What Is This? (Hoax??)

It's funny how people are finally catching on to the Bird of Prey after 3 years!

Newscientist.com is a reputable source, they don't spread hoaxes around.

Wasn't the BOP reputed to have the lowest RCS (by far) of any acknowledged manned US plane?

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Perhaps as real PLAAF projects and systems, not by you of course.

I dont know what your saying but the project is OFFICALY SANCTIONED by the military and being developed by CAIC1 (SAC)

"Invisible sword", China's pilotless aircraft unveiled


China already has other UAV/UACVs up and running

Originally posted by chinawhite
China already has other UAV/UACVs up and running

That may be but this one so far is still only a concept model.

Originally posted by Dskys
Thanks for all the great information guys, i find it so amazing how "they" find it so easy to declassify certain black projects so openly and they go almost un noticed! =]

It hardly went unnoticed. There is alot of info of the Bird of Prey out there, several official presentations by Boeing and the plane has resided in a museum for four years now. Everyone who knows about stealth and military black projects knows about the Boeing Bird of Prey.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
Wasn't the BOP reputed to have the lowest RCS (by far) of any acknowledged manned US plane?

Ive never heard that before but its possible. Look at
this picture. All its edges are aligned at the same angle and the fuselage is so streamlined with very few objects to increase the RCS.

You might want to check out the official Boeing patch for this project. Check out how much the hilt of the sword resembles the shape of the BoPs fuselage.

Originally posted by gfad
Ive never heard that before but its possible. Look at
this picture. All its edges are aligned at the same angle and the fuselage is so streamlined with very few objects to increase the RCS.

Well this Janes article has some good information on Boeing's BoP and here's what it says about RCS.

Many features of the Bird of Prey support the hypothesis that it was designed for unprecedented RCS levels: possibly an RCS of -70dBsm, or rather smaller than a mosquito.

Link

[edit on 5-11-2006 by WestPoint23]

its just an technology demostrator , to form base for further tech

The Bird of Prey actually was a test bed for two different things:

1. Tailless stealth aircraft designs.

2. Daylight Stealth- Now before anyone sais I'm off speculating, I never said anything about color change or anything like that. They were testing a grey color scheme to reduce visual signatures during the day time. The resualts have lead the the gray scheme that you see on the F-22 Raptor and the new light grey F-117's.

Tim

Here is what Janes has to say about the BoP and visual stealth.

...with a renewed focus on visual and even acoustic signatures. The overall goal, confirmed by officials at the event, is to achieve daylight stealth.

The shape of the aircraft, too, is – accidentally or intentionally – laid out to avoid shadows. This suggests strongly that the Bird of Prey is a demonstrator for visual stealth technology.

Link

I can't believe that thing actually flew, i mean look at it! It looks like its missing a couple of bits an pieces. But its a shame that it got cancelled, it would have been interesting to see what it woould be capable of in the battlefield.

The BoP wasnt cancelled. It fulfilled the aims of the program and the project ended. It was never designed to be an operational AF aircraft, just a demonstrator to see if some of the technology Boeing was working on at time was practically possible.

Ah! Being a black project, I wonder how much alien technology has gone into it?

But seriously, what is its role? What's gonna happen to the JSF on which billions have been spent? And why has this been kept a tightly guarded secret as compared to the JSF? What gives?

The JSF is an entirely different program. The Bird of Prey spawned technology that has already been applied to Boeing's unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) designs.

Manufacturing techniques developed to produce the Bird of Prey have become industry standards. That is why the program was declassified.

Originally posted by Shadowhawk
The JSF is an entirely different program. The Bird of Prey spawned technology that has already been applied to Boeing's unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) designs.

Right on!

JSF is a weapon system progam. The Bird of Prey, on the other hand was a technology demonstator. It tested new technologies that will go far beyond JSF in their application. To use another example, let's look at Tacit Blue:

Tacit Blue demonstrated the following technologies:

Stealth on a curved airframe
Stealthy Radar
Stealthy Radio Communication systems

These technologies and the lessons learned in thier development have played a critical part in the development of ALL of the Fallowing aircraft:

B-2 Spirit
F-22 Raptor
F-35 JSF

and every Stealth plane built after them.

Tim