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Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by Zaphod58
On a flying wing, I have to scratch my head a bit to delineate the fuselage. ;-) Now the exhaust is on the top, so are we talking about something on top and between the exhaust? But then the flaps only cover the bottom. So I'm still not clear here.
Combat mode makes sense to me. Or perhaps silent running. I have no idea how they bomb in theater. That is, do they have fighter accompaniment? If not, then there really is no one to talk to.
Seems to me they do need a radio to talk to boomer.
Originally posted by Laxpla
reply to post by gariac
In these photos you can see it sticking out, it looks like the same thing as the photo posted but not totally sure.
www.aviationnews.eu...
douglawrence.files.wordpress.com...
Originally posted by Laxpla
reply to post by gariac
In these photos you can see it sticking out, it looks like the same thing as the photo posted but not totally sure.
www.aviationnews.eu...
douglawrence.files.wordpress.com...
Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by boomer135
Part of "stealth" is to act stealthy, and that usually involves not flying in a straight line. Now maybe too radical of a turn is also bad. It could be a matter of simply exposing too much of a control surface (flap, rudder). I would bet this is the kind of thing they detect in either static and more likely dynamic RCS.
If you are losing TCAS, then I have to assume this "antenna" is actually some sort of multi-band beast of an antenna. Maybe UHF and L-band. At the very least, they need voice comms for normal flight and need to receive the TACAN on the tanker to find it. If you are building a $2 billion plane, you can afford some clever antenna design. [Paratech has technology to tune antennas on the fly with active components.]
Since it kind of looks like I got a shot of an antenna under the plane, I would guess there is a UHF antenna down there, and per the other post, I presume retractable.
So at the air show, the B-2 will need the top antenna to talk to the tower. It must retract it while taking off since photography is not prohibited when the plane is airborne. And I suppose the lower antenna isn't worth keeping secret since it will be seen from the ground. Then again, I really don't see why the upper antenna needs to be so well guarded.
Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by mbkennel
Why would contrail suppression fluid leave a mark underneath the plane? Is it possible those marks are related to some cooling hardware? Just thinking out loud here, if the exhaust is being run on top of the plane, what heat that doesn't get shielded by the "shuttle tiles" on top would flow to the bottom of the plane, so maybe they cool this area to hide the hot spots.
www.globalsecurity.org...
Apparently the B-2 has tanks for such fluid, but the claim is it isn't used.