DARPA’s Liberty Lifter concept is a modern spin on a Soviet seaplane
The aircraft would be able to transport people and cargo low over the water, and then deliver them quickly to a beach.
BY KELSEY D. ATHERTON | PUBLISHED MAY 26, 2022 3:00 PM
To land on beaches in the future, DARPA is pursuing a type of very large seaplane popularized by the Soviet Union. In a video shared May 18, the Pentagon’s blue sky projects wing envisions an ultra low-flying “Liberty Lifter” as a capable transport and cargo plane for getting goods to shore efficiently in places without a ship-friendly port.
To understand why this branch of the DOD is interested in such a craft, it first helps to consider a phenomenon called “wing-in-ground effect.”
“There is a history of attempting to develop aircraft created to fly with ‘wing-in-ground effect,’ which means the aircraft is flying no more than the length of its wingspan above ground or water,” reads the DARPA release. The Soviet Union developed vehicles on the same principle called “ekranoplans”—seaplanes like this could go fast and take off and land without runways, but were restricted to calm seas and couldn’t really maneuver much.
There’s a host of reasons why it’s generally a bad idea for planes to fly close to the surface, starting with the fact that there’s more exposure to the weather and likely a higher risk of crashing. But ground-effect aircraft, like ekranoplans and DARPA’s planned Liberty Lifter, take advantage of the benefits of being low.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/darpa-releases-liberty-lifter-plan/
