This will not primarily be for rescue ops. This will be for supporting Marine standin operations on and within the first island chain. The marines have been trying to figure out how they can handle sustainment and logistics in that environment.
With a few hundred miles range, these craft would be suitable as one way island to island hoppers, or 2 way over the horizon ship to shore transports. For a sense of scale, its ~140 miles from Luzon to Scarborough Shoal (one of the contested islands in the South China Sea).
The "Viceroy" craft that Regent has mocked up on their website claims 180 mile range, 3500lb of cargo / 2 crew + 12 passengers.
EDIT: And to be clear, the article title says "to get", but the article makes clear, this is basically a testing and development contract. There's no certainty that the Marines will get this capability in any meaningful way. Probably better to replace with "to test". This is particularly important because the commercial version of this craft is also still in development and testing.
It seems like combat SAR in the maritime environment is what these are best at.
> The "Viceroy" craft that Regent has mocked up on their website claims 180 mile range, 3500lb of cargo / 2 crew + 12 passengers.
This is like 1/4th the size needed for minimum scale sustainment and support. Not to say that it won't be used for that in a pinch or for special operations, but it's pretty limited. Of course, there's been talk about building huge ones.
The company press release states "The second phase of work will examine seaglider capabilities across missions including contested logistics and medevac/casevac".
I agree that this would be useful for medevac/casevac, but I'm less sure about the search part of SAR. 180 miles is not a lot of range for searching.
I still believe this is primarily about contested logistics, because the USMC still hasn't solved that issue. One of the stand in force concept's biggest weakness right now is how will the marines go about sustaining the force. There's a lot of good ideas written down, but concretely they still don't have good solutions.
I think it's fairly clear that the Marines will look to unnamed undersea vehicles as one vector, but I think they're looking for flexibility and redundancy (and certainly the speed that these guys offer would be interesting).
What's written about SIFs is that the Marines anticipate the majority of SIFs to be deployed in the crisis building phase. They do not envision on day one of a shooting war, somehow dispersing all of their forces across the first island chain - they take for granted that they will somehow do that in the build up. After that, then ya, maybe just med/casevac and resupply is what they're after.
I have a hard time finding concrete examples, but I always envisioned an example detachment being roughly platoon sized. Basically, imagine being able to man a NMESIS launcher or two, ISR, and a squad or two of infantry for security. I think at that point, these vehicles become more viable for certain types of sustainment. You could for example priority rush more NSMs to a detachment.
> I think at that point, these vehicles become more viable for certain types of sustainment. You could for example priority rush more NSMs to a detachment.
Sure-- like 3 per trip. If they're not too long for the vehicle (they might be).
You might be able to barely sustain a platoon-sized force with a trip per day, but this seems very marginal.
> I have a hard time finding concrete examples, but I always envisioned an example detachment being roughly platoon sized. Basically, imagine being able to man a NMESIS launcher or two, ISR, and a squad or two of infantry for security.
Most of the scenarios I've participated in have involved reinforced companies.
The article never mentioned the search part of SAR, only the rescue part. The range is still something of an issue with that, though, as you'd need to be fairly close the people needing rescuing. So I still agree that contested rescue is likely a side mission for this.
While I'm sure the US military sees the obvious possible logisitical solution for the island chains - and I've read them saying that in the past - that doesn't mean there's something deceitful going on here.
Before you make national security depend on a new, developing technology, and one that is also in limited supply, you give that technology a simpler, smaller mission to try it out and to develop it. That is, they don't want control of the first island chain to depend on Regent Craft all-electric sea gliders quite yet.
A perfect match for the modern Marine Corps! (Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but a Marine Corps that has abandoned amphibious assault and port seizure in favor of helping the Navy with sea control has arguably lost its reason for existing.)
Well TBF they will be likely primarily used to "rescue" marines off suicide deployments in 1IC. Marine haphazardly rebranded themselves into MLR / littoral regiment, AKA NMESIS missile battery uber drivers for Pacific theatre to stay relevant. But anyone with half a brain saw how proposal was not sustainable one way mission for crayon eaters. 12 passengers + 3500lb cargon won't reinforce much, i.e. replenish couple Naval Strike Missiles... but likely just supplies to keep the people going, but more realistically it's good for evacuating whose left + body bags because region is going to be saturated with PRC fires. This glider proposal is consoling marines MLR that yes, their rebranding / new conop/conemp isn't terminally stupid, there is an exit plan after hopefully the NMESIS squeeze off their shots, assuming they survive PRC drones/missiles etc.
> How long did it take it for the Osprey to make it into service?
