Documentary Shows what they claim to be F-117 comp

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Zaphod58

I thought about other entries, too

originally posted by: SpeedFanatic
a reply to: mightmight

I have similar thoughts about today's F-35

Super Hornets were introduced in 1999. The competition I mentioned in my previous post was during early 90s. The competition itself might last from early to mid 90s. Competition was cancelled and Navy decided to buy Super Hornets. Some of the 'entries' of the competition would have been used later for other things.. btw

To be exact, Super Hornet / Hornet II / Hornet 2000 was picked up after the A-12 fiasco in 91.
They had a A-6 replacement program set up, called Advanced Attack (A-X for some reason). The Air Force was on board as well looking for a F-111 and long term F-15E/F-117 replacement.
At least on the Navies side the DOD (SecDef Cheney not Navy) decided pretty much instantly to purchase the Super Hornet as an interim solution.
In 92 NATF efforts went belly up, the program was restructured into A/F-X (Advanced Attack / Fighter) and there was a renewed effort to get upgraded F-14s as well. But the DOD killed that one too in 92.
A/F-X went on and they were projecting a Demonstration Validation phase to start in 94 and EMD in 96.
Interestingly enough, Congress specifically directed in late 92 that the Demo phase would include prototypes.
Looked well for a while and they were projecting IOC in the late 2000s.
The program got axed however in late 93. They justified it arguing the Super Hornet will be good enough for the forseeable future, started JAST which became JSF and here we are.
I believe the Navy went ahead with the testing the prototypes anyway, in case JAST/JSF would fail as well. Congress did allocate a couple hundred millions US-$ for the competition in 92 so there really was no reason not to.

The prototypes got to fly - ATS resident Boomer refueled one of them at some point and its desginator surfaced in a test pilots bio. No reason for it to still be classified, just politics.

I dont know about it being used later for other things. Maybe they looked at it again for F/A-XX but i doubt it went anywhere.

a reply to: mightmight

Wohoo man!

originally posted by: mightmight
The prototypes got to fly - ATS resident Boomer refueled one of them at some point and its desginator surfaced in a test pilots bio. No reason for it to still be classified, just politics.

That's exactly what I was thinking about!!!
Most of permanent ATS members knows about what exact aircraft we are talking here. My hunch is that the Air Force tested it later because of the canards. Canards aren't very stealthy so it's good to have a chance to test it for this matter.

a reply to: mbkennel

Or maybe it's not seeing but doing.

???

a reply to: Zaphod58

So longs as it's pointy...

a reply to: Crumbles

The OP image reminded me of something I have on my mantle.

That card is from the early 90's. I guess Micro machines really had some serious Intel sources back then

all anyone has to do, is to look at the OLD Convair (UNCLASSIFIED) drafts and what they were talking about in the 60-70's. Time stands still for no one, esp technology.

i would hazard a guess that most anything interesting today 'flying' people wouldn't believe exist or think are ET lol...

a reply to: penroc3

Don't forget Teledyne Ryan, which got bought out by Northrop Grumman in 1999...

a reply to: HomeyKXTA

its funny that all these super secret black projects people pine over(myself included) are almost older then i am, so what is really the cutting edge coming off the lab bench today?

even if the BBT are at least 20 years old

the orange orbs 10 years

and all the other stuff im not to sure about

my mom always told me, "use the right tool for the job" so there is always that.

a reply to: penroc3
Convair wasnt even included in Project Harvey. I doubt they got the escort aircraft when they werent allowed to bit for the main event.

Northrop, Grumman, General Dynamics, Fairchild Republic and (apparently) Boeing got 1 mil $ contracts from DARPA to come up with LO design concepts. Lockheed forced itself in but got no money.
Fairchild and Grumman got out pretty much immediately since they had not idea how to do LO. General Dynamics proposed upgraded ECM capabilities and left as well.
Northrop came up with a decent proposal, was allowed to go forward, almost certainly build a prototype but eventually lost the XST competition to Lockheeds Have Blue.
I wrote about this before, i dont think Northrop then went on to build the Companion. Their XST entry was all they had and it lost to Lockheed.
Its pretty similar to the F-117 and we know the Companion looks nothing like it so thats that.

Which leaves us with McDonnellDouglas and Boeing.

McDonnellDouglas teamed up with Teledyne Ryan and was actually orginially picked up for the XST competition alongside Northrop and Lockheed but dropped out eventually.
Whats interesting about this, their proposed aircraft is pretty much a perfect candidate for how the Companion might look like. At least in my opinion:
www.google.com...
Sometimes i wonder if they got dropped from the XST competition because they were picked for the escort.

