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Boeing Bird of Prey Stealth Fighter
An anonymous submitter writes: "Revealed: Boeings new secret stealth bat-plane! For years stealthchasers (those guys who sneak around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft) knew the Bird Of Prey existed. They knew it was being tested over the secluded Nellis Air Force Base ranges in Nevada. They knew what hangar it was being secreted away in at Nellis (on the northeast corner) and they even managed to obtain a squadron patch depicting the aircraft itself!... but the government still denied its existance until today. At a ceremony at Boeing's St Louis plant their super-secret Bird Of Prey batplane was revealed today for the world to see and marvel at. You can view exclusive photos of it at popsci.com and projectblack.net."
... it's a plane, it's...
(bombs exploding everywhere)
[Tango 2 to Mother Hen, The egg is in the basket]
mechanicos ergo cogito
How many Pepsi points do I need for this bad boy?
:P
so... this gives new meaning to the words, "TO THE BAT PLANE".
These guys can find out about secret jets, get proof of there existance, all the while the government denies its existance.
Yet, I can't even find matching socks.
That was a Superman reference.
In other news: Gotham city without air cover!
mechanicos ergo cogito
Apparently it's not stealthy enough if people got that much info about it... Okay, that was lame. I apologize.
That's interesting. I wonder what other "denied" stuff is actually true.
Cool looking plane, but it does make one wonder if the fabled "Project Aurora" (spaceplane) also exists. Goodness knows the shape is similar to some of the stories that have been put out there about it (for example, here).
Since this is /. I'm sure many people will correct you but it is the Klingon Bird of Prey, not the Romulan.
So is it Romulan or Klingon?
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Two sites using the same exclusive pictures. Giving the word "exclusive" an entirely new meaning...
it's not exactly a tail-less aircraft as some have said
e le ase/q4/high_res/dvd-226-5.jpg
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photor
as you can clearly see in that picture (very high res, modem users beware!), the tail is beneath the plane, instead of the traditional spot, on top of the plane
it is pretty small, though
This thing is cool looking! I'm glad that when this military technology evolves into sentience, takes over the world and demands our obedience - at least our new robot masters will look cool - imagine if the French military tech involved into instead: We'd all be cow-towing to puce colored fag-robots.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
-- This Sig is currently under construction
Didn't the U.S. military did something similar in revealing officialy the F-117
shortly before attacking Irak the first time?
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
I can now proudly proclaim I am a Star Trek fan in public!
The bird of prey is so damned cool even the military tried to mimic it... all you star wars fans were crazy! Lasers in space... HA! Klingons RULE!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Dang it. I want an edit feature. Second reply :P
the Political Inquirer
to revinvent themselves. Notice the PopSci article makes more of statement about prototype development and not the physical aircraft itself which it built with speed and at reduced cost. The Phantom Works is Boeing's answer to Lockheed's Skunk Works which was made famous by the SR-71 which it produced went from drawing boarding to aircraft (and subsquently speed records) in 18 months.
With Boeing losing so much ground in the commerical markets to Airbus it really needs to prove to the USAF and the military at large that is a prime contender.
Quite frankly this is an expensive PR campaign whose prime audience is not the commerical markets, but the U.S. and NATO military.
This will come in handy when it comes time to deal with those pesky tie fighters
I guess they had to reveal it since it had already been spotted.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Weapons of war how exciting! Can't we all just get along?
I was always under the impression that the Bird of Prey was a Romulan design, as first revealed in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror". I don't recall the Klingon version appearing until "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", and the canonical explanation was that the Romulans and Klingons had entered into a sort-of free-trade agreement for sharing technology....
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
In a multibillion dollar aircraft:
Nananananana BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE!!!... OVER. *pssh*
I have to go out to Nellis for work occasionally. Last time I was there they had two B-2 Stealth Bombers parked near the runway. Seeing one of those things from the back, I am convinced they are the cause of 95% of saucer-shaped ufo sightings in the last 20 years.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Very nice looking aircraft...I want one of those! It seems awfully small, though... Should be interesting to see what this design winds up becoming.
Any chance this thing has been buzzing Manokotak?
Worst. Sig. Ever!
Boeing has a news release with other photos, details, and a movie. The movie is downloading real slow right now though. They've got an image of the plane on their home page, so it's being hyped up quite a bit.
It did look pretty cool, though.
The highlight of the ceremony however, was the free ice cream they gave us all.
This space for rent.
It's a good start, but until they can make a plane that care survive a slashdotting, then I'm not riding.
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
In case you are unaware, when the first proposals were made by the engineer responsible for the B2 stealth bomber, everyone said "Theres no damn way that thing is leaving the ground. That thing can't fly." I have to say, the Bird of Prey looks even more so like this. I am curious as to how it generates the lift required with such small wings. Usually, if you look at any aircraft, the wings are atleast 1/3rd - 2/3rds of the entire size of the craft (size comparison wise). The wings are tiny, along with the fact that they are nothing like traditional wings with the sharp angle mid-wing. You could say its wide, which helps, but I do not think this is the case as the bottom of the fuselage, according to those pictures, does not seem to have any characteristics required to generate lift. I think I speak for us all when I say seeing a video of this thing in action would be pretty impressive, and no doubt interesting. Due to the more narrow design, it looks as if its manuevering capabilities are much greater than that of the B2, which made VERY wide turns. Anyone have links to further details?
