Concorde - military option ?

[rhinochopig]

XB70 said:

Johnnytheboy said:

I suppose the yanks got pretty close with the Valkyrie?

My favourite aircraft of all time....hence my name!

I have a book somewhere in storage that showed a concept for a 747 converted to carry a number of rotary launchers for cruise missiles used in the B1A (as it then was). Something like 100 of them from memory.

As a stand-off weapons platform, that is exceptional. Huge range (and time on station can be extended via refuelling - see the E4B and 'Air Force One'); massive load capacity; ease of maintenance, spares and repair and excellent reliabilty.

Thanks to the net:

It was cheaper and more effective operationally to convert the previous class of SSBNs to TLAM platforms instead.

[The Hypno-Toad]

XB70 said:

I have a book somewhere in storage that showed a concept for a 747 converted to carry a number of rotary launchers for cruise missiles used in the B1A (as it then was). Something like 100 of them from memory.

As a stand-off weapons platform, that is exceptional. Huge range, massive load capacity; ease of maintenance, spares and repair and excellent reliabilty.

Thanks to the net:

And from the looks of things a very,very big bang if one ever got shot down!

[scubadude]

c7xlg said:

Sorry I was being a numb-nuts there.

Concorde payload is more like 13 tons. That 111 ton figues must be including fuel.

13tonnes for 100 fat, rich yanks + luggage, champers and crew? Doesn't sound right either! IIRC luggage allowance wasn't overly strict for Concorde either.

[Beyond Rational]

I agree.

There must be 4000kg of seating alone. Add in galleys, toilets etc.

At the least they must have allowed 80kg for each passenger.

Luggage would have been 25kg? Hand and hold?

That is 14,500kg without even trying.

[Tango13]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

Where would you put the weapons, given that Concorde wasn't designed with a bomb bay?

Hang them under the wings and you won't make Mach 1 let alone Mach 2!

The B-58 had four engines cluttering up the underside of its wings and that managed Mach 2 quite easily. They could IIRC also carry 4X1000lb bombs on hard points near the wing root as well as the jetasonable central fuel tank/hydrogen bomb.

The main problem with hanging any ordanance on the wings of a Concord would be ensuring a clean seperation and making sure nothing was ingested by the engines in the process. Siteing any weapons at the wing root would be a better option as the mass of the weapons would be much closer to the centre line and away from the engines

[AAGR]

Slightly off topic, I'll never forget Concorde + nine Red Arrows over-flying Central London in close formation for some anniversary or other a few years ago. As seen on TV, when they had passed over Buckingham Palace, Concorde obviously got bored with posing about, the pilot gave it full throttle, and it left the Red Arrows for dead ....

Edited by AAGR on Friday 7th October 15:34

[XB70]

rhinochopig said:

It was cheaper and more effective operationally to convert the previous class of SSBNs to TLAM platforms instead.

But how much more boring is that!

To fly. To serve. To annhilate.

[aeropilot]

Tango13 said:

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

Where would you put the weapons, given that Concorde wasn't designed with a bomb bay?

Hang them under the wings and you won't make Mach 1 let alone Mach 2!

The B-58 had four engines cluttering up the underside of its wings and that managed Mach 2 quite easily. They could IIRC also carry 4X1000lb bombs on hard points near the wing root as well as the jetasonable central fuel tank/hydrogen bomb.

But it's spaced out underslung engines also meant created one of it's achilles heels..... an engine failure at supersonic speeds usually meant an unrecoverable loss of control due to differential thrust.
The Hustler was a difficult aircraft to fly, with a high loss rate and was hugely expensive to operate....about 3 times the cost of operating a B-52!!

[Zad]

AAGR said:

Slightly off topic, I'll never forget Concorde + nine Red Arrows over-flying Central London in close formation for some anniversary or other a few years ago. As seen on TV, when they had passed over Buckingham Palace, Concorde obviously got bored with posing about, the pilot gave it full throttle, and it left the Red Arrows for dead ....

That was the Queen's Golden Jubilee back in 2002.

From approx 6m20s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpX-FcDmkQQ

Concorde looked like it was hardly trying too, heck of a rate of climb for so little throttle.

[aeropilot]

Zad said:

That was the Queen's Golden Jubilee back in 2002.

From approx 6m20s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpX-FcDmkQQ

Not even 10 years ago, and yet half of the aircraft types in that clip are now no longer flying.

Tornado F3
Jaguar
Nimrod
Canberra
Concorde

All gone.

Zad said:

Concorde looked like it was hardly trying too, heck of a rate of climb for so little throttle.

Yup, she had some go. BA pilots used to love the rare chances of light flights. I guy I used to navigate for in rallying worked for BA and was one of the lucky BA staff that got drawn out of the hat for the Christmas Day flight out of Heathrow by 4 Concordes back in the mid 1980's (10th anniversary springs to mind?) and he said as it was a staff only flight the pilots were a little more 'adventurous in the handling, and the fighter like formation break was something to experience

[Simpo Two]

Zad said:

That was the Queen's Golden Jubilee back in 2002.

From approx 6m20s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpX-FcDmkQQ

Concorde looked like it was hardly trying too, heck of a rate of climb for so little throttle.

