4 ms·
>You can't have something very small (small enough to fit a dozen in a C-130, so several metres in length at most) which has a powerful turbofan engine and sign
by VectorLock 8y ago
>You can't have something very small (small enough to fit a dozen in a C-130, so several metres in length at most) which has a powerful turbofan engine and significant range and excellent manoeuvrability and compact stowage.
Why can't you? Wouldn't it just be, essentially, a reusable Tomahawk cruise missile?
- nine_k 8y agoHow reusable Tomahawk's engine is? That is, for a reusable engine of this size, what would be flight time until a serious maintenance is required?
- angry_octet 8y agoI did think of tomahawk, but it doesn't have great aerodynamics for long endurance or speed. Certainly not very fast. Of course, TLAM accepts many constraints so it can be launched from a submarine. Could the TLAM components be used in a better folding airframe? I guess so. It always seemed dumb to blow up a $2m airframe to delivery 450kg of HE. And of course it is, TLAM would be cheaper if it wasn't engineered for delivering nuclear warheads. Maybe just build $200k Tomahawk-lite that don't need air recovery, just ditch in the sea.