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Does anyone else think this is a patsy? I mean it really isn't the sort of thing the air force would find interesting... there's no fly-by-wire... it's 1970s "pineapple angle" stealth technology with a stock commercial engine... what is it good for? It's neither an air superiority fighter nor a good sneak attack bomber. I suspect this was released to the press to draw attention (and hide funding) from other projects.
One thing's for sure - anythings better than the flying turd that is the F-117a.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Now we know what those people saw in Alaska! (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/ 17/1219240&mode=flat&tid=134)
-- Cheers!
stealthchasers (those guys who sneak around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft)
During the cold war they would have been known as spies. However, in the present they are classified as terrorists.
Sneaking around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft is a great way to have your citizenship status abruptly changed to "Enemy combatant", enjoying all of the privilleges that such a title brings.
you are correct.
The romulans pilot Warbirds.
mechanicos ergo cogito
But unfortunately the lumbering military-industrial complex of the United States seems unable to tear itself away from the idea of yet another project that will provide a steady stream of cash into the bank accounts of corporations and away from anywhere it might conceivably be of any use to Joe American. Just look at how much of our tax money is wasted each year in endless projects, half of which never come close to realization and yet still cost hundreds of billions of dollars!
The Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves to see this blatent abuse of power in providing corporate welfare in the name of national defense. Rather than any kind of true free market competition, these kind of jobs are farmed out between a small number of corporations who fall over themselves to provide kickbacks and bribes, knowing a successful contract will ensure fat profits for the next decade.
We don't need another stealth plane. What we need is to get our priorities right. It's a new millenium, and threats like that of China and India mean that we need to ensure that we remain ahead of the game, not chasing new toys and pumping our resources into waiting corporate mouths.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
TO THE BAT PLANE, ROBIN!!! ...
I'm sorry, people. I TRY!!! ...
That was already done, wasn't it? I'm too slow.
It's so tiny! Where would the ordinance go? I get the feeling that this is just a prototype that was never intended for real combat use, cool as it is.
i spotted the thing imidietly! try finding the top secret airplane in this image!
Wow, what great timing, what with Bush about to wage war on Iraq. Now our pilots should be just a little bit safer from all those rogue nations out there with super-advanced, high-tech, long-range, radar-guided missiles that this jet can now avoid.
Oh, wait a sec, that's right ... the US is the only nation who can afford the kinds of missiles that this jet can avoid. So what was the point of this trillion-dollar boondoggle again?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
god that thing is cool looking.
Automotive industry take note. If you want to sell shitloads of cars - make em look as cool as this thing.
Thats what i want my moller car to look like.
Do these guys hang out in the middle of the desert looking for aircraft for fun, or is it for monetary gain, ie selling information and pictures to magazines?
So The Doors were in on this from the beginning.
Very interesting.
but is it the prototype model that can shoot while cloaked, and if so does that mean the pilot has to have an eye patch bolted to his face?
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
The F-117 was first used in combat in Panama in December of 1989. The Pentagon admited it existed in November of 1988.
But note the project timing, 1992-1997. This may have been a test vehicle for Boeing's bid for the Joint Strike Fighter program. (Boeing lost to Lockheed-Martin on that program.) Boeing built two announced test aircraft for that program, the X-32A and X-32B. Those were aimed at the carrier-landing and VTOL requirements. The Bird of Prey may have been a third test aircraft, to test stealth aspects.
For years now I've been hearing that stealth fighter technology is the "American Maginot Line"... all those billions of dollars have been invested in it, yet it was designed only to defeat the radars used by the former Soviet Union. I've heard that it can easily be made obsolete by using lower frequency radar, or heat-sensitive infrared radar systems. In any case, the enemy need only make a comparatively tiny investment in radar to render any form of stealth techology useless.
The Bird of Prey looks pretty, but I'm worried that it will turn out to be a costly debacle. Does anyone who knows more about this than I do than I care to comment?
This has been around since 1996 and shows advanced aerodymanic concepts. Imagine what's flying around now, spying on you and taking pictures of you scratching your self when you think no one's looking? Or getting those lovely pics of you cheating on your spouse... hehe.. I want to see what the next release will be like. Prob small enough to fly around in your house, and literally be a "fly on the wall".....
Bird the Size of a Plane Spotted in Alaska
Do they have to wear a wrinkled forhead looking helmet. Are the pilots fluent in Klingon? Do the female pilots dress like female klingons?
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
Boeing recently lost the bid for the Joint Strike Fighter. The JSF is also stealthy multi-purpouse fighter, which after extensive testing and evaluation is now being ordered in large quantities from Lockheed Martin.
I seriously doubt that this thing will produced in any significant quantities - the decision for fighter spending has already been made. It might, however, be important from a development point of view - testing new technologies and so on.
Tor
Now i have that fatboy slim song stuck in my head...
Even worse, I don't have any speakers to listen to it!
If anyone cares, it is called Sunset and here is some weird info about it. Jim Morrison? Why not.
http://www.oxfordstudent.com/2000-10-19/ox2/15
Bird of prey.... flying high... in the summer sky... flying high... gently pasing by...
hmm... anyone know what this plane sounds like? They let Concordes fly around habitated airports because they gain altitude so fast, but how does one keep a plane like this sort-of undercover? (ok, so the answer is 'not very well' it seems...)