Impressive, recent and also defunct. If it happened today I fear most people, instead of going 'wooo!' would think 'But what about the CO2, and what if one crashed, and can we afford it?'

And so now we can't do it any more. More foreign aid anyone?

[CATS ARE BOXING]

Let's demonstate the 'can-do' spirit Cameron was banging on about and build a modern version, money to be taken from the welfare budget until it's done.

[Talksteer]

scubadude said:

c7xlg said:

Sorry I was being a numb-nuts there.

Concorde payload is more like 13 tons. That 111 ton figues must be including fuel.

13tonnes for 100 fat, rich yanks + luggage, champers and crew? Doesn't sound right either! IIRC luggage allowance wasn't overly strict for Concorde either.

Standard aircraft design rules are about 110kg for an aircraft passenger plus luggage. Get enough people together and they will follow statistical trends.

http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_assets/main/downloa...

Concorde was a technical none starter from a military perspective, you can't simply put a bomb-bay into a civil airliner and be anywhere near an optimised aircraft. It would be cheaper to start the design again at which point you would end up with the B1A or the XB-70 or similar.

A large high speed, high altitude bomber wasn't cancelled because they were vulnerable but because they were expensive and inflexible.

Flying at mach 2 and 60,000ft makes you quite a difficult target for a fighter aircraft until you start seeing the really reliable and long range air to air missiles AIM-7M or AIM-54 in the late 1970's.

Before then missiles like AIM-9 or earlier AIM-7s would have a tiny range (think 100s m for AIM-9 to 1-2 miles for AIM-7) from the rear aspect, making timing an intercept virtually impossible with a fighter aircraft. Even with aircraft like Mig-25 it is still quite difficult to get the timings right as you only catch them relatively slowly if you fall behind them, and stand a good chance of running out of fuel. Head on shots with 1960's radar guided missiles are likely to be low probability and relatively easy for the target to put off by making a gentle turn due to the closure rates. Add in a powerful ECM and the rate of missile strikes will be pretty low.

Against SAMs the B52 in Vietnam suffered relatively low attrition, and aircraft flying twice as high and fast would have been at the limits of what an SA-2 could have hit kinematically never mind if the bomber was kicking out jamming and chaff. The SA-5 might have had some more success but was evaded by the SR-71 over Libya. However again by the 1980s your SAM systems find high speed/altitude targets relatively easy and you have to rely on ECM/SEAD/Stealth if you want to fly high/medium and speed makes relatively little difference to this.

The main reason for nobody building big number of supersonic strategic bombers was because until the 1980s all they could drop were dumb bombs and nuclear weapons. The fast bomber would have a had a marginally better survivability than a B52 for the nuclear role but would have been far less effective at the carpet bombing role the B52 actually engaged in. Super sonic bombers were a very expensive way of providing a capability that can be found by other means. If you want to deploy a shed load of ordinance deploy a B52 if you want to deploy to a high threat area deploy an F22.

[Simpo Two]

CATS ARE BOXING said:

Let's demonstate the 'can-do' spirit Cameron was banging on about and build a modern version, money to be taken from the welfare budget until it's done.

Agreed, but it would lose votes so it's not going to happen. Too many people on benefits to get the country back on track.

[sharpfocus]

Simpo Two said:

CATS ARE BOXING said:

Let's demonstate the 'can-do' spirit Cameron was banging on about and build a modern version, money to be taken from the welfare budget until it's done.

Agreed, but it would lose votes so it's not going to happen. Too many people on benefits to get the country back on track.

Take the vote off them, job done.

[Simpo Two]

Yep! And raise the voting age to 21 and only for people with IQ 100+ with three generations as Britons.

But we digress...

[Hooli]

Zad said:

That was the Queen's Golden Jubilee back in 2002.

From approx 6m20s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpX-FcDmkQQ

Concorde looked like it was hardly trying too, heck of a rate of climb for so little throttle.

Still a great thing to watch, probably the last real display of Great Britain we'll see. The oylmpics wont come close.

[Tango13]

aeropilot said:

But it's spaced out underslung engines also meant created one of it's achilles heels..... an engine failure at supersonic speeds usually meant an unrecoverable loss of control due to differential thrust.
The Hustler was a difficult aircraft to fly, with a high loss rate and was hugely expensive to operate....about 3 times the cost of operating a B-52!!

Of the 26 B-58 crashes only on was directly caused by an engine flameout at altitude. The cause of the flameout was a ruptured fuel manifold, the J-79 engine itself along with its inlet was very reliable.

[Simpo Two]

Hooli said:

Still a great thing to watch, probably the last real display of Great Britain we'll see. The oylmpics wont come close.

True enough; I still cringe at the preview (Beijing closing ceremony) where the best we could muster was was a pop singer (well the winner of a reality TV show) on a London bus.

I need a new country.

[StevelKinevil]

Interesting folks who were involved directly with the development of Concorde and others offering questions and info make this 74 page thread a treat for Concorde fans offering great insight into the inner workings of this awesome bird.

Apologies if everyone knows about it already but it is too good a read to miss passing on to someone who may not have seen it.

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-que...