Looks like besides going fast, it looks like the new plane the skunk works has been working on is also a submursible… in other words it dives under the sea.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.
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Tags: Military, Technology
now that is just plain amazing! I thought we were in the 21st century! i was waiting to see signs of progression.
There are reports of hyper drive recon planes and such. And they are working on straight UAV aircraft. But this is the first I heard of a plan that went under water. I would of thought the water compression would ruin the engines… but perhaps this runs via a hyper drive which is similar to a large box that fuel is dumped into. If so, then water wouldn’t effect it as bad.