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Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

airandspaceforces.com

101–110 of 114 posts

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, baffles aren't free, since they add empty weight and reduce payload. The designers will be tempted to keep them to a minimum. There definitely will be at least some free surface effect and slosh.

Plastic bags to reduce slosh?

Plastic bags to vomit in.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#102
post #2

Blended-wing body makes a lot of sense for cargo/tanker aircraft. No issues with emergency evacuation procedure for passengers.

I thought that the main disadvantage with flying wings for passenger traffic was that any kind of roll is made much worse the further you get from the main roll axis, so turbulence etc becomes more uncomfortable in the wing part.

I believe that is somewhat offset by having larger rotational inertia as more mass is further from the center. That does however, necessitate larger control surfaces achieve the same roll performance.\

Also, anecdotally from my flying (I'm a private pilot, small, single engine planes) turbulence tends to create much more vertical translation and pitching movement than it does roll movement.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#103
post #2

Blended-wing body makes a lot of sense for cargo/tanker aircraft. No issues with emergency evacuation procedure for passengers.

I wonder if the design of blended wing body aircraft means that airlines will be more weight constrained by volume constrained. If that is the case, it would be economical for them to have much wider aisles (faster boarding) and exit rows which could offset the negative impact that having more than 2 aisles would have on evacuation time.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#104

Personally, I think it looks beautiful. I hope it works. Generation 3 of the flying wing. A worthy tradition and a genuine problem to solve. Also, for the record, I think military operations get a different category on emissions. Yes they pollute but just hope they aren’t dropping ordinance. That stuff really pollutes. I live by a major cargo hub airport with occasional military traffic. The occasional C-5 Galaxy doi…

> Yes they pollute but just hope they aren’t dropping ordinance. That stuff really pollutes. How so? Usually it’s just nitrate fertilizer. You can actually measure the greening effect that certain large 20th century ears (WW2, Korea, Vietnam) have had on global bio mass.

Most munitions have a toxic concentration of heavy metals. I really wouldn't want to eat anything grown in a field that was heavily shelled or bombed.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fuel doesn't care about the bobbing up and down Maybe the fuel doesn't care, but the flight crew certainly will care about a large oscillating mass constantly changing the aircraft's center of mass.

> the flight crew certainly will care How long will tankers be crewed?

The new Navy MQ-25 tanker is uncrewed. I expect this future Air Force tanker will be optionally manned. The main issue is that Air Force tankers use a boom system which requires an operator onboard to manually "fly" the boom into the receptacle. In theory that could be automated but it's a difficult technical problem. Navy tankers use a simpler drogue system which doesn't require a boom operator.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#108
post #97

The Air Force should have forced some kind of transatlantic agreement, and make the A380 the new tanker, instead of letting the airplane go out of production.

Why? The A380 isn't cost effective and doesn't fit the mission requirements. Let it die.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#109
post #63
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you need to pressurize it? Only the crew space needs that which could be a small/short tube in the middle right behind (and including) the cockpit. The fuel tanks don’t care. They’re not pressurized on a normal design. The cargo may not need it either.

true. I thought cargo planes are often used for troop transport and this would be the same, but if they're solely using it for cargo/fuel it should be fine.

Modern tankers are actually multirole aircraft which can carry small amounts of cargo and/or personnel when necessary. This makes operations more flexible. With something like a KC-46 the entire fuselage including the cargo area is pressurized.

Re: Air Force Plans New Blended Wing Body Cargo/Tanker Aircraft by 2027

#110
post #97

The Air Force should have forced some kind of transatlantic agreement, and make the A380 the new tanker, instead of letting the airplane go out of production.

A380s are probably too big TBH. IIRC their size and weight limits where they can operate because not all runways can support them. Also fuel is fairly heavy and dense, so tankers are more limited by weight than volume. The classic KC-135 tanker for example can carry around 175,000 lbs of fuel, but the main part of the fuselage is basically empty: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2638cc62527bd387b0a38...
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