'F-117 Companion' data

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

There is absolutely no way possible to turn the F-117 design into a transport.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Sure you can you make a paveway and shove a single commando in each one and a parachute on the bomb. Easy peasy.

The sighted bigger F-117 is probably nothing more than a Lockheed demonstrator. Senior Peg and/or ATA-B.

Dunno, but i wouldnt rule out turning those designs into a small transport plane.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks for put it more simply for me

a reply to: mightmight

They wouldn't make a very good transport though.

But there are all sorts of other things that it could be. An ATA-B demonstrator is a good guess, or it could be something like an F-111/EF-111 replacement that was tested and discarded like the apparent YF-24 was, or it could be a scaled-up navalized F-117, tested as a sort of "Stealth A-3 Skywarrior" before the USN settled on the ATA program, or it could be a Lockheed subscale demonstrator testing technologies for the AARS/Quartz program, or it could be a bunch of other things.

From what I've gathered, there have been more than a bunch of Boeing Bird of Prey-style one-off programs to evaluate some concept that a project leader at the Skunk Works or whatever got and liked enough to convince the company to finance a flying testbed to evaluate it further. Like the BoP or the supposed Lockheed quiet boom aircraft, most of these were likely contractor-owned and will never see the light of day unless the bigwigs at whatever contractor built it decides they want to show it off.

a reply to: Barnalby

'Wolfbane' had similar thoughts about it 16 years ago... He said that the '1.5 to 2 times bigger F-117' was attack plane that replaced F-111 Vark.



Anyway, question to BASS, would be B-1 replacement and F-111 replacement the same thing?

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Not even close. The F-111F had about a 31,000 pound payload and was a tactical bomber. The B-1 has around a 70,000 pound payload and is a strategic bomber. You can't do both on one platform.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Not even close. The F-111F had about a 31,000 pound payload and was a tactical bomber. The B-1 has around a 70,000 pound payload and is a strategic bomber. You can't do both on one platform.

"Not even close." - are you saying this about comparision B-1 replacement with F-111 replacement or about the idea of "1.5 to 2 times bigger F-117" would be attack plane to replace F-111 Vark?

a reply to: Barnalby

I dont like the ‚x doesnt have a replacement/follow on, so there must have been an effort in the black world‘ argument. Maybe an aircraft (type) just went away without anything specifically replacing it. Maybe there was no further need for it, maybe there was just no money available to do anything about it.

The F-111/FB-111 is a prime example. It went during the Nineties when the US reduced the DoDs budget significantly. The Sovjet Union was history and with it the might of sovjet air power, the requirement for nuclear strike capability went away, the immediate strategic threat in Europe had disolved, newer fighters like the F-15 and F-16 did very well in Desert Storm and Allied Force, the strategic bomber fleet had already shown its potential flying conventional missions, etc – there wasnt any need or room in the budget for a new fighter bomber strike whatever platform.
If there was an effort to replace the F-111 it certainly died before a demonstrator/prototype would have flown.
Sure EF-111 is another story but Zaphod already sait the Companion stepped in there. Also dont forget the 388 and 390th Squadrons.

The A/F-117X is a possiblity but it would have been, what, 30% bigger maybe? Definitely not 1.5 to 2 times as big.
I never read anything about ‚F-117 style‘ airframes being considers for Quartz/AARS. Everything that went beyond the drawing board should have been a flying wing.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Anyway, question to BASS, would be B-1 replacement and F-111 replacement the same thing?

No.

a reply to: mightmight

One look at the LRS-B program (or Tacit Blue, for that matter) should tell you that often times, demonstrators for a given program look nothing like that program's actual target aircraft.

Northrop is especially well known for doing this. By all accounts, there was no subscale demonstrator for Senior Ice (the B-2), but the Tacit Blue was basically a flying proof-of-concept for everything, flying wing planform aside, that was revolutionary about the B-2, testing complex X-duct intakes, dorsal heat-absorbing exhausts, contoured stealth shaping w/ sharp chines, faired rounded low-RCS glazing, and even RAM formulations that were all integral to making the B-2 concept "work". Compare that to Lockheed, who never had an equivalent demonstrator aircraft for Senior Peg because all of their faceted stealth+RAM+grated intake technology that would have been used on Peg was already proven on the F-117.

For a more recent example, look to the LRS-B competition. Zaph *might* be able to back me up on this, but by every bit of evidence that I've seen, the Northrop LRS-B demonstrator bird was the aircraft captured in the Amarillo sighting, and was a twin-engine manned cranked kite design, roughly the size of a B-57, resembling the art seen in those Northrop commercials. Of course, once Northrop won and we saw the B-21 concept rendering, we learned that their actual full scale bomber design was the pure stealth-shaped root design of the B-2 that they didn't have the know-how to actually build in the 80's.

