Lockheed HAVE BLUE demonstrator in flight-RARE footage

reply to post by dashen


They tested it at Groomlake.

reply to post by StargateSG7


By the way...there were at least two 400 foot mags shot during the flight so
more than twenty minutes of film is missing. and since flight speeds were probably
in the 350 knots range i'm suggesting the more dramatic footage is missing from public view.

Also this film shown here is mostly the hand-held and cine-saddle (leather bag full of beans)
camera footage when I know that nearly FULLY motion stabilized footage was also shot.

As a sort of a funny side note, the British 2nd Unit director who was kicked off the flight
was cursing up an incredible storm and was definitely not the most happiest of campers when the
Air Force tech team asked him to leave. J.D. had to talk him down to a much calmer state
and basically bought his silence with a whole lotta beer and steak afterwards!

Excellent find, many thanks for posting footage of this piece of aviation history.

Star and flag for you good sir!

anybody else notice this 'object' (?) at about 00:16?

Note that the landing at Groom Lake is just video trickery. The plane disappears!

Also, is that U-2 56-6677 in the other video? The plane doesn't look very wide, but they were doing a wide angle shot.You can see a pogo under the wing. If so, that plane was in a fatal crash.

Note that Lockheed has a youtube channel. I set the link up to find first flights, but there are hundreds of clips on it.
Lockheed first flights

Regarding the plane being unstable except with fly by wire, a more accurate description is it is unstable without an electronic control system. However, all modern fighter aircraft starting with the F-16 are unstable without electronic control systems. In classical control systems, you are taught not to take something unstable and stabilize it with electronics because if the electronics fails, the device blows up. However, it is hard to move a stable (AKA well damped) system, so being naturally unstable aids in the maneuverability. In the case of fighter aircraft, you always have plan B if the electronics fails, i.e. eject and leave a pile of smoldering debris on the ground.

reply to post by gariac


Nice link, thanks for that.

This isn't an F117 though, this is the Have Blue demonstrator.

reply to post by biggilo


Maybe you have me confused with another poster since I didn't mention the F-117. My link brings up all first flights from the official Lockheed "channel" on youtube.

reply to post by gariac


No mate, sorry could of worded that a bit better, i had a look through the link and only saw the first flight of an F-117, none of the Have Blue, which isn't really surprising given the secrecy of it, where it was tested and how they ended up.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention again Boomer! I saw the actual doc on TV some years ago. It's from Arte, a French/ German TV channel!!

This HAVE BLUE footage has been around for a while. There is also some nice video of TACIT BLUE and the YF-118G Bird of Prey. All three aircraft were tested at Groom Lake (Area 51). One of the TACIT BLUE videos shows the airplane in flight with Groom Lake in the background very briefly. In addition, there is various footage of the U-2, A-12, and MiG-21 undergoing testing at Area 51.

reply to post by Shadowhawk

If it's little trouble and the videos exist online, could you point us to hyperlinks for the TACIT BLUE and Bird of Prey in-flight footage? Thanks for the information!

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I can't say that I've ever seen any footage like that and I've been a bit of a buff on the stealth stuff. Discovery and others have had lots of documentaries on various aspects of stealth and the Have Blue program but not that footage that I recall. I did find a foreign site with what must be the chain Have Blue fits into for the development cycle to all this. Lots of interesting stuff there I hadn't seen either.

Stealth and Drone tech examples

I'm with others about Aurora. Enough with the officially unofficial secret. We want to see it!

I have also detailed article that is directly dealing with Have Blue, all its competitors and XST program in general.

www.hitechweb.genezis.eu...

Originally posted by matej

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I can't say that I've ever seen any footage like that and I've been a bit of a buff on the stealth stuff. Discovery and others have had lots of documentaries on various aspects of stealth and the Have Blue program but not that footage that I recall. I did find a foreign site with what must be the chain Have Blue fits into for the development cycle to all this. Lots of interesting stuff there I hadn't seen either.

Stealth and Drone tech examples

I'm with others about Aurora. Enough with the officially unofficial secret. We want to see it!

I have also detailed article that is directly dealing with Have Blue, all its competitors and XST program in general.

www.hitechweb.genezis.eu...

