The Liberty Lifter: America Wants to Build a Gigantic Surfing Seaplane.

In Modern Warfare nothing is more important than logistics and when it comes to logistics, the United States of America is the undisputed king of the world. Their strategic transport planes, the Galaxy and the balloon. Master can land tanks and troops around the world at any time. His Navy. It is capable of comfortably sustaining operations in all of the world's international waters, and its aerial refueling capabilities ensure that American airpower reigns supreme long after an adversary nation sees its fuel-hungry planes fall from the sky and simply cannot continue. the pace even despite such massive success Uncle Sam remains its biggest critic and where the rest of the world sees unmatched logistical prowess, the Pentagon sees room for improvement.

Enter the Liberty elevator, a Dara project that aims to add an entirely new capacity to the United States Arsenal. a plane that the Liberty lift is meant to glide over the surface of the water not just long enough to cross lakes or rivers but entire oceans in one go and if the Department of Defense has its way, then the whole world is on the hook. point to find out how how effective such an aircraft can be if you are fascinated by engineering feats and massive constructions, which you are probably watching this channel, you should check out today's sponsor, Mellan TV.

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You'll get a 30-day free trial to check out Mega structures and anything else. If you want, they have over 3,000 documentaries available that you won't want to miss, so check out Mellan TV. Thanks to them for sponsoring and now, back to today's episode. Before there was the Liberty Lifter, there was the MC 130j, a concept that got it. US defense world discusses idea of ​​proposed C-plane at Special Operations Forces industry conference or SOFIC in 2021 The MC-130J was supposed to be an amphibious aircraft an evolution of the C130 transport aircraft tested in time according to people floating Concepts in In that conference and concept art released by the US Air Force, the mc-130j would have grafted floats onto the typical C130 design and otherwise simply performed the typical job of a strategic transport aircraft.

The aircraft could have offered some interesting capabilities, perhaps capable of performing refueling at sea. working as a secret temporary command and control center in the open sea or launching boats from semi-floodable interior compartments is really cool, but a year after the sofic conference, as Outlet Naval News reported, the whole idea of ​​the MC 130j seemed To simply disappear, a naval news writer, Peter Wrong, tried to track down the program, but after military spokespeople seemed to genuinely ask his own commandos what exactly had happened to that thing, the answer he received was strange. : no one First of all, I had ever heard of this or knew what it was, but around this same time in 2022, the defense advanced research projects agency, better known as Dara, issued a requirement for an aircraft that , while not based on the C130, could possibly do the same role in C really very well the program was called The Liberty Elevator was intended to cite the design, construction and flight testing of an innovative and disruptive SE aircraft affordable that operates efficiently in ground effect, can sustain ground effect flight, and enables efficient in-theater transportation. of large payloads at speeds that far exceed the existing platform seal, the critical phrase here was ground effect, the state of reduced aerodynamic drag that aircraft can achieve by flying very close to the ground or, in this case, the surface of the water, basically making a plane float on a cushion of air just a few meters above the waves, was intended to be able to carry at least two amphibious combat vehicles, eight-wheeled trucks used by the US Marine Corps . or six 20-foot equivalent container units to deliver supplies, which is a payload capacity. of about 70 tons, even before billing in others, the load is approximately the lifting capacity of the C17 strategic transport aircraft and the Liberty lift would also be expected to transport that payload up to 4,600 thousand 7,400 km if Dara's new initiative produced an airplane then the The agency estimated that this airplane would be approximately 2.3 times more efficient in flight than a traditional airplane and not only that but it would not need a runway to land or take off since it could do so from the surface of the water traveling at hundreds of kilometers. of miles per hour would be a much more convenient way to transport troops of supplies or war fighting equipment across the sea and, in Dara's vision, the plane would also have to be built in a way that would allow it to go from effect flight ground to regular flight. at altitude, of course, it could take off and land on water, and once settled on this water surface, it should be able to float for extended periods of four to six weeks, potentially allowing it to serve as a repair bay. a Command and Control Center or in a variety of other Mission functions, put all those elements together and the United States would have a tool at its disposal to transfer what it needs to hot zones around the world on short notice, flying at high range and low. altitudes without needing to develop or secure a runway and without needing to wait days or even weeks for ships to arrive and, equally important for the US, the system would be significantly cheaper to

build

and maintain than a comparable aircraft and, at At the same time, it would offer greater operational flexibility than any other. option currently in the US Arsenal in early 2023, two companies have been awarded contracts to continue development of their own iterations of the Liberty Lifter, one is California-based General Atomics, known for America's Predator and Reaper drones, the another was Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary that has a lot of cool concept art but has yet to make a real impact with a major acquisition deal.

In total, the two teams received about 35 million US dollars at the start of the project and then another 41 million accumulated just over a year later. work to produce what they could dare to evaluate both and in 2024 the US defense community learns which of their two options would supply the United States with a freedom elevator in the coming years when it comes to the potential design of the freedom elevator. General Atomic Freedom and Flight Sciences Aurora took rather divergent pieces, one of which would be what we would describe as clean, efficient and practical and the other, which we would say I would describe as much more fun.

