past and present black secrets

I've seen a lot of weird aircraft over the years on ATS, but this one takes the cake. What the heck is this thing?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Holy crap that's a weird looking beast. Judging by the lack of a glass canopy I'm going to go out on a limb and say unmanned also its at altitude with no way of judging size.

The propulsion is also very vague too as it doesn't have the usual B-2 bumps around the engines unless they are on the underside. seems like the exhaust is in the center line but surely that would cause problems with that trailing control surface. But hey what do I know lol.

it also doesn't seem to have a refuel point either, but that of course could be hidden under a flap.

Gotta say I have never seen anything like it before so it's purpose is a complete mystery to me at least.

Passing the buck here to Zaph and the others for a little more info, if they can say anything of course lol.

Regards,

M.

All I know is, 20 years ago if I saw that flying overhead -- I'd assume it was some kind of UFO/alien thing.

a reply to: Jukiodone

I remember seeing the F-16 FSW a long time ago and thinking Damn that's one pretty airframe. Always wondered what they did with the idea after the test and evaluation phase as we didn't see the follow on craft in the white world.

Maybe that this is some kind of variant of this unmanned Boeing "sensor aircraft" idea?



20 hours on station?! That's a long time! I doubt any human would want to sit inside an air frame for 20 hours. Well, unless they had a cool bean bag chair and took turns napping.

a reply to: murlock

Even more interesting was the neural net NASA tested in the 90s that never went past Phase I testing despite performing better than expected.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
All I know is, 20 years ago if I saw that flying overhead -- I'd assume it was some kind of UFO/alien thing.

20 years ago?! wow..

wasn't that around the time the B-2 spirit was at the end of its testing phases? Perhaps this beast was part of the same development curve?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

The B-2s flew 20-24 hours before changing crews to get home.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'm pretty sure that it wasn't just tested by NASA that's way too useful.

As far as I'm aware BAE here in the UK tested something very similar for the Typhoon 2 too. Although there is little known about it other than it did work quite well

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: MystikMushroom

The B-2s flew 20-24 hours before changing crews to get home.

And didn't they forget to put somewhere to sleep in it too? Forcing the crew to go low tech with a camping bed?

a reply to: Zaphod58

A friend of mine had some "USAF hand sanitizer" clipped onto his backpack and I asked him about it. He said they didn't have toilets on his plane, so they hand you a thing of santizer, a few plastic bags and a bottle.

a reply to: murlock

It was originally tested by NASA to put in aircraft to recreate the IAF F-15 one winged flight. When it proved much more useful than they thought it vanished.

a reply to: murlock

They had a chaise lounge I believe, Zaph mentioned some crewman drug it over to the plane. I laughed so hard just picturing it.

If it was me, I would have brought a bean bag chair...

a reply to: murlock

Walmart chaise lounger.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Fighters use piddle packs. It's a plastic bag with a dry sponge in it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Do they feed you a diet of "slow digesting" food? I mean what happens if you need to do more than just "piddle"?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Most flights are two hours or less. They're only necessary for ferry flights. Most ferry flights are 5-6 hours.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: Zaphod58

Do they feed you a diet of "slow digesting" food? I mean what happens if you need to do more than just "piddle"?

I've always wondered about that too. maybe they have a diaper?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Hold it........ Or there's always bags

a reply to: Zaphod58

All the tech in the world and they completely missed the simple stuff

That's human nature for ya

Also yeah I'm not surprised it "disappeared" the possible applications are almost limitless and I'm kinda puzzled why we haven't seen something like it in use for disabled people to allow them to use computers and other electro-mechanical equipment. let alone it's military applications

It's probably still about slowly getting better and better in some quiet lab somewhere as computing power gets faster and faster.

On a side note if they ever need a guinea pig for neural implant testing, I'm up for that as long as they don't scramble my noodles in the process of course

Regards,

M.