Any idea what these are?

Kinda an offshoot from the thread here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

But more specifically, can anyone identify these aircraft, sitting on what apparently is a grass/gravel airstrip:

Map

You can get a bit closer in GE.

Using the GE measure tool, it looks to be around 40ft nose to tail, with a wingspan of about 30ft

Any ideas folks?

[edit on 31-8-2009 by Stoo]

I believe they are F-15s fro Elmendorf AK.

To me they look like F-16's but i could be wrong.

*nod*

That came up in the original thread, but the measurements don't appear to match - the F-15's are well over 60ft in length..

Closer in size, but still too big by about 10ft, and the unknown a/c appear to have twin tails?

reply to post by Stoo

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What I find interesting is their deployment. Sitting outside little sheds in what looks to be the middle of a big forest. They definitely are shaped like fighter jets.

Yeah, I'm leaning towards mockups due to the small size

The body shape looks more like an F-18 than a F-15 or 16.

www.aerospaceweb.org...

The F-18 is about the right lenght and if yyou look at the right one of the three in a row you can see that it has the flared body shape of an F-18.

They could be mock ups though, there is no reason they have to be real. Didn't the Russians used to have air bases hidden in the forets? Maybe it's a training base for troops on how to take them out.

TomCats maybe? Don't know much about sizes but some of them look like F-14's with retracted wings.

I did have a look at the most obvious suspects, but the shortest of them is hovering around 50ft, but those only scrape 40ft in length - hence why I was pondering 3/4 scale mockups - perhaps MiG 25/29?

[edit on 31-8-2009 by Stoo]

I really wouldn't be confident relying on those measurements - a 10 foot margin of error would be nothing at those calibrations.

In my opinion, they look like F-16s.

Yeah, it may not be 100% accurate, but measuring other aircraft (such as the F-15's at a couple of the nearby bases) it's not far off the published specs?

In fact, in GE measuring the F-16's at Eielson AFB comes out at around 50ft, the published specs are 49.5ft, so I don't think the accuracy is in the order of 10ft out?

[edit on 31-8-2009 by Stoo]

That does not mean anything at all for the given pictures - if the plane doing this survey had its calibration off by so much as 0.1% then theres your difference in size. Comparing other places means nothing.



Again, the accuracy of one set of photos means sod all for the accuracy of another set. Google Maps is a conglomeration of hundreds of thousands of different surveys, taken by thousands of different companies, from planes and satellites.

hey does anyone remember a couple years ago a post put out here about some papers called ...the blue planet project??, i need to talk to the person who has that...

I do understand how GE imagery is created, but I've now measured a lot of aircraft at a lot of different bases, over the time periods available in GE, and all of the aircraft I've found so far is within a foot or so of the published specs..

Given that, the odds of that one photo being that far out seem to be unlikely, try it yourself, it's surprisingly accurate if you can get a fairly high-res image

ajsr71 has come across some information which seems to point out that these are indeed mock-ups, so it's more likely the mock-ups aren't 100% scale rather than GE measurements being vastly out..

Cheers for the assistance though peeps

F-16s? Are you kidding me? The above profile looks NOTHING like the aircraft in the image! F-14 Tomcat is out of the question too, although a much closer guess than an F-16. At least the Tomcat has the right number of Vertical Stabilizers!

I personally don't think they look like F-15s either. The shape of the wings is too different, and the Vertical Stabilizers are too angled.

My guess would be a Lockheed F-35 Lightning, F-22 Raptor, Mikoyan MiG-29 (although I thought all of the ones we had were at Wright Patterson AFB, but that might just be the working ones...apparently of the 21 we purchased some were not flight worthy and were immediately moth-balled), or a Sukhoi SU-27 of which our Military currently owns four for Aggressor Training. They all have very similar silhouettes from Satellite view.

There are F-22 Raptors stationed as part of the 3rd Wing at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska.

You stated that the estimate would be a 28ft wingspan, 31ft length, 12ft width between Vertical Stabilizers.

F-35 35 wingspan, 51.4 length
SU-27 48.3 wingspan, 72 length,
Mig-29 37.3 wingspan, 57 length
F-22 44 ft 6 wingspan, 62.1 length

Assuming your calculations are correct, there isn't many things with a 31 ft length and 28 ft wingspan. The only type of aircraft with the dimensions you have given would have to be pilot-less. Even the tiny F-5E is going to be 27 wingspan x 47 length...and those have nothing close to the silhouette shown in those photos (same for the T-38 Talon Trainers). To meet the specifications you obtained from the GE Tool, the planes would have to be Drones (but why would they have cockpits if they were).

If you ignore the dimensions given by the GE Tool, I'd go back to my list of F-35/SU-27/Mig-29 or F-22...the F-22 and Mig-29 being the most likely.

EDIT: I wrote this and got distracted from posting it. I didn't see all the other posts since when I originally started the post. If it is a Scale Mock then that would make sense. It wouldn't make a good satellite decoy, but it may be part of the Bolio Lake Range Complex for testing of Military Equipment. These could be targets for 30km and 50km test firing of weapons.

[edit on 31-8-2009 by fraterormus]

reply to post by fraterormus

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Only a couple of F-35's are occasionally flying, and they are not even close to Alaska...

Most likely is target ranges for Red Flag Alaska, either retired aircraft or mockups.

All I am saying is you are relying completely on something you cannot rely on - correct calibration in one area does not correlate to correct calibration in another.