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Old 16th Nov 2010, 16:49
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Mechta
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
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I'm rather underawed by this if the UAV only lost 10% of the wing. Especially when one considers that the A-10 Thunderbolt is designed to fly without an outer wing panel, half tailplane and one fin/rudder assembly. A bomb damaged Douglas DC-3 was fitted with a DC-2 wing panel which made the wing 5 feet shorter on one side, and flew 'ok', and there is of course the Israeli F-15 which made a successful landing with almost a whole wing missing.



The F18 performance quoted sounds more of a challenge.

What is really needed now, is a way of controlling engines and control surfaces after the wiring harness has been damaged. Both the Etihad Airbus A340-600 at Toulouse a couple of years ago, and the recent Airbus A380 incident in Singapore demonstrated that an engine will keep going after the control has been lost, and there's currently not a lot that can be done about it. The A340 was more or less left to run out of fuel!

It shouldn't be too difficult to have a back-up system of a microwave or laser link between the fuselage & engines, so that a crew could at least shut down, or possibly even control an engine without the interconnecting signal wiring. This would obviously need a source of power at the receiver and to power the control on the engine. An RF system would be possible, but that could then leave the system vulnerable to interference.
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