I was curious so I went and looked;
1981 - Initial development contract awarded
1983 - Bell/Boeing submitted their prototype and since it was the only submission, they were awarded the contract
1985 - Osprey designation established, first full size prototypes under development
1988 - First Osprey was finished
1989 - First testing of the prototypes started and first flight in helicopter mode (several of the prototypes crashed)
1994 - Bell/Boeing received production contract for EMD phase
1997 - First EMD flight + more testing
2005 - Full rate production authorized
2007 - Marines began fielding them
They were still testing the various modes (carrier onboard deliveries, etc) into the 2020s but the most favorable case is that it took over 25 years from prototype to service.
COD wasn't "testing various modes." It was a completely new requirement to replace Navy C-2s which were reaching end of life. It wasn't part of the original contract; it was a completely new "oh, we have this on the shelf and it's fit enough for purpose."
Except it isn't - the V-22 fleet is currently limited to flight 200nm or less due to mechanical concerns. [1] I'm not sure what the US Navy is currently doing or planning for near-future COD. (Beyond ordering more Ospreys. [2]) Pray they don't end up in a real hot war with a peer adversary, I guess?
These are nothing like the Osprey. The Osprey is way more complex. If one of the engines goes out on the Osprey, there is linkage that will allow the remaining engine to continue to power both rotors. Nevermind the mission profiles are completely different.
How long did the SR-71 take to make it into service? How long did the F-22 or F-35 take? None of those answers have anything to do with the other.
Eh, yes and no. They tend to have a pretty strong relationship to each other. But we've all been party to swiss army knife projects that get shit all over by stakeholders because they don't agree about what the right balance of "shitty at everything" ought to be.
Worth noting that the Cold War ended in the middle of the Osprey's development, and the peace dividend really stretched out the timeline for a lot of programs of that era. With higher consistent funding like we're seeing now, stuff will probably be adopted faster
My father was a Marine in the late 80's, early 90's and would talk about the Osprey being in development. They were still in development 20 years later when I was a Marine. I did get to fly in one before getting out though.
To be specific, the challenge with cryogenic fuels is that you can't really keep the rocket fueled up all the time, so you need to spend a bunch of time fueling up the rocket, reducing the responsiveness of the system.
There were generations of hypergolic liquid fueled ICBMs. Those are typically pretty reasonably responsive (and reliable). Unfortunately the fuel is toxic as hell.
Europe does have native solid booster capability. The Vega-C has solid rocket motors for the first 3 stages for example. Very crudely looking at sizes, the 2nd and 3rd stages of a Vega-C should more or less approximate a typical ICBM.
With Ariane 6, they switched to Italian soilds. This was basically France buying of Italy so they would side with them to build Ariane 6, rather then Ariane 5 ME that Germany wanted.
For larger rockets this is typical, however smaller rockets often only have a thrust termination system - for example apparently Rocketlab's Electron uses thrust termination.
You can click through to see specific incident summaries. It looks like a significant amount (if not majority) of events are inflight on passenger flights (as opposed to on the ground, tarmac, ground handling, or freight operations). There were 85 total incidents in 2024 (there were some 9 million passenger revenue departures to give another sense of scale).
Lost phone is a problem because:
* Could be in a place that increases risk of thermal run away to begin with - classic example would be caught in the seat hinge. But even being stuck surrounding by cushioning could increase the risk of overheating
* Decreased visibility. The faster you can react (ie, try to dump the thing into a thermal protection bag / get it away from other flammables) the better. If you read the incidents, you'll see time after time the sequence "passenger notified flight attendant, who then placed it in a thermal containment bag, flight completed normally".
I could see changes to rules that will begin to prohibit storing batteries in overhead compartments (which aside from the pinch problem, actually has all the same risks of losing a phone). Or perhaps mandatory/routine pre-emptive use of thermal containment bags.
The airliners know there's no going back. They must accommodate for batteries, so they'll seek the right balance.
If you've ever had to fly with (cordless) power tools the rules allow this but the batteries must be in carry on and not be in the checked baggage (the tool itself must be checked!) and there's a limit on the max battery size (160 Wh), although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
For example, with DeWalt 20V batteries, 160Wh is an 8Ah (which is one of the larger sized batteries), but if you have 60V FlexVolt tools (circular saw) you are probably out of luck as they start around 6Ah (and @60V, 160Wh is only 2.6Ah), going up to 15Ah (which would be 900Wh).
For the 60V flex volt battery, which is actually 3x 20v batteries which the tool can configure in series, the advertised capacity in Ah is almost certainly measured at 20V. And 20V is also a marketing term, with nominal voltage being around 18.5. So the 6Ah battery is probably around 111Wh and the 15Ah battery is probably around 278Wh. So only one of them is oversized but you should find a data sheet that clearly shows capacity in Wh.