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
No "Beowolf cluster" jokes about these?
./ing them?
How about something about Boeing running their webserver off of a Bird of Prey and the fact that we are
A South Park Underpants Gnome list?
Geesh - I know its Friday, but I have high expectations of you all!
Bush was pres during the Panama invasion, not Reagan.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
It's funny how this was revealed today, while just this week a bird the size of an airplane was spotted in Alaska. Hmmm.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
That's kind of disappointing... it's sort of like driving a new car around the block a couple times a year for 6 years and never really showng it off. At least you'd think they'd use them in one of those upcoming battles on terrorism... or perhaps they are and aren't telling us (as they hid the mere existance of the plane for over ten years).
Makes you wonder (in a good and bad way) what else the US government has up its sleeve.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Try the Huntress.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
since you obviously don't know what you are talking about I will geek out on you.
According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, Klingon's and Romulan's both had a bird of prey model.
The Romulan model was first seen in Balance of Terror (TOS)
The Klingon version showed up in STIII
The Klingon BOP came about because Kruge was originally supposed to steal one from the Romulans in the movie but that was dropped in later drafts. The name stuck though giving rise to all kinds of fanfic.
I'm sure there will be at least one person telling me i'm wrong.
Who run Barter Town?
Does it have a cloaking device ?
-Linux is SO fast it does an infinite loop in 5 seconds.
Oh, wait a sec, that's right ... the US is the only nation who can afford the kinds of missiles that this jet can avoid. So what was the point of this trillion-dollar boondoggle again?
Because we can, duh!
You mean like SAM launchers that feature radar? Shit, every country has at least one of those.
Man, you must have great thighs to be able to kneejerk that well.
There is an article here from Popular Science (Nov. 2000) which is about the 'Bird of Prey' aircraft. They article says that the aircraft has a 'switch blade' wing design. Of course, this is all from the hear say and rumors of the time ;-) Still a fun read.
;-)
Here is another 'version' of the article with more diagrams and speculation
It may be more intended as a spy-plane than as a fighter. A better guess might be a bomber. With today's weaponry, it doesn't take a bomb of huge size to make a large crater.
The name "bird of prey" indicates it to be a hunt-and-destroy type aircraft as well.
A last thought is, of course, that perhaps it has something really cool like a "frickin laser beam", or perhaps some photon torpedos?
Side note: How many people who make these things grew up having a lower sense of limits because of star-trek etc. If one day we have an actual cloaking device and warp drive, it will probably be made by trekkies or ex-trekkies.
America's most powerful weapon.
You are, of course, referring to the DaisyCutter?
No, it's the K10 b*tchslapper - killfrog.com
I've set up a mirror of both the projectblack story and the quicktime movie of the plane in flight. http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/batplane/index .html
can i just say WOW!
i have never been modded down so quickly, with the exception of the few times i've fp-ed. Yes, this is the first post, but i was trying to make a quick joke (on topic) about the article, not trolling. jesus tits, if you moderators spent half as much time enjoying life as you did masturbating about your ability to strike terror into the hearts of posters, then you would laugh-- instead of zealously downmodding.
mechanicos ergo cogito
Article was a bit light on facts but carbon fiber composites, and only one engine would give very low weight
There does not seem to be much room in it for fuel..
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
Three reasons: gold plated latinum
Acually, it looks like it might be getting some lift from the body (ie lifting body). It could also apply to the big engine, small plane theory. Which says given enough thrust anything will fly. For example, the shuttle. I seriously doubt the second given its speed but I don't know what its operating limits are. It might require 275 knots to take off and have a max speed of 300..
In ST:TOS the Romulans did have early Klingon-designed Bird of Prey ships. The design was original Klingon, but shared with the Romulans during a brief period of time when they were allies.
I think you're talking about the tailless sonic cruiser (you can find it on Boeing's site too but it seems to be slashdotted right now).
Except that the Bird of Prey shares very little in design with X-32. The X-32 and BoP have differently shaped and positioned intakes, completely different wing designs as well as vastly different performance specifications. This is kind of moot though, since Boeing has stated what its purpose is and it is not that of a concept aircraft for the JSF, which is well popularized in the white world.
Lift is a function of speed, at high speeds you don't need such a large lifting area.
Look at a gliders weight to wing area, compare it to a high speed aircraft.
Use the wings for stability and direction control.
Secondly fighter type aircraft have really big engines, they can keep you up, and you don't get the areodynamic drag from the lifting surfaces. It isn't efficient, but it will perform better.
I'm not so sure this was a good idea to reveal the existence of this thing. Other then whatever fear we can place in the hearts of our enemies that we will not relinquish the lead on key warfighting tech, I wonder if this just gets other countries fired up to do research on how to cheaply produce similar airframes.
And unlike us they are far more likely to deploy something like this as a cruise missile, thus rendering Arrow/NBMD obsolete.
Let's not encourage or give America's enemies any more ideas.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
http://xaxxon.slackworks.com/lb03235.mov
mirror of the movie on the boeing site..
