What was the Pratt&Whitney engine that was not man rated at that time. The RL-10 ? They are talking Mach 20 and 200,000 fett so I am assuming a rocket engine.
Quote from: agman25 on 08/07/2009 05:15 pmWhat was the Pratt&Whitney engine that was not man rated at that time. The RL-10 ? They are talking Mach 20 and 200,000 fett so I am assuming a rocket engine.I doubt it was the RL-10, because the memo on the briefing of 26 April 1966 mentions that DDR&E assistant director John Kirk was concerned that P&W wouldn't be able to man-rate the engine within 31 months. Surely by the spring of 1966 the RL-10 was a well-known quantity.It's made clear that this is a rocket-boosted glider rather than a rocket-propelled airplane, which is listed as the next thing to be developed, to be followed in turn by a scramjet. On the whole, this seems like an attempt to resurrect Dyna-Soar, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, three years after its death. And the scale isn't really that much different in that the speed--Mach 20-plus--is nearly orbital.To Blackstar: If you have any further "guilt" that needs to be "assuage," I'm sure we would all be only to happy to help! Thanks a lot.
It's difficult to believe that with all of this interest in such a vehicle over the last several decades, nothing has ever come of it!
Mulready's book about advanced engine development at Pratt and Whitney says that they designed and built a reusable staged combustion LOX/LH2 engine for some secret Air Force project, and used the knowledge from that project in their unsuccessful SSME bid. I don't have it with me so I can't look up the name of the engine, but it seems likely that this is the engine that is being discussed. I seem to recall it was around 200klb thrust, which at two engines a vehicle means that this would be pretty damn large for an air-dropped system.The use of the term "man-rate" is interesting.Mulready's book also has a mention of an impressive-sounding fabrication technology to make titanium sandwich structures with conventional steel-rolling technology.
A question if I may.I came across this interesting article in Janes:http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jidr/jidr000105_01_n.shtmlAfter reading this (and with our thread here in mind) I was wondering if it may be russian, overflights?
Kelly Johnson had stated in 1981 the SR-71 had over 1000 missles launched against it, none successful.I'm assuming the Open Skies Treaty establishes some "etiquette" for such flights and getting shot at is no longer an occurance (with Russia at least)? True? Partially true? I suppose the public will never really know and I should do some more research on OST.I wonder about the frequency of Russian overflights and at what speed & altitude they may fly.
Not really. There are plenty of things that have been studied intensely for a short period of time and never turned into a real program.
1-There is a whole laundry list of books I'd like to get, once some of our damn bills are paid, and Shades Of Gray: National Security And The Evolution Of Space Reconnaissance by L. Parker Temple is one I was thinking about.Has anyone read it? Amazon gave it an ok rating.2-I have to say Blackstar, you get access to some pretty neat stuff.
I saw this stealthy "thing" at the Air Force Museum a few weeks ago. It was hard to photograph. The damn thing is still almost invisible! You can't see its means of propulsion from the public viewing spots.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm surprised SR-71 didn't overfly the Soviets. Years ago I had read a book on converted bombers that overflew the soviets in the 50's (some were downed) and I just assumed overflights continued in later decades.
Quote from: edkyle99 on 08/14/2009 02:10 pmI saw this stealthy "thing" at the Air Force Museum a few weeks ago. It was hard to photograph. The damn thing is still almost invisible! You can't see its means of propulsion from the public viewing spots.Teledyne-Ryan Compass Arrow
That's right! It was designed to overfly mainland *China*, at 78,000 feet, to photograph nuclear sites, unmanned. Its jet engine was mounted on top, and its underside was shaped to minimize radar cross section. This was an early "stealth" plane! It would have been air-launched from a C-130-something and recovered while it dropped under a parachute, by a helicopter. This was an extension of the Ryan unmanned drone effort during Vietnam. Teledyne-Ryan was all set to go, then Nixon went to see Mao and the program had to be shut down!
There's a picture of one of these pancaked on a highway somewhere. I think they had a flight control failure. If memory serves, that exposed the program. It is also shown, but not explained, in the book Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones. (There's a story behind that book. I don't know the full details, but apparently it was a classified drone history that somebody let get public by accident.)
1-Would it be fair to say the need for a winged vehicle to make a high speed intel run is history with the advance of sats? As much as I'd like to hope there was a follow on to the A-12, I just can't see what you could do that a sat couldn't.2-Tactical & loiter are another thing of course.3-I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good book on the P3 Orion that had to land in china? Any comment on how much damage was done or did the crew manage to take care of the critical items? Sorry for getting off topic.
In your last article you mentioned Dwayne Day watches too much bad television and needs to read more books.
Pratt & Whitney engineers obviously felt they had a superior product, but what happened to it and why probably requires further investigation.
