DARPA Funded Two Wing in Ground Effect Transport Planes

Been there, done that.....
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Didn't work out so well......

But hey! maybe a great Air BnB opportunity.......?

 

The Boeing Pelican lives! This was proposed way back in 2001!

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A terrible idea. Planes are planes.....boats are boats. I don't believe for a moment that thing could work in 4-6 foot swells.

 

So we want a vehicle with all the downsides and limitations of a boat and all the downsides and limitations of an airplane all rolled into one.

Brilliant plan. You can tell the collective brain trust that dreamed this up had not one red cent invested.

 

Conversely, they are looking for a vehicle with all upsides and benefits of a boat, combined with all the upsides and benefits of an airplane!

What I think they are looking for is a way to get large quantities of material across an ocean quickly to a place without an airfield. Seems like it might be useful in the future. The Russian ekranoplan's were limited to the Caspian sea because of the calmer waves there, however if you increased its size to scale with the wave height it should be able to be used in the ocean as well. They're also designing it to be able to leave ground effect if needed, so if there was a portion of the trip that had particularly rough seas, it would be able to skip over it. Getting the hull out of the water seems like big challenge, but presumably they have made some advancements in that in the last 50 years and think its feasible.

Sure it might not work, but the whole point of DARPA is to try out stuff.

 

Two major reasons why airplanes fly high, economy and weather. WIG can provide some economy, but operating at essentially ground level is not a good environment.

Yes, size matters, and so does wavelength. There are definite limits and no 'advancements' will overcome them. Anyone with seaplane experience can tell you how harsh it is to TO/Land on rough water.

 

Or seen another way their mission is much the same as the rest of our federal government and that is to find ways to spend massive amounts of tax payer money on stupid projects that benefit no one but a select few favored contractors with no repercussions for failure.

 

Without getting into the politics.....I can see no clear mission profile this aircraft would serve. Hauling cargo and dropping it where you want it is one of the reasons the C130 is still flying. It was a different story in WWII when you needed Catalina Flying Boats to rescue downed pilots and fly long range ocean recon.

So working on something like this means they have time on their hands, are overstaffed or have poor leadership.

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Its the federal government you are talking about.
Say it ain't so.

3/4 of Washington DC should be fired and sent home.

 

Private industry is always happy to bilk the government for money to develop products. More often than not products that will never be. So 5 times out of how many they had successes? And of those successes how many would have been done on the nickel of the inventing company had they been told it was wanted or needed? DARPA is a very expensive middle man who more often than not finances products that are not wanted or needed or are bottomless pits of money for something that will never come to fruition. When government is handing out money no one applies a smell test to the possibility of success or need until the money runs out.

 

I worked with and for DARPA for several years. They plan on a 50% fail rate, but the programs I have worked on (space and weapon related) were much higher than that. One of their problems is a short attention span. They tend to jump into something with both feet and then abandon it. Still, some really good stuff does pop out. Test, fail, test again is a winning formula if you stick to it.

 

Jimmy Buffet likes these planes. What other reason do you need?

 

My first thought was preparing for a war in the islands of the western Pacific - destroyed or contested airfields in an area you needs troops/heavy equipment.