Hmmmm, WB has a new show called "Birds of Prey." Boeing acknowledges existance of their new fighter "bird of prey." WB.com says hope comes in the unlikely form of a trio of beautiful and relentless heroines, so I guess these Dawson's Creek kiddies are going to fly around in these badass jets stopping evil-doers, (just like our military, I'm starting to get the idea)
:)
Who says WB shows are lame!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
They would be "puce colored fag-robots", but they could only do two things: surrender, or run away. :)
It's not done downloading yet.. it's at 49%.. but eventually it'll be done :) And this is more than most people are going to get from the boeing site in the next few hours.. ooh! 50% :)
<jedi>This is not the classified aircraft you are looking for.</jedi>
Damn, I was hoping this was about the über-large, super-low-speed, really gigantic, maybe-helium-inflated, possibly-heavy-duty-troop-transport aircraft previoulsy reported (several times) on Slashdot.
Now, that would be killer. I'm really very disapointed here.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
A few things dont make sense to me though, I thought it was flying low because it *looked* to be quite large, but I hardly heard any sound (meaning it could have been far away), but from my perspective it was traveling very slow meaning it would have to have been far away to keep a minimum airspeed [paralax motion]... so I dont know :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
This might helpwith your question.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
It's anti-slashdot-effect. Obsessive-compulsive clickers have to copy/paste/edit in order to see it. Since you posted it, it has now been slashdotted.. Thanks
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
I heard a while back that the explanation was that the Romulans supposedly sold the technology to the Klingons in exchange for advanced Warp Technology.
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
"Does anyone who knows more about this than I do"
The guy wasn't exactly trying to pass himself off as an expert.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Any else think the images look like 3D renderings?
I've heard more stories about strippers playing with his "lobes" than I care to.
And you call yourself a NERD! No self-respecting geek could get enough Star Trek related erotic stories! Sheesh...
GMD
watch this
The B-52 has been in service for almost 50 years and anticipated to remain in service for another 30+ years from now. (Yes, there'll be B-52s flying with airframes older than your grandparents!) The F-4 was recently taken out of service, but there are still some A-6s in service. Those planes were in service during Vietnam.
So on what facts do you base your statement about US stealth aircraft will still be true 40 years from now?
And, umm, could you talk to LockMart, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop-Grumman, and the US Air Force, because they'd all really like to know what they'll be up against in 2042.
Oh.. wait.. never mind, the page loaded.
I believe its gold pressed latinum.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Last time I was there they had two B-2 Stealth Bombers parked near the runway. Seeing one of those things from the back, I am convinced they are the cause of 95% of saucer-shaped ufo sightings in the last 20 years.
Actually the cause of 95% of UFO sighthings is that people are fucking idiots.
GMD
watch this
It costs Boeing under $70 Million to develop this prototype.
"Fully funded by Boeing, the Bird of Prey project costs $67 million. "
I'd like to point out that this is a lifting body design... just like the bazillion other posters who didn't read the other replies first.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.
Not quite. There are only 6(?) airframes so far. No operational squadron. The initial base has been decided, but they're not there just yet.
In the quicktime movie they pretty much make this explicit. There is a graphic of the word "Transformation" then a series of cross-fades between the Bird of Prey and the UCAV showing the similarities.
The stealth fighter was revealed to the general public before the gulf war, they even had a really good game that was released during or before the war.
Doesn't the 3rd slideshow photo (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat_files/space/spa ce1102boeing_slideshow/slide03.html) look faked?
(check the angle of the shadows on the engine intake vs. the shadows on the ground)
But the hi-res photo on Boeing's site looks legit, haven't seen the movie yet...
no we cant, now c'mere and let me hit you
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
The video is /.'ed so I have not been able to see it, but am I the only one who thinks these pics look extremely fake?
If you look closely it does not appear there are any traces of the effect known as radiosity (light shining of off one surface and illuminating another). Radiosity exists in real life, but is rare to see in computer generated graphics and is almost always that "something missing" that makes faked pics look not quite real.
The shading is also not realistic. Looks like computer textures.
Maybe the vid looks real, and maybe I'm wrong, but the pics look extremely fake to me.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
Yeah theres that.
And I was reading an old ST novel a few days ago which seemed indicate that and Earth based arms manufacturer sold Cloaking tech that Kirk stole from the Romulans to the Klingons and Klingon Disruptor tech to the Romulans while the two factions were in a border dispute.
Thats why I added the statment about inspiring all kinds of Fanfic.
Who run Barter Town?
Your little link has already slashdotted it :)
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Treaty: A formal agreement between two or more states, as in reference to terms of peace or trade.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
OK, the dagger in the patch appears to be Klingon. The plane's design appears to be TOS Klingon / Romulan.
What would really impress me is something that looks like the D'Deridex Warbirds. Of course, something that large, and you'd need a cloaking device.
Lowmag.net
A: Photos? All I see are empty hangars and plain blue skylines.
B: Well now is THAT not a hell of a stealth fighter?
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Should read : "My wife is dead, you insensitive necrophiliac!"
When can I buy a model kit of this plane? I need something cool-looking to add to my stack of kits I'm never going to build because I can't glue the parts together elegantly or paint it worth crap.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
It sound like, since it's being retired now, this plane was just a glorified test bed for future camoflage technologies.