You can download the report on the XLR-129 engine here:http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/AD881744WARNING: this is a 17 megabyte file!
Interesting, if the Space Review article is correct all documentation on this engine was supposedly destroyed...
Quote from: Graham2001 on 04/13/2010 05:14 pmInteresting, if the Space Review article is correct all documentation on this engine was supposedly destroyed...That's not what the article says. It says "Pratt & Whitney employees later claimed that they were told to destroy their blueprints and test data to “avoid embarrassing NASA."
Even though CIA officials talked about OXCART missions over the USSR, some of them even flying missions coordinated with satellites far overhead, both politics and the perceived vulnerability of the OXCART to sophisticated defense prevented this from ever happening.
I have a vague and very possibly incorrect memory that some flights were made over the Barents Sea parallel to the coast of the Kola Peninsula to get looks inland. Beyond that, a circuit of the Barents going on past Cape Kanin Nos and up the west coast of Novaya Zemlya would have afforded opportunities to see interesting things while staying out of Soviet airspace.
As for ISINGLASS, it remains an interesting mystery. I really wonder about the performance. Somebody should be able to take those dimensions and work out how much fuel it could carry. From there they could work out performance characteristics. I assume that any first-year aerospace engineering student could do that. It's just volume and then the rocket equation. It should be easy to get maximum values.
...A search for "Convair" turned up three documents that I've requested:"ADDITIONAL TASKING OF CONVAIR FORT WORTH, FOR SIMULATION [Sanitized]," 18 Nov 63;"TASKING FOR CONVAIR," 12 Feb 64; and"TASKING FOR CONVAIR," 21 Feb 64....
Nice!
In the middle of 2001 (i.e. before 9-11) I attended an unclassified symposium at the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was about historical overflight. As part of the symposium we got a tour of the DIA's imagery analysis center, which at the time was pioneering the government use of commercial remote sensing imagery. The value of such imagery was that it could be freely distributed to allies, law enforcement, etc., because it was unclassified.At the end of our tour we saw the room where they processed U-2 film. There was a light table there with some U-2 imagery on it. I took a look and saw an image of several C-17s on a ramp.* We were told that this was Open Skies imagery. The US and the Russians took imagery of either sides' installations and apparently shared their imagery. We used the U-2's film cameras (I think) because it was old technology and we didn't want to show them our current digital capabilities.Open Skies was not really about intelligence, it was a confidence-building exercise intended to get the two countries talking to each other.
Something new.
I cleaned up the last page from the document posted by Blackstar on top of this page, in 2017. Lot of interesting stuff. Not least that the date is 1966, quite late for some of the concepts listed in the many columns. TAGBOARD (on the left column) is well known. ISINGLASS (second column) is also recognizable: B-52, LOX/LH-2 (= XLR-129 although not mentionned), Mach 21 [snip]
I red about this recently. The CIA send ROCAF pilots into the Chinese SA-2 meatgrinder. First time, they dropped the sensors from a U-2. Did not worked. Second try: they send a ROCAF C-130 Hercules at low level - 5000 miles ! - from Thailand to Lop Nor and back. Ten or twelve hours spent hugging the Chinese ground... and they dropped the sensors and made it back alive. The CIA also tried to spy Lop Nor from an Indian, himalayan mountain 25000 ft high and 1500 miles away. With a RTG powered sensor. That was swept by a snow avalanche... or perhaps stolen by the Indians. They never knew. ...... sometimes it makes a fun read, excellent food for one's imagination; and sometimes you're left shaking your head in disbelief and wondering "wow, they did THAT ?"
There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this program (and RHEINBERRY). I think the biggest question is what had been done when the program was canceled? At most they were doing early hardware testing. How much and what kind? And had they settled on a basic vehicle design? Or were they still looking at multiple options?We don't even have a good chronology of the program.
