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So you have a dream to become a one-person nuclear power. I mean, it’s the kind of dream that’s less heart-warming family drama and more “Starring: John Lithgow.” But I like John Lithgow, so that’s okay.Let’s try and crack this nut.First thing for the peanut gallery: Yeah, this answer discusses in some very broad, “Anybody with intermediate Googling skills and level-101 grasps of chemistry, physics, and engineering,” strokes how to build a nuke “from scratch.”That might alarm you. “What if the terrorists find this?! You’re helping the terrorists!”Two things:If the best that “the terrorists” can do is scan Quora for advice from a random non-expert about the construction of weapons of mass destruction, I’m not too worried about their capacity to follow through. More to the point, I’m not a physicist, chemist, or engineer (nuclear or otherwise), so following my advice too closely on this matter is probably not a thing anybody should do with great seriousnessIt’s going to become very apparent very quickly that this isn’t something you ought to be worried about any Joe Q. Terrorist pulling off. If anything, I hope by the end of this answer that you’re relieved by the implausibility of a rogue actor ever seeing this through to fruition.Last thing is that this answer is very long by Internet standards (7,300 words, so 35-ish minutes of reading), so if you just want the top-line figures before browsing off to somewhere else, here:Nuke construction: $111.3 million for the first, $9.95 million for each thereafterICBM construction: $200 million in research and development, $40 million per missile (optimistic)Supporting facility construction: $15 millionLand acquisition: $416,000 to $1.2 millionOdds of success: Infinitesimal.Are we good? Great.The first thing I’m going to tell you to do on my quest to get intrusively investigated and interrogated by multiple government agencies is to move to (and/or conquer) Australia.That’s gotta be, like six agencies right there.For starters, you’re going to need a lot of land – as will become obvious as this answer evolves – and ideally land that’s far away from prying eyes. Australia has that in spades. Of the world’s largest island’s 7.69 million square kilometres of land, about 40 percent of it is classified as desert, and another about-as-much percent is suitable for not much more than animal grazing.So, granted, the land you’ll be acquiring is probably inhospitable, but hey, it’s probably for the best that you build a clandestine nuke and rocket complex out in the middle of nowhere. It will delay your being discovered (as you will be).We’ll come back to figuring out how much land you’ll need towards the end of the answer, but it’s tied to the next consideration for basing your operation in Australia: it has one-third of the world’s proven uranium reserves, the vast majority of which has been unmined.Score! Right?Well, not really, because the Australian government has a pretty damned good idea of where these proven reserves are, and it isn’t about to let just anybody show up and start uranium prospecting – to say nothing of the fact that Western Australia, where many of your barren land/prospective uranium deposits exist, has banned future uranium prospecting/mine development.Moreover, over 95 percent of Australia’s uranium output comes from three existing mines.So what we need to do is......Oh, I’m sorry, is this putting you off? Are you asking, “Why can’t I just buy the uranium I need from someone who’s already mining it?”Okay, let’s discuss.Source: Popular Science (Mar, 1950) via Modern MechanixIn order to build a nuclear bomb, you need “enriched” uranium. That’s a simple way of saying that you need to use uranium that is 90% or greater made up of the U-235 isotope, whereas natural uranium is 99.2% U-238, which is useless for making things go boom.Source: World Nuclear AssociationU-235 occurs naturally at a ratio of about 0.72% in uranium that’s mined from the ground, but concentrations can vary. Put another way, if you held one kilogram of really pure uraninite, you might be holding maybe six grams of U-235 – the equivalent weight of an overstuffed tablespoon of sugar (Important note: U-235 and sugar are not interchangeable ingredients for baking and/or nuclear purposes.).The bomb that exploded over Hiroshima used 64 kilograms of uranium, 51 of which was U-235 – 8,500 times as much as you might ever otherwise casually hold.Now, without severely flagging my internet search behavior, I can’t find anyone that commercially sells an appreciable amount of uraninite to start making price comparisons (probably for the best). You can get three grams of refined uranium from United Nuclear for $69. At that price, you would be paying $23,000 per kilogram. To get enough of their uranium to enrich 52 kilograms of U-235 to build a working replica of Little Boy (getting an extra 1 kilo to ensure critical mass), you would need to spend at least $166.1 million (for the minimum 90% enrichment level required to achieve weapon-grade uranium).Of course, that would have been assuming that their uranium was 0.72% U-235. They note that their uranium is only 0.31% U-235 isotope, so you need at least 2.3 times the amount of higher grade uranium, or $382 million worth.Hmm... This is getting pretty expensive pretty quickly. Maybe getting large quantities of pure uranium from third parties isn’t the way to go.Alternately, you could try to create some kind of front company and start purchasing industrial quantities of triuranium octoxide (AKA, “yellowcake”), U3O8, the form of uranium following mining operations and processing that is sold for further enrichment.Its market price at the time of this writing is $45.20 per kilogram. It’s 84.8% uranium by mass, and we’re assuming 0.7% U-235; so to get 52 kilograms of U-235 from 90% enriched uranium, you’re going to need 9,100 kilograms of U3O8, which at market prices is $411,300.Now that’s much more reasonable!But, of course, the problem we run into is that purchasing that much tasty cake (important note: Do not eat yellowcake, for it is not tasty) is that you’re going to get noticed. Your front company will be scrutinized, probably very quickly discovered to be a shell, and your dream will be over.But, you know, $411,300... Yeah, that looks like a good deal. However, let’s go back to our hypothetical mining operation.See, we’re not trying to establish a commercially viable uranium mine. Large, corporate prospectors are looking for deposits that will net them thousands upon thousands of tonnes of U3O8 that can be turned around for a profit. They’re not looking at the small, isolated deposits (less than 100 tonnes) which won’t recover their operational costs.These deposits, however, would be plenty sufficient for our – er, your, totally your – needs.So let’s say that poking around on the fringes of some of Western Australia or Queensland’s known uranium deposits (tell the government you’re looking for gold or copper) you and your team of geoscientists (cost/person: $90-130,000 per year, depending on experience) identify a probable uranium deposit area of 50 tonnes U3O8 at a depth between 100 to 150 metres. You ask a couple of mining engineers (cost/person: $75-150,000 per year, depending on experience) what they think is the best form of extraction, and if you’re lucky they might recommend in situ leaching (ISL).Basically, rather than blasting out a giant hole or digging a bunch of shafts with expensive equipment and having to deal with a lot of waste product, you can sit some wells over key deposit areas and gradually recover the uranium resin at the surface.On average, ISL mining costs between $65-$110 per kilogram of U380 extracted; so for your baseline 8,800 kilograms, you might be looking at $591,500 to $1,001,000.“Hey!” you say. “That’s a lot more than $411,300!”Yes, yes it is. I know how to math. But consider that you’re getting the added security of controlling your supply chain. If you end up needing more uranium (hint: you will, as will become apparent soon), then you can leach it out.Moreover, just because the market price for the quantity of U3O8 we’d be seeking to acquire is less than our estimated production value, that doesn’t take into account any other duties or fees associated with importing and storing such a large volume of a highly controlled and monitored substance. Add all those costs together, and you’d probably be in the same financial ballpark (and, also, on so many regulators’ and agencies’ radars).And, of course, $1 million is still much less than trying to get good uraninite from another provider, so you’re still in the black.As another side note, you did want to make a nuclear weapon from scratch, which to me sounds like mining should be involved anyway to stay in the spirit of the question.However, that $1 million is only estimated from the mine’s operating costs. We still have to build the mining complex. Most citations I can find for ISL mines’ capital expenditures are between $20-40 million, with some outliers in the $50 million range. In this hypothetical, we’re not working with a particularly large deposit, and so we might get away with construction costs at the bottom end of that range, if not slightly less.Given that, the total cost of the infrastructure to extract the needed quantity of U3O8 for your hobby nuke may be fairly estimated in the $15-20 million range, depending on just how geographically dispersed your deposit is and how much uranium you opt to pull out of the ground (again, roughly $100,000 per tonne). That cost includes the extraction and the process of refining the uranium slurry into yellowcake.In order to further process your yellowcake into enriched goodness, you’re going to need to do some chemistry (although you’ve already been pumping a lot of various acids deep underground), with the end product being uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a gaseous form of uranium that can be used to separate the U235 you need.As noted in the introduction, I am not a chemist. In fact, Chemistry is the only course I have ever failed in my life (if you don’t count my repeating Biology to get a final passing grade). You’re going to need to hire some actual chemists to help you through this process (cost/person: $60-110,000 per year per chemist, depending on experience). I’m just here to give you a sense of just how much chemistry you’re going to need to do (hint: a lot), and how much that chemistry might cost you (hint: a lot).So, first the yellowcake needs to take a bath in nitric acid in order to produce uranyl nitrate. You could either buy the nitric acid directly (pretty expensive to get a 100% solution at industrial quantities), or you could buy a bunch of nitrogen dioxide (not as expensive) to make some yourself.To process 9,100 kilograms of yellowcake, you’ll need 5,500 (-ish) kilograms of nitric acid. To make 5,500 (-ish... You know what? Just add “-ish” after all of these numbers) kilograms of nitric acid, you’ll need 6,000 kilograms of nitrogen dioxide (and a lot of water, which you should already have as part of your leaching operation).Scanning online, because this answer has already wrecked my search history, it looks like 50-60 litre canisters of nitrogen dioxide can be had for between $200-$350 each, of which you would need between 70 and 90; so that would cost somewhere between $14-32,000, depending on the supplier, canister quantity, and grade.Having made your nitric acid (consult your chemists), you’ll be able to make some 12,800 kilograms of uranyl nitrate (with just shy of 1,000 kilograms of nitrogen dioxide byproduct for possible capture and resale, maybe).You’ll then need about 1,600 kilograms of ammonia (cost: $1-2,000, although you’ll have a lot of this on hand from your ISL mine) and a lot of water (again, should be sorted) to make ammonium diuranate from the uranyl nitrate. That then gets a 65 kilogram hydrogen bath (cost: $500) to extract 8,750 kilograms of uranium dioxide.Hey, this is sounding pretty cheap! Well, keep reading – saved the best for last.In order to convert uranium dioxide to uranium tetraflouride, you’ll need 2,600 kilograms of hydrogen fluoride, which you should be able to extract from hydrofluoric acid, which sells for around $100 per kilogram. So, cost: $260,000.Ouch – and it gets worse.To get your 10,200 kilograms of uranium tetraflouride to that last step of gaseous goodness, you’ll need 1,250 kilograms of fluorine gas.Yeah, uh, this stuff is hard to track down (for probably good reasons), not even so much for its role in this illicit process than because it’s just generally, ridiculously toxic and corrosive. It’s usually sold in a diluted state in order to be transported safely, which might be the best you’re able to do (consult your chemists).The only citation I could find for its cost in pure form was $1,900 per kilogram, but that could be way off. Still, barring any other information, 1,250 kilograms of fluorine gas will run you $2.38 million.That seems prohibitive.Alternately, a number of plants engaged in high volumes of UF6 production appear to make fluorine gas on site, which is probably the most cost effective route, and then directly injecting the gas into process to minimize the risks of exposure. Its onsite production would also allow you to make large quantities of hydrogen fluoride, potentially reducing your costs further.The process begins with acidspar, a very high grade of fluorspar, and sulphuric acid. This produces hydrogen fluoride, which is then mixed with potassium fluoride to make potassium bifluoride. The potassium bifluoride then undergoes electrolysis to produce fluorine gas (and other things).Acidspar costs around $350 per metric tonne, and sulphuric acid $30 per kilogram. So already you might be thinking, “Oh yeah, way cheap!”Yeah, well, you’re going to need a lot of this stuff.In order to get 2,600 kilograms of hydrogen fluoride, you’ll need 5,000 kilograms of acidspar ($1,750) and 6,400 kilograms of sulphuric acid ($192,000), which you’ll also have a lot of as part of your mining operation. That’s a savings of $66,250.Now, to do the process again to get 1,250 kilograms of fluorine gas, you need 2,500 kilograms of acidspar ($875), 3,200 kilograms of sulphuric acid ($96,000), and 3,800 kilograms of potassium fluoride, which goes for $5 per kilogram ($19,000). That comes to a grand total of $115,875, for a savings of $2.26 million.So, yeah, relatively speaking it’s “way cheap.”Whichever way you go to get your fluorine gas, at the end of the process you’ll have 11,400 kilograms of UF6 that you can use to produce enriched uranium.Oh, you’ll also have accumulated about 2,800 litres of wastewater that’ll need to go somewhere, as well as 5,200 kilograms of ammonium nitrate that, if you don’t handle properly, will more-than flatten your operation in a horrific conventional explosion before you even get to your nuclear bomb. Perhaps you could try to recover some (like, a pitiful fraction) of your expenses by selling it as fertilizer.And, of course, all of that chemistry description totally glossed over the kind of specialised equipment and laboratory space that you would need to safely undertake the extraction process. It’s not exactly something that you can do in your backyard with some rusty pipes and glass beakers you bought second-hand. You also need people to help you with this, since moving around industrial quantities of hazardous chemicals by yourself is basically an easy way to ensure a slow, gruesome death.It’s hard to come up with a good figure on this, because it requires knowledge about specialty equipment that is difficult to track down. Scanning around some comparable industrial production sites, I think $15 million initial capital investment is a reasonable estimate, followed by hiring 8 to 12 staff to assist (cost/person: $50-110,000 per year, depending on experience).Okay, so now you have to get on with enrichment. This will require the work of many, very specialised centrifuges. How many? Well, obviously that depends both on how quickly you want to process the uranium and the level of enrichment you want. The more centrifuges you have, the faster you’ll have enriched uranium; but the higher the enrichment, that’s more work per centrifuge (and or more centrifuges again).That’s the thing: We (you – still all you) haven’t actually settled on an enrichment level. 