Figure 1 - uploaded by Mike Snead
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Fairchild XC-120 pack plane with detachable module. Courtesy of History Of fice, Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center.
Source publication
This article describes the Configurable Air Transport (CAT) air mobility concept and its concept of operations to enable persistent air power operations.
Context in source publication
Context 1
... 1949, shortly after the initiation of pro duction of the C-119 "Flying Boxcar" trans port for the Air Force, that aircraft's manu facturer, Fairchild, experimented with a design variation that incorporated a detach able fuselage module ( fig. 1). Called the XC 120 "pack plane," the transport aircraft lent itself to rapid reconfiguration in support of a variety of missions. One description of the XC-120 mentions that modules could deliver cargo as well as serve as shops, weather sta tions, emergency hospitals, and ...
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Citations
... Study efforts focused less on aircraft design and optimization and more on identifying and addressing, from a conceptual perspective, issues and advantages associated with a modular military air transport aircraft. These study results was presented in "Global Air Mobility and Persistent Airpower Operations." 31 As shown in Fig. 12, the initial CAT configuration was a large aircraft with a single, centerline-mounted module. For simplification of the mobility analyses addressed in the cited article, the payload was sized to be the same as the C-5. ...
... This reflected an early emphasis on addressing the question of the potential military utility of a modular air transport. As discussed in Ref. 31, there appears to be significant military utility for a modular air transport not only for deploying military forces but also for providing a global range air platform for conducting persistent airpower missions. ...
(Note: For the later substantial update to this concept, search "Configurable Air Transport" on YouTube.) This paper describes a concept of a large flying fuselage transport aircraft that carries the cargo or missionized payload in several large, detachable modules instead of carrying this cargo or payload internally as in current aircraft designs. The paper addresses the application of this concept to the global military airlift missions of air refueling, materiel transport, and persistent air power projection. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the extension of this module-based aircraft design to other emerging military and commercial air transport needs.
