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."

Comments

Does this mean that Aurora exists as well?

[ewanrg]

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).

not exactly tailless!

[TenderMuffin]

it's not exactly a tail-less aircraft as some have said

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photore le ase/q4/high_res/dvd-226-5.jpg

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

Only imagine what they have now...

[Mithrander]

The Bird's innovative features are sure to inform the design of next-generation stealth aircraft, but the plane itself, having served its purpose, is being retired--which is why Boeing and the Air Force were willing to make it public today.

Exactly. If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore. Imagine what sort of stuff is in the "top-secret" category now?

Re:Only imagine what they have now...

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore. Imagine what sort of stuff is in the "top-secret" category now?

Which is exactly the line of reasoning I use when people are creeped out by terraserver.com or the areial images on mapquest.
Then they're really creeped out.

Re:Only imagine what they have now...

[Guppy06]

"If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore."

Except the only cutting-edge technology that counts is what you can get to the battlefield in question. It doesn't matter if what they're playing with now in the middle of Nevada makes the F-22 look like a Sopwith Camel, the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.

Of course this doesn't make these black projects any less interesting to think about...

Gulf war?

[PissingInTheWind]

Didn't the U.S. military did something similar in revealing officialy the F-117
shortly before attacking Irak the first time?

American Maginot Line

[sssmashy]

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?

Re:American Maginot Line

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually the story I heard was that the stealth fighters were very visible on the ancient WWII radar that they had on the ships there. The stealth bomber is designed to block out the high frequencies that modern radars use and reflect the rest anywhere but back to where it came from. But the lower frequencies used in WWII aren't nearly as well attenuated; for basic physical reasons. That, plus the fact that they had 'passive' radar on some of the ships making use of single transmitters on other ships meant that they got to see this small cross-section blip fly past at somewhat below the speed of sound.

Re:Shares some interesting similarities with past

[Richard_at_work]

There are certyain things called "Lifting bodies" which require little wing area to fly. Granted they are not very economic designs but they do have their uses. One problem with them tho is that the more you lesson the wing area, the greater the take off and landing speeds must be (one of the reasons Groom Dry Lake has a huge runway).

Re:Welcome to our new robot masters!

[Guppy06]

"at least our new robot masters will look cool"

Actually, from the PopSci article (emphasis mine):

"The airplane was made from a small number of carbon fiber composite parts, and--amazingly, in view of its shape--had a simple all-manual flight control system without a computer in sight.

In this day and age, this fact impresses me more than its radar invisibility.

So, this will be the plane we use to fight back against the robot masters. :)

Has anyone seen ?

[Monkelectric]

or heard about a black aircraft with the shape of a violin body? I was into astronomy about 10 years ago and in the wee hours of the morning I was setting up my scope when all of the sudden out of nowhere this black aircraft (looked like an f15 with the body of a violin) flew overhead. I couldn't tell how big it was (no way to get perspective in a black sky). It was completley silent until it was over me and I heard a humming noise.

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 :)

Yep

[Goonie]

Australia has a super-long-range radar system, the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar, that lets us watch pretty much anything coming in from the north for at least 2000 miles. It can detect stealth aircraft quite well.

I don't the US is too worried about us though, particularly as Lockheed Martin is a joint venture partner in the project...