Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.
This is no easy task. The tubes are as long as a semi trailer but about seven feet wide—not exactly airplane-shaped. The...
Nothing completely new here, though ingenious enough. The Japanese had subs with floatplane hangars. From one of these sortied Nobuo Fujita, who dropped bombs on Oregon, attempting to start a forest fire in reprisal for the Doolittle Raid. He died in '97. Source: www.outwestnewspaper.com/bomboregon.html
Lockheed has had experience working titanium, on its SR-71. Come to Tucson to see one example at the Pima Air Museum.
Thank you for including a picture of what they think it looks like.
The headline alone conjures up images of "the flying submarine" from that old Erwin Allen 60's cold war TV epic, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", which show I thoroughly enjoyed at the time.
Surely the concept picture shown with the article is MUCH closer to looking like the real thing!
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