90% is the baseline for “weapon-grade” uranium, but maybe you want to go for higher levels of enrichment to minimize the chance that your bomb is a dud.In the enrichment world, these and related factors are fed into a complex formula that determines the separative work units (SWU) required to achieve the desired product. In brief, calculating the SWU takes into account the U235 content of the uranium going into the process, the product’s target enrichment level, and the waste product’s enrichment level.Doing some math, getting 52 kilograms of between 90 and 99 percent enriched U235 with average levels of depleted uranium will require between 11,750 and 13,250 SWU.Modern centrifuges produce between 50 and 100 SWU per year, although some next-generation centrifuges have demonstrated the potential of producing upwards 350 SWU per year. However, in practice, you can’t just divide the total SWU required by the average centrifuge production (in this case, 13,250 / 100 = 133), because a single centrifuge isn’t going to be able to take on the work of concentrating the U235. Centrifuges are arranged in cascades – and then several cascades are linked in a series – to allow more of the feed material to progress through the enrichment process.So in practice, you’ll probably need ten or twenty times the number of centrifuges you might otherwise roughly calculate to achieve your production target within a year – so, in your case, 1,300-2,600.Centrifuges are some of the most precisely engineered machines on the planet, and they’re built from rare materials. That is to say that they’re not something you’re going to be able to whip up and churn out in your tool shed, and it also means that the number of companies capable of making centrifuges is very small, and their exports heavily regulated and monitored.Also worth noting is that the commercial enrichers appear to hire between 6-10 staff for every 1,000 SWU, so you’re looking at a possible staff of 60-130 technicians to make sure your facility stays up and running (cost/person: $60-120,000 per year, depending on experience).You could try and take the route of Iraq, Iran and North Korea and hire the foreign expertise required to build your own centrifuges based on copies of existing technology, but your cost margins (and your final product) probably aren’t going to be to dissimilar from buying centrifuges outright.And yes, I’m kind of skirting the issue of how much all of this will cost, because we’re hitting a lot of variables. We’re also hitting the problem of the fact that the companies that make centrifuges don’t (that I can tell) have public information on how much their centrifuges cost per unit, because why would they? Not only are they private companies, but they can count the number of potential clients on one hand (not including their own operations), and they’re talking to them directly.So I have no idea how much a centrifuge – much less 100 or 1,000 – could cost you, either in purchasing existing technology or (very crudely) creating your own by tapping available expertise.However, some researchers have taken a crack at creating cost curves for capital expenses needed for the construction of new enrichment plants – which we can assume would include the centrifuges – and, surprise, it doesn’t get cheap just because you’re making a small-scale facility. Based on their work and our inputs, you’re looking at capital costs between $16-32 million.By the way, we have to address another important cost component: How are you powering all of this? I mean, you can’t just plug your uranium mining, extraction, and enrichment facilities into the grid and expect everything to be A-OK. You’re looking at energy consumption levels on par with a small town. Your enrichment facility alone will require in the neighbourhood of 1,000 MWh in a year to operate (based on 60-65 kWh per SWU).Here again is another reason to base yourself in Australia: great solar potential.Building your own solar farm, though, is going to be expensive, but much less than buying wholesale. Construction of utility-level solar farms costs between $2-3 million per MW of generation, and if we assume 5 MW will suit your whole operation’s needs, then you might expect to spend $10-15 million.Anyway, once you have your weapon-grade uranium, you have to turn it into a weapon. In all likelihood, you’re going to be limited to a gun-type weapon, as most modern nuclear weapons use plutonium-239 (which we’re not going to make, since that’s a byproduct of a nuclear reaction, and we’re not going to be building any nuclear reactors today, as that tends to end poorly) and other materials that, frankly, are going to be beyond you to acquire.Moreover, you’re going to have to consult with physicists and engineers to optimize your warhead’s design, given that the gun-type is pretty inefficient. Only 2% of the uranium in the Hiroshima bomb actually underwent fission.On paper, if all 52 kilograms of your U235 underwent complete fission, the resulting energy release would be close to 1 megaton of TNT equivalent (66 Hiroshimas). However, you’re highly unlikely to achieve complete fission of all your U235 in the absence of other materials like Pu-239 and a very complex warhead design.Still, if you could improve on the Little Boy design that’s been the inspiration for this article to get even 10% of your U235 to undergo fission, then you’d be in the ballpark of the low range of currently deployed warhead yields.There is precedent for attempting the more complex implosion-type warhead with a pure U235 core, though. That was the principle behind the Mk-18, which was the largest pure fission bomb produced by the US. It had a U235 core that weighed 60 kilograms and delivered a yield of 500 kilotons (about 42% of its full potential). However, that amount of pure U235 in that configuration made the design was incredibly unstable, and extra precautions had to be taken to ensure there wasn’t an accidental explosion.And, you know, when designing nuclear bombs, “unstable” and “accidental” aren’t words you want to string together in the description.So, again, you’re going to want to consult a fair few physicists to get your design right (and stable).On top of this, you’re also going to have to somehow create or purchase the high explosives needed to set off the chain reaction (purchase cost: $200-400 per kilogram and all the red flags).But where you really have a problem is that it sounds like you want to be able to stick your nuke on top of a missile. That’s going to require you to be able to miniaturize the bomb, which requires a lot of time and expertise (just ask Iran and North Korea).How much will the R&D and final development cost you? No idea, but it’s probably fair to assume that your budget here will be an additional 20 to 25 percent of your overall spending just on the bomb design, and then again for the bomb’s miniaturizing. So let’s do the math, using the upper-end estimates:Uranium mining and extraction: $20 millionUF6 conversion facility: $15 millionU3O8 to UF6 conversion: $0.35 millionUranium enrichment facility: $32 millionSubtotal: $67.4 millionBomb design R&D: $16.9 millionBomb miniaturization: $16.9 millionSubtotal: $101.2 million+10% buffer and inflation: $10.1 millionGrand total: $111.3 millionOf course, keep in mind that once your capital and research expenses for the first bomb are sorted, for each subsequent bomb (assuming one per year):Uranium mining and extraction: $1 millionU3O8 to UF6 processing: $0.35 million raw, $800,000/year staffUranium enrichment: $7.6 million/yearElectricity: $200,000/year (operation and maintenance, unless you want to pay yourself for your own power).Grand total: $9.95 millionAnd I’m sure a lot of people are looking at that figure and saying, “Hang on, the Manhattan Project cost the equivalent of upwards $30 billion in today’s currency. How are you building a nuke from scratch for less than one percent of that?”Well, yeah, of course the Manhattan Project cost an insane amount of money to build the first nuclear bomb. Nobody had built one before. All the steps that we can kind of take for granted now had to be invented back then. Nobody was mining uranium or making plutonium in industrial quantities – they were super rare materials. The computing power they needed to test their theories required office-block like facilities. Literal towns had to be built from scratch to house the scientists, their technicians, and their families in order to maintain the utmost secrecy.It’s pretty easy to see how the government would have dropped a lot of money in that kind of circumstance. Today, though, a guy like me can come along, take a few days to browse the existing literature in order to pretend to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, get some price points on the now-global, highly industrialized nuclear fuel economy, and go from there.Moreover, after the US government dropped those billions of dollars for the first bomb, they didn’t have to spend nearly as much per bomb thereafter. The fact that the US government spent as much as it did on nuclear weapons from the 40s onwards was due to the sheer number of weapons they were building, testing, and refining, but the cost per bomb was pretty well reduced.The US government has spent close to $9 trillion on its nuclear weapons program since the beginning of the Manhattan Project. Of that amount, an estimated $640 billion was spent on nuclear weapon construction. If we exclude the Manhattan Project from that figure and focus just on the subsequent production of some 70,000 nuclear warheads, then the cost per bomb comes out to about $9.2 million.And, uh, I did that back-of-the-napkin calculation after I came up with my own ~$10 million/bomb production run, and it kind of freaked me out.So yeah, it cost the US government orders of magnitude to create its first nuclear bomb from scratch than it would some other upstart. That’s how technology works: somebody puts in a lot of money and effort to get the prototype into the market, and everybody else copies it for much less.The same goes for intercontinental ballistic missiles, which is the second part of this question.We’re going to copy the Topol-M, Russia’s mobile ICBM. Why? Because once the authorities figure out what you’re doing and descend on your weapons complex en masse, none of them are going to engage in a high speed chase with a mobile nuclear weapons platform. It’ll be the most bad-ass getaway of all time.Also, it’s a lot cheaper to buy and repair an old, military heavy truck than to dig and maintain a missile silo (average cost: $15 million). In fact, I was able to find the trucks used by the Soviets to haul the Topol-M for sale online for around $200,000. Add another $100,000 for repairs and upgrades, and boom: you have your launch platform.Easy. Onto the rocket.Hire lots of help.Like, you need to. Rocket science is hard, as these Quora answers very capably point out. You can’t just grab a metal tube, stuff it full of propellant, give it a kiss and send it on its merry, fiery way.“Hold on,” you might be thinking. “You just radically – really radically – simplified the process for creating a nuclear bomb, and now you’re putting a missile into the ‘too hard’ basket?”...Yeah, kind of. Balancing equations for chemical reactions and deriving quantities and prices required is monkey’s work. There are calculators for that. Even though I missed a lot of important details in describing the enrichment process, it’s still a pretty straightforward process as far as the big steps go. Chemistry is straightforward like that (again: failed it).But rockets?Keep in mind that it only took about a decade to turn nuclear weapons from theoretical to industrial manufacturing. Rocketry, meanwhile, despite decades of experience, still challenges even the most well resourced start-up programs (eg, Iran, North Korea). Even the Pentagon is having trouble coming up with a cost figure for replacing the Minuteman III missile, which hasn’t been manufactured since the 1990s, with estimates between $62 and $100 billion, owing to gaps in understanding of the facilities needed, and the potential labor and materiel costs. The middle ground estimate of $85 billion covers $718 million for related construction, $22.6 billion for research and development, and $61.5 billion for procurement and maintenance.So, yeah, it’s going to be difficult to say with a great degree of certainty just how much this side of the project will run you. But we can give it a very crude, ballpark shot.Another reason for choosing the Topol-M is because we know a fair bit about its properties by its civilian-modified version, the Start-1, which basically kept the Topol-M’s three stages intact while replacing the warhead component with a fourth stage (you’ll swap back to the original).Now, you’ll probably end up using some kind of ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP), but just a quick, basic scan of the available literature on APCPs reveals multiple possible formulas that could achieve the results you need to get your ballistic missile to go intercontinental, each of which would have variable costs to produce from raw materials.Now, parsing the annual stakeholder reports from American Pacific Corporation (AMPAC), the sole producer of ammonium perchlorate in North America, it looks like ammonium perchlorate goes for about $30 per kilogram. Whether they or someone similar will sell it to you in mass quantities is doubtful, but making it yourself doesn’t appear to be any less expensive, so we’re going to leave that figure there.For most solid fuel rockets, around 90 percent of the rocket’s total mass is fuel. For the sake of illustration, here’s a depiction of the component percentages for the Atlas V.Source: Tory Bruno (@torybruno), President and CEO United Launch AllianceIn our case, that would give us about 40,600 kilograms of fuel which, if it were all ammonium perchlorate, would cost around $1.22 million. However, given that the final propellant requires more than just ammonium perchlorate, the final cost of getting all the materials required for your preferred APCP could be significantly higher than that. For budgeting purposes, it might be safe to tack on another 50% of the base cost for $1.83 million.Knowing that the maximum warhead weight your Topol-M knock-off can carry is 1,200 kilograms, that leaves you with 3,300 kilograms of structural construction materials, which will be a mix of metals and carbon composites, and will be different for each stage.The casings for the three stages of the Minuteman III, for example, are carbon steel, titanium, and fibreglass. For a commercial comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 uses aluminium-lithium, and the Ariane 5 a mix of aluminium, steel, and carbon fibre reinforced plastic in its various components.And while we could probably look up the base costs for each of these materials (steel and fibreglass are cheap, titanium is not), it’s not going to be enough to just multiply the material by the weight and come up with an estimate. They behave very differently under the kinds of stresses that you might expect (and some that you might not) from launching something into space. You need precision engineering, or else your missile is more likely to explode on launch (a bad thing when carrying a nuclear warhead) rather than go anywhere; and the tools and expertise are going to rapidly inflate the cost of construction well above the cost of the raw materials.Additionally, you need a battery, and guidance and control systems, all of which need to be able to survive a launch and function under extreme circumstances. Those are expensive components.The other thing to keep in mind with the cost of rocket development is the research and development phase. This is much more expensive than what we estimated for the bomb design R&D because, ideally, each component of your rocket will undergo rigorous testing – often pushing components to the point of failure. That means you’re not just building one missile from one set of blue prints, but effectively several missiles by building, testing, breaking, and rebuilding components multiple times. So before you’ve even built a single rocket, you might have spent the equivalent of four or five rockets in development.I mean, you could skip this step if you’re supremely confident in your engineering and machinery teams, but it’s most definitely not recommended.So... We’re not really any closer to an estimate, are we?Each Peacekeeper missile cost around $50 million in today’s dollars. Each Minuteman III around $40 million. The Pentagon wants to buy its new missiles for around $66 million each. However, commercial launches of much, much larger rockets than your backyard ICBM (eg, Ariane 5 and Falcon 9) cost around $60 million each; and we have to assume a fair chunk of that has to be profit, or else the commercial space industry would collapse.If you’re not building your ICBM on an industrial level, maybe you can achieve some cost savings by not having to construct a massive facility and employ a large staff; but if you were able to keep the budget per missile below $40 million (which would put R&D upwards of $200 million), I would be impressed.All of this brings us back to a critical question asked at the start of this answer: How much land are you going to need to build your mining/nuke/missile complex?If you’ve been paying attention: a lot.Cycling back through some of the example facilities I’ve used in this answer:Heathgate Resources is currently leasing 30,000 hectares (300 square kilometres) of land in South Australia for its Beverley Mine operation, which on a map looks like this:Source: South Australian Resources Information GatewayThe total proven and inferred U3O8 deposit in the Beverley Mine area is just shy of 80,000 tonnes, so significantly larger than the hypothetical deposit for this answer (100 tonnes, to refresh your memory).However, just because our deposit is 1/800 the size of this real world example, it would be wrong to assume that a 375,000 square meter plot would be sufficient. You need room to explore and make sure that you’ve captured the full extent of the deposit.So, a bit arbitrarily, let’s estimate our needed plot as being [math]\frac{1}{\sqrt{800}}[/math] of the Beverley Mine, which comes out to 1,060 hectares (10.6 square kilometres) of land. That should be plenty sufficient to start with.The good thing about in situ recovery mining is that you can still use the surface for other developments, as the individual wells and boreholes don’t take up too much space and can extract the deposit from a distance. Of course, you don’t want to build too close to the approximate