perfidy

Aah, the miracle of modern technology. It makes the cockles of my heart feel all cockly. The geniuses what brought you the P-38 Lightning, the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 Nighthawk have come up with another wonder. The Skunk Works has long been renowned in the aviation world for not only its designs - some of the most impressive planes ever to fly - but also the speed at which the Skunk Works could develop them. Back in the late days of WWII, the Skunk Works team developed the first prototype for the P-80 Shooting Star, America's first operational jet fighter, in just 143 days. This feat is even more remarkable when you consider the absence not merely of computers and modeling software; but also even of calculators.

The new wonder is an unmanned vehicle dubbed the polecat. What is remarkable about this craft is not its performance, but rather the means by which it is made. 3D printing, or 3D rapid prototyping, has been around for a little while. A 3D printer shoots finely focused lasers into a vat of plastic or metal powder, and the heat of the lasers causes the plastic to solidify, or the metal to sinter together. This method allows solid shapes to be built up out of layers, without the need for expensive hand-crafting or retooling. This is nifty. But up until now, the objects you pull out of a 3D printer were merely prototypes - objects that were not fully functional but which could be used to test designs. For example, by seeing if all the computer drawn shapeys all fit together.

The Skunk Works has now taken this to a new level. The Polecat UAV is actually constructed largely of parts made by means of 3D fabricators.

"The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods," says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works. "The big advantage over conventional, large-scale aircraft production programmes is the cost saving in tooling as well as the order-of-magnitude reductions in fabrication and assembly time."

By mixing composite polymers with radar-absorbing metals, it is thought that the aircraft can be built with a certain amount of stealth characteristics already built in.

Here we see the beginning of the future. Much of the objects that we use are identical to thousands if not millions of other objects - production of all the nifty, useful and essential articles that make our lives possible is constrained by the tyranny of the capital cost of expensive capital equipment and the expertise necessary to set it up. Witness:

"This use of rapid prototyping is certainly a revolutionary approach to making an aircraft," says Bill Sweetman, aerospace and technology editor of Jane's International Defence Review. "The classic way is to set up a production line with very heavy-duty fixed metal tools that hold everything in the right place." That is too expensive an approach for the low production runs that reconnaissance UAVs are likely to need, he says.

While the first use of this technology is military, it will have civilian uses. And of course, as clever civilians come up with ever more interesting ways to use that technology, then the military will also benefit.

If someone comes up with a way to print working circuitry with a 3D printer, then you have a general purpose fab. One that could, provided with the necessary feedstock, manufacture essentially any device whose plans are stored in its memory or accessible via google. Think free hardware movement. A lot of the planning that is being done in military acquisition circles is contingent on the idea that moving from idea to production weapon system is a matter of billions of dollars and the better part of decade, and leaves you with balky equipment at a premium price. As this technology takes hold, things will begin to change. By decreasing the design build test cycle, you can move much more rapidly. In the early stages, parts will be made with fabs, and then assembled. We won't be printing whole aircraft. But if a part is faulty, or can be improved, just change the program. There is no need for expensive retooling, and all subsequent versions of the weapon are the new, improved model. By changing the composition of the feedstock, you can change the properties of the product. Tweak the design, and each model is an improvement.

The advent of industrial manufacture changed a lot of things, warfare being one of the most important ones. Moving to a software, information-age style manufacture will have equaly great effects, perhaps even greater than the changes we've seen with the rise of information technology in our media. You could think of it as analogous to the printing press and the factory. The changes are parallel - scribe/printer/blogger and craftsman/factory/fab. Just as we bloggers have the advantages of both earlier modes - fabs will have the advantages of the individualization of the craftsman with the lowered cost of the factory.

Big changes.

[wik] hat tip to blogger and excellent sf author Walter Jon Williams. His book Voice of the Whirlwind is one of my favorites. D'accord.