For crissake they didn't fly it over 300 mile and hour. I coulda shot it down with a nice scope and a deer rifle.
http://www.boeing.com/phantom/ucav.html
you can clearly see that many of the design technologies from the bird of prey have made their way into the X-45 prototype.
Perhaps using technology found at the Roswell crash site?
i don't like style guides
One of the original proposals for Concorde had bat wings. Take a look at the ARMSTRONG-WHITWORTH M-WING proposal.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
It IS a development model for testing.
It's easy to look at the matte grey and assume it's a fighter, but a trip to Boeing's press release tells a different story.
The aircraft has an operational ceiling of 20,000 feet, and a cruising speed of 260 knots (mach 0.4). It's weight is 7,400 lbs. that's less than half the weight of an empty F-16 and a sixth that of an F-14. The weight alone doesn't mean it can't be a fighter, but it's no good for any sort of mixed-use, because of its minimal load capacity.
It's also an unlikely choice for surveillance because of its low ceiling. the U-2 was good because anti-aircraft munitions couldn't reach it. The SR-71 was good because they could outrun missiles. This thing, as stealthy as it may be, is a sitting duck as it patrols below its 20,000 foot ceiling, putting along at 280 knots.
No, the point of this aircraft is that it proves new design and fabrication techniques. the prototype was built for $64 million, soup to nuts, and that's a huge deal. Boeing financed the design and production out-of-pocket, and my best guess is that they did it to rpove to the DoD that they could come up with innovative designs, fabricate and test them cheaply and quickly, and maintain a veil of secrecy while they do it.
After losing the F-22/23 battle to Lockheed Martin, Boeing has to rebuild cred with the DoD as more than a missile and satellite maker. My guess is that this is their 'see what we can do' project for the military, since the Skunkworks facilities were't working on much else nowadays.
Kevin Fox
The a.s.s.m. archive search engine
For use when you can't look at the pictures.
?sp
no. to be a nato member you must have nato planes. The Russians dislike this b/c of Migs.
This is just a radar/areodynamic test prototype and is quite a few years from production. And as the "skip a generation" approach the current administration has the UAV version is probably the future.
The location of the air intake also implies that this is going to be a subsonic aircraft design. Perhaps the future replacement for the F117A rather than a fighter.
Even the Boeing PR points this out:
So it seems unlikley we'll see a manned version of one of these in the future. They may have been thinking that way in the early 1990s when they started to build it but not today.
The video is interesting -- the plane looks so different from different angles and there is one angle where the wings look more like a flying squirrel rather than a bird of prey(tm).
not Skunkworks. My bad.
Kevin Fox
Comment removed based on user account deletion
its too bad no military technology can withstand the mighty slashdoting! muahhahahhahahaha!!
Won't you be my my neighbor?
"The Bird of Prey technology demonstrator pioneered breakthrough low-observable technologies and revolutionized aircraft design, development and production. Developed by the Boeing Phantom Works advanced research-and-development organization, the Bird of Prey was among the first to initiate the use of large, single-piece composite structures; low-cost, disposable tooling; and 3-D virtual reality design and assembly processes to ensure the aircraft was affordable as well as high-performing."
Emphasis mine.
Don't forget the KH-11 satellite... It had at least a 6" resolution that we know of. Now this was a satellite that was from the mid-80's. Imagine what they have now, 20 years later!
Now that we got the governament to admit that there is indeed a secret stealth fighter called "bird of pray", something we knew all along, I would like to be the first to start the rumour that there is in fact no such thing as a "bird of pray" stealth fighter.
Look at those pictures will ya, I could have done a better job using Photoshop. Sheesh, the thing doesn't even have a laser cannon. And everyone knows that secret fighterjets are black, not regular-fighterjet gray.
Holy-Gueillo Batman! This looks (even to scale!) like the old Captain Power jets i had as a kid! i just hope the ejector seat works just a *tad* better in this model. ~what, me worry?
Ferengi Ferengi Ferengi Ferengi Ferengi
There, now I'm crying. Are you happy with yourself!?!
However,
I'm assuming you're having trouble differentiating between seeing a an object in the air you can't describe, and some redneck that says aliens implanted a mind control device in his dog.
Well, okay, if you want to get really picky about symantics then I'll point to your post and state that everyone can differentiate between an object in the sky and an uneducated human being. But what you meant to say is that I'm confusing a Unidentified Flying Object and an alien spacecraft.
What I am really guilty of is using "UFO sighting" and "UFO reporting" interchangably (well, that and misspelling sighting in my original post). My comment about people being idiots is reserved for those who, upon seeing something unusual in the sky, immediately run off and notify the authorities. They are really the ones who confuse a UFO with alien spacecraft -- not me. The only reason these people are reporting something unusual is because they think it is important. People are lazy. They aren't going to go to the trouble of telling the police "Hey, I saw this thing and I don't know if it's important or not." Those that take the time/effort of reporting lights or saucer shaped objects in the sky have already largely convinced themselves that it's alien in origin in spite of no evidence whatsoever.
GMD
watch this
What impressed the hell out of me was this bit from the popsci article:
I work in a air force research facility, and this still dropped my jaw. All the fancy stuff, plus the simple little things like, "oh, and we painted it white where the shadows are."
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
n.