deposit area; because if you screw up, then you have an expensive tear-down-rebuild on your hands. So I would expect to keep at least 500 hectares in explicit reserve for mining and exploration.The mine’s processing plant probably won’t take up more than 6 hectares of land, and your 5MW solar farm will take up 15 hectares at the upper end.The Honeywell uranium conversion plant in Illinois takes up approximately 24 hectares, but it’s set up to process some 15,000 tonnes of UF6 per year at full capacity. You only need one-tenth of one percent of that capacity per bomb. However, like the mine size, you can’t expect to process multiple tonnes of volatile gasses and compounds in 0.1% of the space (240 square meters) just because you need 0.1% of the product.Just, no. You cannot make 12 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride in the space of a cozy family home.If we isolate what appear to be the core processing facilities of the Honeywell plant – we’ll have a lot of empty land, so we don’t need to double-up on calculating things like parking lots and storage yards – it comes out to about 5 hectares. Maybe you could compress that into 2 or 3 hectares, but some equipment might simply not lend itself to further compression; so for planning purposes, we’ll stick with 5 hectares.Your centrifuge plant should be able to house 10-20 SWU per square meter, which potentially makes it the smallest of your facilities. Still, that’s just the space for your centrifuge cascades. You need to account for storage, maintenance, staff, etc.The URENCO plant in New Mexico, for example, acquired 220 hectares of land for its initial 3 million SWU facility, even operations take place on about 44 hectares, with the actual (since-upgraded) facility space occupying 10 hectares. That means its actual SWU/square meter is upwards of 60; however, they’re using the latest and greatest centrifuges, and you won’t be.So for planning purposes, set aside two hectares.Finally, we have to set space aside for the missile’s construction.SpaceX has revolutionised the rocket construction industry by vertically integrating its construction process onto a small campus; and given both the size of your missile and scale of your production, you might actually be able to replicate its small construction footprint. SpaceX’s main facilities in Hawthorne, California, have a combined footprint of 39,000 square meters, so just shy of 4 hectares. As previously established, you don’t need to worry about building a launch facility, and you’ll have plenty of open space for testing that we don’t need to necessarily set aside.Where does that leave us on land?Initial plot: 1,060 hectaresMining and exploration: 500Solar farm: 15Ore processing facility: 6Conversion facility: 5Enrichment facility: 2Missile production: 4Total used: 532Spare: 528And if that seems like a lot of empty space, consider it as a privacy/security buffer, or room to set aside if you ever feel generous and decide to build a tenement village for your many workers (seeing as how you’re out in the middle of nowhere – that’s a very long commute).So how much would that amount of land cost?It would depend a bit on the state in which you discover your deposit, and then where in that state, but in general, the median, statewide price per hectare in Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia for sales in excess of 500 hectares ranges from $785 to $1,100. However, the more rural you get, the faster those medians drop (eg, $277 per hectare in west Queensland, $536 in east Western Australia).So if you think you can compress your whole operation into 530 hectares atop a deposit in Queensland, then you might be looking at $416,000 in land acquisition. Get stuck with a large parcel in the north of Western Australia – which, reminder, is going to be the least amenable to your uranium prospecting – and you might have to pay out $1.2 million or more.And so now, finally, getting back to the question: How much does it cost to build a nuclear weapon and ICBM from scratch?$327.5 million for the first pair, $49.95 million for each pair thereafter.You might be looking at those figures and having a little freak out. “That’s so cheap for a country! Why don’t more nations have nukes? Why doesn’t a well-funded terrorist organization have one?!”Well, let’s put a lot of my very speculative writing back into perspective.First off, yes, that amount of money is nothing for advanced nations like the United States, Russia, and China. Again, the US Department of Defense is currently considering replacing its entire ICBM arsenal at a cost of upwards $100 billion over several decades – and that’s being considered costly but not prohibitive.But let’s assume for a moment that every country on Earth spent an average of two percent of their GDP on military matters, with one-fourth of a percent solely going towards a nuclear program (which would be nearly double the US’ annual expenditure as a percent of GDP); and let’s assume that, for an effective nuclear deterrent, a nation needs 25 nuclear-armed ICBMs, and they aim to build it within three years (a pretty quick ramp-up). Based on all of the above, that means a nation would have to spend around $1.53 billion – about $500 million per year – to get an admittedly very crude nuclear deterrent.In order to make that kind of a commitment, a nation would need to have a minimum annual GDP of $204 billion per year. Depending on who’s counting, there are only 40 to 50 nations with that level of GDP, and most of them are allies with an existing nuclear power (to make the development of their own nuclear arsenal unnecessary).Obviously we can play with those figures all we’d like until we make it “affordable” for every nation on the planet to put aside a little bit each year to their nuclear rainy day fund, but eventually we’re going to hit a floor where the level of annual spending is insufficient to make any substantive progress towards a nuclear bomb and delivery system. Let’s say that floor is $75 million per year at one-tenth of a percent of GDP. Quick math says that means a GDP of $75 billion per year would be sufficient to acquire a crude deterrent in 20 years.That expands the list of potential nuclear states to a whopping 70 – less than half of all nations on Earth – and over a period of time that would almost certainly subject those nations to sanctions and trade embargos to severely restrict their capacity to make good on their ambitions (eg, why Iraq was very far from achieving nuclear club status by 1991).Moreover, our scenario assumes a steady, securable supply of uranium. That is, unfortunately (or fortunately), well beyond most nations, as proven deposits only exist in 50 nations, with appreciable deposits and mining activity in about half of them.No uranium, (effectively) no nukes.The challenges for a rogue organization (ie, “the terrorists”) to achieve nuclear club status are even more enormous. In what universe are they supposed to get the capacity to acquire and enrich industrial levels of uranium without anybody noticing, much less build the highly technical facilities to pull off bomb and missile development? It’s just not a realistic possibility.This is why the worry of intelligence agencies is terrorists getting their hands on one of the mythical “suitcase nukes” that went missing in the collapse of the Soviet Union, or sufficient quantities of other radioactive materials and using them in a dirty bomb rather than manufacturing a sophisticated nuclear weapon from scratch. It’s much easier – relatively speaking – for a terrorist organization to steal and repurpose other people’s nuclear research and development than to try and develop the capacity on their own.That’s exactly why the world’s existing nuclear powers and major intelligence organizations so closely guard and monitor the trafficking and storage of nuclear weapon-capable components. Moreover, because the process for building a crude nuclear device can be pretty easily researched by someone determined enough (see all of the above), it’s also pretty well known where the possible exploits might be, and how to protect against them.Furthermore, just because a person (or group of people) might compile the core knowledge needed to understand how to build a nuclear bomb and delivery vehicle by no means guarantees that they have the capability to produce such things. They would still require the expertise of a pretty exclusive club of scientists and engineers, most of whom are already employed by legitimate makers and maintainers of nuclear materials and who would probably not readily sign on to a rogue actor’s up-and-coming program.So if you have $300-odd million to spare and a lot of land on top of a uranium deposit, yeah, okay, you might have the bare resources needed to get your own nuclear weapons program up and running. However, don’t be surprised if any of the nuclear engineers and physicists you approach to join your team turn right around and alert any number of international authorities about your intentions.But hey, let me know how far you get, by which I mean I’ll read about it in the news after you’re detained and authorities share with the media just how close you did (or, more likely, didn’t get).On the upside, John Lithgow might make a cameo appearance in the television depiction of your endeavour and ultimate downfall.Cost: Priceless.

The next twenty years are going to showcase some of the most monstrously terrifying while holistically awe-inspiring feats of engineering in the history of warfare.To set the scene, imagine a time in the not so distant future. A despotic regime in the Horn of Africa is growing wealthy as their people toil though life in comparatively medieval conditions. A once nameless local warlord has grown to become a regional threat, disturbing the balance of power and trade from Central Africa to the waters on the far end of the Indian Ocean. He is backed by powerful Eastern allies caring enough for his nation's mineral wealth to ignore his history of human rights violations to the neighboring peoples who have fallen under his shadow. Emboldened by the regime's newly acquired military hardware, the dictator invades his neighbor to the South.AirSatellite imaging has shown diplomatic initiatives to prevent the invasion have failed. The dictator has already started his attack. Ground forces have crossed the border simultaneously with a series of air strikes. Armed with next generation aircraft, they are an imposing threat to dated military of their targets. As the air raid sirens blow, they scramble to arm and launch their small force of outdated warplanes built more than 40 years ago. In previous wars these planes were considered to be invincible, but today many of the pilots wonder if they now are little more than their own glorified coffins.Elsewhere, on a base in the the Arabian Sea the order has been given to launch a squadron of hypersonic fighter drones.Son of the BlackbirdEnvisioned as an unmanned aircraft, the SR-72 would fly at speeds up to Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. At this speed, the aircraft would be so fast, an adversary would have no time to react or hide.“Hypersonic aircraft, coupled with hypersonic missiles, could penetrate denied airspace and strike at nearly any location across a continent in less than an hour,” said Brad Leland, Lockheed Martin program manager, Hypersonics. “Speed is the next aviation advancement to counter emerging threats in the next several decades. The technology would be a game-changer in theater, similar to how stealth is changing the battlespace today.”A hypersonic plane does not have to be an expensive, distant possibility. In fact, an SR-72 could be operational by 2030. For the past several years, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a method to integrate an off-the-shelf turbine with a supersonic combustion ramjet air breathing jet engine to power the aircraft from standstill to Mach 6. The result is the SR-72 that Aviation Week has dubbed “son of Blackbird,” and integrated engine and airframe that is optimized at the system level for high performance and affordability."Meet the SR-72" - Lockheed Martin Press ReleaseAs the drones take off a nervous international film crew in a hotel more than 3200 km away prepare for the impending attack. As the minutes tick by a lucky cameraman on the balcony spots the enemy's planes in the distance. The tiny specs of silver grows ever more dangerous in the sky as four squadrons of enemy fighters become visible. Twenty six minutes after the invasion began the warplanes are now visible to the capitol city. As their profile becomes clearer the camera captures something its operator can't even see. He sees the jets in the distance and then a flash of light and smoke - first the lead plane followed soon after by all of the other fifteen in his formation. He thinks that they have fired their missiles, but then sees in the distance through his camera's zoom the puffs of smoke were actually explosions in the sky. Sixteen white clouds were showering debris on the city outskirts. A few moments later the city is rocked by a violent tremor and the deafening roar of a thousand screaming lions as windows throughout the city shatter and fall to the ground. No enemy planes are anywhere to be seen as the clouds of fallen invaders dissipates into nothingness. A few minutes later a second boom can be heard, this time much more faint. As its echoes fade the sirens are quieted and silence is all that is heard throughout the city.CyberspaceThe dictator sat at the head of a granite top table in the situation room of the jewel of his domain, the Republican Guard Headquarters Building with his most accomplished and senior staff to either side. They looked above the massive table to monitors on the far wall. As their forward strike fighters continued on their doomed mission, little did these leaders know that an enemy agent had already infiltrated the deepest recesses of their most guarded strongholds, and in fact, that very room. As they gleefully watched their monitors in the situation room, expecting to see the results of a stunning victory, the room abruptly went dark. Sudden night fell on the leadership with the deafening silence of the sudden halting of every light, screen, computer, and air vent in the building. The after image of the screens in the pitch blackness of the room was the only thing the dictator and his Generals could see. As the dim green square in their vision faded, fear and confusion took over when they realize that they are cut off from their information of the battlefield and their command over it."United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."Stuxnet is a computer worm that was discovered in June 2010. It was designed to attack industrial Programmable Logic Controllers or PLCs. PLCs allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or (most infamously) centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Exploiting four zero-day flaws, Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart. Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Stuxnet has three modules: a worm that executes all routines related to the main payload of the attack; a link file that automatically executes the propagated copies of the worm; and a rootkit component responsible for hiding all malicious files and processes, preventing detection of the presence of Stuxnet. Israel, through Unit 8200, has been speculated to be the country behind Stuxnet in many media reports and by experts such as Richard A. Falkenrath, former Senior Director for Policy and Plans within the U.S. Office of Homeland Security.The helpless dictator and his highest ranking officials clumsily scurry and stumble amid the confusion and chaos of the situation room. Groping in the darkness one finally reaches the door, opening to reveal a likewise dimmed out hallway, stirring with frightened secretaries and officials. So deep in the building was the central administration section of the Republican Guard Headquarters that natural light from the outside had no chance of reaching them. The first few minutes ticked away as they fingered their ways down the hall, led by the soft glow of lighters in their pockets and the few flashlights that had been found in the office. The dictator's security team stormed the room as they grabbed their leader to take him to his secure command center. The Generals, now left behind, guided themselves to a point of light at the end of the hall. An exit sign was visible at the end of a hall above a door, natural light peeking out from around its perimeter. They opened the door to the blinding light of the setting sun.As they regained themselves, they looked out over the balcony of the building. They could see their dictator being rushed into a car and it screaming into the street. Within the car the dictator desperately tried to regain control of his country. He and his closest secretaries pulled their phones from their pockets to realize all the devices were now dead. All communication lines had been lost. One of them screamed out to destroy their phones since they may be being tracked. Frustrated, he threw his phone to floorboard and stomped it with his foot, followed by all the rest. As his car made its way down the momentous parade route of the Ministry of Defenses's new complex of buildings he saw that none was lit as it should be at this hour. Each had gone dark. In the distance he could see only the dark silhouettes of the National Palace and the Headquarters of the National Police, contrasted greatly by the bright lights in full illumination of the city behind them. Behind him he saw his grand Republican Guard building, now just a shadow, backlit by the rising of the full moon.He could never have known that days before a secret agent had slipped deep into nation's defense system. It had arrived when he had made one of his grand propaganda broadcast in the days and weeks leading up to today's attack. After a digitally broadcast display of his army on parade he gave a speech, invigorating his populace. After the grandiose display a commercial was broadcast telling his citizens of a news application where they could learn more about their great leader's plan to empower the people of their nation. A link was displayed on the screen where his citizens were asked to download the free news and information source. Tens of thousands of his people did as they were instructed. Had he only known that the program they downloaded was not the one he had provided. Unbeknownst to anyone, they were redirected through a series of proxies to a new program, one similar in every way, from look to functionality to the one the dictator had mentioned... that is, except for major difference. Embedded in the program was a new process. This additional program tracked the information of everyone who downloaded it. From a base far away, an information network was being created with the ID's, contacts, messaging identifiers, locations, bank account activity, medical history and locations of thousands of different users. Subtle messages were being generated and sporadically sent out across all user's social media and email accounts. Faithful believe in the words of their friends, family and coworkers endorsement of the very real, well-known and verified national news source encouraged millions of people to download the application. This truly viral media campaign had, in fact, been among the nation's most successful advertising campaigns. His national secretaries believed the great success was due to the people's great faith in the dictator and his dream for their nation. In days building up to right now, a virtual map of all the most influential systems and people had been developed automatically by the intrusive worm. Information on millions of his people was now accessible, most importantly many of his top aides, officials and officers. Entrances had been created into the most important networks in his country, from his military networks, the national banking system, his secret police force and intelligence networks and even into the power and sewer grids. As darkness fell over his city, a shadow that had loomed in his presence began to rise.His car made its way to his secure bunker deep within the Ministry of Defense's Complex in the capital. Helplessly he looked out his window when his car came to a stop. He screamed at the driver for an explanation of the delay when he looked ahead to see the streets ahead in hopeless gridlock. As the lights when dark in the Ministry, so did the traffic lights throughout the entire city. Now there was nothing directing the millions of people heading home from work on what seemed like a normal day. It was the only civilian system affected, yet it left the entire city and all its people in a complete standstill. As he looked out he saw the line of cars clustered before him and the growing congestion building behind him. He was trapped and completely vulnerable. Most were just normal commuters but now many were desperate government officials fleeing the Ministry. Realizing the danger he was in, his security team opened his car door and rushed him out of the vehicle. They would have to make the rest of the three mile trip on foot.He wouldn't reach his destination though. Among his entourage was the driver of his vehicle and his personal confidant. Not realizing the danger it posed, he had never thought to destroy his phone. Though the device appeared to be broken and disabled, as he discovered when attempting to reach Central Command, a message was still being sent.........."9°00'49.2"N, 38°45'44.9"E"..."Heading North by Northwest"..."3.2 meters per second"...SpaceAn overland invasion force has yet to receive word of their forward air strike's failure and the collapse of the Ministry of Defense in the capital. They view the radio blackout as a temporary interruption and continue on their mission as ordered until command can come back online. Formations of tank and troop carriers storm in through the African savanna. They can be seen nearing a local village by villagers high in the mountains. The dust their convoy column has risen is visible for miles. As the village comes in sight from the top of the hill, their column reforms and goes offroad. Spread out across the valley they loom upon the frightened villagers.High in orbit above the continent a satellite shifts into position.Project Thor is an idea for a weapons system that launches kinetic projectiles from Earth orbit to damage targets on the ground. Jerry Pournelle originated the concept while working in operations research at Boeing in the 1950s before becoming a science-fiction writer.[1][2] The most described system is "an orbiting tungsten telephone pole with small fins and a computer in the back for guidance". The weapon can be down-scaled, an orbiting "crowbar" rather than a pole. The system described in the 2003 United States Air Force (USAF) report was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods, that are satellite controlled, and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.[3][4][5]The time between deorbiting and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a world-wide range. There is no requirement to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. Although the SALT II (1979) prohibited the deployment of orbital weapons of mass destruction, it did not prohibit the deployment of conventional weapons. The system is prohibited by neither the Outer Space Treaty nor the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.[4][6]The idea is that the weapon would inflict damage because it moves at orbital velocities, at least 9 kilometers per second. Smaller weapons can deliver measured amounts of energy as small as a 225 kg conventional bomb. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[5]In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 USAF report above, a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (or 7.2 tons of dynamite). The mass of such a cylinder is itself greater than 9 tons, so it is clear that the practical applications of such a system are limited to those situations where its other characteristics provide a decisive advantage. Some other sources suggest a speed of 36,000 ft/s (11,000 m/s),[8] which for the aforementioned rod would amount to a kinetic energy equivalent to 120 tons of TNT or 0.12 kt. With 6-8 satellites on a given orbit, a target could be hit within < 12–15 minutes from any given time, less than half the time taken by an ICBM and without the warning.As the raid nears the city, frightened villagers look back to their assailants. As they do they see a series of streaks dart across the sky. The momentary points of light rain havoc upon the enemy vehicles. Tanks are flattened and thrown across the landscape as troop vehicles disintegrate in plumes of dust. As they watch with awe three more flashes of light steak across the sky. They collide the Earth with a massive eruption of violence and astonished bewilderment. With fear and amazement, massive dust clouds rise from the impact sights as each eject a wave of force emanating from their points of impact. The waves spreads across the plain, felling trees and kicking up the grasses. The waves continue on towards the village, first one, then another and then another. They are knocked from their feet and look back on the blast. The area is nothing more than a massive cloud of dust which is now settling everywhere around them. Their attackers are all gone. [1]SeaCombating a rise in piracy within their maritime jurisdictions, various world governments have adapted to be responsive with faster, lighter navies armed with fleets of advanced new ships combining stealth capabilities with high fire power armaments and speeds outmatching their agile rivals.As the regime begins to breakdown in Africa weapons and soldiers flow out and join up with local pirate factions looting shipping lanes across the Indian ocean. Little did one ship know, that it was already being closely followed by the US Navy's next generation of naval weapons.The littoral combat ship (LCS) is a class of relatively small surface vessels intended for operations in the littoral zone (close to shore) by the United States Navy.[1] It was "envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals."[2]The Freedom class and the Independence class are the first two variants of LCS by the U.S. Navy. LCS designs are slightly smaller than the U.S. Navy's guided missile frigates, and have been likened to corvettes of other navies. However, the LCS designs add the capabilities of a small assault transport with a flight deck and hangar large enough to base two SH-60B/F or MH-60R/S Seahawk helicopters, the capability to recover and launch small boats from a stern ramp, and enough cargo volume and payload to deliver a small assault force with fighting vehicles to a roll-on/roll-off port facility. The standard armament for the LCS are Mk 110 57 mm guns and Rolling Airframe Missiles. It will also be able to launch autonomous air, surface, and underwater vehicles.[3] Although the LCS designs offer less air defense and surface-to-surface capabilities than comparable destroyers, the LCS concept emphasizes speed, flexible mission module space and a shallow draft.The concept behind the littoral combat ship, as described by former Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England, is to "create a small, fast, maneuverable and relatively inexpensive member of the DD(X) family of ships." The ship is easy to reconfigure for different roles, including anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, homeland defense, maritime intercept, special operations, and logistics. Due to its modular design, the LCS will be able to replace slower, more specialized ships such as minesweepers and larger assault ships.[11]The pirates are occupied hunting down civilian traffic in the area... to busy to notice the ship rapidly gaining on them. Traveling at more than 50 knots these next generation littoral ship is one of the fastest vessels in existence. In little time at all it has closed with the pirate's ship. Desperate to evade, the pirates attempt to flee. Wishing to avoid a confrontation the Captain issues an edict for the ship to shut off it's engines using its latest version of the Long Range Acoustic Device in twelve of the major languages of the region. Fearing capture and acting in desperation the pirates turned their boat towards the US Navy ships. It was clear that they were attempting to ram the vessel. Warning shots were fired from the 110 cannons across the enemy bow. The ship continued to close. The cannons were zeroed on the ship and with the Captain's command the ship was torn to shreds by successive bursts of the overwhelming cruiser.A life raft was spotted behind the wreckage. The XO informed the Captain that it appeared they had jumped ship hoping that the ramming would sink the LCS. If the pirates were able to get back home having captures a video sinking the US Navy ship they could become wealthy men for the bounties that circulated among the area's various black market cartels. Today, however, they wouldn't be so fortunate and tonight they would be spending the night in the ship's brig. This was the second such arrest this week by the fleet with another seven expected before the end of the month. [2]MedicineCorporal "Cy" Fannon is augmented with an artificial eye and hand after losing his in Venezuela. The "Cy" stands either for cyborg or cyclops. No one really knows which and no one is brave enough to ask. He's quiet, but when he looks at you with that creepy as hell robot eye, you'll do whatever he asks just to get him to stop eyeballin' you.After Venezuela, Fannon was given the opportunity to be med-sepped with full medical benefits from the VA. He was also presented with the opportunity to prototype some new of the DARPA tech ready for the field. He took the road of fool hardy and stayed in to be a human guinea pig for some robomed company's hopes of creating the future of robot warriors to put the rest of us out of a job.Futurists and researchers in prosthetic technology say that nearly everything depicted in [science fiction] films is possible; indeed, current advances in robotics, neuroscience, and microelectronics are bringing the visions of science fiction closer to reality every year. Over the next two decades, scientists expect to introduce bionic appendages that respond to thoughts, and chips implanted in the brain with the potential to download data directly into human memory banks.Devices including "neuroprosthetic" limbs for paralyzed people and "neurorobots" controlled by brain signals from human operators could be the ultimate applications of brain-machine interface technologies developed under a $26 million contract to Duke University sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The contract is part of DARPA's Brain-Machine Interfaces Program (http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/sp/bmi.htm), which seeks to develop new technologies for augmenting human performance by accessing the brain in real time and integrating the information into external devices.His first major augmentation was his neural unit installed into his skull. You can see the scar under his high reg, but it's not like the brick they've been installing in amputees for the past decade. Even if they don't have to move their arms and legs like robots anymore, half of them would fall over from the stupid giant controller unit. I don't even know how they sleep. Cy's got it all on the inside. I really don't know that all works. What powers the damn thing? Half of us wonder if the thing is fryin' his brain or something, either with microwave transmissions or just because he has a stinking computer console in his grape, but as long as he doesn't short circuit, I guess he's fine.Next, he got his arm. They've really perfected the art form with arms like his. Honestly, I didn't even know he had the thing until we went out to the bar one day back in San Diego. He crushed a beer can into a marble. I thought I was going to piss myself. It wasn't until he pulled off a flesh panel to show the gears, wires, and techogizzitry that I realized he had the prosthetic limb. It was all Star Wars or something. It's honestly a bit of an advantage. I know you're not supposed to say that a dude who got his hand blown off has an advantage, but as long as he keeps his arm still he always quals expert at the range and has the grip of a bear. Ok, he has to oil himself like some sort of freaky Marine Corps version of the Tin Man, but still I kind of wonder if he is better off with the robot arm.Lastly, and most obviously, is his freaky robot eye. He didn't take the natural ones. No, he went full Terminator. It's an on board camera with multiple sensors that far outperform us "norms". He can see with that thing far beyond normal people. He can focus the thing to full zoom at better than 20/1 vision, more than 20 times farther than any of the rest of us. What'll really freak you out is that he can see in infrared and night vision. It isn't as good as the installed unit of helmets, but he can see heat, which is so freaky. I don't really know what one would do with all that, but I suppose it's nice that he always knows which beer is coldest. I guess that is a good trade off. What's probably the most important though is that he can record everything. At night he'll go through and plug this cable into the port of his eye, review and upload all the important stuff he saw that day. I kind of wonder what he does with it. Makes me really worried to change in front of the guy, but oh well. His depth perception is still off though. When he is letting the system idle with the range finder off, Sergeant has fun throwin' stuff at him, knowin' that he has no hope of reacting correctly. In a way it helps us remember that he has vulnerabilities and isn't some sort of ubermensch gearing up to lead the robots in their take over of Earth. [3]Diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a teenager, Pontz has been almost completely blind for years. Now, thanks to a high-tech procedure that involved the surgical implantation of a “bionic eye,” he’s regained enough of his eyesight to catch small glimpses of his wife, grandson and cat.The artificial implant in Pontz’s left eye is part of a system developed by Second Sight that includes a small video camera and transmitter housed in a pair of glasses. Images from the camera are converted into a series of electrical pulses that are transmitted wirelessly to an array of electrodes on the surface of the retina. The pulses stimulate the retina’s remaining healthy cells, causing them to relay the signal to the optic nerve. The visual information then moves to the brain, where it is translated into patterns of light that can be recognized and interpreted, allowing the patient to regain some visual function.In any case, Corporal Cy is one messed up freak, but he is a crazy good Marine. He's specialized in ways the rest of us couldn't compete with. He is special and a great asset to the squad. He's unique in the Corps and all his augments make him perfect for his role with the team... as the squad's field operator.LandIn a valley to the South of the recently created Camp Mēga a pack of autonomous robots maneuvers through the valley. They are delivering supplies to the recently activated forward operations base. The four robots run in line through the dry river beds and plains, navigating the rocky feet of mountain cliffs. These are the GammaDogs, the latest's version of transportation vehicles built by the robotics firm Boston Dynamics, a subsidiary of SoftBank. They make thousands of these runs delivering the gear and equipment across the thousands of miles of terrain in the scope of military operations. They deliver everything from gear and equipment to medical supplies and food for the local villages and even care packages from home. They also have specialized combat variants which support the front line patrols by carrying packs and heavy ordinance of the troops in the field. When on their own, each time they make the journey it is a new one, so that their patterns are never discovered by enemy insurgent forces.BigDog is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the hopes that it will be able to serve as a robotic pack mule to accompany soldiers in terrain too rough for conventional vehicles. Instead of wheels or treads, BigDog uses four legs for movement, allowing it to move across surfaces that would defeat wheels. The legs contain a variety of sensors, including joint position and ground contact. BigDog also features a laser gyroscope and a stereo vision system.Built onto the actuators are sensors for joint position and force, and movement is ultimately controlled through an onboard computer which manages the sensors. Approximately 50 sensors are located on BigDog. These measure the attitude and acceleration of the body, motion and force of joint actuators as well as engine speed, temperature and hydraulic pressure inside the robot's internal engine. Low-level control, such as position and force of the joints, and high-level control such as velocity and altitude during locomotion, are both controlled through the onboard computer.On March 18, 2008, Boston Dynamics released video footage of a new generation of BigDog known as AlphaDog.