NA/Rockwell 70's Stealth: Flying Banana, Silent Attack & Surprise Fighter

[SteveO]

Ah yes. Must remember to reread threads before posting

 

[AeroFranz]

from Darold:

"I believe we also envisioned getting off one missile as a fighter...not very agile, but "surprising" the enemy (same philosophy as F-22!) with first shot/first kill."

 

[hesham]

Hi,

https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/comments/ctg09y

 

[sferrin]

A project I've never heard of until today, looking through the Rockwell bomber study PDF here:

http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=C016293&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Concept 4-1 uses stealth technologies developed under Rockwell's Surprise Fighter program. Radar tests of a model of this shape showed virtually no radar return from most directions. The aircraft penetrates at high mach number with its wings fully stowed, leaving only a slab-sided shape with minimal intersections.

Interesting that this knowledge didn't appear to make it into their ATF concept.

 

[Foo Fighter]

I'm sorry I must appologise, I have for a while been gettin my reading of the title wrong, lazyness perhaps. Instead of
"NA/Rockwell 70's Stealth: Flying Banana, Silent Attack & Surprise Fighter", I have seen part to read as "Silent Banana". Sorry folks, my bad...........
IMHO though, my version works much better as a defence program title.

 

[sferrin]

When I was a kid there was a regional airliner. . .Hughes Airwest, that painted their aircraft yellow, called them "Top Bananas" but everybody else called them Flying Bananas. McDonalds even had little foam cutout "Top Banana" gliders they put in Happy Meals (I had one).

 

[Scott Kenny]

The pictures represent early attempts at designing stealth attack aircraft in the early seventies. The mission was to attack an SA-2 site.
The "Flying banana" and the "silent attack aircraft" are from North american, the surprise fighter is from Rockwell.
All vehicle incorporated FLIR and some sort of plug in the exhaust to prevent line of sight to the hot section. The surprise fighter was interesting in having pivoted wings which disappeared under the fuselage. I can only assume that penetration would occur at low altitude and high speed, and body lift was all that was needed. There is at least another later Rockwell bomber that relied on this concept, although in that case the design had a one piece oblique-wing hinged at the center as opposed to two variable geometry semi-wings. weapon launch in the Rockwell fighter was through a system similar to torpedo tubes. Exhaust doors at the back would open at the time of launch.

The "Flying Banana" looks like a scaled up version of an early stealth drone ("Aguila"? CIA Aquiline or MDD Batwing II, now that I looked it up), just with the V-tail upright instead of inverted.

 

[Archibald]

Awesome. So - that's where Tom Clancy got that idea of a surprise attack by a surprise fighter, to kill those pesky Soviet AWACS ? I note that (dreamland) frisbees are close from bananas, in shape [hell, crap - boomerangs, not frisbees - silly me, forget that)

How about that ?

I readily agree the non-banana surprise fighter certainly looks like a revamped YF-107 for stealth.

That forum is full of surprises.

 

[Archibald]

"Operation dreamland" - are you a Clancy & Red storm rising fan ? (just asking in passing)

 

[OPERATION DREAMLAND]

Yes!

 

[Archibald]

Me too ! Bought Red October, in 1995 - I was thirteen, and I loved it. Red Storm Rising came later : 2007. I like to think some Tomcat crews flew in both... novels.

 

[quellish]

Interesting that this knowledge didn't appear to make it into their ATF concept.

In 1972 or 1973 Lt Col Delbert Jabcobs authored the "Surprise Attack Technology Prototype" paper. In it he describes what is almost certainly the "Surprise Fighter"

Stevenson, in "The $5 Billion Misunderstanding" quotes portions of the paper:

Myers said air force Lt. Col. Del Jacobs was also advocating a "surprise fighter" that was shaped like a wedge. Jacobs advocated his surprise fighter concept in spite of the reception that tended "to create controversy and outright opposition in some cases." In a paper Jacobs circulated entitled "Surprise Attack Technology Prototype," he stated that surprise gave a fighter an 800 percent advantage over an airplane that had been noticed.

The overwhelming value of surprise attack has been largely over- looked in favor of powerful airborne search radars, costly weapon systems optimized for agility against a violently maneuvering foe, and the resultant large, expensive, high-performance fighter aircraft capable of performing the all-threat, all-aspect, all-weather air supe- riority task... . We need to complement this all-weather, all-threat fighter force with an astute balance of less costly fighters, optimized to achieve surprise in day or night good weather air combat.

Jacobs advocated the use of technology to minimize radar reflection and emissions. He also wanted to be able to track the enemy's "particular chemical exhaust signature .. . along with persistent atmospheric turbulence due to wing tip vortex phenomena. Some, or a combination of these radar, IR, acoustic, chemical, and other energy emissions provide the basis for a passive detection, acquisition, and tracking system."

Perhaps the most significant proposal Jacobs made was his advocacy for a radar-homing air-to-air missile, which would have changed the calculus of air-to-air combat. "Radar homing missile capability can exploit ... and .. . discourage enemy use of air-to-air search radar just the way Shrike and other anti-radiation missiles have limited SAM search radar operations."

For night operations, Jacobs wanted to rely on reduced radar sig- natures. For daylight missions, he said, "visual detection avoidance and optical tracking degradation methods include: (1) adaptively controlled lights to reduce contrast; (2) optical deception (using corner cubes, holography, flashing lights, etc.); (3) improved camouflage paint; and (4) smokeless engines."

I am uncertain in what capacity Jacobs authored the paper, and wether it was a proposal or a description of an existing program. He later worked for the F-16 and F-15 SPOs, and in 1979 made Brigadier General. In 1983 he retired from the Air Force and took as position at Northrop as the program manager for their ATF proposal.

I have so far been unable to locate a copy of the "Surprise Attack Technology Prototype" paper. Based on the above though it does seem that the "Surprise Fighter" had at least some air to air role.

It also appears that the "Silent Attack" paper may have triggered other reduced observable efforts, including the USAF visual signature reduction / optical countermeasures efforts of the early 1970s. It also, clearly, served as the inspiration for Myer's "Harvey" concept (which was a dead end).

The "Silent Attack" design was almost certainly a Navy program. At the time of the "Silent Attack" study the Navy ONR was conducting similar studies with other contractors (McDD, Boeing, Lockheed). The McDD "Quiet Attack Aircraft" was one of those studies.