Idioms:
at (one's) wits' end At the limit of one's mental resources; utterly at a loss. have
[Middle English, from Old English. See weid- in Indo-European Roots.]
So what is your point exactly?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Weren't the first stealth aircraft announced just before Gulf War I? There was speculation at the time that we just needed an excuse to test new weapons in real combat.
Why bother to post a link to tripod? I see that their 30 bytes per hour limit has already been reached.
First, we give them the missiles to help in their fight against anti-American interests. Second, enemy vanquished, they turn against us. Then we need the plane. Rinse and repeat ;)
The images and the whole story seems to me like a hoax. If you look carefully at picture of jet the flying, you will see that there is nobody inthe cockpit.
It looks like fricken origami. Perhaps it really was born as a "napkin idea". If the enemy captures you, wipe your face with your plane and quickly toss it in the trash.
Table-ized A.I.
On the fact that changing your radar apparatus from long wave emission to short wavelenghts (or the other way 'round, don't remember...but that's not the point: the point is that all of the worlds radar works on iether long or short waves) will effectively reduce stealth technology to being quite ineffective.
/. which basically said that if you operate mobile phones in your airspace, you can catch stealth planes. Stealth is only a temporary (albeit very effective while it lasts) advantage.
It's an expensive change, but it's happening already. Hell, there was just an article here on
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
a cat, a fiddle, perhaps a cow too...
:)
a lot of people are, uh, into astronomy" these days...
Knocking over the "scope" is the ultimate party foul...
Well, if it's now revealed, it ain't secret anymore, isn't it ?
I don't the US is too worried about us though, particularly as Lockheed Martin is a joint venture partner in the project...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Fair enough. But as you point out, the changeover's expensive. Now... what can third-world countries not afford to do, unless we give them the food so they can afford to divert more money towards doing it? *coughNorthKoreaJimmyCartuhcough*
The mobile phone / cell tower method of defeating stealth is interesting, but it's a huge signal-processing problem. More to the point, it's a huge data communications problem. In 5 years, a PlayStation IV will probably be able to do the math... but how's the adversary's third-world-cellphone-mast-radar net gonna get all that data to the CPU in order to do the computations?
I dunno, but I'd bet something TCP/IPish, over wires. Doing it over the air renders it susceptible to jamming. And doing it over wires makes it like the Internet - one bomb dropped on a NAP and *boom*, router tables oscillate and it's lag, lag, lag.
(My personal prediction is that despite the glam appeal of human-piloted jets, 40 years from now it'll all be UAVs piloted by flight sim geeks in air-conditioned trailers. UAVs are smaller and can take G-loads that would black out, or even kill, human pilots. With respect to fighter jocks, I think they'll change their tune the first time they try to train against a fleet of UAVs :-)
That said, I wouldn't bet the defense budget on the notion that "UAVs will make fighters obsolete". A lot of generals said the same thing 50 years ago - that air-to-air missiles would make guns on fighters obsolete - which turned out to be a very expensive mistake, in both men and materiel.
It was 5:30am and it was still dark out. Me and a friend of mine were looking out over Blackwater Sound when I noticed three slightly illuminated rectangles moving just above the cloud deck (about 3000 feet I guess), heading NNW from the Atlantic. At first I assumed it was lights shining on the bottom of a jet, as it was moving a little faster than a prop plane would. But I couldn't hear anything, nor could I see the shape of the plane (it was just starting to get twilight). Me and my friend were stumped as to what it was.
I wanted to entertain the fact that I had just saw a UFO, but all my instincts told me it was a secret gov plane. The flight path made me think it might be a spy/recon plane that had just returned from checking out Cuba.
Now that I've seen a bottom profile of the Bird of Prey, I'm almost certain the strange tri-rectangle shape I saw was the bottom of one of these things with its landing lights on. It was probably on final approach for Homestead AFB.
You're not honestly going to defend the British spelling of "manoevre" (maneuver) are you?!
Okay, for those that haven't paid enough attention (i.e. didn't actually go and read the article,) here is the short of it:
Now, what this means:
This aircraft was made by Boeing so they could make sure that developmental technologies would work. They did this because they had other contracts with the DoD that would benefit from this technology. As the press release says, technology from this aircraft was used in development of the X-45A.
This is very common for defense companies. They know that they need to work on some piece of technology to get their DoD project working right, but they already told the DoD that they had said technology. So what do they do? They develop the technology in secret (seperately from the DoD project,) do it cheaply, and do it with in-house money. This way, the DoD project gets its technology, and they don't have egg on their face from the fact that they didn't actually have this technology developed in the first place.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
It ain't too big and it's only got a Cessna Citation engine...gee, why can't we homebuild this thing? (you'd think there'd be more homebuilt aircraft ppl hanging around slashdot...)
Course, could just use normal fiberglass/epoxy instead of the stealthy RAM to build the fuselage to save money...
This could be the next LongEZ...quick, save the photos so we can make plans out of them!!!
It wouldn't be the bird of prey -- #1 it has a business jet engine, #2 it has no real instruments, hell, it doesn't even have real computers! It was flown manually (not fly-by-wire). I doubt this plane was used for anything else than just testing designs...
Always amused by 'save human life.' Guess when the Other Side is using remote-control devices, too... and then, the concept of violating the peaceful use of space treaty and duking in out beyond the asteroid belt sounds downright civil.
