DARPA's Liberty Lifter Program Aims To Bring Heavy Ground Effect Seaplanes Back To Life

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According to new atlas, DARPA has launched a new "liberty lifter" program to design, manufacture and test an efficient wing ground effect (also known as ground effect) aircraft, used to transport "very large weights" over long distances without runways. DARPA said the prototype could fly as early as 2027.

In the past few years, there has been some small revival of the wing ground effect. Several participants tried to get ground effect vehicles (gevs) into the commercial circulation field - especially wigetworks in Singapore, its aircraft-8 and Regent in Boston, which has attracted a lot of funds and pre-sale to build the prototype of its all electric, 12 seat Viceroy glider.

All these aircraft, as well as liberty lifter and Russia's famous World War II ekranoplan, are designed to use a clever physical principle: when the aircraft is very close to the ground - less than half its own wingspan - it can fly on a high-pressure air cushion between the wing and the surface to obtain additional lift and reduce the drag caused by lift. This can make these things very efficient - flying at an altitude of about 5% of the wingspan can improve your efficiency from ground a to ground B by 2.3 times.

DARPA likes this idea because ground effect seaplanes can transport large and heavy goods from place a to place B faster than ships, without the need for large ports or the huge runways and ground logistics required by large cargo aircraft. Liberty lifter can take off from any specific water body and land anywhere else without any infrastructure requirements, which greatly simplifies the logistics of transporting large and heavy military equipment everywhere.

For the liberty lifter project, DARPA is looking for the following designs:

-Able to take off and land at low speed on turbulent sea surface;

-Capable of carrying more than 100 tons of payload;

-Capable of providing operational range figures of more than 7500km (4660 miles);

-Able to operate continuously at sea for several weeks without maintenance on land;

-It can reduce the risk of collision during high-speed operation in crowded areas;

-Low construction cost, using low-cost materials instead of foreign lightweight materials;

-It can sense and avoid big waves, and intelligently handle the corresponding take-off and landing processes.

Although these aircraft may fly with ground effect most of the time, DARPA also hopes that they can fly continuously at an altitude of up to 10000 feet, so they are not limited to staying on the water.

According to IEEE spectrum, DARPA plans to award $15 million to develop up to two concepts. The system level critical design review is scheduled for 2025, and the first full-size prototype may fly as soon as 2027.

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