How to Shoot Down an Airplane with an ICBM
Indeed, just think about it: an airplane that flew at more than three times the speed of sound could carry and launch missiles with nuclear warheads from a height of almost 30 meters - this is something unrivaled even in our time. And what can we say about the good old days?
Some, looking at the photo, will say: well, what don't we know about "Blackbird"? What's all the fuss about with the sale?
The thing is, the photo is not of the SR-71 Blackbird, but of another aircraft that had seen the skies two years earlier. It is the A-12, created by the same creative group, Skunk Works, that developed such remarkable aircraft as the P-80 Shooting Star, F-94 Starfire, F-104 Starfighter, U-2, F-117 and, of course, the SR-71 (pictured below).
In general, the 60-70s of the last century were a real heyday of science and technology. In fact, the majority of what was developed in those years weapons It fights quite well on all fronts of the world today, and in space the change of generations is only just beginning.
So, the year is 1958.
The U-75 reconnaissance aircraft, which has become famous (mainly thanks to the Soviet S-2 air defense missile system), is already flying, and the US is simply going crazy over its successes, caused by its truly impressive flight characteristics, but in the quiet of secret workshops, work is already underway on the Archangel project.
In general, the US in general and the CIA in particular did not make long-term plans for flights over Soviet territory. They planned to fly for a couple of years, but Powers was shot down only in 1960, that is, the program worked for four years, but during 24 flights the Americans learned a lot of interesting things. For example, they detected and counted the Soviet strategic M-4 and learned where the Baikonur cosmodrome was actually being built.
Well, since the crash of Powers' burning U-2, the era of unpunished flights has ended.
But by that time, the engineering jokers from Skunk Works had been working on the Archangel project for a long time. Of course, their planes were one weirder than the other, but apart from the Starfighter, the F-104 never refused to fly.
The "skunks-scoundrels" (a free translation of the word "skunk" from English, so "skunk", but in relation to a person - "scoundrel" or worse - ed.) having studied the layouts, came to the conclusion that the highest chances of not being shot down by a missile have a super-high-altitude and super-fast aircraft. Capable of simply escaping from a missile due to its speed. And by 1958, the design sketches were already ready, and the CIA and the Air Force did not spend a dollar, all the developments were carried out at the expense of Lockheed, which included Skunk Works.
At first, this "Archangel" was developed under the name U-3, but in 1958 the aircraft received the designation A-11. The idea was fantastic: the aircraft was supposed to fly about 6 km at a cruising speed of Mach 500 at an altitude of 3 to 27 km.
In general, here we have a moment that has confused our own and confused everyone else: "A" in the US Air Force is from the word "Attack", this is how the American Air Force designates aircraft intended for striking ground targets, that is, attack aircraft. And here "A" either from the name of the project "Archangel", or from the word "Agency", because the customer of the reconnaissance aircraft was the CIA, that is, the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency.
In general, the result was a reconnaissance aircraft project under the code name of an attack aircraft.
The A-11 was a relatively normal (as the Skunk Works engineers understood the term) aircraft. It was generally similar to the later Tu-144 and Concorde, but these beauties were known to almost the entire world, while the A-11 was not so lucky.
In general, it was a tailless, delta-winged aircraft with a forward-swept trailing edge, with two turbo-ramjet engines in nacelles under the wings. But then things got interesting: the chief designer of the project, Johnson, consulted with engine builders from Pratt & Whitney and Marquard, and after the engine builders explained what they could provide for this aircraft, the project had to be redone.
Thus began work on the Archangel 2 project. The aircraft had slightly different shapes and outlines, but Johnson even theoretically laid down improved flight characteristics - the speed and range remained the same, but they decided to raise the altitude to 33,5 km.