[4] The footage shows BigDog's ability to walk on icy terrain and recover its balance when kicked from the side.[5] The refined equivalent has been designed by Boston Dynamics to exceed the BigDog in terms of capabilities and use to dismounted soldiers. In February 2012, with further DARPA support, the militarized Legged Squad Support System (LS3) variant of BigDog demonstrated its capabilities during a hike over tough terrain.Starting in the summer of 2012, DARPA planned to complete the overall development of the system and refine its key capabilities in 18 months, ensuring its worth to dismounted warfighters before it is rolled out to squads operating in theatre. BigDog must be able to demonstrate its ability to complete a 20 mi (32 km) trek within 24 hours without refuelling while carrying a load of 400 lb (180 kg), whereas a refinement of its vision sensors will also be conducted.From one of these cliffs a shepherd watches with amazement. These must have been the "mule cars" he had heard spoken of at the market the last time he visited the village. Now he could see them in his valley. He marveled how at times they reminded him of the bison stampeding as they maneuvered through the valley below. Only these bisons moved too perfectly. Every action was with intent and with purpose. In a perfect line they leaped, bound, climbed and ran faster than he could believe possible of a machine. The small train of robots continued without pause where there was no road nor trail, leaving only puffs of smoke where their feet impacted the dry earth. Wanting to show his friends and family the wonder he saw today, he pulled out the phone from his pocket to capture the moment. [4]IntelligenceAbove surveillance drones escort the train of GammaDog transport vehicles. They're armed with a battery of cameras and other detection equipment, able to see in 3D and infrared detection. Sonar systems allow them to make three dimensional maps of the area for battlefield planners. This latest model can fly in two modes, as a glider for endurance surveying or flapping its wings as a bird or, more precisely, as a bat. These bats measure just two feet in length. They are capable of surveillance silently from several hundred feet above the target to perching indiscriminately on the ledge of any building. It's powered through a solar membrane on its wings providing hours of additional flight time after the battery would have run dry. The COM-BATs are equipped with networking capabilities to share view points across multiple angles and a wide area. They communicate everything in real time to operators or higher level intelligence programs. Traveling in flights groups of four or more, they provide numerous layers of immediate information to troops in the field, war planners, and battlefield observers.Scientists at the University of Michigan College of Engineering are developing a six-inch robotic spy plane, modeled after a bat. Colloquially known as the COM-BAT program its purpose is gathering data such as sights, sounds, and smells in urban combat zones and transmitting the information back to combatants in real time. A $10 million grant was given for this project, which is being developed in the Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology. The robotic bat is planned to perform short-term surveillance missions supporting advancing troops in the battlefield. It could perch at a street corner and send data regarding its immediate surroundings, or could land on a building for longer surveillance assignments. Real-time reports of its activity will constantly be sent to the commanding unit.The University of Michigan researchers are focusing on the microelectronics. They will develop sensors, communication tools, and batteries for the new “Bat” micro-aerial vehicle. Engineers envision tiny cameras for stereo vision, an array of mini microphones that could home in on sounds from different directions, and small detectors for nuclear radiation and poisonous gases. The robotic bat will also have the ability to navigate at night, using low-power miniaturized radar and a very sensitive navigation system. Its lithium battery will recharge using solar energy, wind, and vibrations, and the bat will communicate with the troops using radio signals.The robot’s body is designed to be about six inches long and to weigh about a quarter of a pound. Its expected energy consumption will be 1W. They will work to develop quantum dot solar cells that double the efficiency of current solar cells. Furthermore, they expect their autonomous navigation system, which would allow the robot to direct its own movements, to be 1,000 times smaller and more energy efficient than systems in use today. If the planned improvements will indeed be successful, the researchers believe they will provide the bat with a communication system ten times smaller, lighter and more energy efficient than currently available systems.Today, one of the tiny planes has spotted something through its on board infrared camera. There is a man on the ledge above the pass. One of the BATS leaves the group of escorts to investigate. With his cameras the plane circles above the unsuspecting man. The plane relays images to a remote operations intelligence server. The server's image recognition software sees that the target is a military aged male. He has with him an AK-47, though this is common in such a dangerous country. However now the man has pulled from his pocket a device the program recognizes from its database to be one of the old phones of a few decades ago. The system analyzes the angular projection and determines that this man could have attempting to capture images from the mule team down below. The event is flagged "Orange".The Orange rating triggers the server to initiate a series of queries to determine more information on the target. The GPS location was cross-referenced with the country's land listings and it was found that the land was leased to a family by their patriarch Solomon Selassie. Another query to the nation's record office of public health pulled a birth certificate and health care history information. That information indicated Solomon to be too old to be the man seen in the recording, however, Solomon had a son, Yared. Yared's age and medical information matched the apparent height and age of the target. Further investigation of his record showed school records with photos. Facial recognition with aging calculated a high probability that the target in question was indeed Yared Selassie. A search for information on Yared connected the search program to his account with the local phone company service provider. A data package had indeed just been sent from Yared's device to another device in Yared's network.Fortunately for Yared, he had no known background with the now displaced regime. He also had no criminal record and was not connected with any known agents of the regime in the last 10 years. His ID had not been one of those gathered during the initial cyber infiltration a few weeks ago so no logs of him existed yet in the military's watch list, which indicated that he had little contact with the rest of the world and with the regime at all. By all known accounts, the program results seemed to indicate that he was indeed a peaceful shepherd farmer living deep in the African savanna. The event would be logged as Yellow for cautionary and suspicious activity. He would have an identity file created under the database where his information would be easily accessible and the event would be called any time in the future if Yared may come into investigation. Any future suspicious actions by him would likely result in his apprehension.His GPS location was also flagged Yellow. In the event of future activity there, Yared would likely be a source of information if not also suspect. The Selassie home was also flagged White - for informational - along with the rest of the family and known contacts of Yared. If Yared were to ever become considered dangerous, they would be considered sources of potential information or potential accomplices and the house would be watched. Today, however, Yared was not in danger of arrest. Logs were created in all the relevant databases and a report was generated on Yared, the location and infraction in question. The report would be delivered to the Provisional Constable's email. The entire process up to this point had been automated and no human would have any knowledge of the event until the Constable read his email. It would be one of a few dozen he would receive that week. He would probably forward this one on to one of his deputies and in a few weeks the deputy would dispatch an officer with security detachment to investigate the Selassie house. They would discover the reason for taking the photo and if everything was determined to be all clear the family would be advised not to take any more photos of military equipment again. The family would be scanned with the Biometric Automated Toolset. Their photos, fingerprints, DNA and numerous other identifiers would be logged to their identifying files. After that the Selassie family's life would go back to normal, though a new mountain of information on them would be readily available for intelligence agencies and perhaps more dangerously, the new regime to come once the Americans left.As the report was generated and sent to the Constable, the BAT was directed to call off its surveillance of Yared and return to escorting the transports. Yared watched the train move out of the valley completely unaware of what had transpired. He returned his phone to his pocket, gathered his things and moved his small flock down the mountain back towards his home.Light InfantryCommand is nervous following an up-tic in civilian protests throughout the region. Numerous activist groups are coming out as they attempt of built something resembling a government to replace the shattered regime. Most are harmless and benevolent. Many want to bring about real change for the region and are anxiously seeking to take advantage of their first real chance at leadership roles in more than a decade. Others, however, push for more dangerous agendas. Remnant forces still vie for power, sometimes through democratic means and other times in the form of a new brewing insurgency. Many of the old leadership in the defunct regime escaped overseas and are now channeling money, and propaganda into the country. Enough of the old regime's officers saw the coming storm and saw to it that stockpiles of weapons and ammunition mysteriously disappeared prior to our arrival. Now, many of those weapons, along with thousands more are being smuggled in through the unregulated black market, and are finding their way to the quickly organizing insurgency forces.That's where we come in. We are Marines expeditionary rifle squad of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, 2nd Battalion 5th Marines. We were stationed in the area to ensure that stability is maintained while a constitution is drafted. The squad's marching orders were to conduct an unmounted patrol through the city. Tensions are high since there is currently a massive rally taking place all along the parade route of the old Ministry of Defense's complex. The streets of the complex are crowded with tens of thousands of people. Marine platoons are on patrol in the event that this peaceful rally turns into something far worse. You'd probably have guessed that by now all military activity would have been replaced by all the drones flyin' around, but history has shown us that some jobs, just like these, you just can't trust a rumba to replace boots on the ground. Not that they haven't tried, but after the mess in 2022, they realized the only real future was one that married the drones with infantry into a holistic combat unit. So that explains why there are still morons like me trudging around in places like this.Marine Expeditionary Rifle SquadPurpose: Significantly increase future Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) ability to conduct squad level combat operations in an uncertain environment across the ROMO for the Joint Force. Improved ability to operate in both traditional and irregular warfare environments while retaining the ability to conduct forcible entry operations from the sea.Attributesgreater lethalityaccurate identification and classification of targetsunencumbered mobilitysecure, reliable, MAGTF- integrated command and controlballistic and fragmentation protectionclimate and terrain protectionability to administer low level medical aidimproved training and leadershipProvide greater improvement to the current rifle squad’s ability as a total package to engage the enemy across a wider range of operations with an increase in survivability and better access to support forces.