(Photo: Boeing)
Boeing’s new Phantom Eye prototype elicits a welter of contradictions in the environmental pacifist.
It’s powered by two 2.3-liter, four-cylinder Ford Ranger engines that have been converted to hydrogen fuel.
If all goes as planned, it’ll be able to cruise at 65,000 feet for up to four days. Plus, it looks kinda cute. How hard would it be to airbrush him into this picture?
On the other hand, the visual similarity of Phantom Eye to a cartoon bomb strapped to a wing is evidence of its genesis in the bowels of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. Darryl Davis, president of Boeing Phantom Works (and who doesn’t dream, really, of having that title on your business card), is quoted as saying Phantom Eye will usher in a new era of “persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” and offer “game-changing opportunities for our military, civil and commercial customers.”
With their 150-foot wingspan, future Phantom Eyes are envisioned as criss-crossing the globe at 150 knots (carrying up to a 450-pound payload). Boeing’s goal is to extend the craft’s time-in-air from four days to ten, so that three to four Eyes are all that would be necessary to provide portable global surveillance and communications. (Somewhere, Enemy of the State‘s keyhole satellite is sulking.)
Back on the ground of the present-day, there’s still a lot of work to do. The first Phantom Eye test flight should come in early 2011. So hurry up and do your super-nefarious before then. In the meantime, we can hope this puts pressure on leadership resistant to a Manhattan-Project-style clean energy push.
Seriously, Ford Ranger engines converted to hydrogen, turbocharged, capable of powering a plane for four days, and our first use of this engineering feat will be to spy on people. Sigh. If it weren’t for the military applications, we’d never have nice things.