> although I don't think there's a limit on how many you can carry-on.
Correct. So long as it's for personal use.
> [1] Quantity limits: None for most batteries — but batteries must be for use by the passenger. Batteries carried for further sale or distribution (vendor samples, etc.) are prohibited. There is a limit of two spare batteries per person for the larger lithium ion batteries described above (101–160 watt hours per battery).
I assume this is because the thermal containment bags they have are only rated to a certain limit, but distinct batteries hopefully won't ignite at the same time and can in any case go in different bags?
Heat a lithium secondary cell too much and it goes into runaway. When the cells are packed together in one device if one of them goes up it can take the others with it. The bigger the device the hotter it will be and harder to avoid it turning into a disaster.
IATA says a limit of 2 <160Wh batteries (with airline approval) and a limit of 20 <100Wh batteries (which is a lot!), but also airlines are free to be more or less strict as they see fit, so basically check with the airline (it's rare that they'll be less strict as a policy, but they may be OK if you clear it with them beforehand, and some are more restrictive by default).
The Spectrum is kinda unique - it's a LOX/Propane rocket (RP1/kerosene is traditionally more common, and methane is what the new hotness is).
From the footage that we have, it looks like we got maybe ~15 seconds of good flight before things got weird. It's not clear how relevant the "smoke" mentioned in the article is. Since the propellants (both of them in this case) are cyrogenic, some degree of boil off/venting may continue even after launch. For example, if you look at the New Glenn or any of the Starship launches, they continue to visibly vent well into ~20-30 seconds into flight.
Things appeared to have started going wrong around the time the announcer said "they're starting the pitch over", and we can see the rocket first start pitching, and then start rolling and then go belly up. It possible that it was a problem related to guidance/control.
The CHIPS act did include specific funding for mature (>= 28nm) nodes. It definitely wasn't the bulk of the funding but it was there.
Initial estimates were that about a quarter of funding would go to supporting legacy/mature nodes, and at least 2 billion (of the initial 39 billion) was directly earmarked for legacy/mature nodes.
There's no major announcement here (compared to what Airbus has been saying for the last few years). Airbus continues to believe that propfans/open rotor designs are worth testing for their next generation design.
As noted in the article, such a design would likely require rear-fuselage mounted engines, or high wings (either shoulder mounted or gull shaped)
What seems interesting to me is that Boeing's "next gen" bet seems to revolve around truss braced wings, which seem to also require shoulder mounted wings. I wonder how well these two features would interact with each other.
I seem to recall very thin wings being touted as lower drag, but are unable to store fuel. Are the trusses there to support thinner wings?
Edit: the answer seems to be yes, they are thinner wings, called the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW). However why is it transonic? higher speed would negate the fuel savings. Also this looks to be experimental and not for the next generation.
Standard airplanes used for passenger travel have transonic airflow. Some air is forced to be supersonic as it passes over the wing and around the body of the plane.
The Transonic Truss-Braced Wing is still experimental but prototypes have been built and they are seriously considered for the next generation. If I recall correctly where to store the fuel is a bit concern.
question , have mono in plane body engines ever been tried? i developed a fascination with the idea (which is obviously tertible for safety and maintenance reasons) but beyond some exotic early critters google gave me nothing .
Polar vortex collapse leads to cold polar air mass moving south over the course of the next few weeks. At least where I am, this article is coinciding within a day or so of the end of "fake spring".
In fact, this might help explain the concept of fake spring in general. The final collapse of the vortex is ultimately caused by warming of the northern hemisphere as spring kicks in. This implies that the pattern of "get pretty warm, then the polar vortex collapses, then you get one more surge of winter weather, and then you get real spring" is actually typical.
This will not primarily be for rescue ops. This will be for supporting Marine standin operations on and within the first island chain. The marines have been trying to figure out how they can handle sustainment and logistics in that environment.
You can read some wonkish article about this (back in 2022) https://warontherocks.com/2022/09/sustainment-of-the-stand-i... . You'll note that the article does suggest revisiting seaplanes as a distribution option.
With a few hundred miles range, these craft would be suitable as one way island to island hoppers, or 2 way over the horizon ship to shore transports. For a sense of scale, its ~140 miles from Luzon to Scarborough Shoal (one of the contested islands in the South China Sea).
The "Viceroy" craft that Regent has mocked up on their website claims 180 mile range, 3500lb of cargo / 2 crew + 12 passengers.
EDIT: And to be clear, the article title says "to get", but the article makes clear, this is basically a testing and development contract. There's no certainty that the Marines will get this capability in any meaningful way. Probably better to replace with "to test". This is particularly important because the commercial version of this craft is also still in development and testing.