Pictures requested by popular demand of planes in Groom and the NTS

reply to post by Stealthbomber



I talked to zaph about what he found out but like him im not gonna talk about it yet. The source is out there if you know where to look.

boomer, do you know any classified project from 90s or early 2000s which based at Groom and was tested over Poland?

reply to post by boomer135


What specifically on the KC-135 uses plasma technology. Be specific and cite documentation.

There was a classic case of using technology to improve fuel efficiency using laminar flow. The plane (X-21A) is left rotting in the weeds as a photo target at Edwards.

reply to post by gariac


Nothing yet. There is a proposal to add it to certain portions of the aircraft that would reduce drag and fuel consumption on the tankers, and other transport aircraft.

Originally posted by GroomLakePolishFAN
boomer, do you know any classified project from 90s or early 2000s which based at Groom and was tested over Poland?

The operative question here is why would any plane at Groom be tested over Poland? Would the Russians test a plane over Canada knowing the US isn't very far away?

Groom Lake has certified project exposure due to crashes outside the NTTR (let alone the box). There is the F-117 crash near Bakersfield and the Wendover A-12 crash. Both involved lame cover stories, of which the F-117 crash fooled nobody.

So again, Groom is going to take a test article, fly it to Europe with at least one or two tanker sorties, then test it over Poland? Tests generally have L-band telemetry, which we encrypt, but still, why bother doing this over Poland. To aid the Soviets in telem intercepts?

Journalists deal in who, what, where, and why. In black projects, you kind of know the who, you don't know the what, where is generally near a base, and why is the key question. So when someone says there is a black project that does X, your first question should be WHY?

So I ask why test over Poland?

Originally posted by Stealthbomber
reply to post by boomer135

 

Do you know of any other current aircraft that use plasma? I would think that the F-22 would use it.

Any why would the F-22, which has RAM and a stealthly shape, use plasma?

The wiki on plasma stealth is actually pretty decent. It goes into the failed attempts at using plasma to hide jet turbo blades. It is pain to generate a plasma only to have it flow right into the jet engine. That is, it is tough to generate plasma at aircraft speed since the plasma is lost to the airflow, and worse yet, leaves a detectable plasma trail. [Plasma, being conductive, should show up on radar.] The wiki also mentions the annoying problem of the plasma emitting EM (detectable) and light (detectable). When the dust settled on the wiki, about the only chance plasma stealth has is in hypersonic flight. These mach 5 tests NASA is doing have a telem blackout due to plasma. Spacecraft hit the atmosphere at mach 25 (depends on how you define atmosphere). It isn't clear to me just how fast you need to go to get a natural plasma field, but it looks like mach 5 will do it.

The only paper I could find on plasma stealth that passed high school physics analysis (most internet dicussions don't even get that far) is by Stavatti. I'm having trouble finding the free link again. The paper is for sale, but it is so useless I wouldn't suggest buying it. What Stavatti proposed was a two layer hull. That is, the aircraft would have a transparent to RF skin and then a structural skin. Mind you the RF transparent skin still needs to be capable of aircraft forces. They would create the plasma between the two skins, keeping the temperature to what they deemed cold, namely 500 deg F. Needless to say, I don't think the technology ever got built.

Two things that kill reliability in electronics are heat and voltage. Trends over the years has been to get rid of any high voltage requirements if you can, hence the growth of LED backlighting over EL panels for example. Heat is the other killer. I seriously doubt there is demand to fly a plane surrounded by 500 deg F plasma. In fact, heat is one of the problems they try to solve in flight, not create.

Lastly, if enemies of the US had plasma stealth, the US would not have turned off all their over the horizon radar.

reply to post by gariac


Because, again, there are quite a few other benefits to it, besides stealth. You won't find it in the white world, but the aerodynamic benefits are amazing, as well as fuel consumption benefits, other than just stealth. You don't think stealth is just passive do you?

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by gariac

 

Because, again, there are quite a few other benefits to it, besides stealth. You won't find it in the white world, but the aerodynamic benefits are amazing, as well as fuel consumption benefits, other than just stealth. You don't think stealth is just passive do you?

But I have found those aerodynamic benefits in the white world. I just don't see anyone bothering to do them.

Stealth is a combination of tactics and technology. If you are flying in a straight line, you are not stealthy. But I see no need for active stealth, which is what plasma is. I say this because plasma is a pain in the ass. Any engineer is going to go for the simple solution (Ocams razor) over some hairbrained complicated solution, if the simple solution does the job. That is how you engineer reliable products. What you build today that is successful means you are more likely to win the next product competition.

I hate having to repeat myself, but again, plasma stealth makes the plane less detectable by radar, but more detectable by other means. I have read lots of the internet chatter, but it is completely obvious to me that such people never took any science in high school, let alone have engineering degrees.

You can use good engineering, or you can create a product that ends up like this:

reply to post by gariac


Then why do I have black world sources telling me about it? Are they lying? Oh wait! They're disinfo agents right? If it's such a bad idea, why is there evidence (no matter how circumstantial) that it's out there?

The aerodynamic benefits of plasma are so much more than can be found in more normal ways. The things that I've learned about it make things like laminar flow control look like the Wright Brothers.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Show me the evidence. Oh wait, you can't, it is in the black world.

OK, tell me exactly, with 100% clarity in painful detail and full documentation, how they get around the detectability of the plasma. No handing waving. Show me the science.

Science!

Now if you don't mind glowing like a light bulb and think a plasma trail is a good idea, then add plasma generators to your aircraft. But in any engineering economics calculation, there are many paths to achieve a goal. For instance, just go to a composite (which is what the commercial world IS doing) to reduce weight, and you have made the plane fly further on less fuel.