The results of this work were presented to Air Force Systems Command in March 1965 in a report titled Manned Hypersonic Vehicle Study.Manned Hypersonic Vehicle StudyThe Manned Hypersonic Vehicle study summarized the work done in the previous phases for Mach 4 to 6 designs and then addressed two classes of Mach 6 to 12 hydrogen-powered designs. The first class, called Early Availability, consisted of vehicles with conventional propulsion systems, including currently available turbojets and subsonic combustion ramjets. The second class, called Later Availability, consisted of vehicles with advanced propulsion systems, including advanced turbojets and supersonic combustion ramjets.None of the designs were B-58 parasites, which is not surprising since Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara formally announced the retirement of the B-58 program in late 1965.Three design approaches were presented for the Early Availability category. They were based on three variations of the same reconnaissance mission concept—a pre-zone leg at subsonic speeds and medium altitudes that covered at least 2,000 nautical miles from the area to be reconnoitered; a zone leg at maximum altitude and super- or hypersonic cruising speed that covered 4,000 nautical miles; and a post-zone leg at subsonic speed that returned the vehicle to the home base or a safe base in another location.The first design approached the mission with a boost-glide vehicle. This design, called Configuration R-3, had a maximum speed of Mach 9 and a maximum altitude of 130,000 feet. Powered to max speed and altitude by a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket booster with thrust of 190,000 pounds, it then glided for the remainder of the time in the reconnaissance zone. Subsonic propulsion for pre- and post-zone operations was provided by a single Bristol Siddeley 100/8 turbojet engine.R-3 had a gross weight of 146,000 pounds and a zone range of 1,100 nautical miles. The variable sweep wings, when extended, gave the aircraft a wingspan of eighty feet. The overall length of the aircraft was 141.8 feet. The sweep angle of the leading edge when not extended was eighty-two degrees.The second design, called Configuration B-2, approached the mission by air-launching a satellite payload from a rocket-propelled missile pod attached to the underside of a hypersonic carrier. The carrier vehicle had a maximum speed of Mach 8. It was powered by four General Electric J93 engines and one liquid oxygen/JP-fueled rocket motor. The rocket had a thrust of 250,000 pounds. The aircraft was 134.7 feet long with a fixed wing span of 77.8 feet and a sweep angle of sixty degrees. It weighed 299,000 pounds without the pod.The satellite pod in B-2 was powered by two rockets. The first rocket, which ignited after the pod separated from the carrier at Mach 8, consisted of a two-stage UGM-27 Polaris A2 sea-launched ballistic missile. The second rocket was a forty-inch diameter Thiokol rocket. The combination satellite/missile pod weighed 25,000 pounds.The third design approached the mission with a cruise vehicle. Called Configuration C-3, this design had a maximum speed of Mach 8 and a zone altitude of 115,000 feet. The twin-tail, fixed-wing aircraft was powered by four Pratt & Whitney advanced TF30 turbofan engines and one Marquardt dual fuel ramjet.The turbojets would power the aircraft to Mach 3 at which point the ramjets would be ignited and powered by JP-4 fuel, the same fuel used to power the turbojets. Once the aircraft reached 115,000 feet and Mach 8, the ramjets would switch to liquid hydrogen for the duration of the zone leg. The dual-fuel approach allowed the aircraft to be sized smaller than a single-fuel design and to be refueled by existing KC-135 tanker aircraft.C-3 had a gross weight of 170,000 pounds. It was 158.4 feet long and had a wingspan of 68.4 feet. An alternate configuration, which placed all four turbojets between the twin tails, had a length of 147.9 feet and a wingspan of 68.5 feet.The Later Availability vehicles were based on engine and structural advances as applied to Configuration C-3. These advances included supersonic combustion ramjets and advanced turbojets. These designs, which were not detailed and not pursued, according to Kent, would be capable of reaching orbital velocities.
atomic-powered spy device. Then there are stories about a lost RTG-powered device on an Indian mountain in the mid-60's (complete with someone involved getting testicular cancer from the plutonium). The device disappeared, supposedly, in a massive avalanche, and is described as a huge environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. These stories appear to have come out after the Wignall book.I'm not even going to try to guess how much of the above is true.
Those working on the A-12 replacement project initially referred to it by an internal billing designation—Work Order 540. The initial studies were divided into four two-month phases that spanned November 1963 through June 1964.A budget status chart at the end of the report for Phase 3 indicated that Work Order 540 would run through July 1965 with an overall budget of $165,000, and approximately $110,000 had been spent for the first three phases. However, no status reports beyond Phase 3 were found in researching this article. The gap, however, is covered by follow-on design work that was initiated in August 1964. The results of this work were presented to Air Force Systems Command in March 1965 in a report titled Manned Hypersonic Vehicle Study.
The Manned Hypersonic Vehicle study summarized the work done in the previous phases for Mach 4 to 6 designs and then addressed two classes of Mach 6 to 12 hydrogen-powered designs. The first class, called Early Availability, consisted of vehicles with conventional propulsion systems, including currently available turbojets and subsonic combustion ramjets. The second class, called Later Availability, consisted of vehicles with advanced propulsion systems, including advanced turbojets and supersonic combustion ramjets.None of the designs were B-58 parasites, which is not surprising since Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara formally announced the retirement of the B-58 program in late 1965.Three design approaches were presented for the Early Availability category.The first design approached the mission with a boost-glide vehicle. This design, called Configuration R-3, had a maximum speed of Mach 9 and a maximum altitude of 130,000 feet. Powered to max speed and altitude by a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket booster with thrust of 190,000 pounds, it then glided for the remainder of the time in the reconnaissance zone. Subsonic propulsion for pre- and post-zone operations was provided by a single Bristol Siddeley 100/8 turbojet engine.
