'F-117 Companion' data

Few years ago, there was a rumor that there is recording comms between F-117, AWACS and mystery aircraft --F-117 Companion-- back then during the first Gulf War. Really tricky to find said recording(I wasn't able to) btw

There is something except audio file, I think.
Recently, while browsing through the internet I saw something that seems to be veeeery cool.

I remember seeing shots taken from a runway in Saudi Arabia during GW1 of an unrecognized aircraft taking off.
I think they were in pop sci, the article postulated it was the latest in tactical high speed recon.

what was shown in a series of three shots taken from outside the fence at one of the saudi bases, was definately a manned craft it was somewhat deltaish shaped with twin inward canted rudders and twin engined.
The pictures were taken at dusk just as the aircraft was taxiing for take off.

Im pretty sure the pics were taken in SA maybe turkey. But they were for sure shot at an operational base. And Im thinkin the photog observed them, there was more than one, one several occasions flying out just as the sun set.
The pics werent very good, shot with a really long lens and at dusk.
There were 2 pics of it on the runway and one just as it left the ground going away from the photog.

Above posts are quite old now(they were published before 'F-117 Companion" advertisment here on the forum) so they seems real.

Happy hunting

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

obvious questions :

1 - why would a " companion " to a low speed platform need to be " hi-speed "

2 - the cruncher - why has a " companion " to a platform retired 8 years ago never ever been made public ?

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Well, technology isn't outdated that's why Companion is probably still black.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

She's out there, and are you sure the nighthawks in one form or another are all mothballed?

If the platform we are talking about played the role of a sparkvark EW EF-111 it would do it well to be high speed and high flying.


If i were going to make a target designator,electronics warfare, and battle damage assessment craft that was going to fly AHEAD of the night hawks it better be very stealth


first in, last out

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Heck, I'm still wondering what happened to that fabulous new aircraft the F-117. I don't follow to closely, you understand. The last i heard was that they were operational, as intregal aspect of our system, and then they just faded away.

a reply to: Aliensun

Uhhmm have we been asleep or too busy thinking constantly about black triangles the last nine years almost to the day (April 22 2008 to be precise)? It was well documented and publicized. Do you not recall the Nighthawk with the famous "Stars and Stripes" paint job photos on its lower fuse towards the end of its service?

However Nighthawks have been observed still flying regularly out of at least one airbase, and when I say observed I mean as in photos taken and by many, many people. And this despite the fact that they have been officially retired and placed in storage. The US Govt isn't talking but nor are they doing anything about covering it up. However still no official word nor recent photos of the F-117 companion aircraft.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

(long time reader, probably wrong about all of this, but whatever)

OP reminds me of this aircraft, looks kinda like I imagine the Companion:
www.hitechweb.genezis.eu...
(this is just a Teledyne Ryan / McDonnell Douglas XST concept)

Anyway, what always bothered me about the Companion is the manufacturer. Between boomer and Zaphod I have no doubt it exists, but who build the thing? Northrop never made much sense to me. As far as I understand it, the Companion is supposed to go way back, being developed more or less alongside Senior Trend, meaning at best early eighties or something.
In this timeframe, Northrop didn’t have much to offer. Just look at what they came up with for the XST competition. Their entry is essentially a worse looking Have Blue variant, not anything like the Companion is supposed to look like. And how would that work anyway? Did Northrop have a second team to develop the Companion? Was there another competition? Northrop ‘blew’ the XST and just happened to luck out on the Companion, somehow creating an airframe beyond anything at the time its still operational decades later? It doesn’t work like that.
Later in the decade they had BSAX and the ATB, but no radical evolution that would result in an stealth fighter-sized airframe still relevant today. Tacit Blue was a big fat whale and it took decades and the cranked kite evolution to get a decent fighter sized flying wing going.
Granted, the YF-23 came out of nowhere and I read about someone trying to link it to the Companion, but ATF came almost a decade after the Companion and the development history doesn’t add up well with a classified predecessor.

So, who else? I’m not sold on McDonnell/TR either. Their XST concept looks juicy (perfect for the Companion IMO) but XST went forward without them. I’m unsure on the details of them dropping out, maybe there is a case to be made for their airframe getting picked for the Companion at that time.
Other companies which participated in the early studies (Project Havrey) are even less interesting. Fairchild and Grumman declined outright, General Dynamics wasn’t into Stealth at all and wanted to do ECM while Northrop and McDonnell moved forward and Lockheed forced itself in.

If one excludes Northrop (at least of the airframe), all that’s left is McDonnell or someone else entirely. So just to put the question out there, what on earth was Boeing up to during all this? They were not in the fighter business back then, but no one never bothered to include them into the quest for stealth? They had just acquired Rockwell a few years back, and between the shuttle and the B-1, they were most definitely cutting edge. Then there is Boeings Quiet Bird which never made any sense at all. They had essentially figured out material and shape based Stealth back in the sixties, way before Lockheed put some Russian math into a computer program.
I mean, at least the shapes of the Quiet Bird look like what I imagine a revolutionary airframe from way back but still relevant today would look like. And yet, Boeing not only supposedly ‘forgot’ all about the program until the nineties, the company never ventured into the black world of fighter sized stealth platforms and slept through the XST revolution. uhuh
If I had to pick a manufacturer for the Companion during the late seventies / early eighties, I’d put my money on them or McDonnell. I really don’t see Northrop, at least if the Companion was indeed developed alongside the Nighthawk.