- LtCol Chris Woodburn, USMCThe squad was composed of the ten of us, nine Marines and a doc in two fire teams and the Staff Sergeant.Our fire team leaders are Sergeant Nguyen and Corporal Piers. They each carry an M-35 Infantry Automatic Rifle attached with M-207 grenade launchers. For the 207, they carry an assortment of goodies they can launch depending on the mission requirements. For today, they are armed with tear gas, flares, and one grenade that can be fired above, through a window or into a dark alley, bursts open and out pops a tiny little drone cam to check out what overhead drones might miss. They also have regular explosive varieties and incendiaries, but today is just supposed to be a routine patrol. More important than their armaments, they're also equipped with networked Tee-Cud helmets. Tee-Cuds are the common name for the Tactical Command Heads Up Display integrated combat helmet systems. They are complete helmet systems with a ballistic visor that covers their entire face. Inside is a broad spectrum networking node that communicates information to and from the higher ups. This feeds into a heads up display that projects an augmented reality layer over everything they see. Team members, allies, non-combatants and enemies are highlighted with a colored filter to seek to avoid identity confusion in the heat of battle. They also have combat relevant data on each of the members of their team from ammunition count to a 3D geographic mapping projection complete with possible fields of fire. The Tee-Cuds run off of the Layar based MZ Scout Systems. Scout is an augmented reality browser and AI that coordinates all the networked visual data. The entire system is voice activated, sensitive enough to a whisper, so different commands will initiate different actions from Scout. Each Marine goes through a certification week where they have to speak a ton of random lines and sentences to create a unique voice ID and only the ID's on the team can operate the system. The team leaders can say "Squad" which will temporarily open a channel with their squad. "View..." can open any viewpoint from different squad members to overhead observation or strike drones, as well as other personnel within the area of operations. Saying, "Command" or the command's designation can open a direct channel with command headquarters for requests of information, backup or to send out a nine line request. The Tee-Cuds give the team leaders an unmatched view of the battlespace and their own team's condition warfighters of only a few decades prior would have died to get their hands on.Next, there are the SAW gunners. SAW stands for Squad Automatic Weapon, which used to be the name of an old weapon system the position used to use, but being that they even today they can somewhat reliably cut whatever they want to in half, the name stuck. That said, they are armed with M3, the largest non-crew served weapon in the Corps' history. The M3 is the automatic machine gun currently used for squad suppression fire. Depending on the situation, the M3 can fire a belt of high velocity rounds, or high mass yield rounds for heavy impact. In the semi-automatic setting it can fire a kinetic impact round that can punch through walls from six hundred yards. The gunners themselves would never be able to lift the damn thing, though, if it weren't for the exoskeleton assist. With the rigging the SAW gunners can carry a load of over 400 lbs for six hours and never break a sweat. SAW gunners, as well as the other members not equipped with Tee-Cuds, wear Scouters. Scouters are units that attach into the helmets over one ear and have a small ballistic visor that completely covers one eye. The Scouters operate on the same Layar based Scout system. It can project limited amounts of information in the same way as the Tee-Cuds on the ballistic lens, but with less detail and scope. It is also voice activated and the commands are all the same. The only difference between the leadership level Tee-Cuds and the scouters is that the scouters don't come with the full heads up display and can be worn separately without the helmet. [5]After the SAW gunners are the assistant light machine gunners. The A-gunners assist the the SAWs. They provide direct fire back-up and can provide emergency assistance to the SAW gunners' equipment in the field. They are armed with the M1300 CSASS, a compact semi-automatic sniper system rifle engineered for squad level sniper support. The weapon can deliver a variety of rounds to the enemy from sixteen hundred yards or deliver deadly fast accuracy with mid-range engagements.The newest members of the squads are designated riflemen. They are equipped with standard M-35 Infantry Automatic Rifles and extra ammo. They also carry the M-483 Light Infantry Missile System. It's a small pod you drop on the ground and arm. Once armed, the squad leader, or the operator, will designate a target and issue the command to fire. From there, the system will fire a self-guided missile about the size of two soda cans directly into the air before it directs itself to the target from above. Besides that, they are boots and if you're lucky they will only almost get you killed once a day. They're really good for getting ammo from the Heavy Dog and digging holes when you don't want to tire out the robots.Last are the field operators. In the mid to late 2020's infantry integration with drone warfare became paramount. As I mentioned before, militaries around the world realized that there are just too many things you can't do with a drone that require on the ground support to accomplish. Swarms of robot jets overhead and mini tank guns look cool in movies, but 90% of the time wars are fought by you actually walking up and asking a bystander if something jacked-up is going on that the good guys should know about. When the bean counters in Washington finally realized that a drone can't exactly prevent looting or arrest someone without having their onboard camera's kicked in by a six year old, they realized that next generation infantry integration was the way to go. With that came the field operators.Field-ops have constant command of drone escorts during patrols and missions. They are equipped with the same Tee-Cuds as the team leaders, but their systems are set up to direct the feeds of information from surveillance and attack drones overhead, paint targets as either hostile or non, coordinate battlefield intelligence with the squad and to also directly command drones in combat. They are equipped with sidearms for immediate emergency protection, but their main offensive weapons are their gloves. Hundreds of sensors in the gloves catch every subtle movement as a command to manipulate drone movement and observational capabilities. At any given moment, the Field-ops are overseeing dozens of nodes all around the battlefield. They are aware of hundreds of moving objects from people, vehicles and drones. They have as close to a complete holistic view of the battlefield as has ever been available to a frontline infantry unit. Working Field-ops is supposedly like nothing else. Even though they are right there with us, many describe their job as an out of body experience. The role used to go squad and fire team leaders, but the tsunami of data bombarding them left them unable to manage both the drones and their teams, so the tasks were delegated to the newly created unit. Their omnipotence is flushed down the toilet, though, when their focus is so deep on planes buzzing overhead that they completely lose track of where they are, trip, and fall flat on their face. Obstacle avoidance is their most requested new feature since they'll find themselves on the ground all the damn time. It's honestly a little embarrassing that they are the future of warfare. A field-ops' idea of a good day is hunkered on a rooftop or in the back of a vehicle controlling the battlefield without fear of tripping over a rock or something. They come off as clumsy and distracted, but when they get in their zone, they are the deadliest thing in the battlezone. They command the swarm and the respect of any enemy they might seek.Along with our doc, the last member of the squad is its leader, Staff Sergeant Ramirez. He's been to every major conflict in the last eleven years; Odessa, Yangong, Valencia. They say that back in the day a squad like ours would have been led by just a Sergeant or even a Corporal, but I guess with the modernization of the new Corps, this is what it takes. The Squad leader is armed identically to the Fire Team leaders. He carries the same M-35 with the 207 attachment and is equipped with the same Tee-Cuds as the others. Besides his experience, he doesn't differ greatly from the two team leaders. This was by design in case he should be incapacitated than one of them could be able to step into his role.This is the modern Marine Corps infantry unit. Two fire teams complete with leaders, SAW gunners, A-gunners and dedicated riflemen supplemented with corpsmen, Squad Leader and with the advent of the Field Operators, the eleven man Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad was complete.We made our way down the street. Far off in the distance you could hear the sounds of the rally. Here though, all you could hear was Cpl. Fannon picking himself up off the ground again and the sound of the SAW gunner's hydraulic joints. Chatter over the inter squad channels reported the same quiet.We turned another corner into an alley. It was completely devoid of movement and deathly silent. As half the squad made their way into the alley, SSgt Ramirez turns the corner and calls for an all stop. The squad darts for cover along the alley. Fannon started a detailed scan of the area. From one view he noticed a small group of men on the next street. He could see inside a few windows and could see people shutting their windows. From one of his aerial units he noticed a window at the end of the alley with a suspicious pipe moving out of it. He flew the unit around the building to get a clearer view of the window. As his view became clearer he saw a man aiming his rifle on the squad."CONTACT FRONT! SECOND FLOOR!"Support"Contact". The term has been part of infantry training and battlefield tactics for a century. Now the word has evolved to much more. This single word initiates a mobilization of a vast movement of men and machines in a worldwide effort towards the acts of locating, closing with and eliminating the enemy through fire and maneuver.When Corporal "Cy" Fannon gave the call for Contact Front he initiated a command within MZ Scout System that forwarded the alert to seventeen other commands. These commands included Forward Operations North East Africa, the Coordinated Unmanned Asset Command, Marine Air Ground Task Force Central Command, and a myriad of other units. Alarm bells rang out and operators manning stations across the globe came online, now with all of their attention directed to a small alleyway in a small city and one particular squad of Marines. Monitors across the globe lit up with the view scopes of the Marine's Tee-Cuds. A voice came in through the NCO channel. It was a woman's voice.Corporal Piers was surprised. He was a newly promoted Corporal and unfamiliar with assaults from the NCO's point of view. He'd handled engagements before, but now the flood of information on his visor and responsibility to the Marines within his charge left him momentarily frozen. Her voice brought him back."This is the Operator. Standing by for SITREP."With her sudden call to awakening, his training kicked in. He knew of the operators and had experienced them in dozens of exercises when he was given his fire time, but he was still surprised by what he heard over his headset. Usually, everything in training is nothing like the real thing. Adrenaline and confusion are elements that are difficult to replicate in the training environments without Marines actually getting killed. Everything amps up, but this voice didn't. He knew it was their job to watch over the combat patrols and coordinate relief, reinforcements, or additional assets when need. She was calm and relaxed, like listening to the weather girl or the melodic tones of the host for some late night easy listen radio stream. She made it sound as if dropping in on Marines embraced in the heat of combat was something she did everyday. Perhaps she did. As Cpl Piers gathered himself in the midst of the chaos that was enveloping the Marines, she was calm, the collected voice of serenity reminding the Marines that they were not alone.Cpl Piers composed himself not a moment soon enough. What started as a single shooter foolish enough to get caught before the ambush, had in fact been a well orchestrated attack by more than a dozen insurgents. They had prepared the alleyway for what must have been some time in hopes of catching the Marines off guard. Such a defeat would be a massive symbolic victory for the insurgency, ushering in new recruits by the droves. As Piers and the others took up defendable locations in the alley, the scope of the danger became apparent to the Marines. Windows all along the narrow street were suddenly filled with men and metal. Bullets rained down like tears from heaven.Staff Sergeant Ramirez was already on the bounce. He knew something didn't feel right about this alley in the first place. The call for contact only confirmed what his instincts had prepared him for."Operator, this is Echo Six Romeo. Incoming SITREP..."... individual troops can look forward to the JTRS Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Fit AN/PRC-154 Rifleman radio. Developed by General Dynamics C4 Systems. Rifleman is designed to deliver networking connectivity to frontline troops in a lightweight, ruggedized, body worn device. The radio transmits voice and data simultaneously via SRW. Perhaps most importantly, Rifleman radios are capable of interfacing with smart phones.Cutting-edge wireless networking technologies, potentially capable of supporting both JTRS and smart phone devices, are now arriving in the form of mesh networks, including mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) that can provide virtually instant high-bandwidth networking capabilities for handheld radios, ground and airborne vehicle communications and security and tactical wireless sensors. The military is increasingly turning to wireless mesh networks technology for sensor-driven environmental control, yard management, and security and tactical applications. A mesh network provides continuous asset visibility from any location in the system’s range, noted Mark Lieberman, automatic identification technology program manager for the Defense Logistics Agency, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va..John Edwards - Telecommunications Industry Analyst - Defense Systems[dot]comSSgt Ramirez listed relevant information in the hasty situation report. The operator, not flinching and with no obvious distress in her voice, replied back to the NCO channel,"Very well Echo Six Romeo. I've secured a roaming aerial interceptor squadron for your field operator. Echo Four Foxtrot, you should see the new units displayed on the Active Unit Window of your Tee-Cud. Do you see them?""Yes, Operator. I see them," Cpl. Fannon replied."Very well. They should be arriving in the next three minutes. Echo Six, I've opened a channel to higher command, designated "Snakepit". I've also opened a channel with the other patrol unit leaders in the city. CASEVAC has been alerted and are standing by. I'll be standing by for further assistance as needed.""Understood. Echo Six out."The squad was entrenched in the alleyway. Windows all along street slammed open to become places of cover for concealed insurgency forces, ducking away as quickly as they had appeared. They popped in and out to spray momentary bursts of fire on the Marines below, only to replaced by another in another window, and then another and another. The alley was unsecurable. The minimal cover and overhead deployment of enemy forces meant that the Marines would be chow in minutes if something wasn't done.Fannon was a bit occupied at the moment. He was the only one with a clear bird's eye view of the scene with aerial strike capabilities. His view, however, was obscured by the buildings. As he was trying to gain a clear sight on the window, a burst of rifle fire ricocheted next to his head. He ducked away in search of new cover. By the time he felt secure enough to focus on the drones, it had already moved on beyond view of the window. He would have to wait on the next one to make a pass. More rifle fire cracked as it struck the building next to him. The squad may lose its field operator if he didn't secure his most valuable asset: his life."Operator, I'm in heavy fire! I need to find cover and am requesting QRF assist!""Understood field op." She knew who had said it even though he hadn't said much by the indicator denoting which helmet made transition. "Patching in UAV Pilot Quick Reaction Force with special instructions to secure your immediate location."With a few adept keystrokes of the operator's hand, a red light lit in an installation in Colorado. A team of four pilots were already in their seats. They had been watching the feed and listening to the instructions. The operator opened a channel between them and the field op. As he scurried and dodged his way through the alley, he was relieved to see the individual units in his active asset window switch over from autonomous operation to full remote. One by one their icons switched from green to orange and faded to a translucent fuzz on the side of his display. He could now focus himself on finding a securable location for the time being. Fortunately for him, SSgt Ramirez was also aware of his desperation and had sent one of the squad's riflemen, LCpl Dodd, to secure him.As the two sought some mild semblance of safety, the drones above and all around came alive in a way not like before. Under normal operations, they circle around in simple methodically programmed patterns or hovering at points spherically encompassing the squad, waiting for the field op to call for them. Now, all of them were under the direct control of a team of remote pilots thousands of miles away.Interoperability Functional DescriptionThe ability of systems, units, or forces to provide services to and accept services from other systems, units, or forces and to make use of the services, units, or forces; and to use the services so exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together. An example for the use of this policy would be the condition achieved among communications-electronics systems or items of communications electronics equipment when information or services can be exchanged directly and satisfactorily between them and/or their users.Interoperability is integral to the continued success of missions using unmanned systems and represents a long-term objective of the Services and their stakeholders. The urgent needs in theater and corresponding rapid acquisition approach during recent years have resulted in thecurrent fleet of unmanned systems that generally do not interoperate with each other or with external systems. The combat development community is calling for interoperability as a critical element to the future unmanned systems fleet. The ability for manned and unmanned systems to share information will increase combat capability, enhance situational awareness, and improve flexibility of resources. Interoperability will improve the ability for unmanned systems to operate in synergy in the execution of assigned tasks. Properly stabilized, implemented, andmaintained, interoperability can serve as a force multiplier, improve warfighter capabilities, decrease integration timelines, simplify logistics, and reduce total ownership costs.Department of Defense - Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013-2038The individual birds started their maneuvers. They were