Guys, if Bios has a mystery photo puzzle to solve then you can take it from me it's legit.

To me it seems reminiscent of the D-21 drone with what appears to be a slight bulge on the right hand top side that could either be a fore body strake, or a cockpit canopy. It may be a scaled manned prototype of a UAV for reconnaissance (a la' D-21) or strike, although why it would have been flying anywhere near a place where it could be seen if it is a black program is odd.

Bios, do you have any idea of approximate size or speed, I take it we are talking subsonic even if it was in a supersonic corridor at that altitude? And have you been able to run this by Intelgurl yet as she may have some ideas or hints she can share?

LEE.

I think your best hope is that Intelgurl takes a look as she seemed to be involved in the UAV world. She might be able to shed more light.

The funny thing is that the shape reminds me a bit of the boeing X-32 from that angle sort of deep body delta shape, but of course it can't be that - so may be a boeing UAV of some description?

Double post

[edit on 12-10-2009 by Popeye]

Well, I guess I might as well put my thoughts in. I honestly don't have any specific guesses as to what it is, but I just want to point out a few things that might facilitate identification.

-The craft appears to be at a high angle of attack at low altitude. I'd be surprised if this was anything but a UAV, and I'd be more surprised if it was Blackswift. To be performing High-Alpha maneuvers this close to the ground doesn't seem to be in the realm of things you'd do with a manned black project or a high-speed/high-altitude recon craft. But I've been wrong before.

-It also appears that the wing extends straight to and joins at the nose of the craft similar to the nose profile of the B-2, or the X-45C. That same shape has pretty consistently shown up in a lot of recent UAV designs.

-The back end of the aircraft is a lot harder to discern. The trailing edge appears to start perpendicular to the fuselage at the wingtip and then curve smoothly rearward to join without any immediately apparent engine nacelles. I also notice that there's the shadow of what might be a vertical stabilizer (can't tell of it's straight up or dual-tilted), but it's very hard to say anything conclusive.

-One last thing I notice is a slight bulge towards the front of the aircraft where a cockpit might be were it a manned craft. I would suspect that if it's indeed a UAV that it's the engine intake hood, but it seems to be very high off the aircraft's wing to be that, unless the engine is absolutely enormous.

From this I really don't have any ideas as to what it might be. The orientation and apparent height almost steer me towards a standard delta kite, but if Bios says it was an aircraft I'll roll with that. Except that I can't, since I have no helpful ideas. Sorry.

Pr0

I was there with the guy who took the shot - problem is we cant agree on whether the plane was in level flight or banking. He says it was banking, i could have sworn that it was in level flight.
This is no doubt why UFO sightings are so easily discredited, sorry...

The X-32's wings aren't streamlined enough. This aircraft's wings waere pretty swept back.

[edit on 10/13/2009 by bios]

My initial reaction was that it was like a very skinny F117. The Have Blue was very similar. Who knows, perhaps there are spin off projects from there.

Wow its been awhile since I was last on and it seems like its the same for some others too! Hence the earlier responses covering ground about the F-117 etc. The hypersonic platform is possible due to shape but seems much too low to be in its element of testing and I'm not familiar with the location to know if its near a airbase to make sense of why this aircraft would be so low. Also a quick question I would pose is how accurate would you say the shape is on the photo to what you saw bios as I'm sure if it was going any sort of flight speed we could have heavy blurring.

The issue is that if this is a test platform that is black/gray or even a normal one they tend to stay away from populated areas to begin. For a large number of reasons like safety of the vehicle and population and to not attract unwanted attention... But yes it is always possible to "catch something special".

Originally posted by smurfy
There is cloud cover and obviously the 'plane is below it. It would be helpful to know how high was the cloud cover in your area at the time. The blurring in the picture is a bit confusing since you don't say exactly in which direction the 'plane was going.

I'd take a wild stab in the dark that the most "pointy" end was the front of the aircraft hence you can work out the direction from there