@Aliensun
F-22 happened. It can drop bombs when it has to (did over Syria) and for everything else there is JASSM and/or B-2s. The F-117s were not needed anymore and while they were revolutionary (as far as we know) decades ago, stealth has evolved since then. The Air Force is short on cash as is, retiring the Nighthawks was one of their smarter decisions in recent years.
Congress decided to put them in some sort of advanced storage, they are kept in flying condition to be reactivated quickly in case of emergency. Dunno if this is still the case.
And who knows, maybe some black vlo strike platform entered operational service, effectively replacing them too. Improbable but not impossible.
The Companion is probably similarly outdated at this point (at least technologically). I suppose once they get the F-35 ECM systems working (Block 4.something ?) they’ll retire it too if it hasn’t already. As far as I remember it was last seen airborne / talked about in 2014.

originally posted by: thebozeian
a reply to: Aliensun

Uhhmm have we been asleep or too busy thinking constantly about black triangles the last nine years almost to the day (April 22 2008 to be precise)? It was well documented and publicized. Do you not recall the Nighthawk with the famous "Stars and Stripes" paint job photos on its lower fuse towards the end of its service?

However Nighthawks have been observed still flying regularly out of at least one airbase, and when I say observed I mean as in photos taken and by many, many people. And this despite the fact that they have been officially retired and placed in storage. The US Govt isn't talking but nor are they doing anything about covering it up. However still no official word nor recent photos of the F-117 companion aircraft.

Truthfully, I was being facetious. From my general view of the facade of the whole aerospace industry in the face of the US ownership of the triangles--unless you want to consider them alien, Russian or Chinese ships--I have the vague concept that the F-117 was, probably, the original cover story to hide the development of the triangle craft and as that it should never have been ballyhooed into being any aspect of being an operational unit as a fighter!. --Refresh my memory, what was its role anyway?

a reply to: mightmight


I don't have to much to add except that's a great post and this is a very interesting thread.
Quite a few people have posted about this companion aircraft over the years with nothing concrete ever coming out but I'm a firm believer, just wait and see if people like Zaph and a few others avoid posting! that will tell you something

a reply to: ignorant_ape

There are several programs that were black or retired that haven't seen the light to this day.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

I just keep asking myself this everytime people talk about new planes. We all know tech get better each day. Why would the world wat to make us believe there is nothing today that is faster than a plane designed in the 60's - sr 71. Something more stealth than the f117. Est est. 40 maybe 50 years in aircraft tech is a eternity.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's a very none descriptive post about the F117 companion

The description of this aircraft and the supposed aircraft that crashed at Boscombe down are very similar, would you say they were the same??

Isn't the F117 still technically active? so I'd imagine anything related to it would still be covered by several layers of secrecy.

Zaph's answer is the classic I can't say yes but at the same time I cannot say no, I'm sure he knows a lot more but lets not get him in trouble for revealing still classified stuff as we'd all miss his knowledge if he had to do a lot of hard time.

a reply to: Maxatoria

They're in type 1000 storage. Technically that means they can be restored to flight quickly, but the recent return of Ghost Rider to the fleet proved that quick is relative. There are several that are flying doing undisclosed things, but the majority of the fleet would need time to return to service.

a reply to: Maxatoria

I'm pretty sure our own sammichman got some photos published on foxtrot of the f117 flying with new antenna. Less than a year ago. As far as companion. That's one thing no one with knowledge will even throw hints at on here.

a reply to: Zaphod58

When was the ac-130 retired?

a reply to: mightmight

Great post, mightmight. TR-3A is F-117 Companion archetype. The most interesting notes about Companion you can read in Foxtroth Alpha article:
foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com...

If I had to guess I would say that below drawing is pretty close to 'F-117 Companion' appearance.


Some members here on ATS admitted that there was a drawing that looked almost identical like real aircraft but was deleted...

almost=real aircraft had inward canted tails(on the drawing - lack of it), it is confirmed both in Foxtroth Alpha article and in quotes in my original post in this thread.

It is second day I'm trying to find the magazine with these real pics taken during Gulf War...

a reply to: Aliensun

According to some, the F-117 is still out there. Zaph posted some pictures of some flying not too long ago in one of his airplane (where else?) threads...

So someone, somewhere, seems to think they either are, or might be, a viable platform.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

I've searched up down back and fourth. Even scanning pages and pages of other forums. All scrubbed. Mind you the topic stayed, but pics gone.

a reply to: Crumbles

Here ya go.