The fun design was the one Dara ultimately decided against, but we'll take a look at Anyway, if that design was the one General Atomics benefited from, a twin Fus lar aircraft that would have used a center wing boom and a tail boom to By joining the two fuselages, powered by no less than 10 Pusher propellers, the aircraft would have been especially stable in the water. Because their twin fuselages made them much more difficult to capsize when resting like hollows in the water, the tips of the fuselages would have been raised like the C5 Galaxy, allowing cargo or vehicles to roll away and potentially even directly into the fight in a Unique touch Some renderings of the overall atomic proposal even included small fins on the noses of each of the fuselages giving a sort of mustache that would have brought some Theodore Roosevelt-style toughness to the overall US outfit.

Spirit of the whole Liberty elevator project, alas, Dara. They decided they weren't feeling the whole Mustachio Vibe and ultimately decided against the overall atomic design. Instead, they opted for the design presented by Aurora that resembles a traditional extra-large C-plane or

seaplane

. Aurora's design features a single fuselage and hull. and tall wings located on top, the rest of the fuselage would have eight forward-facing drive propellers mounted on those wings, while at the ends floats on each wingtip would prevent the aircraft from tilting toward the rear of the plane. The twin valleys would jump up and away from each other on a slight diagonal linked by an upper section in a device that should increase both maneuverability in ground effect flight and the ability to make precise altitude changes when necessary, that fork It will also allow you to have a loading door.

In the rearguard, according to Dara, Aurora had proven to be much more capable of meeting the aggressive schedule and technical goals of its project, while General Atomics was lagging behind and apparently that was enough for Dar to drop them as far as the plane Aurora is really capable of doing. The prototype doesn't exist yet and probably won't arrive until 2028; It might even take a little longer considering America's love of military procurement delays, but based on the requirements Dara laid out, the Liberty elevator will be able to do a few things: It will be able to fly at altitudes below 100 t from the sea ​​level or 30 m and potentially as close as 15 to 30 feet.

It will be necessary to climb to altitudes of at least 10,000 feet or 3,000 m above sea. level with a fair range which is a range of 6,500 nautical miles or 12,000 km one way, it is supposed to withstand rough seas during takeoff and landing and even harsher conditions while floating as it carries a heavy lift payload of up to 90 tons and must be built at a relatively low cost without losing the performance elements that the US considers essential according to Aurora flight sciences. It will integrate an innovative new avionics suite and new capabilities to control and adjust its handling.

Most likely he is unarmed. Maintaining the standard for us strategic lift aircraft and although the old Aurora ARS concept depicted a Liberty lift with wings swept downwards near the tip, that particular feature is not expected to make the final cut, we have established the payload capacity useful Liberty lift capable of handling. two marine amphibious combat vehicles, but when that figure is put into context, it becomes a little more impressive. two acvs carry a total of 32 marines, 16 each, which is a little less than a platoon per

liberty

lift, four of the planes can carry a full company. that's over 100 soldiers in total, while 16 of them can transport an entire marine battalion and deposit it anywhere in the world and if you can transport two acvs, you can transport a variety of other marine equipment or, with a hangar flooded, several of the combat ones.

Rubber boats commonly used among Marines, Navy Seals, and other water-worthy combat elements within the US military. That payload can also be dedicated to supplies, weaponry, and anything else that can be packaged so that survives some contact with seawater. Before reaching shore, according to Darpa's own internal videos on the Liberty lift, the Marine ACV should be able to drive directly from the plan's fuselage to shore, indicating a preference for rapid insertion operations and anything else that allow the Liberty elevator to help take. one target per assault when a prototype finally emerges then the Liberty Lifter will not be the first aircraft to fly using ground effect, but it will become the best very quickly.

The Soviet Union made a valiant attempt to devise this type of flight with its so-called acran aircraft, but they were largely ineffective and were never put into large-scale use. There were many reasons for this, but chief among them was the high risk of collisions with surface objects of arrana aircraft and their inability to cope with rough waters. and rough seas that come from less than perfect conditions, they couldn't climb, they couldn't turn very sharply, and the few evasive maneuvers they could make put them at immense risk of crashing to the sea floor if they were in shallow water, but the Liberty Elevator would solve all those problemsintegrating the ability to alternate between ground effect flight and normal aircraft flight.

For ground effect to be possible, the plane has to fly very close to the surface of the water. Basically, the phenomenon disappears if an airplane ascends to a height greater than the length of its own wingspan, that is, an airplane with a wingspan of 100 feet loses the phenomenon of ground effect if it exceeds 100 feet in altitude, but the effect is much more powerful when it is closer to the ground and what it gives to a plane in terms of flight efficiency it also takes back in the form of immense stress placed on the wings of the plane and especially on the trailing edge of the wing, but at the same time design the Liberty elevator in a particularly resistant way.