An interesting novelty was the proposed flight profile: Johnson calmly borrowed it from the Austrian designer Professor Eugen Sänger, the so-called Silver Bird bomber (projects Ural-bomber and America-bomber), which, according to calculations, could have an extraordinary flight range. Sänger assumed using the "wave-like gliding" mode, reminiscent of the movements of a stone reflected from water when thrown, and making "pancakes". True, Sänger did not have an airplane, but a rocket plane, which was supposed to go into space (the pilot became an astronaut for a short time), and when gliding from space, ricochet several times from dense layers of the atmosphere, thereby significantly extending the distance of the possible flight.
Johnson imagined the flight of his brainchild as a series of jumps with a step of 80 to 50 km descending from denser layers of the atmosphere to less dense ones.
The calculated data for Archangel 2 were as follows:
- maximum take-off weight - 61 kg;
- service ceiling - 30 m;
- flight range - 6 km.
The power plant included two J58 turbojet engines and two 1905 mm diameter ramjets.
And... Johnson started the redesign again! He was not satisfied with the complexity and high cost of the aircraft due to the combined power plant. If you remove the ramjet engines, you could get a gain in weight of up to 9 tons! And the Pratt and Whitney J58 turbojet engines already had very decent characteristics, and in theory, should have provided the declared flight characteristics without ramjet engines. In general, these turbojet engines were developed by order of the naval aviation and it was assumed that they would be able to operate over a wide range of loads and speeds.
The pilot rescue system was also simplified. Initially, it was planned to put the pilot in a sealed rescue capsule that could rescue the pilot at any altitude. But at the development stage, it was replaced with a regular ejection seat and... a spacesuit! And without any fuss, they dressed the A-12 pilot in the Gemini astronaut's spacesuit.
The "space" aspect of the aircraft did not stop there. High supersonic flight speeds guaranteed high heating of the airframe, so it was necessary to rack one's brains over the materials of the fuselage and wings. Naturally, titanium (85%) and composites (15%) won. This, of course, significantly complicated the assembly work, titanium at that time was not an easy metal to obtain and process.
And there was also a separate war with heat. An airplane at a speed of 3 M+ would be expected to heat up like... like a sinner in hell. Therefore, literally all the airplane systems had to be protected from overheating. One cockpit canopy cost $2 million and three years of work.
A funny thing happened during the development. Lockheed, as a contractor, sent out a proposal to various manufacturers to send a hydraulic fluid for testing that could work normally at a temperature of 300 degrees Celsius and higher. One company sent a sample that could work at 315°C. For some reason, the sample was in an ordinary canvas bag and was a white powder. Lockheed was a little taken aback, but after reading the documentation, they probably laughed heartily: the powder turned into a liquid at a temperature of 93°C. Lockheed could not figure out how the hydraulic system would work at an ambient temperature of, say, 20°C.
In general, the fuselage design was calculated for skin temperatures up to +260°C and short-term heating up to +315°C.
And already during the flight tests, thermodynamics presented another surprise: during landing, in the case of a decrease in engine thrust at a relatively high speed of descent, the engine housings cooled down much faster than the compressor parts. As a result, the blades began to catch the walls of the housing, which predictably led to their destruction. The problem is complex, and most importantly - expensive.
But in the end, they got an aircraft that could fly at Mach 3,1. The closest competitor was the F-106 Delta Dart, an interceptor based on the F-102 Delta Dagger, which could produce Mach 2,6. Considering that the A-12 could climb to an altitude of 28-30 km, the C-75 (and C-125) crews began to have problems, because there was catastrophically little time to get to an aircraft at such an altitude, flying at such a speed.
Plus the A-12 was, so to speak, a larva of a stealth aircraft. The developers tried to depict something in this direction by introducing composites into the design, making two smaller inclined stabilizers instead of one vertical fin.