Sweet never used Google translator before!

reply to post by StargateSG7


OK you made my day by combining two of my favorite things, star wars and the USAF. Thanks for that awesome story!

And thanks goes out to everyone else for providing more links that I haven't seen before!

reply to post by dashen


Haha it has the nose of a duck, that's the first thing I thought of when i saw it.

It's cousin.

reply to post by matej


Ok reading this article shows another example of an aircraft chosen over a potentially better stealth platform. The HAVE BLUE platform from skunk works was chosen over the Northrop design even though it may have been a better stealth aircraft:

Both models have shown more than a thousand times smaller radar reflection than any conventional aircraft. Up to this point, the parties recognize the impact of the work and the standard of confidentiality to suddenly become one of the most closely guarded military secrets. During the measurements, both teams were strictly separated and after their completion could come to see a draft of the competitor. The decision on the winner has been largely subjective. Although Northrop model had the potential to be less detectable wider range of enemy anti-aircraft defenses, production of two prototypes was 26 April 1976 Lockheed entrusted us as the Skunk Works division has had considerable experience with effective and economical construction of prototype aircraft. Model Northrop would require a longer time to develop and showed slightly worse results right where it zavážilo.

Yeah it's google translated so it doesn't make sense sometimes. But you can get the general gist of it. Looking at some of the designs from other companies competing for the contract, a few could be considered the F-19 model kit design concepts. As we seen time and time again, they take the lesser capable aircraft (like the -22 over the -23), make it white world (well not in the -117''s case) and make the other competitors aircraft a black world project. It would be like developing a RF-23 right now or perhaps the RF-19 at the same time as the F-117.

The point is shown in the table. While approach of Northrop was to design something later called "multispectral stealth" or balanced design with low RCS on various frequencies, Lockheed optimised its design solely for the given specifications: to counter Soviet anti-aircraft system ZSU-23-4, which operates in 16 GHz band.

This is the reason, why Lockheed was selected to build Have Blue and why Northrop was suggested to keep its team alive to begin new program - Gauss curves based Tacit Blue, that later led to B-2 bomber.

As you can see, Have Blue and also F-117 were easily detectable on low frequencies, so when someone call this aircrafts "invisible" I am going mad!

In the late 1980's my husband a surprising peek at the stealth bomber. I am not sure what one but, he was driving near Moffit field in northern California and saw it come in low to land. He loves to tell people about how impressive the craft was.

I have a question for those of you familiar with crafts that are cutting edge. Two years ago at about 2 am I was stargazing due to being unable to sleep. The sky to the south was covered by a blanket of clouds. It literally looked like a blanket was pulled across half the sky. I could hear a loud plane coming from the bank of clouds. I watched as this white triangle emerged from the clouds. The craft had to be rather large to be so obviously a triangle at the height it was. Here is the weird part, in the center of the triangle was a bright white glow. The craft looked to be powered from the bottom center. The glow was unlike anything I have ever seen. The shape of the craft reminded me of the stealth bomber. The craft was not silent. I am in north Phoenix and it was headed northwest. What craft do you think I saw?

reply to post by Twilightgem


Aircraft have lights on the wings and the nose. The vast majority of aircraft look like triangles at night.

Moffett Field is extremely public, even back in the 80s. There was less construction around the field then compared to today. In the 80s, place was active, both the field with P-3s and the Blue Cube. The Soviets were still...well.. Soviets! A charade of security was maintained around the base. In theory no foreign nationals could drive by it, but how do you police highway 101. Workers were encouraged not to eat across the street (Pacific Fresh and Charlie Browns, but St. James Infirmary was OK because spies don't like burgers.) So nothing too secret landed at KNUQ that you could see. I'm not discounting a C-5 with a satellite aboard. The Blue Cube was a satellite command center.

Even up to the 00's, they kept up the charade of security around the Blue Cube, even though there was nothing to see. A high school photography teacher got the brilliant idea of having his class photograph the Blue Cube, which lead to a run in with security.

They have done some UAV flight at KNUQ, but nothing secret. You can watch the field from office buildings these days.