New British UCAV demonstrator

The orange panels were BRIGHT orange, retangular and ran on the top and bottom of the craft. As for ariels ect could not say, but not visible to the eye if it did. As for the hawk, it is very distinctive because its all black. Totaly black from nose to tail, always flew with some kind of center line pod (Which i just thought was a long thin fuel pod) but the wings were clean with no pylons on them. As for the markings of the hawk, there didn't appear to be any in colour ie like RAF flashes ect, to the naked eye it was just black all over, not even having any colour on the top or any where.

Noise wise, very quiet more of a swooshing sound than a jet scream, the hawk was much more audible. The time on the ferry to the isle of man it passed over at medium alt in level flight on a bright sunny summers day. Me and G/F got a view through binos, and the orange actually makes it very hard to see... cannot explain why, but it makes you look at the orange and not the shape.. thats the best way i can put it.


Oh and just a quick note for plane man about my credability : For months ive been telling folks about the corax and its swept wing version, and people just went "yeah yeah sure there is" but Oh look a picture of a swept wing corax.... Warton folks. Thats where this stuffs hiding out.

[edit on 24-2-2006 by MadGreebo]

I was sent this thread by a friend of mine who posts on a different site. I asked him about nightjar, and in reply he sent me this.

www.strategypage.com...

Its from a good source ( Aviation week) and contains some useful snippets of info for us to keep an eye out for. My interest was held by the electro optical work done on a hawk .... Worth a read at least. Warton is where its at folks.

One interesting note is in the replies to the thread about how BAe was involved in advanced ucav work back in 1999 with the americans.

[edit on 24-2-2006 by MadGreebo]

lol, that's me on strat page, I post on a few sites usually under the name Mike_A or RM-Nod.

Anyway, thanks I'm putting the information together so I can send it to a few people who may know something; hopefully I can get some answers.

Can you think of anything else that might be useful

Nice post mike, thats real freaky I was sent that link....and the poster turns out to be you.....ROFL thats weird in the extreme!

Oh I probably should have said in my last post, the article about Nightjar is wrong, it was later corrected by Douglass Barrie in another of his pieces in AW.

Nightjar was actually an egg shaped test body at Warton which was used to test airframe features of future combat aircraft. The project was split into two phases as far as we know with Phase II starting recently I believe; the significance of the two phases is unknown. The project will be completed in October this year.

The visual stealth stuff is project Chameleon which was probably conducted around 1995 with tests being carried out to develop ways of reducing an aircraft’s visual and infrared signatures. This was actually something I was thinking about in regards to your aircraft; the bright orange panels may have been a visual aid designed to allow ground based spotters and the chase plane to see the aircraft which may be using technology developed under Chameleon to disrupt its visual signature. That’s just a theory though, not based on much.

By the way this time you saw it whilst on the ferry, what time was this?

heysham / isle of man ferry in early July, left around 14 30 hrs...about an hour into the journey so around 1530 / 1600 hrs.

Mike just one thing about the orange panels. they are very bright, but do not make the craft easy to focus on, just the opposite in fact; Its actually quite freaky in a way that some thing so bright is such good optical deterrent almost.

check out a video of raven

www.youtube.com...

check out a video of raven

www.youtube.com...