The Later Availability vehicles were based on engine and structural advances as applied to Configuration C-3. These advances included supersonic combustion ramjets and advanced turbojets. These designs, which were not detailed and not pursued, according to Kent, would be capable of reaching orbital velocities.
Cunningham said that he and CIA officials Jack Ledford and John Parangosky met with Jim McDonnell and his son to discuss the project. This was most likely in early 1965.McDonnell Douglas worked on the project for approximately 14 months (May 1966 aprox.)
Quote from: libra on 01/26/2021 01:20 pmI cleaned up the last page from the document posted by Blackstar on top of this page, in 2017. Lot of interesting stuff. Not least that the date is 1966, quite late for some of the concepts listed in the many columns. TAGBOARD (on the left column) is well known. ISINGLASS (second column) is also recognizable: B-52, LOX/LH-2 (= XLR-129 although not mentionned), Mach 21 [snip]Any thoughts on ISINGLASS/McDonnell and connections to earlier hydrogen aircraft work at Lockheed by Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson? The relevant chapter in "Skunkworks", chapter 8 "Blowing up Burbank", where they were looking into LH2 planes from about 1956 to ~~1960. That included Suntan 1956-1958. ISINGLASS is later while Lockheed works on the A12 but anyway?
Document attached is a 1961 study about technical issues related to boost-glide reconnaissance. "1961" means DynaSoar (obviously) but it may be of interest for ISINGLASS and RHEINBERRY too.
Digging this further... cleaned up file 2.0, attached. -------No idea what S-105 / ISINGLASS would do with a "Skybolt 2nd stage". Perhaps an auxiliary rocket engine to help accelerating the ramjets from the B-58's Mach 2 to ISINGLASS Mach 4 cruise speed ? Ramjets work better at mach 3 than Mach 2... they usually need a booster. --------S-103 "air launched reconnaissance satellite" the booster is a Minuteman II + Able-Star stage as described on Ed Kyle website. AJ10-41 was Able-Star engine. https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/thorh2.htmlhttps://minutemanmissile.com/solidrocketboosters.htmlI did some calculations for a B-52 + Minuteman II + Able-Star launcher; the overall weight and payload to orbit matches very well. Minuteman II 63 000 pounds and Able-star is 10 000 pounds, so total 73 000 pounds. Payload to orbit corresponds, too: 1100 pounds.
Quote from: libra on 02/01/2021 06:33 amDigging this further... cleaned up file 2.0, attached. -------No idea what S-105 / ISINGLASS would do with a "Skybolt 2nd stage". Perhaps an auxiliary rocket engine to help accelerating the ramjets from the B-58's Mach 2 to ISINGLASS Mach 4 cruise speed ? Ramjets work better at mach 3 than Mach 2... they usually need a booster. --------S-103 "air launched reconnaissance satellite" the booster is a Minuteman II + Able-Star stage as described on Ed Kyle website. AJ10-41 was Able-Star engine. https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/thorh2.htmlhttps://minutemanmissile.com/solidrocketboosters.htmlI did some calculations for a B-52 + Minuteman II + Able-Star launcher; the overall weight and payload to orbit matches very well. Minuteman II 63 000 pounds and Able-star is 10 000 pounds, so total 73 000 pounds. Payload to orbit corresponds, too: 1100 pounds. I don't know if I paid attention to this when you posted it a couple of years ago, but why did you switch the names? The table in the original document has ISINGLASS as the second column, but you renamed it. What is the justification for that?
Things we still don't know - when did ISINGLASS morphed into RHEINBERRY: 1964 ? 1965 ? - the role of Benny Schriever in that transition before his retirement from USAF in the summer of 1966 - how did he got the XLR-129 funded and build and tested as far as component level
So RHEINBERRY could be a pure "accronym invention", like TR-3A Black Manta or Aurora ? (or... Blackstar ?)
Quote from: Harry Cover on 03/09/2023 06:54 pmSo RHEINBERRY could be a pure "accronym invention", like TR-3A Black Manta or Aurora ? (or... Blackstar ?) No, I think RHEINBERRY is real. Bud Wheelon told me that name while we were having lunch. It's just that I'm not sure we have any documentation about it. It may have been a blip of a program, started and gone quickly.
The CL-400 was abandoned in favor of the Archangel design series when Kelly Johnson realized that any full-scale development and operational use of the CL-400 Suntan required building an infrastructure which could supply LH2 to fuel the CL-400's engines. ISINGLASS, since it was designed to take pictures of Soviet territory at speeds greater than Mach 10, needed an engine and a carrier aircraft to perform a reconnaissance mission, and McDonnell found the B-52 the most appropriate launch platform for the Model 192, and the LR129 rocket engine would have allowed the Model 192 to tune performance over a wide range of altitudes over hostile territory by relying on an expanded nozzle. Like ISINGLASS, the Suntan program was kept secret even after cancellation for a generation, and it was publicly disclosed by Lockheed until the 1970s.
