Frontline's V-STAR UAV - Have Lift Fan Will... What?
The UAV industry is young enough to have room for improvement, and AUVSI is a showcase for its ideas. We don't want to stifle innovation, but we do have a responsibility to be realistic in our reporting. Even I do, and my idea of what is possible in aerospace is more permissive than most.
So how do we handle the V-STAR vertical take-off and landing UAV unveiled by newcomer Frontline Aerospace at the show on Tuesday? Carefully. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept. Two turbine engines driving a counter-rotating lift fan for VTOL and an aft fan for propulsion. A box wing with fold-out tips for high lift and low drag. An understandable configuration for a combat resupply UAV.
Photo: Frontline Aerospace
There are a couple of unusual aspects. One is locating the payload on the CG, which is good, but the designers chose to fit it inside the lift-fan hub, which seems a bit limiting. The other is the recuperator, or heat exchanger, designed to reduce fuel consumption by transferring heat from the engine exhaust to air entering the combustor.
But there are two eyebrow-raising issues. The V-STAR seems more like a packaging exercise than a true innovation. Individually, none of the technologies is new.
More to the point, Frontline comes to AUVSI lacking credentials. Nobody involved has run an airplane program at all, and CEO Ryan Woods is an energy consultant. And there is no sign that the company has tested a single piece of hardware. Do they know how to control a fan-lift vehicle in the hover? Aurora (to name one example) has worked long and hard on that issue. Frontline asserts that their recuperator works far better than anything tested up to now, but that's easy to say on a PowerPoint.
Privately funded Frontline plans to fly a half-scale prototype next year, but is looking for a major partner to go further - and while a half-scale looks impressive, it's only one-eighth the mass, which dramatically changes the dynamics. In such a rapidly developing, and highly competitive, industry as this, more than marketing material is needed to be taken seriously.
V-STAR (tm) was designed by a retired Boeing Technical Fellow. We have received preliminary confirmation in early water and wind tunnel testing. And we have received positive feedback from senior designers well known in the UAV world from places like Wright-Patterson AFB and the Naval Research Labs. We are receiving serious customer interest at AUVSI and elsewhere.
You are right that other companies have struggled with stability issues. But no other company arrived at the patented V-STAR (tm) design, which offers a breakthrough approach. Certainly, more must be done, but it rests on a promising base. Aviation is filled with cases of big companies whose designs have failed, while innovators have succeeded (even without permission).
Your comment about scale and "mass" neglects an important point that I made in the press conference you attended. Setting aside the fact that many aircraft designs have evolved through sub-scale demonstrators -- I noted at the press conference that the "baseline" design is quite scalable to missions in their own right. We are engaged in just such discussions with a potential customer, and these smaller variants are not merely "pale shadows" of the larger configurations.
As to our payload volume, it is a truism well known to designers and, even more importantly, to military customers that virtually every UAV struggles to find internal payload capacity. Our payload configuration fully meets a military-defined combat resupply objective. Plus, it gets "beer, beans and bullets" to the troops who need it, faster, quieter, and safer than any helicopter or other UAV. It also readily accommodates ISR, weapons and other payloads leading in the market. In fact, our payload advantage -- to which numerous viewers at AUVSI have said "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" -- is that it is always at Center of Gravity, allowing for rapid response to tactical contingencies in the field.
Regarding our patented MicroFire (tm) recuperator design, it is underway with an expert technical team of considerable experience separate from our aircraft design, and it has also drawn serious customer interest both during and preceding AUVSI. You are right that the "concepts" are not new. It is the achievement of design targets now possible with advanced materials and methods that we can discuss with potential partners or customers more fully on nondisclosure. In the meantime, any who want to arrive at their own conclusions about this and other design elements can find an overview at our new website -- FrontlineAerospace.com.
You are correct to imply that the considerable investment I have made to date has not yet produced another Lockheed Martin, or Northrop Grumman or SAIC. But that is not our objective. As an experienced entrepreneur, I have achieved stage-one objectives for Frontline Aerospace, Inc., on a trajectory that will next engage far greater capabilities and relationships than those you have reported.
Let me observe that your comments about "credentials" have some truth. We stated plainly that we are a new company. But you omit reference to the involvement of two retired flag officers with Joint Staff, special operations, development and combat experience who spoke in Frontline's behalf at the press conference. You do not mention that Dr. Robert M. Wood is also a Frontline director after 43 years as a senior research executive with McDonnell Douglas. (On personal note, I am proud of the the heritage brought from others of my forebearers -- Dr. K. D. Wood, whose textbooks pioneered in teaching two generations of aeronautical engineers, and Schuyler Kleinhans, who retired as Corporate Vice President of Engineering from McDonnell Douglas.) So we know the nature of the sometimes jealous aviation industry and always difficult defense acquisition maze better than your comments imply.
You describe me as an "energy consultant." I am an engineering-trained businessman with extensive technical marketing and management experience with firms such as INTEL, Digital Equipment Corporation and Toshiba, before embarking on a successful entrepreneurial career, including multi-million dollar deals in the energy industry. Whether the calculator-brigade or the DOD-schmoozing brigade regards those as credentials, I am too busy to say. Combat commanders who want to do things better are interested in V-STAR (tm). People who use the proven Rolls-Royce 250 engine series are excited about MicroFire (tm).
It is hard to imagine that Frontline Aerospace, Inc., is the first company ever to use marketing materials or to announce emerging capability. I stated plainly that we have more work to do. We are doing it. And we are telling the truth about it, which is sometimes an innovation in itself. I look forward to speaking with you further.
Respecfully,
Ryan Wood
CEO, Frontline Aerospace, Inc.
........
Wood Enterprises Newsletter
UFOs, Immortality, and Modern Medicine February 2009
In This Issue
Protandim: The Fountain of Youth?
