F-121 Sentinel :

F-121
"Sentinel"

Reported Specifications:

Primary Function: Strategic Reconnaissance Aircraft
Prime Contractor: General Dynamics
Power Plant: Unknown
Length: Unknown
Height:Unknown
Wingspan: Unknown
Speed: Mach 3+
Ceiling: Unknown
Unit Cost: Unknown

This aircraft was built by General Dynamics (Fort Worth), now part of Lockheed Martin, and first flew in 1986. It is a single-seat Mach 3+ reconnaissance aircraft for NRO, and significantly more stealthy than the SR-71A. It is of almost perfect delta planform with 65� leading edge sweep, and its ventral air intake is highly blended into the fuselage. Four of these aircraft are currently operationally based at Groom Lake in hangars 20 through 23.
The unofficial F-121 designator was allocated after Lockheed Martin took over the GD Fort Worth assets, and the 121 is said to honor the Lockheed article number of the first A-12 Blackbird aircraft. The F prefix is widely used for bogus designations of secret aircraft, and is not meant to designate the Sentinel as a "Fighter". The code name "Centennial" was also mentioned for this aircraft.

Some pix (Source FAS) :


www.dreamlandresort.com...


www.dreamlandresort.com...





[Edited on 12-5-2004 by Nans DESMICHELS]

Actually the F-121 was rumored to be the Aurora also... that with the XR-7 and the SR-75.

No, I dont think the F121 have something to do with the Aurora.

Do another search on it.

Plus the F-121 is a turbo jet engine.

the engine has a life exspectancy of 3 hours!
nice plane but a bit dodgy engine

Originally posted by devilwasp
the engine has a life exspectancy of 3 hours!
nice plane but a bit dodgy engine

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THREE HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is the piont of building the thing if its going to last that long, Nice plane but if you was going to take that thing up, i would consider you re-engine it!!!!!!

Three hours, what kind of thing does the plane go through to last that long?, I do like the plane but why dont they thoroughly improve it. It is also a waste of aerospace engineering if it lasts just for that long, wait there a second! maybe it is supposed to last a short time , it is supposed to be disposible so that the public and other governments cannot find evidence of this black project, it is just like the tape in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE that will self destruct in 10 seconds.

At Mach 3+ you could go pretty far in just 3 hours. Maybe the engine is some disposable design to keep costs down and make maintainence in the field easy?



the links to the pics in the first post don't seem to be working

[edit on 8-11-2005 by warpboost]

Disposable? If it was a UAV, fine! But you can see it has a clear(ish) canopy, so therefore it needs a pilot. What would you do with the pilot then, huh? And what happens if a piece just happens to fail to disintegrate properly? It's not good to have reverse-engineerable parts falling into enemy territory. Maybe over the sea... but yeah.

Its not feasible for it to last only 3 hours. Either that stat is WRONG or the plane is completely gibbled. Back to the drawing board!

All of the so-called "information" about the "F-121" is highly speculative. There is no documentation to back it up. The author of the article on dreamlandresort.com should have specified that instead of repeating rumors as if they were gospel. Someone needs to go back through the entire dreamlandresort article on black projects and bring it up to date.

The links for the pictures are just coming up as access forbidden anyway.

Originally posted by Nans DESMICHELS
F-121
"Sentinel"

Reported Specifications:

Primary Function: Strategic Reconnaissance Aircraft
Prime Contractor: General Dynamics
Power Plant: Unknown
Length: Unknown
Height:Unknown
Wingspan: Unknown
Speed: Mach 3+
Ceiling: Unknown
Unit Cost: Unknown

This aircraft was built by General Dynamics (Fort Worth), now part of Lockheed Martin, and first flew in 1986. It is a single-seat Mach 3+ reconnaissance aircraft for NRO, and significantly more stealthy than the SR-71A.

NRO Spyplane? You might want to try again. The National Reconnassance Office (NRO), doesn't fly aircraft. The NRO is an office that is in charge of spy sattlites. No offense, but check you basic facts!

Tim

Here's a picture...

Originally posted by Jezza
Here's a picture...

Looks a bit YF-23ish from the top, the cockpit, engine humps if you get what i mean.

It also looks like the A-17 too.

On pages 247 and 248 of the book Dark Eagles by the late Curtis Peebles, the alleged "F-121" Sentinel is described as a Northrop product shaped like a pyramidal equilateral triangle. Quoting a private source who provided a drawing of the "F-121" to Peebles, this book offers a description of the "F-121" Sentinel as follows:

By late 1993, two new triangular Black airplanes began to be talked about. One was the Northrop "F-121 Sentinel." It is described as being an equilateral triangle with the tips flattened. Its three sloping sides met at a point, giving it the appearance of a pyramid. At the center of the F-121's underside was a depression and a dome-shaped nozzle. It is claimed that a squadron of the planes are based at the Northrop RCS facility at Tehachapi. The site had no runway, but the planes take off and land vertically from the underground bunkers

The book Dark Eagles then mentions on page 250 the "F-121" as using antigravity propulsion:

The "F-121" was described as taking off vertically with an anti-gravity engine.

Andreas Parsch correctly dismisses rumors about the "F-121" Sentinel being a classified Mach 3+ spyplane as spurious, so what we are left with is whether Northrop built an aircraft with the "F-121" label. Given that anti-gravity technology remains the stuff of science fiction, it is very unlikely that the alleged "F-121" Sentinel had antigravity engine, so even if it existed, it might have been a subscale technology demonstrator for the kind of stealthy VTOL special operations airlifter concept encapsulated by Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and Northrop's design studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s for a VTOL tactical transport.