By Tyler Durden | 29 May 2022
ZERO HEDGE — The Pentagon’s top research agency has unveiled a highly unusual kind of plane that is a blend between a hovercraft and an aircraft to skim the ocean’s surface to deliver cargo much faster than convention transport vessels.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) “Liberty Lifter” uses a trick of physics known as the “ground effect” to reduce aerodynamic drag by only flying no more than the length of its wingspan above water. This allows the plane to travel much faster and carry large amounts of payload.
Liberty Lifter “will combine fast and flexible strategic lift of very large, heavy loads with the ability to take off/land in water,” DARPA said in the press release.
The agency pointed out the Soviet Union developed a ground-effect vehicle called ekranoplans, explaining that “these vehicles were high speed and runway- independent, but were restricted to calm waters and had limited maneuverability.” […]
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