________________________________
Our Sponsors
UFO Conference
UFO Products
Protandim(R)
MAJIC Eyes Only
The Secret
Greetings!
Questions abound: Can humans achieve immortality? Are UFOs time travel
machines? Has society secretly benefited from reverse engineering?
Would aliens have immortal souls? How can modern medicine advance our
physical lives and add to our knowledge quest?
UFOs, Immortality, and Modern Medicine
In the millennium there is a consensus: conversations should be and
are taking place concerning the technological advancements on this
planet and the hypothetical existence of life beyond planet Earth. Not
only that, but we are heavily debating stem-cell research, cloning,
cryonics, and now the notion of virtual existence via human mind
"uploading." Our human quest for knowledge and immortality has lead to
numerous ground-breaking technological discoveries, to say the least.
But the questions still abound: Is immortality achievable? It is
clear that aliens do exist, and that they have a achieved a functional
level of immortality. So it can be done, but what is modern medicine
really capable of?
First of all, let me catch you up to speed. There are serious
conversations taking place about uploading minds to computer
simulations in the next 50-100 years. Hypothetical concerns and
questions are being raised about the reality of this concept, a
concept that is suggesting a kind of immortality. This conversation
opens a Pandora's box into, quite literally, infinite spaces. For
example, Mac Tonnies wrote:
"It's just possible that aliens, if they are visiting us, are a
machine-based intelligence, as postulated by author and historian
Richard Dolan. They might upload/download themselves into a variety of
specialized mechanisms and bodies as casually as we change clothes or
trade in old cars. Whitley Strieber's testimony certainly suggests
something like this...Ultimately; it's a matter of dealing with a
single, mind-stretching question: Given the opportunity to become
virtually immortal, will we take it? Do we dare overrule the tyranny
of our DNA or are we hardwired for death?"
Virtual immortality aside, let's discuss our collective interest in
immortality. First of all, a definition of immortality should be
agreed upon. Immortality, according to the research phenomenon,
Wikipedia, is defined as "the concept of living in physical or
spiritual form for an infinite length of time." Not dying, or rather,
staying young, strong and healthy, is something many humans desire-so
much that we have jested in fiction about the existence of a "Fountain
of Youth," where these dreams become a reality. But is it possible?
Life extension advocates feel that biological immortality is likely in
the decades to come. Specifically, this refers to the absence of aging
of the body due to baseline biological human limitations, but
acknowledgements that complete immortality is attainable in a human
form are unlikely due to the fact that even when you remain
biologically young, you are still susceptible to accidents and
environmental demise.
So what can the average person do to improve the quality and longevity of life?
Modern medicine offers the spiritualist, the believer, the
non-believer--and every type of human out there--the chance to
increase longevity and health, thus stepping that much closer to a
sense of immortality. There are numerous scientifically credible
approaches to improving your quality of life, regular exercise, good
nutrition, marriage, a dog regular prayer and so on. But let me share
with you a simple solution that that genuinely improves your immune
system in an exponential way.
Protandim(R) is a groundbreaking, clinically proven solution for
healthy aging. This patented anti-oxidant therapy is 1000's of times
more powerful than red wine, oranges, blueberries, acai juice or other
popular anti-oxidant supplements. Protandim works by increasing the
body's natural anti-oxidant protection at the cellular level,
triggering cells to produce naturally occurring protective antioxidant
enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione
synthase.
A peer-reviewed scientific study shows that after 30 days of taking
Protandim, free radicals decreased an average of 40 percent, slowing
the progressive aging factors to the level of a 20 year old. Protandim
is currently the subject of over 20 scientific studies at leading
universities and research institutes. For more information, please
visit the Protandim(R) product web site at www.Protandim.com
Protandim(R), a patented product developed by LifeVantage Corporation,
was proven by an earlier study to actually slow the progressive rate
of aging. This new study confirms that Protandim's(R) gene induction
approach to antioxidant therapy provides much broader and more
powerful benefits to the body than those provided by vitamins such as
E and C, according to the Company.
Dr. Joe McCord, professor of medicine and co-author of the study,
commented, "The results of this study may change how we view aging and
the factors that impact healthy aging. Notably, glutathione, which is
of particular interest to many disease researchers, was increased more
than 300 percent with Protandim. Glutathione plays a key role in the
immune system and when glutathione levels drop, a person's ability to
fight disease also decreases. In addition to the findings on
glutathione, the study also shows that Protandim delivers an
antioxidant benefit to the body that exceeds those provided by
vitamins E and C."
McCord added, "Contrary to popular belief, our bodies don't actually
rely upon the intake of vitamins, such as C and E, to maintain proper
antioxidant balance; rather we utilize a complex network of
antioxidant enzymes to maintain health and protect against oxidative
stress. Oxidative stress is damaging to our bodies in that it is a
major contributor to aging, weakened immune function, and over 200
diseases. In fact, the use of direct antioxidants, such as vitamins C
and E, as an effective way to reduce oxidative stress has been largely
discredited in the past few years. Under some circumstances, vitamins
such as C and E can actually promote oxidative stress rather than
relieve it. Protandim(R) reduces oxidative stress by enhancing the
body's entire network of antioxidant enzymes."
So what is a reasonable person to do? Naturally, there are just a few
choices, either sign-up and purchase Protandim with the auto-ship
program or not. If not, you might consider investing in the stock:
ticker symbol LFVN . There's no stopping science; it is just a matter
of time before Protandim will announce high credible scientific
findings from the score of clinical trials that are underway and the
stock will move from 25 cents to $25 dollars!
It is your decision.
Wood Enterprises | 14004 Quail Ridge Drive | Broomfield | CO | 80020