It didn't matter that the demonstrator likely looked nothing like the actual aircraft, because again, the demonstrator was likely more about testing RAM, shaping details, and engine technology in a small, manageable package that they knew would easily scale up to a later, larger production aircraft. Think: The BAC 221 vs the actual Concorde.

But yeah, I wouldn't at all be surprised if a similar "small" aircraft existed in the late 80's to test technologies such as skins and engine signature management for AARS/Quartz, given just how ambitious that entire project was.

a reply to: Barnalby

Demonstrators are usually risk reduction aircraft. Their general shape is going to usually be at least somewhat close, but not always, so they can verify control runs,stability and the like. But the key is simply proving their ideas work and the systems are going to play well with each other and the aircraft overall. Then later they refine the shape and all the fiddly bits.

a reply to: mightmight

As to "X was retired, so clearly Y must exist", I'll go on-record as saying that the F-117 was almost certainly the actual replacement for the F-111, and it might even explain why the -117 got a Century series designation. The decreased bomb load was a non-issue, as the F-117, developed exclusively around PGM's, could pack a wallop in 1988 that was just as hard as what the F-111 was designed to do in 1968, without the need for a second crewmember, either, due to advances in targeting.

I would posit though, that the increased power requirements of an EF-111-tier ECM suite would have required a larger airframe with more powerful engines, and very possibly the addition of a second crewmember. If every other operational stealth aircraft from the 80's was an indicator, the EF-111 replacement (likely the companion) was almost certainly the product of another, unseen pole-off or fly-off.

That being the case, the "big F-117" that was sighted in the 1980s could have very well been Lockheed's contender to a competition to build the F-117 companion that by a lot of dot-connecting here was very likely won by a Northrop craft that was a massive evolution of their XST design (in the same way that the YF-23 could be seen as a morphological descendant of the Tacit Blue).

a reply to: Zaphod58

Exactly. The BAC 221's ogival wing looked nothing like the one that eventually flew on Concorde, but it verified that an ogival wing could reliably produce the subsonic->transonic->supersonic shifts in center of lift and pressure that would be necessary to make an SST work while still keeping drag low enough that an aircraft with enough dry thrust with such a wing would be able to supercruise once it pushed through the transonic range on wet thrust.

The more I dig, the more convinced I am that for every big airframe that debuts out of the blue with a slew of paradigm-shifting new technologies that are seamlessly integrated and work more or less flawlessly from day one, there was at least one, if not more subscale technology demonstrator aircraft.

On a related tangent, that's why whenever I look at the Space Shuttle, I'm not at all convinced that there WASN'T at least one post-X-15 rocketplane. We saw the lifting body validation aircraft in the white world, but the STS emerged with too many 100% mature new thermal management technologies, not to mention the SSME's, for there not to have been another, unseen hypersonic testbed that probably flew in the late 60's or early 70's.

a reply to: Barnalby

Just because they showed us a rendering doesn't mean that is what it looks like.

a reply to: Flipper35

Good point.

a reply to: Flipper35

But Amarillo was pretty clearly a cranked kite of some sort.

At least it looked like one, that is, unless...

a reply to: Barnalby

I wouldnt bet on there being no Senior Ice demonstrator/prototype. Maybe they even had a competition with Lockheed. Maybe – pure speculation – it was never declassified because they chose Senior Peg for something else. Wouldnt be uncommon either, they had the LRSB flyoff and the YF-24 was a competition aircraft too.
About Amarillo, this doesnt read like LRSB: www.abovetopsecret.com...
Personally i think Amarillo is pretty obvious – ‚RQ-180‘

The F-117 being the F-111 replacement doesnt add up. The F-117 grew out of Lockheeds ATA-A study, the F-111 replacement/black companion would have been ATA-B. As far as we know ATA-B never went anywhere besides morphing into ATB.

The connection with the Companion is a very interesting idea though. I never thought about the need for a second crewmember. It would have been a requirement for a ECM aircraft back in the day, but according to Zaphod, the Companion just took over the ECM capability from the EF-111 when it went away, it – probaly - wasnt designed with it in mind. So maybe it was a single seat platform afterall.

I wrote a long post on the first page of this thread on why i dont necessarily think the Companion was built by Northrop

the 180 has a LARGE wing span. Think U-2, they need large wings to help stay aloft at 100K altitudes.

The u2 has a 103' and the B-2 has a 172' span.

I bet the 180 will have long slender wings with a LO body.

A triangle is a good lifting body but it's heavier and would cut into loiter times

Think of a stretched out B2 for the Rq180..Im sure Ive seen a pic online of it somewhere other than 3D models and CGI.