Thank you for finding that. I think I've seen that before, since I went through the CREST archives a lot. I think that in the 2000s I may have posted about RHEINBERRY in some discussion forums, but I never got anywhere. At the bottom of my April 2010 article on ISINGLASS, I asked if anybody had any more information on RHEINBERRY:https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1602/1I don't think I got anything.As I compile my list of proposed but unbuilt space/satellite-based reconnaissance programs, I keep turning up more and more of them. I think I'm up to two dozen now.
For example: air launching a spysat from an A-12 OXCART.
Rene 41 material - of DynaSoar fame - had a long and rich story in the decades thereafter: at Boeing and elsewhere.
When you're doing something that's really going to push the boundaries you want to take as few chances as possible with materials. The British and French did this when they chose an aluminum alloy that had been used to make aircraft engine pistons since the 1930's to build Concorde out of. Lots of test data in lots of different situations, especially at high temperature.
Quote from: Harry Cover on 03/11/2023 06:56 am For example: air launching a spysat from an A-12 OXCART. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4307/1That one just made no sense.
Even less since there is no room whatsoever on an A-12 to stick a large rocket - not on the back, not on the belly, and even less on a non-existing pylon. Plus: not only the huge drag would kill the Mach 3.4 top speed, but even that velocity makes preciously little difference when launching things in orbit - because the rocket equation is (pardon the rude word) an exponential bastard thing.A modified SR-71 already had difficulty dragging a D-21 drone on its back - when then did not crashed into each other. Funnily enough, a Mach 2 B-58 while a touch slower would be a better air-launch platform. As a Polaris size and weight evenly matches the usual big pod underneath. At least the rocket wouldn't screw the B-58 usual aerodynamics. Project TOWN HALL ran in parallel with the A-12 studies, same year 1962 and using the same solid-fuel rocket - a Polaris !
A number of years ago I worked on a report about additive manufacturing--also known as 3D printing. I didn't have much experience with the materials or manufacturing people. One thing that I learned was that there are certain materials, primarily metals, that have a very long lineage and therefore very well known properties. It's all kept in reference manuals. So if you want to know the strength of aluminum at minus 20 degrees C, it's in a book. If you want to know about fatigue cracks under heavy loads for 5 years, it's in a book. You don't need to do your own testing, or study the problem for a decade. That's one of the issues with selecting materials for 3D printers. You want to use something with very well known properties. Unfortunately, you also need it to come in a form that can be fed into a 3D printer, usually a powder. Now try to look up the properties for aluminum that started as a powder before it went through a 3D printing process. You may not be able to find that info.
About 5 years ago I was at AIAA's SciTech conference and there was a session on air-launching satellites. Somebody there said that at that time there were something like 20 companies with proposals for air-launching. Now a lot of times these companies are not even companies but just one or two people who have put out some press and are looking for money and may not even have filed paperwork creating their company. But it was a surprise to me how many still wanted to do this. People have been launching rockets into space for 65 years now and there have been almost no air-launched rockets. I swear that at some point long ago I saw a proposal in the CREST archives for a C-130-launched rocket, but I've never been able to re-find it. Would have been mid-1960s.
Even less since there is no room whatsoever on an A-12 to stick a large rocket - not on the back, not on the belly, and even less on a non-existing pylon. Plus: not only the huge drag would kill the Mach 3.4 top speed, but even that velocity makes preciously little difference when launching things in orbit - because the rocket equation is (pardon the rude word) an exponential bastard thing.
Quote from: JosephB on 08/14/2009 03:26 pm1-There is a whole laundry list of books I'd like to get, once some of our damn bills are paid, and Shades Of Gray: National Security And The Evolution Of Space Reconnaissance by L. Parker Temple is one I was thinking about.Has anyone read it? Amazon gave it an ok rating.2-I have to say Blackstar, you get access to some pretty neat stuff.1-I suggest getting it through interlibrary loan to see if you really want it. If I remember correctly, it is very expensive. I think the material is dated now.2-Requires lots of effort.
Lockheed Martin: "The SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft."acknowledged
PS: To answer my own question, as OAC includes "The Space review" printouts, you probably knew
RHEINBERRY appears to have been a proposal around 1965 that had the same flight goals as ISINGLASS
QuoteRHEINBERRY appears to have been a proposal around 1965 that had the same flight goals as ISINGLASS Veeery interesting. Wonder who made that proposal then. Seems there is a distinction to be made between -"Second ISINGLASS"-"That RHEINBERRY that overlapped with the second ISINGLASS". As for Pratt XLR-129 it could have been either for "second ISINGLASS" or "That RHEINBERRY that overlapped with the second ISINGLASS". Wonder how these two were related...