The first flight of the A-12 took place on April 25, 1962, in an atmosphere of maximum secrecy. And the first flight almost ended in disaster: the system for increasing the stability of the aircraft in flight did not turn on, and although the flight itself was more of a "jump" with taxiing, test pilot Schalk got a lot of thrills, since the A-12, having taken off from the ground, immediately began to "flounder in the sky", in the words of the pilot, demonstrating instability and the ability to self-oscillate in all three axes. The tester managed to plop the aircraft on the soft ground of the dried-up Groom Loik lake, and in the second flight the next day the stabilization system was already working and everything went more than smoothly.
Following the first series of flights, the A-12 began to be produced in a test series. Things, as they say, got going.
And then the guys from Lockheed smelled Money.
As the A-12 entered normal production, Lockheed quietly approached the Air Force brass with a brilliant plan: quietly and unnoticed, build and test a weaponized version of the plane. The A-12 was to be turned into a strategic interceptor capable of destroying Soviet strategic bombers.
Here it should be explained that at that time the main means of delivering an atomic bomb to a target remained a heavy long-range bomber, missiles like the Soviet R-7 were only just beginning their path to recognition. And therefore the US Air Force paid considerable attention to an aircraft that could intercept and shoot down any bombers at any altitude. Moreover, intelligence in the USA was working, and information about the Tu-16 and Tu-22 was gradually getting to the Pentagon. So the Air Force supported the idea, and three unfinished A-12s were redirected to a certain KEDLOCK program, no less secret than the Archangel. Moreover, the US Air Force's own program for the XF-108 Rapier interceptor was closed. The borohydride fuel of the engines of this aircraft did not provide any special advantages over aviation kerosene, and was very toxic. So the Air Force readily agreed to receive the super interceptor and even shared the developments of the Hughes AN/ASG-18 fire control system and the AIM-47A (GAR-9) Falcon missiles developed for the XF-108, which were used on the YF-12. This was the code name given to the defector "Archangel".
In general, the idea of arming the A-12 really came to the rescue precisely because this aircraft was in many ways similar to the XF-108 in terms of flight characteristics. Speed over Mach 3, range of about 4 km, high altitude – the A-000 had all of this already in the sky, and not on paper. The main problem was simply to find a place for the newest radar and missiles, which were a very interesting creation.
It was a complete system consisting of a GAR-X missile, a YX-1 radar and a fire control system. The original missile design had a range of 25 to 40 km and could be equipped with a conventional warhead or a W42 nuclear warhead with a yield of 0,25 kilotons. The nuclear warhead guaranteed the destruction of any Soviet M-4/Tu-16/Tu-22 class bomber. The Americans respected us, since they were preparing such a weapon against our bombers, nothing can be said about that.
In April 1958, the missile and radar were renamed the GAR-9 and AN/ASG-18. When the F-108 project was canceled in September 1959 due to its unrealistic cost, the Air Force decided to continue developing the missile system with both warheads. Moreover, both the radar and the missile were quite good and had room for improvement.
The three A-12s, designated YF-12s, were the heart of the KEDLOCK program, which would have produced an interceptor of unprecedented capability. The YF-12s were very similar in appearance to the A-12, except for a rounded, cone-shaped fairing, like the F-14 Tomcat. This fairing concealed a 40-inch nose-mounted AN/ASG-18 radar that didn’t fit into the existing A-12 nose, but without which the rest of the design was meaningless. The YF-12 ended up looking more like a fighter.
The radar was solved, but what about the missiles? The answer was to throw out the Perkins Type I stereoscopic camera from the YF-12, which occupied four payload bays, and shove the GAR-9 missiles in there. The YF-12 had four bays, two behind the pilot's cabin and two below it. Three bays housed three GAR-9 missiles, and the fourth bay housed the control and targeting system units.
And in 1964, testing began. At first, things didn’t go according to plan, and one aircraft was miraculously not lost because the missile went in the wrong direction, but in 1965, the YF-12 made its first air-to-air interception, shooting down a target at a range of about 50 km. In September 1965, the YF-12 launched another GAR-9 missile from 75 feet at Mach 000 and made another interception.
