Well actually, yes, more than two of LM's designs on that page are/have been in use for the last decade, some a little longer. And yes....lol,
"It's not the B-2 refueling a ucav".
No it's not but there are some pretty cool tanker stealth ideas floating around the internet. Pretty cool to check out!
Why is the Air Force all the sudden not even fighting the retirement of certain aircraft? Perhaps cause they know that there is something a
little better in the pipeline???
I can not say, but perhaps, some advancements/technologies are available at higher levels?
Peace!! ID
Well see we are talking about two different environments here. The mid east and the pacific are two different dogs when it comes to ISR aircraft. If
your flying ISR missions in the Pacific watching shall we say China, you gonna need more that some drone that has the RCS of a school bus. Sure the
RQ-170 is out. But they didn't build that many and obviously, in my opinion, they wanted Iran to have that aircraft, but that's a whole other
thread.
Looking back at the cold war we had the ultimate recon weapon, the SR-71. No missile could catch it given enough reaction time. It was free to take
pictures as needed for its mission. Then, you have Aurora show up as a budget line underneath SR-71 and the U-2. I still think it belonged to the B-2
but lets just say it's the third bird in the picture. What could it do that the Sr-71 couldn't? Leak fuel?

Hypersonic? I doubt it. We are
still trying to get it to work in another platform. But what about a companion aircraft? The SR-71 did have some stealth features, call it first gen
stealth if you will, but what if we had a plane that was just as stealthy as the F-117 or the B-2 being built in the 80's or 90's? What if this
plane flew missions right along side the F-117 using EW and perhaps A/A missiles that the F-117 lacked? Why not send in the 117's with a speedy,
stealthy, ISR aircraft to make a one two punch? I believe it was LM that had like a 9 billion dollar budget gap that they couldn't account for
publically. That's enough for R&D on a new aircraft and at least a few demo aircraft...
OK, don't shoot me, but I'm gonna go ahead and say this and it will be the last time it ever comes out of my mouth or off of my fingers, I promise.
But maybe, just maybe, JUST MAYBE John "the liar" Lear was correct (or maybe lucky) when he speaks of the F-19 being produced alongside the F-117.
Think about this for a second and let it soak in before the bashing. Instead of trying to debunk the theory, try to prove it. I think I can, except
for the time frame, and a lot of others like myself can as well. Pictures are worth a thousand words...
A quick comment on your question. My personal observations don't mean anything unless pictures or some other proof is involved. I could go on all I
want about black world aircraft, but who would believe me? Don't get me wrong, I've posted some pretty iffy pics here on ATS, but I think that they
are ok for release. I don't think I would go to jail for them. But if I was to confirm the existence of aircraft we currently have, well, then,
Leavenworth is 40 minutes from here

. Thats why anything I post is considered speculation and allows the reader to make up his/her own mind about
the things I say.
A quick note on the space command. We as an Air Force recently started to get heavily involved in the space aspect of our mission. Basic Training
slogan changed when I was midway through to "Air Power, Space Power, AEF!!!" Having said that, there's more to our space mission than we know. This
next part is just my personal feelings about things, not anything I've witnessed myself.
Our little space plane floating around in orbit is definitaly up to something up there. The payload bay is small, but not too small to launch the
newest little buggers: nano satellites. These small satellites could be launched from that bay and deploy without effort. Now what is the reason for
them? Who knows. DARPA's Phoenix program is still alive and running as far as I know. That's where they send these nano satellites to broken or
retired orbiting satellites to get the good stuff off of them. Maybe that's what that orbiter is doing up there. Maybe it's spying. Or maybe they
really are just testing it for future c model astronaut use. But whatever its doing, the Air Force slowly changed from an Air and Space Force, to a
Space and Air Force. I would guess we have tons of toys up there orbiting the earth that are classified.
Oh and look the F-35B is grounded. Speaking with some other members on ATS, I think that we will never see the 2000 plus fighters from the F-35. Not
even close. A new jet will take its place soon. Remember computers double in technology every 18 months...