Another "F-117 Companion" thread and a bit of history!

a reply to: T3rrap1n

I think the Suprise Fighter is the more interesting of the two. It went further than the drawing board...
paralay.iboards.ru...
www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com...
Little too early for the Companion IMO.

a reply to: mightmight


I love the North American Rockwell Technical drawing!! I've never seen that before.

a reply to: mightmight

Now that’s enlightening.

I think what is most intriguing about the companion is that it must be truly something special for it not to have slipped into the ‘real world’ as yet. But what I can’t decide on whether it’s a truly radical airframe design or the ew component, or both. What’s more why haven’t China or the Russians tried to out it?

Would it be too much of leap to suggest that it’s properties these days are used to mess with peoples heads. Some form of psyop distraction strategy?

Reading through an old Aviation Week article I saw this:

As luck would have it, several weeks after our May 1, 1989, issue hit the streets, a flight of F-117s flew directly over my house a few hours after sunset. I ran outside, when I heard the Nighthawk's distinctive, muffled engine noise, and watched a number of the "black jets" fly over at fairly low altitude... In the middle of that string of F-117s, we spotted a markedly different aircraft. It sported a planform with a less-pronounced wing sweep than the Nighthawk, a quieter engine acoustic signature and a significantly different exterior lighting pattern. Despite yeoman efforts, my AW&ST colleagues and I were never able to identify this aircraft or its mission. The mysterious bird may still be flying out there ... or retired and hangared at the secretive Groom Lake, Nev., air base.

a reply to: PhantomTwo

There were at least two sightings that I heard of from the early days of the F-117 being revealed.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Just curious, had Companion any incidents or mishaps during all these years of flying? I'm not referring to Boscombe incident because I know it was different bird.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

If they did, we'd never hear about them.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'm looking for a sightings from the timeframe around 1988... I have few ideas.

Possibly rethorical question but I have high hopes that these are Companion sightings:
1.

February 1992
At Beale Air Force Base, the California facility that was long home to the SR-71, on two consecutive nights in late February 1992, observers reported sighting a triangular aircraft displaying a distinctive diamond-shaped lighting pattern, comprised of a red light near the nose -- similar to the F-117 configuration -- two 'whitish' lights near what would be conventional wingtips and an amber light near the tail. While the wing lights are reportedly much brighter than normal navigation lamps, they do not illuminate the aircraft's platform. Observers claim the vehicle's wing lights are approximately twice as far apart as those on the F-117, and nose-to-tail light spacing is about 50 percent longer than that on the stealth fighter.

2.

February 1995
While driving North on 95 between Goldfield and Tonopah, I watched 2 lights grew or off white triangular aircraft in formation with 2 F - 117A aircraft, one of which was painted and grew visibly darker than the 2 bogies but not black like the other F - 117A. None of the planes had strobes or collision lights on and this was around the time the Sun was setting. I would guess their altitude as about 2000' AGL and I could make out what I though were white tiles arou nd the weapons bay and gear doors of the black F - 117A and one of the bogies, and both bogies seemed to have slightly darker leading edges and control surfaces, with a scorched - looking panel on the belly between the tails. The flight turned east toward the Nellis Range. I had a very brief glimpse of to bogies exhausts before I had to bring my attention back to the road.

3.

Nevada
An experienced aviat ion watcher says that he and his companions saw an unacknowledged delta winged aircraft about 35 miles east of Groom on Nov. 23 (1995). This was a triangular craft with rounded corners, as has been described in the Press as the "TR - 3A". The witness works for a major aircraft developer in California and says that he knows aircraft well. He says the sighting took place around 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening (long after dark) as he and several companions were traveling north on US - 93 for a visit to the Tikaboo Valley. South of Alamo, they stopped to watch some orange flares being dropped by jets on maneuver. These flares -- intended to distract heat - seeking missiles -- are a common sight in the area. But the jets themselves were not. The witness was drawn by the unusual lighting of the jets. Four had only a single red strobe on the bottom about midway down the fuselage. About 4 others had only 3 steady lights -- red lights in the front and rear and a white light at mid - fuselage. The witness says that the M oon had just risen, so he was able to see the outline of the aircraft from below using low - power binoculars and looking almost directly upward from their location near the Pahranagat Lakes. The planes with the single red strobes he recognized as F - 117A St ealth fighters. The other 4 aircraft had a distinctive triangular shape with rounded corners. Both the witness and his companion (also an aviation worker) insist that these aircraft were not B - 2s (the only acknowledged craft in the U.S. arsenal that rese mbles that shape).