In this way, using wide and potentially even downsloping wings on a well-reinforced structure, the aircraft will be able to do more than resist phenomenal ground effect damping: it will be able to rise further from the water surface at relatively low speeds, most of the time. or even all the way out of the water to avoid the collision of rough seas against your hole by absorbing, dissipating and even completely avoiding the impact of wave forces, the liy

lifter

should be able to solve your problem. In the long term, just in case, it is also expected to integrate a suite of advanced sensors and control mechanisms to move it out of the way of large waves and better compensate for differences in drag that occur when moving part of the hull at, say, 100 m per hour. air and moving the other part of the hull at the same speed but through the water as of now the Liberty lift is expected to enter a design review phase early next year and a roar is expected to pass those controls and then

build

a float and eventually fly a prototype if all that goes as planned the first one.

Liberty elevators could burst onto the scene with operational capability as early as the early 2030s, and while the technology demonstrator is expected to be a little smaller than initially planned, around the size of a C130, the documents DARPA budget estimates indicate that the actual aircraft will be built around the size of a C17, since initially prescribed elements such as crew size, refueling capability, and assignment to one or more specific branches of the military The US hasn't been addressed yet, now we've already talked a little about why it's so important for the United States to acquire the Liberty lift, but before we conclude today's episode, let's really delve into what this strange

seaplane

concept offers of

surfing

to the United States that caused the Pentagon to take a look and say why don't we have it yet.

Perhaps most important when talking about the Liberty elevator is its ability to make up for the shortfalls and inefficiencies with the current mechanisms that the United States has to do its logistical work right now, that work can be done by planes or ships, whether we are talking about deployment, transfer of supplies. command and control or anything else, on the one hand, the United States has not run into a problem that it cannot solve with a combination of these two tools, but at the same time there is a lot of room between being able to solve fixes using the tools currently at the disposal of the United States and being able to say that the United States has the perfect tool for a specific job, the Liberty lift will not be able to match the payload capacity of the United States ships nor will it be able to fly as high as the United States.

Other strategic transport aircraft, but being built decisively at the midpoint between the two, the Liberty elevator offers potential that none of the existing mechanisms can match. Unlike ships, the Liberty lift would be much better able to deal with threats in the water and could quickly move away from Naval. Orit threats and vulnerable to submarine attacks and too fast to be tracked by Maritime Assets in the same way that a floating vessel would not need the same type of unloading facilities that maritime vessels would need and could do the same jobs. much faster in a strictly conceptual sense, the size of a maritime lift using ground effect flight could be expanded quite a bit - for example, just look at the Hughes H4 Hercules or the Spruce Goose, an aircraft built in 1947 that held the record for larger wingspan until it was surpassed by the Strat launch aircraft in 2019, a luxury ground-effect aircraft to the limits of modern technology, they could very well make the spruce goose look small in comparison, if such an SE aircraft ever existed, then it would be the Liberty elevator version would have paved the way, and compared to traditional non-strategic transport aircraft, the LIY elevator has countless benefits.

We've already emphasized that the plane would not need runways, but it's important to explain what that really means in a wartime environment. Airfield seizures are among the riskiest and most important operations that occur early in US military interventions. They require many highly trained assets and require massive fleets of cross-coordination between much of the US military building airfields in or on enemy territory. Foreign soil is a little easier, but that requires that enemy forces are already gone, meaning the critical window where fast airlift is most useful is gone. Add the Liberty Lift to the mix and any location with a coastline is now fully capable of experiencing. an American invasion by air, while naval operations that previously could not integrate any air support that could not land on an aircraft carrier now have another layer of damage added to their own arsenals, making matters worse for a potential adversary the nature of The Liberty lift's low flight means that even if it is not invisible to radar, it will be much harder to detect than a strategic lift aircraft approaching from above.

The Liberty elevator will not be the perfect tool for every mission when it comes to shipping large quantities. of military equipment or troops across an ocean that will have to be the domain of ships, especially at times when time is less limiting when it comes to parachuting troops or conducting supply operations on land, the C5, the C17 and C130 might do that job better, but when it comes to hard-hitting amphibious actions that the United States is at its best in, the Normandy star assaults, or the rapid insertions we've seen time and time again for decades, the elevator Liberty provides a degree of capability that no other tool can match and when it comes to the integration of airlift capabilities into large-scale naval operations, the Liberty lift opens up strategic and tactical options that simply do not exist in today's world.

Is this the most critical need of the US Department of Defense? No, it probably won't be the perfect solution in every situation, it's unlikely, but the Liberty Lifter will take America's global military power to new heights that even Uncle Sam hasn't quite achieved, and as of now, it's only a matter of time before that happens. just before you go, if you haven't already, click the link in the description or scan the QR code now to get a free 30 day trial of mellan TV, enjoy the mega structures I mentioned above and much more, See you next time.