Looooong Duration Flight

A fine idea at first blush, but what about storms? What about if it does fail? Will it come crashing down in an inhabited area, or into a city? I see no difficulty with the technological aspects, since they've been experimenting with long-duration solar-powered aircraft for several years, but if the craft is that close to the ground, it would be vulnerable to enemy aircraft. Still, hats off to those guys for finding a cheap alternative to launching another satellite.

Hmm, I've been watching this for a while and almost got involved in the bidding. Twelve miles is over 60,000ft in altitude and even today there are not many aircraft that can get there. Missiles can though, and at the lower altitudes such a craft would be a lot more vulnerable than at the higher altitude. You get better pictures though at lower altitudes.

Operationally there is nothing to stop these aircraft from descending into a zone of interest and then climbing out again. Equally they could monitor several areas sequentially. However, one great advantage accrues to these aircraft and that is that they are free of the restrictions of orbital mechanics and with skill could be used to immediately target areas when satellite coverage is low or non-existent.

Price-wise there should be a great advantage over satellites and launch vehicles. With the recently demonstrated vulnerability of satellites a cheaper system whose position is not as predictable as a satellite's should be a welcome addition to the intelligence toolkit. Such a system would be of great use for both strategic and tactical intelligence gathering.

Next we need is magnetically levitating military air base complexes that can be stationed out in the middle of nowhere, which are many many more times efficient than the old terrestrial aircraft carrier counterparts.

Triligy,

Aircraft Carriers may be approaching the end of their usefulness as tools of force projection. This is not because the idea is bad but because they have become vulnerable to a whole slew of weapons that can be launched at them from long distances. This includes missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. Structurally a carrier may survive a small nuclear blast even if it is fairly close, but it is unlikely to function afterwards.

To combat threats like this the amount of resources put into defending the carrier is steadily rising. The resources being used are essentially updated and new defensive weapon systems. Each such system sucks resources from the warfighting role of the carrier and eventually the whole concept of Carrier Battle Groups breaks down.

Your concept of magnetically levitated bases belongs in the realm of science fiction. Even if we could do it, why would we want to? We can go round the globe in aircraft without difficulty, our missiles and satellites see most of what needs to be seen.

The real problem is getting tactical intelligence data to the warfighter in real or near real time so that battlefield decisions can be made with greater knowledge and more certainty than we have heretofore had.

In the light of the argument posited above the DARPA contract is both intriguing and necessary. You also have to remember that DARPA likes to try and solve really hard problems that push technology and sometimes basic science to the absolute limits in search of solutions. They are very good at their job.

I can see how it could be done. 20 miles up is over 100,000 feet. There are no anti-aircraft missiles that shoot that high, and only the US has aircraft that can GET that high - none of which are armed. Radar profiles would be hard to get since most radar only tracks targets at certain altitudes (below 80,000 feet) and it could, conceivably, fly higher than that.

Finally, the regions where these aircraft would be used wouldn't possess the technology or capability of shooting something like this down. As it can only perform the same functions of a satellite (ie: Not armed), I don't see a lot of reason for anyone to spend the considerable time and effort it would take to shoot one down.

Andy Clark

The defensive capabilities of a carrier battle group are much better than you seem to think. Unless someone is willing to through megaton plus sized strategic nuclear weapons at a carrier nobody has a descent shot at taking one out - pun intended. And by the time anyone gets good enough to be able to threaten the Nimitz class we will be building the next generation stealthy CVX's. They are also far more survivable than you seem to think. I was on the USS Arkansas CGN-41 for her shock test (very large underwater explosion close enough to effectively simulate a near miss from a tactical nuke) and we did not lose any weapons capabilities or suffer any major damage. Only submarines are safer.

Yesterday the headline was "Plane that can fly non-stop for 5 years", today it is "Plane that never needs to land". WOW! - What a difference a day makes!