An honest question here: Given that this is a stealth aircraft demonstrated with 'off the shelf' technology, apparently with an aeroshell stable enough that it doesn't need a fly-by-wire system to keep from crashing to the ground... isn't there some concern that, say, N. Korea or a similar industrialized enemy could get to work on a similar plane? Seems like the Zero or MiG of stealth, before an enemy's independently released one.
If we assume secrecy actually == security, as the gov't would like us to believe while conducting these undisclosed projects, is Boeing's stock price now more important than the chance of someone flying a nuke in a similar "Hey, we could build that in the garage, with a little radar-absorbent paint..." design?
I totally agree.
"The other night as I was driving home... I had a couple miles to go, when all of a sudden, I saw a great orange light - to the east! When I came to, I was home. What do you think happened to me?" -Colonol Cambell, MGS2
Yup...
The Romulan and Klingon empires filed suit against Boeing today, responding to the trademark and copyright infringing title of the new aircraft, stating "We'll have justice, or we'll wedge a photon torpedo so far up your (expletive deleted) that your (expletive deleted) will glow for weeks, after which, your (expletive deleted) will explode, taking your (expletive deleted), your (expletive deleted), and your (expletive deleted) with it!"
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"Enemy combatants" have rights under the Geneva Convention. You're more likely to be a "Detainie".
What makes trolling so enjoyable is trying to get past Taco's silly little anti-troll features. If he removed them I'm pretty sure there would be much less lame trolling going on.
Its just a power grab by a highly insecure individual.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Thanks for geeking out. I'm the AC who didn't know his ass from a Romulan Bird of Prey. I guess my knowledge of the movies vastly exceeds my knowledge of the original series.
The third photo in the set, the one in flight with mountains behind, looks like a fake, doesn't it? Compare the shadows on the plane with those on the mountains. I'm not saying the plane isn't real, since the off slashdot links seem to be real, but why would they use a doctored photo? To hide the area it made test flights?
We is NATO
I suppose all your base are belong to NATO as well?
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys
But I've gotta be honest... I forgot who said it... The Simpsons?
(no offense to the French, BTW)
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Show some respect. The Skunk Works turned in a revolutionary, extraordinarily capable, STUPENDOUSLY RISKY airplane on a shoestring budget. We need more engineers like that.
I second that motion. For anyone who is interested, I recommend "Skunk Works: A personal memoir of my years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich. The SR-71 and F-117 were both created at the Skunk Works, and this book tells the tale from the inside. It contains some pretty fascinating tidbits - for example, during selection trials the F-117 prototype showed an alarmingly large radar signature on the test range. The fix? They had to design a stealth pylon to put it on because the F-117 proto was the first plane so stealthy that its signature was less than the pylon!
--paul
-- Every time you kill a kitten, God masturbates.
Yawn! I see a stealthy pea shooter that you can STILL see on infrared and heat sensors, and it still gives a very small radar signature.
Now when the military has a protoculture driven aircraft like the VF1-Valkyrie that can recongure into Guardian or Battloid mode, then you will have my undivided attention.
My favourite anecdote from that book was the one where they thought the test radar wasn't working, because they weren't getting a return. Then all of a sudden, they got a spike...from the big black bird that had just landed on top of the model.
Beautimous.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Its been around since the late 60s, test driven by Sally Fields if I'm not mistaken...prototype?
To me, a more interesting question than the ultimate resolution of these babies is the *number* and scope of cameras on them. Can they watch a car drive along a Cairo backstreet? Can they do this to 20 (or 200 or 2000) cars simultaneously?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Australia and Canada are both able to see Stelth Aircraft with their weather sattilites. The satilites can track them in multiable ways:
- Vapour trails show up easy on weather Satt's
- Inpher-red shows up on the Aussie bushfire detection Satt's
- The new Candain Geographic Survay Satt's use a style of side scan rader that detects stelth aircraft just as easy as any other type of plane. Infact the Amercains were very pissed when they figured out how good the Satt's were and tried to prevent new ones from being lunched.
Jeff Foxworthy: "If the UFO Hotline limits you to one call per day, you might be a redneck."
Have none of you seen a bumblebee through a telescope before? Might explain the humming noise, too.
well it looks like the usaf is copying old star trek episodes for their aircraft...in that case i wanna know when r they gonna bring out phasors and ray guns... scotty: Captain...i canna fix it!! spock: Just point the phasors to the dileithium crystals and fire. scotty: arrrre ya surrre it will wurkkk? spock: it worked in last weeks episode motherf&*%*er
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Sure you can use them to see stealth aircraft coming, but, due to the long wavelength nature of the radar, you can nail down the aircraft's location to about a 50 mile radius sphere.
Good luck trying to shoot it down.
Low observable planes, the Air Force's code name for stealth, also receive visual and infra red treatment to make them harder to detect that way.
All stealth missions are backed up by massive jamming from EA-6Bs and other aircraft.
With the F22, if an enemy aircraft does 1. Avoids getting shot down. 2. Detects it. 3. Catch up to it. It will still be almost impossible for the enemy plane to lock on. The F22's radar scans other radars and jams them at the precise moment when they try to lock on.