each taking actions for the different specialties of each vehicle. Four target acquisition units were actively darting in and out of the building's windows seeking runaway insurgents, following them through hallways and as far as the trail would take them. When their scanners found something, other specialist operators were busy tagging each person as either friend or foe and adding an identifier so that the tracking system could keep watch as need be. Hunter strike craft pursued the insurgents relentlessly, able to dart in and out and descend from anywhere upon their targets. In the few seconds since the squad had taken fire, the alleyway had descended into a hornet's nest of firefighting from both man and machine.With the time bought by the swarm, Fannon and the other Marine were able to secure a location in the kitchen of one of the buildings along the alley. Fannon hunkered down in a back corner of the room. Dodd provided security for the two. He now posted himself along the window, regularly checking to make sure the two were safe while Cpl Fannon focused on the battle overhead.As he gained his bearing, Fannon began receiving instructions and information from the rest of the squad, along with communications from the other pilots. Now keyed back into the engagement at hand, he took control of the ships around him and began to coordinate his assets with the rest of the squad's counter offensive. He took back manual control of the remotely piloted unmanned assets as objective necessity dictated.One might wonder why Fannon would take back control at all. While the team back in CONUS was fully capable of carrying out the mission of taking down all enemies they saw with guns, explosive ordinance, and maneuver warfare, there was too much they could not know. They lacked the unit briefings on specific engagements for this particular region, since their area of operations was the entire planet as need be. They lacked a thorough understanding of the area, population centers, business centers and key hotspots and places to avoid fire. Mostly, they lacked clear communication with the entire squad. Fannon, more correctly, the Field Operator, did. What might be perceived as a design flaw was actually a well engineered aspect of the overall future of infantry warfare.They used to just have an open channel to everyone involved in the battles. The idea of a flat system of communication seemed a Utopian ideal. Any boots on the ground could speak directly with the people they needed to to get whatever assistance they would need. Anyone who might be able to help could just chime in if they thought they could be of service. On paper it is miraculous. So long as you were a part of the picture in the slightest your voice was overhead on the channel. Every command, every request, every observation, every opinion, every scream; everyone was talking and not enough were listening. It got to be a real nightmare scenario. Everyone from the General on down would be barking out conflicting orders to the troops on the ground. Debates out rules of engagement would clutter up the messages needing to be sent as terrified Marines lay frozen in forced inaction. Pilots for bombing runs and pilots for casualty evacuation were all speaking and yelling at the same time. Even engineering unit commanders would be giving his two cents on what to be be careful of so as not to blow up their precious fiber optic line more than two miles away. There might be as many as a hundred people squawking at once. And do you know who wasn't listened to at all? Why, it was that Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli on the ground, getting cut to pieces by machine gun fire in the jungle, the very Marine who started the conversation. It was a cluster.So they turned to the NCO's. The Non Commissioned Officers of the infantry squad were elevated to new levels of responsibility. Besides leading the fight, these warriors were now also the information hubs, directed to guide battlefield data and unit instructions from higher to the field troops assigned to them. At any given movement these troops may be relaying information from several different scopes and fields of view. They are now the levies holding back a paralyzing flood of information. The training necessary for their vocation puts them on par with any master level technician or specialty artisan in the world, not the least of which being the field operators. They are all career military and with their training, each holding the civilian equivalent to degrees in various fields from electrical engineering, telecommunications or logistics, they might be living easily overseeing some automated package delivery service, driverless taxi or even building the next gen automated warfare. At home they would have the life, but they chose something different. By being the channel through which all sources of information are funneled, their focused implementation of command and information allow them to direct the application of force on battlefield as if it were the strings of a marionette.Want more future of war? This answer has grown a full length novel mixing the same focus on technology and tactics while providing a character driven narrative I'm sure you will all enjoy. If you would like to check out my book inspired by this answer, The Next Warrior follow the blog The Next Warrior and follow this link to the start of the book.The Next Warrior by Jon DavisAirMeet the SR-72This Stealthy, Hypersonic Drone Could Become The Most Exotic Plane EverCyberspaceUnited States Cyber CommandStuxnetSpaceKinetic bombardmentRods From God - New York TimesU.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, United States Air Force, November 2003 - http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/af/af_trans_flightplan_nov03.pdfSeaLittoral combat shipIndependence-class littoral combat shipMedicineNew Prosthetics Keep Amputee Soldiers on Active Duty - US NewsProsthetics in the VA: Past, Present, and FutureThe future of artificial limbsMichigan Man Among 1st In US To Get ‘Bionic Eye’ - CBS DetroitLandBigDogBigDog - The Most Advanced Rough-Terrain Robot on EarthIntelligenceBat-Inspired Spy Plane - The Future Of Things | Science and Technology of TomorrowLight InfantryHeadquarters Marine Corps - Combat Development and Integration: Marine Expeditionary Rifle SquadSupportA look at the future of mobile military communications on the battlefield -- Defense SystemsUnmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013-2038 - Page on defense.gov[1] - Kinetic Bombardment is currently still relegated to science fiction rather than actually being planned out for the future of warfare, though it was referrenced as a possible avenue in the U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan , November 2003 linked above. The idea comes with massive logistical and engineering problems that are beyond our current reach. Most importantly is that the delivery of massive tungsten rods into space would be an impossibly costly endeavor and likely be more costly than any possible advantages gained from the practice. Given the recent advancements in the private space industry, however, the idea of space born military instruments like this becomes more a possibility every day.Also, I am still unclear if such a reaction would throw out nuclear fallout. Since there is no nuclear reaction taking place I don't see it happening. Of course I have also read that fallout comes from the churning of already radioactive material below the earth's surface which I really don't get. Either way, I'm not a physicist so if you physicists who have just been yearning to teach me a lesson, please clear that up in the comments. The fate of a fictitious village rests on your shoulders.[2] - The littoral combat ships are not actually the future of warfare. They are happening right now. The US Navy already has a fleet of these ships in deployment. My story involved an slightly exaggerated ship that is an update of the current version. The reason I didn't change the story to focus on some future super sub or next generation aircraft carrier is because of how speculative their future roles will be. What is certain is the role LCS's will play in the next several decades as an important element in ensuring peace along the world's coastal regions. That's why I wanted to focus on them, because no matter what happens, these are going to be a part of the Navy's future.[3] - OK. The eyeball thing is pretty weird. Truth be told, I borrowed the idea from Orson Scott Card's sequel to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead. All this to say the character who had one was freaky too. As far as Corporal Fannon's eye, I really don't even know if it will be close to possible to fit all those technologies into such a small platform whether in the next twenty years or ever. Every day tech is improving and bionic eyes are a reality even today, but heat vision, night vision and twenty times zoom, let alone the ability to record. Well I probably stretched my creative license on that one. Maybe making a Marine into a modern day Predator was asking too much, but don't even pretend that you don't want Cpl. Cy's cyborg eye.[4] - A lot of people may be curious why I chose to write a story surrounding a glorified pack mule, but in reality, I think this machine has a much more important role than any future weapon that we might be talking about today. More important than a new self guided rounds or a gun that shoots around corners is the logistical mastery of the field. Armies march on their stomach as it is said and the ability to deliver gear and supplies cheaply and safely will be a massive advantage from modern delivery systems. Add to this that the VA paid out about $57 billion on disability benefits last year and the most common injuries from veterans today are related to stress injuries of heavy, burdensome equipment. Given this information, it makes a lot of sense for the military to utilize a robot as a form of loss prevention on the bodies of future vets its going to provide medical care for otherwise. Finally, the ability of an autonomous system to maneuver through random routes, never taking the same one twice, illuminates the most deadly foe of the War on Terror, roadside bombs known as IED's. By avoiding the major arteries that roads are, logistical support can be delivered without the expense of air drop or helicopters. It provides an unimaginable scaling opportunity for the US military on many different fronts, providing the technology works as we all hope it does.[5] - Yeah, the Scouters are from Dragon Ball Z. That's over 9000! Thank you Google Glass for fulfilling my childhood fantasies that didn't include Bulma.[6] - Those of you who are sharp will have noticed another Easter Egg in this story. More than half the technologies mentioned are built of products and companies currently owned by Google.Liked this? You might also like my YouTube Channel. You can also connect with The War Elephant on Facebook. If you want to help me make more content like this, please visit my Patreon Page to find out more.

Why? Because it is every aviator’s wet dream!Who wants to land at 180 MPH? Who wants a run of 10,000 feet before takeoff?With land around urban centers becoming more expensive than your mother-in-law’s lifestyle, the time has come for India, China, and many other nations to consider STOL airports.It is estimated that Mumbai’s new airport will take another 50 years (or another 500 years; what’s the difference?). Can we afford to wait that long?▲Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport set a new world record for a single runway airport in November 2017 as it handled landing and take-offs of around 969 flights within a span of 24 hours. The airport handles over 900 flights per day and their runway reportedly has the capacity to handle 46 take offs and departures within 60 minutes. How much more can they stretch?Neatly lettered in yellow across a new airstrip that opened in August, 1968 at New York's La Guardia Airport (formerly Glenn H. Curtiss Airport and North Beach Airport) located in the borough of Queens, New York, gleamed the word STOL, an acronym for short takeoff and landing. La Guardia's STOLPORT, as the 1,095-ft. runway had already been dubbed, was first of its kind in the U.S. to offer commercial airplanes those desirable qualities.A brand-new, 1095-foot ministrip had been opened a javelin throw away from the general-aviation ramp.The VIP among expected visitors was expected to be the Breguet 941 - McDonnell Douglas 188, a stubby, banana-shaped ship with outsized wings. Beginning next month, it was to touch down at La Guardia's STOL runway between hops to landing strips set aside in Boston and Washington for extensive testing.A STOL-runway, 01/19, at a length of 835 ft. was opened, but is no longer active and has been developed into aircraft parking and manoeuvering areas near the Marine Terminal.Word is that during opening demonstrations on the STOL strip, a TransEast Twin Otter pilot coming in saw the doings, asked to land there and got approval from a towerman who evidently figured he was part of the show. The pilot made a beautiful arcing descent out of a strictly unorthodox pattern and touched down like a pigeon in front of the flabbergasted officials.Eastern Air Lines Breguet 941S - McDonnell Douglas 188 STOL Demonstrator seen in September, 1968 during a US tour to allow FAA, Eastern and American Airlines to experiment with the aircraft under the conditions and requirements of commercial aviation. The second Br 941S carried out a tour of the United States, being evaluated as a STOL passenger airliner for operation from small city airports, although, again, no orders resulted. This aircraft demonstration activity included flights for Eastern Airlines in the northeast U.S. No subsequent orders were placed.Breguet STOL ProspectsWhy is it, that after so many convincing experiments, so many proofs of reliability of the 941, so many evident advantages offered for the problems of air traffic control in zones of high density air traffic, why is it indeed that the Breguet 941 did not succeed?Successful flight demonstrations continued further in France. Despite such convincing tests, so much evidence of its reliability, and such obvious advantages in the face of growing air traffic in densely circulated areas, the plane failed to attract customers on either side of the Atlantic. Was it too much ahead of its time? Too economically hazardous in the view of the complex and costly maintenance it required? Too noisy and dangerous for densely populated areas?At any rate, all the 941S built went to the French air force and donned camouflage until their retirement in 1974.Yet the concept of the 941 did not die, for McDonnell Douglas used many of its technical aspects to develop the four-engine YC-15 demonstrator in 1977.Now let’s get to the meat of the question: HOW do airplanes achieve STOL performance?For which I have a counter-question: Which is the tougher assignment: high-speed flight, or low-speed flight?The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.▲The C-130 can takeoff or land in 1,000 ft.STOL is a much, much, much,much, much, much, much, much, much, tougher assignment.Prepare to spend an hour here; this is not an easy problem and therefore there is no short answer.▲The C-7 proved to be enormously valuable in Vietnam. It was particularly useful for resupplying outlying Special Forces camps because it provided quick-response lift to move dispatches, command personnel, medical supplies, and similar loads into tiny contingency airstrips during major ground sweeps and carrying casualties directly from remote battlefields to major evacuation hospitals.▲Boeing’s proposed 90-passenger tilt-wing STOL, 1970. Downtown-to-downtown air service with STOL and 500- to 2000 ft. runways was a hot idea of the time. It would relieve the strain on the main metropolitan airports and give passengers better service.▲The 1970s were the years that short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft came of age. For many urban planners, adapting their aerodynamic magic to fly up to fifty commuters at a time in and out of downtown centres became the panacea for urban congestion. STOL air services sprouted from airports like St. Helen's Island, Montreal, Toronto Island, Docklands, London, and Belfast City Centre, and the aircraft invariably seen at all of them was the De Havilland Dash 7, the world's first STOL airliner. Several countries had looked at developing their own commercial STOL aircraft — the Australian GAF Nomad, the German Dornier 128, and the Israeli Arava were the best known. De Havilland Canada had more experience with STOL than any of them, from its Beaver in 1947 to its Twin Otter, then in production. In 1972, the company began a quiet, environmentally friendly STOL airliner project, a high wing monoplane that, unlike the preceding DHC aircraft, was a real passenger aircraft: it had four engines and a retractable undercarriage. De Havilland's Bob Fowler and Mick Saunders test-flew the imaginatively named Dash 7 on March 27, 1975. The Department of Transport certified it for a seven-degree, thirty-foot glide slope and a thirty-five-foot landing reference height, and the first production model was delivered to Rocky Mountain Airways three years later. Like the Beaver and Porter, it achieved STOL by optimizing utmost lift at minimal speed. De Havilland had developed flaps that covered three-quarters of the trailing edge of the wing, extending the rear of the flaps even further.