Popular science stealth ucav speculative picture!

img224.imageshack.us...

This image is from next months popular science, and can be found here along with 3 other pics - I seperated this one because it is remarkable in its similarities to a patent applied for by Lockheed many years ago -

www.popsci.com...
Click on the view photos and its in there with a stealth special forces transport that intel gurl has posted a few days ago....!!!

See below link for the patent.

www.desertsecrets.com...

any bets on if this gets rolled out for people to see?

I was just thinking to myself that it looks like a next gen. unmanned version of a P-51 Mustang.

Yep, I read this issue. They've got a small article on the Aurora as well as some other stuff.

cool stuff - But I do hope its going to be some thing more concrete this time round...remember 2000 /2001 and all the pop sci speculation about the TR-3A??

..........Maybe one day we'll see a black world stealth come into some light..... and not just a little model plane ala polecat, bird of prey ect.... I want to see mach 5 hydrogen slush powered recon birds rolled out....Sigh....heres to wishing!

Originally posted by D4rk Kn1ght
cool stuff - But I do hope its going to be some thing more concrete this time round...remember 2000 /2001 and all the pop sci speculation about the TR-3A??

..........Maybe one day we'll see a black world stealth come into some light..... and not just a little model plane ala polecat, bird of prey ect.... I want to see mach 5 hydrogen slush powered recon birds rolled out....Sigh....heres to wishing!

Don't we all? The fact is that something like that might not even ever be revealed.

The government chooses what it wants to tell us, we can't force them. And if the project dies, it doesn't mean it becomes open season and becomes declassified, I'm sure many black projects out there have been terminated and are still unknown and will forever be like that. I too would like to see something like that, but I would prefer to fly it before hand.

Shattered OUT...

Originally posted by D4rk Kn1ght
..........Maybe one day we'll see a black world stealth come into some light..... and not just a little model plane ala polecat, bird of prey ect.... I want to see mach 5 hydrogen slush powered recon birds rolled out....Sigh....heres to wishing!

i heard that

well, the closest thing to it in the near furute is the FALCON project (DARPA)

but it makes me wonder...if thats the "white" side to it, what about the "black" part of the spectrum? i KNOW ive seen contrails indicative of an Aurora before. MANY times. ive been fed explanations that add up to crap, and the FALCON isnt set to fly for a while longer, so whats making those contrails?

(EDIT--->those generated Aurora pictures have to be about my favorite [best looking too] thus far)

[edit on 18-9-2006 by truthseekerX]

niac.usra.edu...

Its a link to a space tehter launching project, but just have a look at the launch aircraft - DF-9 from boeing...

I have been told that it has never flown and was just a paper exercise, but just read all the has, can, does language, and yes I know ive been told its never flown, but the guy sure as hell knwos alot about it for a non - aircraft.

The DF-9 is a rather well known non-existant plane, however anyone that worked on the project, or something dealing with the project like this, IS going to know a lot about it. They'll HAVE to, so they know if what they're designing will work or not.

Well then I want to see some of their art work and concept drawings....maybe i'll mail boeing to see if they'll send me any thing, as it seems an awesome project to hide off in a phantom works shed out in the desert....


Ohhhhh its not fair!!!..... i wanna see a fast recon bird flying.... I want pictures....

Gonna sulk till i see some.....

Oh Please /PEOPLE!/

How many feature junctions are there on that so called 'stealthy UCAV' configuration?

Where does the landing gear go?

WHY would you put a gimbaled EO package behind a HUGE curving sensor window and let the whole bloody world look at the frontend of a standard 'thimble' optics head by POINTING IT at the most likely reciprocal lookup angle for a ground radar?

Optically, why would you put twice the 'dark mass' on the front end of the airframe where it is MOST likely to be detected as both inlet and FLIR aperture?

Look at that GBU-39. That's a a six foot long weapon with a 7" diameter. What does that make the scale of the weapons bay door. The front window or the inlet or even the wings?