Quote from: Harry Cover on 03/18/2023 02:31 pmQuoteRHEINBERRY appears to have been a proposal around 1965 that had the same flight goals as ISINGLASS Veeery interesting. Wonder who made that proposal then. Seems there is a distinction to be made between -"Second ISINGLASS"-"That RHEINBERRY that overlapped with the second ISINGLASS". As for Pratt XLR-129 it could have been either for "second ISINGLASS" or "That RHEINBERRY that overlapped with the second ISINGLASS". Wonder how these two were related... Wheelon told me that General Schriever was interested in a scramjet. I wonder if RHEINBERRY was a scramjet vehicle and they determined that would be too difficult to achieve, so they abandoned that program.
As I've been writing this one up I keep scratching my head about why the CIA thought it was a good idea. It had very limited utility. It would have provided a single photo pass roughly 50 nautical miles wide and 6000 nautical miles long. Okay, what is the value of that? What happens if the interesting stuff is outside of that swath? And my suspicion is that it had very little final crossrange capability, meaning that it pretty much had to be pointed at the landing location. So if the target of interest is not along that path (because the vehicle could not reach its landing spot), then you're not able to use it.
I've been wondering the same. In the mid 1960s they argued that the Aircraft Reconnaissance System system could provide a back-up in case US recon sats would be taken out by Soviet or Chinese asat weapons.
<snip>I guess this might come down to a case of what factors were driving their decision making. Were they just really enamored of a super fast rocketplane and that drove their desires more than an operational requirement? Or did they have some studies that showed that this thing might actually be valuable?(Of course, we're being very theoretical here, because they didn't build it.)
I realized that I might be misreading some of the documents and have a different interpretation now.I think that RHEINBERRY may have originally been the name for the McDonnell proposal. ISINGLASS was the name for a General Dynamics proposal. The GD proposal was then rejected, and perhaps at that point the McDonnell proposal became ISINGLASS. Considering that what is described as the McDonnell proposal here as RHEINBERRY is what essentially continued on as ISINGLASS, that seems to make the most sense.Or am I misunderstanding stuff?
Quote from: Blackstar on 03/19/2023 06:13 pmI realized that I might be misreading some of the documents and have a different interpretation now.I think that RHEINBERRY may have originally been the name for the McDonnell proposal. ISINGLASS was the name for a General Dynamics proposal. The GD proposal was then rejected, and perhaps at that point the McDonnell proposal became ISINGLASS. Considering that what is described as the McDonnell proposal here as RHEINBERRY is what essentially continued on as ISINGLASS, that seems to make the most sense.Or am I misunderstanding stuff?It's possible there was some programme name politics going on: Initially using RHEINBERY to separate the concept from ISINGLASS (which at that point was looking to be on the chopping block due to not being sufficiently performant to do the job), then with the requirements change to a Mach 20 vehicle renaming to ISINGLAS II - and later just ISINGLASS again - to give the impression of a mere iteration to an existing vehicle programme rather than development of a whole new and otherwise unrelated vehicle (in a similar attempt to the Crusader III).
But I've fallen down the rabbit hole on it and am trying to climb out. Late last night I found myself skimming dozens of documents about it when I should have gone to bed.
QuoteBut I've fallen down the rabbit hole on it and am trying to climb out. Late last night I found myself skimming dozens of documents about it when I should have gone to bed.Ha ha. I've fallen down the AIAA, SAE, NTRS, DTIC (and others) rabbit hole in 2002 - when as a student I finally got a regular access to the Internet. Still trying to get out of the rabbit hole... 21 years later.
So far I have not found anything that surprised me, except that CIA was pushing for it a lot more than I thought.
Quote from: Blackstar on 03/20/2023 12:42 pmSo far I have not found anything that surprised me, except that CIA was pushing for it a lot more than I thought.Was it the CIA as a whole, or DDS&T, or NRO Program D specifically ? I ask because I don't really know what they did after the A-12, apart for some audacious but presumably relatively cheap drone programmes. And by "they", I'm not really sure if I mean CIA or Program D. There's quite a lot in the Wizards of Langley on aviation but it's a long time since I read it.
apart for some audacious but presumably relatively cheap drone programmes.
Quoteapart for some audacious but presumably relatively cheap drone programmes. What baffles me is COMPASS ARROW and TAGBOARD drones. Build at the same period for the same target (Lop Nor PRC nuclear grounds) with some limited common features such as "pre-stealth" low RCS. But different organisations - once again, USAF vs CIA aerial reconnaissance turf war. TAGBOARD flew just in time (1968) to make a few missions to Lop Nor - all of them failed one way or another. COMPASS ARROW was a bit late and couldn't even reach IOC before Nixon - rather than spy drones - went to China and screwed both programs to befriend Mao. Both drones were fantastic technical achievements but never get a chance to shine. Which I could know more about COMPASS ARROW. Any declassification for that one, someday ?