▲The McDonnell Douglas YC-15 was one of the candidates for a lucrative "advanced medium STOL transport" contract put forth by the US Air Force, and it is an example of an attempt to combine the good ride qualities and high speed of a heavily loaded wing with the STOL performance of high thrust-to-weight ratio coupled with sophisticated flaps. The YC-15 achieves its STOL performance (cruise of over 400 knots, approach speed of 80 knots and a landing roll of 800 feet) by using externally blown flaps. The exhaust from the jet engines is directed through and around the double-slotted Fowler flaps in a way that persuades the air cascading back over the wings to also flow around the flaps rather than separating and becoming ineffectual. This type of boundary-layer control has been made possible by the comparatively cool exhaust temperatures of high-bypass turbofan engines.▲YC-15 (McDonnel-Douglas) Blown Flaps▲The Boeing entry, the YC-14, used "upper surface blowing" (USB) to generate the extra lift needed to operate from runways of 2000 feet. The USB effect is similar to the way water from a faucet follows the con-tours of the back of a spoon. Air from the engines, attached to the leading edge of the wing, blows across the wing's surface and follows the contours of curved flaps attached to the trailing edge. Airflow can be made to turn almost 90° so that it blows downward, thus creating a strong lifting force.▲YC-14 (Boeing) Upper-Surface BlowingIn theory, the problems and their solutions seem elementary.The simplest method is to design a plane with a low wing loading—a low gross weight and a large wing area. If two aircraft have the same wing design and installed horsepower, the machine with the lower wing loading—less weight per square foot of wing area—will require less runway for takeoff and landing.Add to low wing loading a high power loading—high horsepower for a low gross weight—plus an effective flap system and the result is impressive STOL performance.It is easy to understand why these characteristics contribute to STOL performance.Weight is the downward force that must be overcome by the upward force produced by the wing.The upward or lifting force is proportional to wing shape (which means airfoil design, flap deflection and wing planform), wing area and indicated airspeed.For any particular wing shape and airspeed, doubling the wing area doubles the lift.An effective flap alters the wing shape in a manner that allows the wing to produce more lift at the same airspeed; or expressed in another way, a flap allows the wing to produce the same lift at a lower airspeed.When a small weight is being lifted by a large wing, as is the case when the wing loading is low, the wing can easily produce the required upward force without first accelerating to a high speed.Equip the same wing with a powerful flap and the necessary lift is achieved at a still lower speed.Consequently, a lightly loaded plane with a large, flapped wing can fly slowly without stalling, and it can take off and land at low speeds.▲Lift Coefficient vs. Airfoil Angle of AttackLow wing loading and effective flaps are not sufficient, however; STOL aircraft also require a high power-to-weight ratio.Each pound of aircraft weight must be accelerated to takeoff speed and then carried upward at an acceptable rate of climb.The more horse-power per pound of weight, the quicker the aircraft accelerates to takeoff speed and the shorter is the takeoff ground roll.Normally, only a portion of the available power is needed to overcome the drag at takeoff and climb airspeed.The remaining power is used to provide climb performance.For each horsepower in excess of what is required to produce forward speed, 100 pounds of aircraft weight can be carried aloft at 330 feet per minute.Thus, if all other factors such as airspeed and drag are equal, the plane with the higher power-to-weight ratio will have more excess horsepower to carry the aircraft's weight upward.The combination of low wing loading, powerful flaps and high power-to-weight ratio spells STOL.The first two features allow the aircraft to take off, climb, approach and land at low speeds.The lower the correct climb speed, the less horsepower is required to overcome drag, and the horsepower not needed to pull the aircraft through the air is converted into rate of climb.Low forward speeds and high vertical speeds mean steep angles of climb, a necessary ingredient for STOL aircraft.Low speeds for approach and touchdown mean there is less forward momentum to stop after touchdown.Most of the STOL aircraft flying today achieve their short-field status in a relatively simple way—by means of low wing loading, powerful flaps and a high power-to-weight ratio.Many STOL aircraft as well as conventional planes employ leading-edge devices (LEDs) to reduce the stalling speed.An LED can take many shapes.Most jet airliners use some sort of LED; Krueger flaps are found on the Boeing 727 and retractable drooped slotted leading edges are used on the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, for example.The Boeing 747 has Krueger flaps on the inboard leading edge and variable-camber flaps at all other parts of the leading edge.Unlike flaps, which increase the wing's capacity to generate lift without changing airspeed or angle of attack, LEDs do not significantly alter the lift characteristics at air-speeds faster than the stalling speed of the unmodified wing.They do, however, allow a wing to fly slower without the airflow separating from the upper surface and stalling the wing.Another way of expressing the same function is that LEDs increase the angle of attack at which the wing stalls.Normal unflapped wings tend to stall at about 16-degree angles of attack; a wing with a drooped leading edge may not stall until the angle of attack exceeds 20 degrees, thus the wing with a drooped leading edge will produce about 15 percent more lift solely because it can fly at a higher angle.But the aircraft must be flying in the higher angle-of-attack range between 16 and 20 or more degrees to use the capability of leading-edge devices, whereas the effect of flaps occurs at normal approach angles of attack.Flaps can reduce the stall angle of attack by as much as four degrees, which helps provide a more comfortable nose-down attitude during the landing approach.There is nothing new about the kind of STOL technology that is based upon big wings, lots of power, leading-edge devices or powerful flaps.The Ford Trimotor, vintage 1926, was designed with a large wing and a good power-to-weight ratio that combined to give the Tin Goose excellent short-field performance even without effective flaps.But the Ford Trimotor had poor cruise performance and rough ride qualities, which made the plane expensive for the operator and unpleasant for the passengers, particularly in rough air.Today’s operational STOL aircraft also are based upon the same tried and proven method of achieving short-field performance, and like their low-wing-loading predecessors, they suffer from the same problems of poor handling qualities and operating characteristics, particularly in the area of ride comfort and roll and yaw control at slow approach airspeeds.The inability to make precise approaches to an exact touchdown point under gusty wind conditions, as well as difficulty in coping with wind shears and crosswinds, are significant problems of STOL aircraft with low wing loadings.The low wing loadings and slow approach speeds that make STOL performance relatively easy to obtain also are responsible for the operational limitations of the aircraft that utilize them.Lift changes always occur on a wing due to angle-of-attack variations as a plane goes through rough, unsettled air.If the plane’s weight is low compared with the size of these lift changes, as is the case for low wing loadings, the aircraft is tossed around by gusts and turbulence.Low approach speeds affect STOL vehicles in several ways.Because the takeoff and landing phases of the operation are of utmost importance, STOL aircraft tend to be designed for low-speed handling qualities.They have large vertical tails, for example, so they will have adequate directional stability and control at low speeds.At cruise airspeeds, however, STOLs are bound to be slower than conventional aircraft with the same power and to be overly responsive in pitch, roll and yaw to vertical and horizontal gusts.The price for STOL characteristics is a slow and bumpy ride, a trait that displeases both pilots and passengers.In addition to being bounced around, STOL aircraft suffer from unusual control problems that are aggravated by the slow speeds they use for landing.Lateral/directional control is particularly affected.Drooped ailerons and flying at high lift coefficients (that is, flying at very low speeds) increase the need for good rudder-aileron coordination to reduce yaw excursions during turn entries.Drooping ailerons often reduce roll effectiveness and can magnify the adverse-yaw tendency that all ailerons have. Flying slowly at high CLs also increases the adverse yaw during turn entries because the upward-moving wing experiences more drag than the downward-moving wing.In addition, the rudder and ailerons lose some effectiveness because at slow speeds they cannot generate large enough aerodynamic forces and moments to make the plane respond sharply.Thus, the STOL pilot finds he must work hard to line up with the runway on final approach, particularly in gusty crosswind conditions.Perhaps the most serious handling deficiency, however, is in glide-path control. Even if the pilot has to work hard to line up with the runway, that’s acceptable as long as he lands on it and does not hit the lights on either side. But if he stalls out on approach because he was trying to fly too slowly or touches down so long that he overshoots the runway, that’s a different matter.Repeated go-arounds before the pilot finds just the right approach path are not acceptable either, and adding an extra 1,000 feet of runway for contingencies defeats the purpose of STOL in the first place.At speeds where good glide-path control is possible, there is the probability that a float will occur during the flare. In a STOL airplane, only about two or three knots separate a too-slow, uncomfortable approach that could result in a hard landing from a too-fast, potential-float situation.At that unique "best" approach speed, the pilot finds he has little control over glide path except by making power changes.With the large flap deflections needed on low-wing-loading STOLs to obtain enough drag for steep approaches, the plane’s response to power changes tends to be sluggish.Furthermore, if the pilot is using power to achieve a nose-high attitude and slow air-speed, as he often must do to utilize the STOL capability of leading-edge devices, he may be reluctant to reduce power to adjust his glide path downward.The transition from a slow, steep, full-flap approach to a go-around also is lethargic with STOL aircraft.It appears that the true measure of a plane’s operational STOL capability is not published performance figures or impressively slow stalling speeds; it may be the consistency with which the pilot can get the performance his plane theoretically possesses.To overcome the handling quality and operational problems (including the ride-comfort limitations) of low-wing-loading designs, considerable research effort has been directed toward high-wing-loading STOL aircraft.When wing loadings reach 100 pounds or so per square foot, the ride becomes about as smooth as a 707-320B’s, and the cruise airspeeds are typical of today’s subsonic airliners; but achieving STOL performance under these conditions is a little like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.It requires brute force, which is very expensive and generally quite a complicated approach to the problem.Approach handling qualities and control problems are acute for this class of aircraft because of the vehicle’s size and the methods of generating the required lifting force, thus special control-augmentation techniques generally are necessary.The technical risks inherent in a successful ride-smoothing system for low-wing-loading STOL aircraft are formidable, but the problem is being tackled under Government sponsorship by such huge companies as Boeing.The military, of course, spends a lot more.The United States Air Force (USAF) attempted to replace the long-running, prop-driven Lockheed C-130 “Hercules” tactical transport during the mid-1970s. With production beginning in 1954, the high-winged, four-engined C-130 had been in service for several decades up to that point and a myriad of variants were ultimately realized when the USAF established the Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) competition of 1968 to seek a standardized successor. From the RFP (Request For Proposal) of 1972, Boeing’s entry into the competition became its “YC-14” and this was set against the McDonnell Douglas “YC-15” prototype.Boeing and McDonnell Douglas each had their designs selected from a field of five entries and each were awarded prototype contracts for two examples. Boeing prototype 72-1873 went to the air for the first time on August 9th, 1976 and the second example followed as 72-1874 in time. The formal USAF head-to-head competition began in November of 1976 at Edwards AFB and this phase lasted into mid-1977.And guess what finally emerged:▲Yeah. We bought a couple of these, and they are so good, we’re buying some more!. The C-17 Globemaster: just right for a country where there are neither runways nor roads, only squabbling politicians (and one particularly odious jerk who goes around saying “Suit Boot ki Sarkar”….has he seen how Chinese politicians dress?) and an overcrowded, overbearing, and completely untalented and self-serving bureaucracy.▲Dornier, a leading aircraft manufacturer in West Germany, has produced a number of STOL aircraft since the 1950s. The DO-29 VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) plane is noted for having pusher props capable of being rotated 90° downward to create a powerful upward push.▲Arava 20-passenger Israeli STOL 1971▲DeHavilland Twin-Otter in intercity travel▲Rutan 36-passenger commuter 78-I for intercity commuter service, proposed by Burt Rutan, 1982. While not strictly a STOL configuration, the 78-I was designed for small-field operation.▲Rutan’s design for an Advanced Technological Tactical Transport (AT3), 1988. The problem: Design and build a transport aircraft for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that's bigger and faster than a helicopter, but smaller than a C-130 transport. Throw in a range of almost 3000 miles, a cruise speed of 326 knots and a payload of 14 troops and 5000 pounds of cargo. And —oh, yes!—make this aircraft capable of getting into and out of unimproved jungle clearings in 1000 ft. or less. To avoid having the air flow from the front set of wings interfere with the rear set, the front set are dihedral (slanted up from the center), while the rear set are anhedral (pointed down). To solve the problems of getting the airplane to take-off speed as quickly as possible, and yet keep that speed down as low as possible, Rutan developed what he calls jump flaps: When the AT3 hits 50 knots in the takeoff roll, the pilot activates a special lever which deploys the flaps almost instantly.▲In the late 1970s, Dornier GmbH developed a new kind of wing, the TNT (Tragflügel neuer Technologie – Aerofoil new technology), subsidized by the German Government. This grew into the long successful STOL design, the Dornier 228 passenger STOL transport. In November 1983, a major license-production and phased technology-transfer agreement was signed between Dornier and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) was signed; a separate production line was established and produced its first aircraft in 1985. By 2014, a total of 125 Do 228s had been produced in India.▲As part of a five-year NASA research project, a team led by researchers at California Polytechnic State University designed a 100-passenger Cruise Efficient, Short Take-Off and Landing (Cestol) airliner that could arrive and depart at steep angles to and from 3,000-foot-long runways. For the past year, scientists have wind-tunnel-tested a 2,500-pound model with a 10-foot wingspan, nicknamed Amelia (for Advanced Model for Extreme Lift and Improved Aeroacoustics), at NASA's Ames Research Center. "This plane was designed with a circulation-control wing, which generates higher lift at lower speeds," says David Marshall, an associate professor with Cal Poly's aerospace-engineering department. "We can reduce the field length by 50 percent." Other researchers studied how Cestol planes would integrate into existing infrastructure. Results show that in tandem with NextGen's approach and departure routing, which could allow planes to fly outside traditional flight paths, Cestol aircraft could land at underused, shorter runways or at smaller regional airports. Spreading air traffic over more runways would relieve congestion and substantially reduce flight delays. The FAA's multibillion-dollar NextGen initiative is an elaborate mélange of satellite-based guidance, arrival, and departure technologies intended to modernize the outdated and much-criticized national airspace system by 2025.Care to join a STOL design team?What is VTOL? A beginner's guide to vertical take-off and landing technologyBoundary Layer Control, STOL, V/STOL Aircraft Research NASA Ames