Jets suck gas like a drunk locked in a brewery. Where's the fuel? That wing is too narrow in both chord and section to feed any thing with realistic (i.e. better than a manned vehicle) loiter at radius. YOU NEED A DELTA to give decent root:tip taper with reasonable space for spar voids and fuel cells.

This is nothing but a cheap 'artistic' knockoff of a long retired drone-

www.defensetech.org...

Which itself was a 'sealed volume' recce airframe, _air launched_, from a DC-130E and fitted with a SINGLE camera (only 300lbs total payload) which didn't require compromising structural design with multiple furhter internal voids like a weapons bay.

A drone which FAILED to meet even period 1970 RCS needs.

Add to this a minimalist performance capability of some 4.5hrs and 1,700-2,000nm worth of range, along with ZERO evidence of a satcomms link able to support the bandwidth requirements of BLOS UAV (what the Geigeresque head hump of the RQ-1 and 4 are all about) and the question becomes: "Why?"

Compass Arrow was 34ft long with a 48ft wingspan. It weight 5,500lbs or so. To get up towards a USEFUL capability (loiter on the order of 24hrs at 1,500nm range with _landing gear_) they had to go to the Compass Cope with a _90FT_ span in a 15,000lb airframe.

Bam, you're right back at the GHawk.

This, this is a toy dressed up as concept artwork. You've already seen the basically simple designs (X-45 and X-47) which will provide an _intermediate_ 10hrs at 500nm capability. And nobody wants them because they make the worthless flyboys look bad even as they likely make the Raptor look like a flaming neon sign in terms of LO features.

Some things to consider:

The classified USAF PHAE followup to J-UCAS is in it's earliest developmental phases.

They have /supposedly/ harvested the J97-GE-100 engines from Compass Arrow and these are being used in pairs for the new system. Given that the J97 produces on the order of 4,000lbst at sea level and only 184lbf at altitude, while the YQM-96 (C-Cope) was three times the weight of the AQM-91 yet used the same engine, they must be sucking a LOT of power for the airframe systems to justify twice the fuel burn.

It's a complete Schultz at 80Kft. Even at 55Kft which is 'round about' where the GHawk commonly flies, the sky is black as night above the horizon and a veritable white mirror below. Optical LO is thus highly unlikely given the _weight_ penalties involved.

Penetration without endurance is worthless. Penetration without responsive bombs on target is worthless. Penetration without covert radar to look through clouds is worthless.

Covert Penetration without deep RAS on a straight wing is impossible.

CONCLUSION:
The Blue Suited RICO Indictment Committee are just toying around again. Throwing whatever they can at the baseline capability sketch in the hopes of _deliberately_ creating something which is so lopsided for capabilities and so /incompatible/ with conventional tacair for D1R1 penetration speeds and profiles that they can 'pretend they tried'. Without ever developing the airframe whose production economics could be justified as a followon to the F-16 in a price category that makes sense.

No 500-1,000 airframe buy = 'too expensive to be continued with' as just a development program. And another cancellation in favor of the manned systems approach which is _failing_ 'so well' now.


KPl.


P.S. Have any of you Aurora fanboys ever considered that, with the end of the NATO Mission, Mach 5 to 3,500nm is simply _not good enough_? That staging forward a Methane or Hydrogen tanker without a dedicated Detachment and cryo or catalytic tank farm storage system every few thousand miles (as with the SR-71) is going to slow down your 'global power' responsiveness more than the jet itself can make up for in comparison with simply basing in, closer?

Hey thanks for the reply ther CH.... alot of info and alot of politics all rolled in to make it a good read..

Yeah I know I might be a mach 5 fan boy....but i am also a fan of stealthy UCAVS that can do the job with out making a pilot put his arse on the line over some God forsaked country where no CSAR can reach him..

But I want to see a mach 5 spyplane goddamit!!! I WANNA!!!