Mysterious flying wing over the Philippines ?

originally posted by: Ghoul
a reply to: Arbitrageur
The picture of the grey UAV is not the RQ-180 tho, it was a P-175 polecat

It have been well explained/debunked in another thread

But we can see obvious similarities tho, which is not surprising for a stealth HALE uav.

Thanks for telling me about the debunked photo, but I guess that suggests there are multiple planes with a similar appearance from a distance in fuzzy photos?

originally posted by: musicismagic
By the looks of the distance in the sky and the contrails , it gave me the impression that there would be an a noise level to be heard.

I've tried to explain to you why your impression is false. I don't know if I've suceeded in convincing you. If you see contrails, generally, it's at relatively high altitude and generally will NOT be very noisy, you can barely hear them in quiet areas and not at all in cities. There could be rare exceptions where contrails form at lower altitudes than normal, but, they usually don't.

I live under the path of US military airplanes, although I can't see them, I sure can hear them at times and I don't live in a big city. Maybe that's why.

But this is not an experience base which shows any correlation of what sound levels to expect when you see planes with contrails. When they are low enough, I can hear them even in the city, but they aren't forming contrails.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes probably, the flying wing design fits very well for stealth and long endurance mission. So there is probably a lot of platform that use it, the RQ-180 is almost certainly a flying wing, the 170 is a flying wing, the B21 will be one, the wichita plane is a flying wing, the stealth tanker that was tried was a flying wing design apparentely... and the list can go on and on
So we will see more and more of them in the future

Flying wings will always be popular for VLO designs, because they have an inherent reduced RCS. They also don't have vertical fins that create an eddie for low frequency radar to pick up. We currently have four flying wings in the air, that we know of, and we'll see more in the future.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Let me guess :
-B2
-RQ-170
-RQ-180
-The wichita plane
-Maybe the "super sentinel" also ?

I don't count the Polecat and the X-47B as they're testbed/proof of concept aircraft.

Am I correct ?

Special recon version of the B-21 for the NRO?

Ive often wondered if some alphabet agencies like to operate advanced LO designs before the AF gets their hands on them? Like the A-12 and CIA to the SR-71 and USAF.

a reply to: Ghoul

Yeah, that more or less covers them, although the so called Super Sentinel was used for the -180.

a reply to: StratosFear

Not bomber type platforms. The B-21 demonstrators have been out and about before though. What better test than to fly near active radars used by line units.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thank you Zaph ! I thought the "super sentinel" was a larger version of the 170 but used to drop bombs, kinda like what the DARPA JUCAS program demonstraded in the early 2000.

originally posted by: cmdrkeenkid
a reply to: Violater1

I'd go RQ-180 before B-21. Long way from Palmdale, and very close to Chinese radars, for a test article.

I agree. As far as I know, it’s not known publicly how many engines the RQ-180 has, but with an endurance that allows it to fly back and forth over the Pacific, I doubt it would be single engine. That might explain the contrails.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Knowing the aperture and other data of foreign radars isn't it possible to just simulate them? Then you get the data, they don't. Plus, in the day and leaving contrails to boot is just screaming for attention.

Is it safe to assume it is a an American craft? There are others in that region that might want to display a craft for others to see…

originally posted by: cmdrkeenkid
a reply to: Zaphod58

Knowing the aperture and other data of foreign radars isn't it possible to just simulate them? Then you get the data, they don't. Plus, in the day and leaving contrails to boot is just screaming for attention.

TD Barnes, president of the Area 51 workers club called "Roadrunners" explains that what S-4 was used for, foreign radar testing, it's not what or where Lazar said; Barnes says Lazar never worked there, because the security guards checked every single manifest during the times Lazar claims to have worked there, and Lazar's name wasn't on any of them, so there's no way he was there.

Link queued up to the relevant discussion beginning at ~23:00
TD Barnes, Area 51 "Roadrunners" club president, says Lazar never worked at area 51, and explains that there is an S-4 but it's used for radar testing.

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid

We have quite a few foreign radars around Tonopah, and we can get a good idea of how something works against them too. But every so often you want to stretch a platform out, and test in a real world environment. While we have a number of interesting foreign systems, what we don't usually have is a full IADS version of them.

If it is american, can we assume it was coming from Guam ? I know Boomer135 mentionned years ago that there is an island in the Pacific that often get the visit of black aircraft. So Guam could be a good candidate ?

B-21 Raider

a reply to: EternalShadow

If it is why does it have one side of the wings? B2 has a three end tail thing i forget what they were called.

B2

a reply to: TritonTaranis

Looks like it. And looks more like it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

If those demonstrators were show stoppers like what was mentioned I`d put them up against a real world scenario to see what they`d do without toting bombs. We still got the UFO thing working for us right?

a reply to: StratosFear

If a quarter of what I've heard is true, these things can go anywhere at will.

There's an RQ-170 squadron based in Guam.

Anderson, AFB.