Here is what CIA historians Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach wrote in 1992:"(...) the Office of Special Activities did briefly consider several possible successors to the OXCART during the mid-1960s. The first of these, known as Project ISINGLASS, was prepared by General Dynamics to utilize technology developed for its Convair Division’s earlier FISH proposal and its new F-111 fighter in order to create an aircraft capable of Mach 4-5 at 100,000 feet. General Dynamics completed its feasibility study in the fall of 1964, and OSA took no further action because the proposed aircraft would still be vulnerable to existing Soviet countermeasures. In 1965 a more ambitious design from McDonnell Aircraft came under consideration as Project RHEINBERRY (although some of the work seems to have come under the ISINGLASS designation as well). This proposal featured a rocket-powered aircraft that would be launched from a B-52 mother ship and ultimately reach speeds as high as Mach 20 and altitudes of up to 200,000 feet (...)"
Add in AQUILINE.
QuoteAdd in AQUILINE.That one was so smartass it ended pretty baffling. "Hey, let's build a spy drone masquerading as a bird of prey so that the chinese doesn't notice it. Oh, and it must fly 3000 miles because Lop Nor is so far away."
I was surprised by the accumulated costs of the A-12/SR-71 program. By the end of FY66, a total of 2.073 billions US$ had been spent (about 16.5% of what had been spent on the Apollo program at that time). This makes me wonder about the projected cost of the "very expensive" ISINGLASS project.
ISINGLASS is really only going to be a relatively short section of my much bigger article. But I've fallen down the rabbit hole on it and am trying to climb out. Late last night I found myself skimming dozens of documents about it when I should have gone to bed.The program was really pushed by CIA and opposed by the NRO. I think the primary opposition was the cost, plus the lack of a clear requirement for it. There were also concerns about vulnerability. There are indications that CIA just couldn't find the funds, and McD funded it internally probably a bit too much. Everybody knew it was going to be really expensive. And some docs I skimmed confirmed things I learned elsewhere, like they got USAF to fund the rocket engine. ISINGLASS appears to have been an active program until around 1968, which is longer than I thought, with the engine contract going into the early 1970s. However, "active" mainly means limited study. They were not starting development. Some demonstration hardware--subscale structure and thermal protection system--was produced.So far I have not found anything that surprised me, except that CIA was pushing for it a lot more than I thought.
Quote from: hoku on 03/23/2023 04:47 pmI was surprised by the accumulated costs of the A-12/SR-71 program. By the end of FY66, a total of 2.073 billions US$ had been spent (about 16.5% of what had been spent on the Apollo program at that time). This makes me wonder about the projected cost of the "very expensive" ISINGLASS project.From my article (because it is the easiest thing to look up right now):“Well, of course, the bill was, by anybody’s standards, pretty staggering. It was like the eight vehicles were spaced out over three years and the total cost was like $2.6 billion. And this was in 1965 dollars.” (Roughly $18 billion in 2010 dollars.) “It got a very polite reception, like everybody in the audience clapped with one hand.” https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1602/1
Thing is, not only satellites are (relatively) cheap and low-tech; Agena was produced in rather large numbers for a spacecraft (362 total, of which at least 250 something were spysats - 144 CORONA and 92 GAMBIT, for a start. Plus the failed birds : ARGON, LANYARD). Compared to ISINGLASS or RHEINBERRY, an Agena spysat looks like a bargain. Even with the launch costs. There is no pilot, no ECLSS, no heatshield, no landing gear or B-52 mothership, no tortured aerodynamic shape whatsoever. It is merely an aluminium tin crammed with storable props, RCS and a guidance system - with the spysat stuff bolted to it: capsules in the back, camera in the front.
Later in the decade, and particularly by the early 1970s, the NRO started to care a lot about the costs of their missions. HEXAGON cost twice as much as GAMBIT, and they were concerned about paying for about 4 missions of each type per year. (I'd also add that in that case, they were talking about their per-unit costs, whereas the multi-billion dollar figure for ISINGLASS covers development and production of a finite number of vehicles.)
I happened to find this drawing at the Secret Projects forumof the McDonnell Model 192 from a CIA presentation paper. Any idea when the document containing this drawing was written?
I find the "Advanced Reconnaissance Aircraft Study" from Nov 1966 quite interesting. It lists A-12 and SR-71 "Mission requirements":1. Strategic recon in peacetime of USSR, China + their allies2. Force mobilisation recon of China and European Warsaw Pact members3. Recon for general war crisis over USSR (+China)4. SIOP recon of USSR (post-strike damage assessment)The mission requirements should also have been applicable to ISINGLASS. They discuss the requirement with respect to present and future optical and radar recon sat (KH-8, KH-9, FROG, MOL ,..) and drone (TAGBOARD, etc) capabilities. Overall, they still see a "need" for the A-12/SR-71 over the following 2 to 5 years.
