support. The annular wing doesn't bother me. Tipping the cockpit forward and then firing recoilless rifles at close range and trying to land on an unknown substrate make me uncomfortable (I suspect control and precision in a hover would have been a bit worse than helicopters and its seems complex).

Maybe, I'm a little timid and the twinkle in my eye frightens myself.

 

[carsinamerica]

For the "insane in concept" category, I'd offer up one of Lockheed's C-5 missile carrier proposals. It was to carry Polaris missiles as ALBMs, but not dropped out of the tail a la the air-launched Minuteman tests. This proposal launched the missiles upward from the fuselage (one hopes, cold-fired). If the ejector cartridge malfunctioned and operated at lower-than-desired pressure....

 

[marauder2048]

For the "insane in concept" category, I'd offer up one of Lockheed's C-5 missile carrier proposals. It was to carry Polaris missiles as ALBMs, but not dropped out of the tail a la the air-launched Minuteman tests. This proposal launched the missiles upward from the fuselage (one hopes, cold-fired). If the ejector cartridge malfunctioned and operated at lower-than-desired pressure....

That concept was subsequently revived for VLA (A380, 747-8) launching, IIRC, Kinetic Energy Interceptor sized missiles for ABM.

 

[Rickshaw]

Bobby Mike's 2) Insane in concept. I mean, the AAFSS always seemed like an expensive suicide device (and submarine launched is getting into the fever dream territories).

As for arsenal ships - I always thought they made strategic sense: Your enemy *has* to attack them as priority targets (even though they're fairly cheap). Surrounding them with a defense of ASW and air-defense units gives you a chance to slaughter enemy's anti-ship capacity.

Having a large portion of your production run tied up in one target means it can only be in one place at a time and also means one "*BOOM* and there goes years of production.

Isn't that the same argument against the building of CVNs? They make wonderful missile and torpedo magnets.

 

[GWrecks]

The idea of mounting four 88mm cannons on a giant P.08 also has a bit of that feeling:
http://www.luft46.com/mess/mep08.html

Exactly what did they mean by this?

 

[Grey Havoc]

As I understand it, the concept was for at least two of these 'Flak carrier aircraft' to loiter for long periods of time at a relatively high altitude in a Himmelbett zone until allied bombers (this was before the introduction of 'bomber streams') were detected by ground early warning & tracking systems (the overall 'Kammhuber Line'), upon which ground controllers would direct their aircraft onto courses which would allow them to easily engage the bombers with their 88mm cannons from outside the effective range of the defensive armament of the allied bombers. Though primarily intended as a nightfighter, this P.08 variant would have probably been effective against the later daylight bomber streams during the time when the 'Escort gap' was still in effect.

Here's a bit more on the P.08 project in general: https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,17664.0.html