And then there is Boeing. One of the largest defense contractors outthere, they built the Quiet Bird before anyone at Lockheed dreamed about Stealth, got an inital DARPA contract for LO and were never heard from again.
Thats pretty suspicious, there is no reason to keep an Project Harvey entry hidden at this point unless they did something else with it.

a reply to: mightmight

Ever since I learned about the Quiet Bird and noticed its name and layout similarities to the Bird of Prey, it became immediately obvious that there were/are very likely multiple missing links in the "bird" family connecting the 1960s aircraft to the 1990s one.

One of them could very possibly be the companion.

Though my guess is that it's still someone's pre-Echo 1 contoured stealth shaping experiment from the early-mid 70s that manages to get the shape really, really right. Stealth shaping works a lot like aerodynamics. Once you get a handle on the principles and how the physics works, it's fairly easy to then get to the point where "if it looks right, it probably [reflects] right, too".

I can totally see someone becoming a sort of "Sydney Camm of stealth" and just having a really strong sense of how to shape airframes based on basic understanding of how radar reflections work. Who knows who he worked for, though.

a reply to: mightmight

of course, i was just using them as an example of the level of ideas and the technology they were using and it's more accessible as they are no longer around and seem easier to find pictures of their projects

i still find it amusing that people refuse to accept that this craft exists,

the whole serbia thing make me wonder if they were shooting at that and hit the F117 on accident, Was the missile commander as good as he is claimed to be or just a lucky miss.

i know they said he was turning his radar on and off, but it should still have been able to find it, but history says otherwise.

a reply to: penroc3

Even if they had found the radar, fixing the position and hitting it would have been extremely difficult at best. It takes a few sweeps of the radar beam to localize it. They would have had a general idea where it was, but then to hit it, they would have had to bomb it, probably with CBUs. A HARM wouldn't have had anything to lock on to for the initial fix.

No, this was a case of a damn good operator using his strengths against planners that screwed up.

a reply to: penroc3
I was wondering about the Companion and Allied Force too when i read the article. I dont think they were there since they couldnt guarantee operational security at Aviano.
I mean...
www.youtube.com...

Also boomer135 never said anything about the Kososvo campaign, just the Gulf Wars. Maybe because he wasnt there, dunno.

a reply to: Zaphod58

true, i guess to hit it you need to see it first.

a reply to: mightmight
a reply to: mightmight

It makes sense. I think you are complately right when it comes to XST competition and McDonnell Douglass/Teledyne Ryan. I've always thought that Companion was "another option" in the XST. It wasn't "losing bird" but the idea that McDonnell Douglas along with Teledyne Ryan dropped from XST competition for escort mission seems bull's eye. Companion was mid-70s design and it perfectly matches with the Patent USD244265 when it comes to the date and other details.

As for Kosovo. I bet that Companion wasn't used there because reports came out of a lack of ECM support... OIF was later and I haven't heard about any reports from lack of ECM support back then... so the story goes..

a reply to: mightmight

lol thats great. i wonder if they had to put fake names of the pilots. free air show

originally posted by: SpeedFanatic
a reply to: mightmight

Wohoo man!

originally posted by: mightmight
The prototypes got to fly - ATS resident Boomer refueled one of them at some point and its desginator surfaced in a test pilots bio. No reason for it to still be classified, just politics.

That's exactly what I was thinking about!!!
Most of permanent ATS members knows about what exact aircraft we are talking here. My hunch is that the Air Force tested it later because of the canards. Canards aren't very stealthy so it's good to have a chance to test it for this matter.

I was reading the previous post and was waiting for someone to mention the designator I completely agree with this assessment. The timeline and the designator numbering both fit.
Only thing I am wondering why the designator was 'F' not 'F/A'? Also was it so far along it got an 'official' designator?
I would give an arm and a leg to get some more info on this bird, besides the topic from a while ago. The retractable canards would be pretty funky and unique for a U.S. plane. I wonder if the tech found its way into something different later on...

a reply to: spaceman42

Sometimes planes that don't get developed get a designation. The F-20 Tigershark was never developed beyond two prototypes, but had an official designation. It was never even up for a contract, and was developed solely on company money.

As for F/A, that's only if it's a Navy/Marine aircraft. The Air Force hasn't used F/A in years. They brought it back for the F-22 for a New York Minute, but that was the only Air Force F/A aircraft in years, and there probably won't be another one.