Ok, few details seems wrong. Triangular aircraft? Companion isn't triangular... but maybe from the distance it isn't hard to misidentified it as a triangular design.

Random thought (I'm not nearly as up on all this as many people here), but could this supposed Companion have been a spinoff of the B-2 Low Altitude Penetrator concept drawn up early in the development of the Spirit? The B-2 that we know was the result of a study of mission profiles, the high-altitude flying wing platform was much more efficient and produced less wing loading than the faster (Mach-ish at 250ft attack runs) low-altitude hybrid delta/lifting body design. But I'm thinking if you size that down a little with a lighter payload requirement...although of course something flying that low would be very noticeable.

Alternate thought. Maybe after two decades of rumors with nothing proven, perhaps we can agree there is no companion. Nor was fastmover a project. While I'm at it, let us all agree Bigfoot doesn't exist either.

a reply to: gariac

i disagree about bigfoot. yowie, almasty, sasquatch, yaren. people are seeing something and they all can't be mistaken bears or men in ghillie suits.

now about fast mover. are you making the argument that there was never a project title called fastmover proclaimed or not like the theories about the name Aroura as a claimed project. or, are you saying there were no projects for high supersonic or hypersonic aircraft besides the sr71 that came into some degree of fruition over the ages.

if the govt can keep a multitude of black aircraft almost completely and forever hidden and secret why not the f117 companion

originally posted by: gariac
Alternate thought. Maybe after two decades of rumors with nothing proven, perhaps we can agree there is no companion. Nor was fastmover a project. While I'm at it, let us all agree Bigfoot doesn't exist either.

So you think Boomer is a fraud an made it all up? Including forging his refuleing photos and convincing multiple reputable users to pull along? I dont get the reasoning on this one.
We rarely have more than rumors. The Companion is no different than Tacit Blue, the Bird of Prey, Polecat or the RQ-170. What did we know of them before they were declassified? What about Helendale, Palmdale, Amarillo, Wichita and a dozen other sightings of stuff we dont know anything about? What about the RQ-180 the Air Force admitted exists, what about the Bin Laden Stealth helicopters, the LRS-B prototypes, the YF-24, the list goes on?
The US Air Force alone blows more than 15 Billion US-$ this year on classified RDT&E alone. Thats hundreds of billions of US-$ since the black Budget exploded during the Reagan years. Do you really think they coudlnt hide a handfull of weird black planes in the Baja Hangars at Groom or at TTR?

a reply to: mightmight

Maybe some day the Bird of Prey will hang in a museum.

a reply to: gariac

So you are saying until you get to see the photo it doesnt exist? Isnt this rather short sighted? I really dont get this reasoning. There are so many SAPs outthere we know exists but cant poitn to more than some fragments of evidence. Having a former Boomer Operator talking about the aircraft multiple times on multiple sites is pretty much as good as it gets in my mind.

a reply to: ShadeWolf

Flip it around and it might make more sense. What if the Northrop Low Altitude Penetrator concept was an offshoot and descendant of their companion design?

a reply to: gariac

I'm pretty sure that it already does...

originally posted by: Barnalby
a reply to: ShadeWolf

Flip it around and it might make more sense. What if the Northrop Low Altitude Penetrator concept was an offshoot and descendant of their companion design?

This is what i was thinking when i posted a couple of pages back, the US Airforce must of "messed around" with some low level design and stealthy wild weasel concepts before the B1.

a reply to: Barnalby

My comment was meant as sarcasm since many of those projects are hanging in museums.

Dupe message.

Argh! Triplicate message. I knew when the server stalled bad things would happen.