The increasing demand for intelligence and surveillance missions has led to the novel use of aircraft (especially unmanned aerial vehicles). Rather than flying long distances or loitering, a fleet of aircraft will maintain a permanent presence at a remote location. Two questions arise: at what distance can this presence be maintained, and at what aerodynamic efficiency shall the aircraft fly during the transits? The Breguet equations for range and endurance provide a preliminary formula for the “range for continuous coverage”, in which the aerodynamic coefficients for both transit phases appear. The optimization of these coefficients provides remarkable results: for a given propulsion type and number of aircraft, the lift coefficient for the optimal range for continuous coverage is always a constant multiple of the lift coefficient for the best range (e.g., the best continuous coverage C L for two jet aircraft is 1 / 3 of the best range C L ).


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    Title :

    Optimization of the Range for Continuous Target Coverage


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Journal of Aircraft ; 52 , 3 ; 896-902


    Publication date :

    2015-03-12


    Size :

    7 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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