One could say that a super-interceptor was created. But Lockheed decided to go a little further and began developing a fighter-bomber, which received the designation FB-12.
This plan was even more ambitious than the YF-12, because it assumed that in addition to the AIM-47 Falcon missile (as the GAR-9 became known), the aircraft would also carry the SRAM short-range missile. The SRAM is an air-to-ground missile with a range of about 200 kilometers and a warhead with a capacity of 17 kilotons (from the Polaris missile). A little more than the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima (15 kilotons), meaning that it had the ability to destroy one medium-sized city.
The result was a fighter-bomber capable of penetrating Soviet airspace at high speed and altitude along with other bombers and delivering a nuclear strike on any target. And for defense, the YF-12 had AIM-47 Falcon air-to-air missiles.
In general, the concept was quite decent. At that time, Soviet radars could somehow detect an aircraft flying at such an altitude and with such a speed, but there was really little use in this. And the YF-12 could easily work exactly according to the CP system Defense The USSR with its nuclear missiles and ensure passage for larger bombers.
In terms of strategy, it looked quite good. And most importantly, it smelled of impunity. The MiG-21P had already proven itself to be a very impressive weapon, but alas, the YF-12 flew both higher and faster than the Soviet interceptor. This meant that it could force a fight on it when the MiG attacked American bombers from a more advantageous position.
The Air Force received funding for 93 FB-12 fighters, but the aircraft were never built.
It would seem that what could go wrong, why did such a promising development turn out to be practically unnecessary?
It's all about changing the nuclear strategy of a potential enemy, that is, the Soviet Union. The USSR was unable to create a more or less decent means of delivering nuclear charges in the form of a strategic bomber capable of overcoming US air defense. But the 60s were quite successful in other types of weapons.
Yes, we are talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles. Korolev, Yangel, Chelomey, Sadovsky, Nadiradze and their design teams created a whole series of missiles capable of dropping nuclear charges on the USA. R-36, R-36orb, UR-100, UR-100K, RT-2, "Temp-2S" - they left no chance for aircraft, being much more effective than the latter.
It was in 1963-1965 that it became clear that the aircraft had finally and irrevocably given way to the missile as a carrier of nuclear weapons. And so a situation arose in which Khrushchev decided to fight only with missiles and effectively reduced the development of bomber aviation to zero. This step is still disputed and criticized, but it had a certain logic: to this day, almost all nuclear weapons possessors rely on missiles, not bombers, to deliver charges to targets. At least eight countries (not counting Israel) of the Nuclear Club possess ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear charges, and only three have strategic bombers.
In general, the tactics of destroying the Soviet Union with carpet nuclear bombing somehow failed. The MiG-21 modifications flew higher and faster, and the MiG-23 was already looming, which generally became a nightmare for all bomber pilots in the world. Soviet SAMs fired further and higher, and the tests of the S-200 SAM version of the "Angara" were already ending, which generally called into question the possibility of delivering nuclear strikes with free-fall bombs from aircraft.
A completely different era was dawning.
US military policy no longer assumed shooting down enemy bombers, which the USSR did not have in large enough numbers to seriously threaten the US. So the FB-12 fighter-bomber armed with short-range nuclear missiles was fast, but it could not keep up with the changing world. Although it almost went into production, the situation turned out to be, as they say, "they stopped in time."
As a result, in 1965, interest in the A-12 program from high-ranking officials began to decline sharply. Moreover, the situation was amusing: the aircraft was ready, but both the military and politicians were not ready to use it for its intended purpose. There was nothing to catch over the USSR except air defense missiles, and over other countries like Vietnam or China the game was clearly not worth the candle. All work on the FB-12 fighter-bomber was stopped.
But if the A-12 somehow managed to serve until 1968, then handing over its helmet to the SR-71 Blackbird, which flew until 1999, then the FB-12 was shot down. By a missile. But not a regular missile from an anti-aircraft missile system, but an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Such collisions also happen in the world.
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