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History of the AARS and all other secret stealthy reconnaissance UAVs till RQ-170

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posted on Nov, 4 2010 @ 05:21 AM
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When I began to be interested in aviation, one of my favourite themes was the mysterious Tier III. Over the years I managed to find, sort and process a lot of stuff to uncover one of the most secret and one of the most ambitious projects of the cold war together with all its competitors and successors. My current article about it is the first one (that I produced), which gives you more answers than questions. It coveres projects and programs like AARS, QUARTZ, Senior Pine, Boeing Condor, Tier III, Tier IV, RQ-3A DarkStar, StrikeStar, P-420 LightStar, P-175 Polecat, Frontier Systems/Loral W570A, Arrow, Shadow, PHAE, RQ-170 Sentinel or SensorCraft.

A few hints:
- part of the AARS program was also the high speed component, managed by USAF and designed to replace the SR-71 fleet. This is what people used to call the mythical Aurora.
- QUARTZ component of the AARS was very big superstealth autonomous ISR UAV, designed to search large Soviet territory for the mobile ICBMs and direct the B-2 attack force to them
- TR-3 is not a Black Mantha, nor flying triangle, but the modified Grob G500 Egrett, which was low-cost alternative, that emerged short before the termination of the AARS
- the mysterious Lockheed patent from 1996, that is for a long time used to describe Tier III, is in fact in-house effort called P-420 LightStar
- Loral and Frontier Systems flown in the mid 90s their secret high aspect ratio flying wing UAV demonstrator called Shadow
- the primary purpose of the RQ-170 is to be the communication relay in the NCCT countries and stealthy AESA search platform. It is going to be equipped with the kinetic and non-kinetic weapons.

Note: because of the length of the text, in the case to obtain the full google English translation, you will be probably forced to press your browser "refresh" button a few times to translate also the last paragrahs of the text.

www.hitechweb.genezis.eu...



posted on Nov, 4 2010 @ 12:01 PM
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here's a direct link to a "sort of" translated version of the same link matej provided above. hope it works for everyone. good research as usual matej, S + F

Link



posted on Nov, 5 2010 @ 05:46 AM
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The Grob 500 was a Tier lll ? How the hell was that supposed to work then? there is no way in hell that the Grob could of acted as a penetrating airframe.

Oh and great web page O/P, very well put together. Loving the picture of the Condor.


edit on 5-11-2010 by Astr0 because: Added a thank you



posted on Nov, 5 2010 @ 09:43 AM
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No, Grob 500 or better to say Grob Egrett was not a Tier III. Dont mix the "TR-3" and the "Tier III". TR-3 was the designation reserved for the small, cheap and minimalistic alternative to the Lockheed/Boeing QUARTZ, when the AARS program went to the troubles (overbudget and technical difficulites). That was sometimes in 1991 and it seems that the TR-3 designation was never officially assigned. TR-3 was planned to be the optionally manned successor of the U-2, based on the work done under the Senior Guardian program in the US and under the LAPAS in the west Germany. There were also other alternatives, one of them was for example Northrop RB-2.

Tier III was a set of specifications AFTER the cancellation of the AARS in december 1992, so it fits the 1993 - 1994 timeframe. But the main idea was generally the same - to create the low cost alternative to the AARS, only the timeframe is different. But the Tier III is the set of requirements rather than some specific vehicle.



posted on Nov, 5 2010 @ 01:08 PM
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reply to post by matej
 


hi there u2u sent .

2nd line

thanks

snoopyuk



posted on Nov, 10 2010 @ 03:59 PM
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Outstanding original post. Very informative.



posted on Nov, 10 2010 @ 04:19 PM
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A picture is worth a thousand words....this is the way of the future in aircraft.....
Thanks for the link....



posted on Nov, 11 2010 @ 01:14 AM
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Nice article. I also beleive there was a Tier III+ UAV as well but info is scant.

One interesting one was the SENIOR PROM program which was basically an unmanned, scaled down F-117.
en.wikipedia.org...



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