Look at our once secret stealth helicopter. Just a change in shape and probably some RAM. If anything, quieter aircraft is a better research project than plasma stealth.

I write off all black project rumors, just like I do stock tips. They have a poor record of reality.

reply to post by gariac


Oh my god! You know what? You're right! You're the smartest person out there to have realized that Plasma would make you glow like a light bulb and has no possible application! What would we do without you to tell us? Thank you so much for telling all my contacts just how stupid they are to believe this!

reply to post by gariac


Actually in the white world Boeing is using laminar flow on the 787.

Fluid dynamics

Originally posted by Stealthbomber
reply to post by gariac

 

Actually in the white world Boeing is using laminar flow on the 787.

Fluid dynamics

The 787 is just using good engineering to reduce turbulence. No mystery there. Also note the 787 makes heavy use of composites to reduce weight.

The paper does cover plasma actuators. However, this has nothing to do with stealth, and the plasma will make the plane detectable. No big deal for a passenger plane with ADS-B firing away. But not too good for stealth. It isn't clear to me if plasma actuators can totally replace flaps. I mean you need a lot of control surface to get a plane off the ground in a short distance.

I don't know about you, but I always check the flaps when I'm in a passenger plane that is going to take off.
Delta 1141
Fecal matter happens. It would be a bummer if the plasma generator failed on take off. With flaps, hey, you get to look at them!

reply to post by gariac


We'll they're using a natural laminar flow on the engine nacelles. I know it doesn't have anything to do with stealth, I was just saying that because you were saying there arent white world benefits, I also think that Boeing are using a section technique for boundary layer laminar flow.

I found this SBIR on testing a single dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator to get further range.
V-22 Osprey SDBD

And another one for a UAV.
UAV


Here's a post from the other thread that was going about how to overcome one of the problems you described earlier. The statement made was "Dielectric barrier discharge is accompanied by high intensity radio
frequency electromagnetic noise."

Originally posted by Bedlam

Originally posted by mbkennel

Dielectric barrier discharge is accompanied by high intensity radio
frequency electromagnetic noise.

That was actually a big problem, even in the B-2. You get that emission point down in size like a diamond microemitter point source, put it in a divot that's got absorbent, it helps some. Also the plasma bucking around can induce currents in susceptible systems and pop them. Causes a lot of systems integration work for people like me.

There are some methods better than straight DC to fire the point, maybe a bit of a laser would work too - imagine little plasma blooms all over... Anyway, the smaller the point the less the noise. Or so I hear - I'm channeling all the data from the great beyond. OmmmOmmmOmmm

Can someone confirm existance of aircraft with designation F-121/A-17? I don't think that aircraft with this designation really was built but maybe in this shape? How many of these aircraft were at Groom?

reply to post by GroomLakePolishFAN


If you got the info about the F-121 off dream land resort they were talking about a Mach 3 spy plane named ''sentinel'. I'm not sure where they got the info but Sentinel isn't a Mach 3 spyplane and it's designation isn't F-121, it's RQ-170.

See it wouldn't make much sense to give an unmanned spy plane an 'F' designation as its not a fighter. The 'R' designation stands for reconnaissance, and 'Q' is unmanned.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Plasma actuators != plasma stealth.

Here is a paper on active stealth. It is closed cavity, which gets rid of the plasma stream problem. The plasma itself will still be detectable, and it requires a double hull construction. You can just see the eyes rolling at a design meeting.

Active Stealth

Note the outer shell needs to be transparent to RF. I just don't see this being practical. You can one-off anything in a research lab, but production capable and battle ready is a totally different story.

Regarding the X-21A, the holes in the wing for laminar flow would get filled with bugs. Now in hindsight, I wouldn't have expected this to be a big deal since most of the time aircraft are much higher than bugs will fly. But they do have to take off and land. Descriptions posted by Mary (last name I forget) from Edwards were that they were scraping layers of bugs off the wings, kind of like cheese. [Note to designers: make sure you fill your wind tunnel with bugs during testing.]

All "improvements" in design have had their detractors. Hydraulics? That stuff can leak, ya know. [A-10 has hydraulics with a back up cable system, uh, because those hydraulics do leak, especially if hit with bullets.] Even today, there is resistance to fly by wire. But I think active stealth doesn't have much of a future when the alternative is just a coating.

reply to post by Stealthbomber



I found a ATS link that went back to a DLR link that was removed, but it is sitting on archive.org. It isn't the RQ-170. The thexhunters is Shadowhawks work.

The forum can't handle archive.org links. Go to archive.org. In the wayback machine, enter
dlr.thexhunters.com...

Originally posted by Stealthbomber
reply to post by GroomLakePolishFAN

 

If you got the info about the F-121 off dream land resort they were talking about a Mach 3 spy plane named ''sentinel'. I'm not sure where they got the info but Sentinel isn't a Mach 3 spyplane and it's designation isn't F-121, it's RQ-170.

See it wouldn't make much sense to give an unmanned spy plane an 'F' designation as its not a fighter. The 'R' designation stands for reconnaissance, and 'Q' is unmanned.

I know this article for a long time. I heard history that they(USAF) named this aircraft letter "F" for pilots to feel better Of course it's stupid story. Whole "Secret U.S. Aircraft Projects at Groom Lake" article on DRL Resort site is based on stories wrote by 'wolfbane'... so for me every information is a fail.

reply to post by GroomLakePolishFAN


Without getting right into it, I know there's something with a similar designation to that in the black world.