Can a fighter aircraft like an F-22 or F-18 ever run solely on battery power instead of jet fuel?

Question

Can a fighter aircraft like an F-22 or F-18 ever run solely on battery power instead of jet fuel?

Answer 1

really i have no clue but if i had to guess it would be no but other than that idk but if you don't get an answer try it out

Answer 2

the instuments can run on the battery, and they can "glide" without fuel, but they will not be flying for very long...

Answer 3

Only if they had really really really really really big batteries.

Answer 4

No, they require Jet Fuel.  The burning jet fuel in the engines provide the required thrust to make them fly.

To get enough battery power to turn an electric engine to provide the same amount of thrust would be so heavy that it could not get off the ground, let alone be any kind of air superiority aircraft.

Answer 5

Not with present technology.  It would take a jump of several orders in magnitude for batteries to be efficient enough to generate the kW equivalent of 75-80000 pounds of thrust.

I'm not saying it isn't beyond the realm of possibility, though.

On a related note, you might be interested to learn that the Air Force is conducting tests with hybrid fuels in B52 and B1 testbeds.  So far, the tests are quite positive.  Also, the AF is moving to solar/thermal power were practical.  Nellis AFB in Nevada is running almost 35% of its needs from solar panels...

Answer 6

Not in this lifetime.

Answer 7

No, cars run on piston engines, and when you run a car on electricity it makes it almost useless, because of range and speed issues.

Jets came about because as technology has moved on in fighter aircraft, piston engines are almost useless.

So if you can't replace the piston engine with electric motors properly, you'll never replace the jet engine.

The amount of thrust created by a modern jet engine is immense.

Answer 8

I might suppose if they towed a 100' x 10,000' solar panel behind them. However, this would be a logistics nightmare, especially for the maintenance crews.

This may also affect performance in cloudy weather or at nighttime.

Please increase your lithium dose, oh wait...

I feel if I answer this question honestly, I will be subject to harsh criticism for no reason whatsoever, beleaguered by non-colleagues, pasteurized, homogenized, folded, spindled and mutilated, so I'll pass on this one like an Audi A6 on the autobahn...

Answer 9

The problem here would be that even if you could get enough power output from a battery, that it would have a very short life before it would need recharged.  So, to counter that, you'd have to have a whole lot of batteries.  The problem with that is that batteries are quite heavy, which does not work at all on a fighter aircraft (or most other planes).

Answer 10

Not a chance anytime soon, if ever.  The power requirements for any useful airplane require a very energy-dense storage medium (which is all jet fuel is: an energy storage medium), many orders of magnitude denser than any battery is capable of achieving with current or any projected technologies.  If it's too much power for a Cessna Skyhawk, then there is no way that a fighter, with its far more demanding energy requirements, could ever work on battery power.