| [ military ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): terraic () 날 짜 (Date): 1999년 3월 28일 일요일 오전 11시 14분 09초 제 목(Title): 하나더 허덥한 자료 One of the most publicized achievements of the Skunk Works began in July of 1975, only six months after Kelly Johnson's retirement and the new director, Ben Rich, took over the Skunk Works. Rich attended one of the periodic top secret Pentagon briefings held to update those need-to-know individuals on the latest Soviet technical advances in weapons and electronics. At that point in time, the United States had only two fully developed defensive ground-to-air missile systems. In contrast, the Soviet Union operated approximately 16 different systems to defend their cities and vital strategic interests. Most disturbing however, was a chilling study of the 1973 Yom Kipper War involving Israel, Syria, and Egypt, where Israel suffered massive losses of 109 planes in only 18 days. The study showed that if a war broke out between the U.S. and the highly trained Soviet Union, using similar planes, pilot training, and ground defenses, the United States Air Force would be completely wiped out in a mere 17 days. That April, a 36 year old Skunk Works mathematician and radar specialist, Denys Overholser, presented Rich with the greatest breakthrough ever for stealth technology. The information he handed over to Rich would make an attack airplane so difficult to detect, it would be literally invulnerable against any radar system in the world. Denys found the answer inside a long, dense, technical paper on theoretical optics that was ironically published in Moscow by one of Russia’s premier scientists, Pyotr Ufimstev. Ufimstev was completely unaware of the profound impact he had on America’s defense until he visited the United States to give a lecture at UCLA in 1990. Ufimstev wryly observed, "Senior Soviet designers were absolutely uninterested in my theories." The paper put forth the formulas necessary to create a computer program to accurately calculate the radar cross-section of a given configuration. The result was called faceting -- creating a three-dimensional airplane out of a collection of flat sheets or panels. This would then make the Skunk Works the first group ever to design a plane composed entirely of flat, angular surfaces. The product of all of their research and development would become one of the most highly guarded secrets of the United States, until later unveiled to the public in the Gulf War as the F-117A. Further testing of the scale model showed that even on the most sensitive radar systems, the plane would only show up as large as a 1/8-inch ball bearing! The stealth fighter would later prove itself to be the most effective aircraft used during Operation Desert Storm, and would rake in over six billion dollars from contracts signed with the U.S. Air Force for squadrons of F-117's. Recently future plans for the F-117 have been submitted to the Navy for carrier versions of the plane, but not much interest has been shown by the Navy due to budget constraints. Code named "Have Blue" during its development, the F-117 is so advanced that pilots are actually unnecessary during flight. It can fly to its destination, drop a pair of GBU-27s (a two-thousand pound bomb), and return. This computer program developed by the Skunk Works is so advanced that the Air Force bought it for use in all their attack planes. http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/3993/stealth.html ------------------------ 글쓴이 ------------------------------ 金鍾淵 email : terraic@chollian.net 011-391-8274 / 015-112-5604 ______________________________________________________________ |