Bistatic and multisource radars are a threat, but again, the question is whether they get good enough signal to shoot. That answer's probably no. Furthermore, now a days JDAMs cost $25,000 a pop, which is pretty cheap compared to any type of radar emitter.
The cutting edge in LO, from the available literature, seems to be lowering maintanence costs and all-aspect stealth, which just means that infra red and visual stealth are becoming more and more important. Supposedly, with some clever arrangement of lights, one can make aircraft almost invisible to the eye as close as 1 mile out. With a plane flying at 500 mph, that's practically invisible.
So is stealth beatable? Sure, despite everything mentioned above, you can shoot down a stealth aircraft. The question is, how much is it gonna cost you to prepare the defenses? How much of your own equipment and people do you loose in the process? The answer, short of new breakthroughs in stealth detection, is enormous.
Does the US really need stealth in the modern environment? Not likely. The sales pitch is that taking on stealth is so daunting that it deters anyone from even trying. That's a statement that has some merit.
This whole discussion lends credence to my theory that 90% of the reason we have wars is because we (primarily the males of the species) like making cool stuff to blow things up with.
:)
(I say this not at as any kind criticism, merely an observation, since my reaction to this plane is pretty much "COOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!"...)
You gotta wonder if the first time some guy stabbed a Mastodon with a pointed stick a bunch of other guys like us crowded around him saying "Ohh! Look at the sharpened point! Hey, I bet he could hit something with one of those at twenty, thirty feet!"
Like it's namesake, the Bird Of Prey doesn't have bathrooms.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
There is a big difference between detecting a stealth aircraft and shooting one down. High power long wave (HF & VHF) radars are better able to detect & track stealthy aircraft, but the accuracy of their position & velocity estimates isn't sufficient to provide a firing solution. Distributed systems that use many low powered transmitters & receivers in the lower microwave bands are also better at tracking stealthy aircraft, but they're more expensive and similarly incapable of providing a firing solution.
In order to take down a stealthy aircraft, you need to be able to guide a missile accurately enough to intercept it. That requires a radar that operates in the higher microwave bands or an EO/IR sensor. EO/IR sensors are inherently short range, and stealth designs are intentionally designed to be most effective against the radars that shoot rather than the radars that detect and track.
Why all these trolls?
:)
:)
...
:)
:)
Why all the negativity?
Why don't we all just comment on the positive side: United States is pretty much what the rest of the world would like to be, why aren't we happy that good old U.S. of A. has the strength to be whatever they like to be?
Sometimes I am astonished by the level of "commie indoctrination" among these "Linux" freaks!
And on the more realistic side: United States does not torture people, I quess? Saddam does. Get your fuckin anti-US kicks on that.
I mean that it is so fashionable amongst the European people to hate the United States. What then? Wanna go to the "Wahhabite Islamite System" and live amongst fundamentalism and completely disfunctioning economic and social system? What about the right to have a different opinion? Do you think that you might live without you microwave owen, your PC and your celluar phone?
Get a life...
In the good old days I used to be anti-US, these days I am just astonished by the scale of this anti-US sentiment, i mean that they just blame the USA and it's all completely overblown. I mean, most of the US foreign policy sucks, but who would clearly say that the US accomplishments so far are not good?
Without USA we would not have...
- Democracy in Europe
- Any kind of Personal Computers
- Functional market economy on global scale
- Anything resembling the current system of very quick progress on the technological front
- I quess that this free/open source software was pretty much a United States idea as well
Most of the criticism against the politics of the USA of today are quite correct, but that nation has also been very beneficient to the rest of the world. USA is the place where the current standard of living enjoyed by the computer-literate middle-class everywhere was made. Why would people like me know so much English otherwise?
I don't say that you should accept the current U.S. foreign policy, all I'm saying is that there are many good thing coming from the United States that we should not forget...
Pretty much a reaction against the yacky-yacky-all-pervasive anti-USA-sentiment around Europe on my part...
On the other hand you also have freedom to choose the Taliban as your world leader.
All I mean is this; critizise US foreign policies intellectually like my favourite american dude Noam Chomsky does, do not pour that anti-US fucking anti-sentiment without any intelligence everywhere.
Thank you
Best regards
European dude
Check this out: http://www.invisible-defenders.org/programs/bop/bo p-index.htm
...didn't i see that plane on Discovery Europe last year(!), they showed a VERY similar plane (small model) when talking about "future stealth fighters having no tail fin".
The entire project cost $67M. The B2 project probably spent that much on jet fuel.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
its funny how all of you know it all assholes that can describe super secret military planes and get all worked up about this crap cant spell existence. original post, reply after reply, etc, "existance". i know, its just spelling and i am a huge troll, but its still pretty damn funny.
I wonder if this was a good thing i.e. the airframes and technology are now outdated and redundant or a McNamara-esque cost cutting trick a la destroying the tooling for the SR-71 Blackbird back in the late '60s...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Certainly the whole swing wing thing is a costly tech to maintain and I'm sure they have aged.
My objection is not necesarily taking out the Electric Foxes, but that there isn't an equivalent replacement in the pipeline.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
--humour mode on--
Probably won't happen. Might screw with the newz media too much if the USAF inadvertantly jammed all of the satellite phones in an area.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has
been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an
import. This beer never really sold very well because the original
manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer
fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a
16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was
originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design
hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of
this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.
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