Quote from: LittleBird on 03/20/2023 03:21 pmQuote from: Blackstar on 03/20/2023 12:42 pmSo far I have not found anything that surprised me, except that CIA was pushing for it a lot more than I thought.Was it the CIA as a whole, or DDS&T, or NRO Program D specifically ? I ask because I don't really know what they did after the A-12, apart for some audacious but presumably relatively cheap drone programmes. And by "they", I'm not really sure if I mean CIA or Program D. There's quite a lot in the Wizards of Langley on aviation but it's a long time since I read it. Seems like it was DDS&T. But I don't know. I only have a limited number of documents, I skimmed them late at night, and I'm not doing a deep dive into this now.
-project was sponsored by the airplane side of CIA, without the endorsement of the Directorate of Science and Technology.
-CIA was not convinced that it was possible to solve the window problem. They had faced a major challenge to get the window to work on the OXCART at Mach 3, and ISINGLASS would have had to fly much faster. Although it would have been at a higher altitude, there would be major problems in this area.-the project was too expensive to be funded by CIA alone. Because DoD was opposed, there was no way that it would get funded.-CIA had to inform McDonnell that it was not going to happen (because of DoD opposition) and they should stop spending internal funds.-another major problem was the operational utility. ISINGLASS could essentially only fly in a straight line and could not maneuver. This really limited how it could be used. For example, you had to pick a starting point and an ending point (friendly airfield) and could only photograph targets along that line. If what you wanted to look at was off that line, it was too bad, you were SOL.
This is only loosely related, but I wanted to share the link anyways. The National Security Archive has released a bunch of declassified videos on the US Air Force in the 1960s:https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2023-03-20/filming-armageddon-air-force-movies-depict-us-preparations?fbclid=IwAR0RCX-wV8cDbQfrzlQFkG197prGVhLQAzI1qvttlqdjgRTIBf464wfhQS0Filming Armageddon: Air Force Movies Depict U.S. Preparations for Nuclear WarUSAirforce Washington, D.C., March 20, 2023 – The declassified Air Force film shows the crew of a U.S. B-52 bomber reaching its “Positive Control” (“fail safe”) point on the way to its target in the Soviet Union. But instead of turning around as usual, they get an order to proceed to their assigned objective.
One key mission envisioned for the SR-71, but not the A-12, was post-strike reconnaissance - its use in the event of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union as well as in other scenarios. This draft study describes the SR-71 aircraft and its sensors, the deployment of aircraft, the location and capability of processing sensors, details of its envisioned pre-launch, penetration, and target coverage activities, and an evaluation of SR-71 utility for post-strike reconnaissance. The data collected could possibly contribute to both generalized estimates of ballistic missile performance and the evaluation of whether specific targets were destroyed.
The question of the composition and, as result, management, of the U.S. advanced aerial reconnaissance effort was the subject of this memo. It was based on a mid-December discussion among Cyrus Vance (the Deputy Secretary of Defense), Donald Hornig (presidential science adviser), Richard Helms (the Director of Central Intelligence), and C.W. Fischer (of the Bureau of the Budget). The memo summarizes the status of the OXCART (A-12) and SR-71 fleets, noted that originally they had different purposes, and that while they were being developed the U.S. had acquired an increased overhead reconnaissance capability through satellites and drones. It further discusses views of fleet size, identifies fleet reduction alternatives and the arguments for and against those alternatives, and presents recommendations. All the participants except for Helms recommend mothballing the entire OXCART fleet. On December 28th, President Lyndon Johnson approved that recommendation and the phaseout of the fleet by January 1968.(14)
Favoring the [RHEINBERRY?] proposal was General Bernard Schriever, who wanted to see ramjet [sic] technology developed but who was unsure the NRO would approve such an effort. He suggested to Wheelon that [CIA's Office of Special Activities] might begin work on it, and the Air Force Systems Command would support the work. Wheelon raised the issue with [DCI, Vice Admiral William ] Raborn, who raised it with MacNamara, who told the DCI to forget it. Wheelon was not convinced it was needed, and the plane would be quite inflexible-capable of only one turn around the Earth. [Ref to author's Wheelon interview in 1998].Nor would it have produced much in the way of intelligence. After much effort, designers concluded that it was impossible to eliminate the shock wave created when the plane skipped along the atmosphere and impossible to photograph targets through the shock wave . The plane might have provided an exciting ride for the pilot but would have done nothing for intelligence analaysts on the ground. [Ref to "interview with a former CIA official".]