2011 DoD Black Budget: $57.8 Billion

reply to post by Astr0


Tell me more about this uav that hunts in packs please, any links or other info?

never heard about this one

cheers

Originally posted by maintainright
reply to post by Astr0

 

Tell me more about this uav that hunts in packs please, any links or other info?

never heard about this one

cheers

I certainly would not know Astr0's source on this, but there are open source indications that such an autonomous program exists. The TRL on it suggests it is not ready for the battlefield though. That said the Reapers do have swarming abilities at the hands of remote pilots.

So unless Astr0 is talking about Reapers swarming with a Global Hawk, Predator, Sentinel or ground troops acting as spotter when he says, "the other airframe hunts in packs and the Taliban are said to fear these above all other systems" then he is either a bit premature or in the know on something that is not yet public domain.

Originally posted by Astr0
My thoughts? an operational squadron or two of as yet unknown airframes (RQ-170 pictures anyone?)

Glad to oblige...

RQ-170 Sentinel
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/05fd30b6f675.jpg[/atsimg]

Originally posted by maintainright
reply to post by Astr0

 

Tell me more about this uav that hunts in packs please, any links or other info?

never heard about this one

cheers

It is said to be a tailess design, painted very light tan / white and operates inside the Warizistan tribal areas. It is described as smaller than a Predator airframe but jet powered and flys low.

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by intelgurl

 

I hope someone will be able to shed some light into this (but remain doubtful)...

What is really distressing is the incredible waste (it seems) of money and resources (

) that could be put to more valuable use in further space exploration, and possible permanent extraterrestrial colony establishment --- this one planet is just our "cradle", and it is not sufficient to sustain our species indefinitely.

Hey, that's what it's for.

The problem is that interstellar Mach drives cost a wad to build and operate, and you lose a surprisingly high percentage of craft and crew. You generally write the crew off as "helicopter accidents" or the like, but the craft are a big ticket item. Not pretty.

[edit on 11-7-2010 by Bedlam]

Originally posted by GeechQuestInfo
I thought the black budget was off the books. If this is the case how can someone know the actual funds dedicated to such a budget?

Just wondering...anyone know the answer?

Oh, we call this the "non line item" budget. The congresscritters get to vote the entire block up or down, but they don't know what's in it, and it doesn't appear on the books, at least not the books anyone can get to easily.

Other stuff shows up on the line item budget, and you can see what it goes to, at least sort of.

A lot of classified stuff is line item, in that the project number and the budget for the project shows up. There's a secret decoder ring for project number vs project title most people can't get their hands on.

But the really dark stuff just goes into the non-line-item list and vanishes.

reply to post by Aim64C

When I was back in Aviation Electronics A-School for the Navy...

This is one of the most informative/interesting posts in a very eye-opening thread.

Thanks for sharing.

reply to post by Bedlam


Wow, that was a mouthful.

In short, you're saying that they're hiding it right in front of our faces(?).

Originally posted by Aim64C
Well... there's a trick to it, too.

Remember what I said about how they buy off-the-shelf technology? Well, there are just as many contractors (civilians) who work with those programs as military.

Raytheon may have some ideas for some new radar solutions...

You also have 'experimental' or 'research' technologies that are, really, first-time/proof-of-concept demonstrators...

Just remember that corporations are just as involved in a lot of this as the government is - it's not only the government that tosses chunks of money into developing these projects - many of the companies do that on their own (or to each other).

Yep.

We do a lot of "one off" designs for the guys in Tampa. In theory it's COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) but in practice it doesn't exist, or not exactly in the way they'd like. In which case there will be an odd phone call, like:

"Tom, we need a *** for our Secure Forward Command Post project. Actually, a set of designs for doing ***, *** and ***, which would all be almost off the shelf, except it has to fit in a VME slot and work with ***. So it doesn't exist. But we need it in about three months, and it has to pass this that and the other milspec for radiation and EM susceptibility."

me: "We don't have one either"

"What would it cost for you to have on on the shelf in about three months?"

me: "About 100K"

"We can't pay non-recurring engineering, since it's COTS"

me: "We can't do it for free...?"

"Amortize the engineering out over the production run and charge us that"

me: "That'll make it about $2000 per unit"

"I don't care, as long as I get it in three months"

So then you get Raytheon, GenDyn and Lockheed all calling for the same board, and they're doing the multiple bid thing, only all that's being bid is us. And that's the way it works in one-off.

Originally posted by SquirrelNutz
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Wow, that was a mouthful.

In short, you're saying that they're hiding it right in front of our faces(?).

Well, there's just a number of ways that happens.

One is the non-line-item budget. Then you have line item budget for which the line item is a project number, but no description.

There's also other ways to do it which are used a lot. If it's below a certain amount, which is about $100K, a full bird or better can handwave it on his own recognizance by sticking it into the unsolicited SBIR slush fund. We've done a number of small jobs, or the assessment stages of jobs that were very classified and were stuck into NSBIR. Presto-changeo, have 100K.

There is another funding technique called "other funding", I'm not sure where the bucks for that come from, but you can stroke out a sizable chunk of coin to that one. I think the biggest other funding I've seen was about 32 million and went to PhantomWorks to test their wideband radar inviso-cloak back in what, 2004? Development for that's been going on for quite a while before you heard about it in the MSM.

Yet another way that I've been paid is to fund science foundations and let them obscure the payout. NSF does this at times, but you will also see some university educational or research foundations that are nothing but shells for someone. Ah, for instance, there is one I used to get paid out of when I first ETS'd and had gotten an endorsement from the Captain to do work for these guys as a civilian. So I got a call one day from let's call it the "Foundation for Aquatic Technology", and they were wanting to stroke me some major coin for doing sort of what I had been doing in the Army, only without being shot at and about 10x the pay rate. Since I was going to school, dead broke and newly married, and we were eating the green meat from the discount bin at Piggly Wiggly, it was hard to say 'no' to a job where you brought home about 50K for the summer after taxes, even if the work was a bit odd.

The fun part was when I went for the interview at "FAT", instead of geeks, it was actually staffed by guys there in Tampa, and the same ones I had just been working for in the Army, too, just a bit higher up the food chain. Sort of. The whole thing was a front.

"FAT" is still there, they recently bought a Able series data mining operation that doesn't show up on the books, maybe five years back. The money goes in for 'research', a paper is produced, the money goes elsewhere, everyone's happy.



[edit on 11-7-2010 by Bedlam]

reply to post by Bedlam


Well, that's all way above my level of accounting practices. I understand it, just can't believe it (and, yet, I do).

I read the keeping up the B-2 is incredibly expensive. Have the fleet of 20 are usually in the shop getting stripped down and re-painted. The top-secret covering is very high maintenance.

reply to post by intelgurl

What accounts for the growth? The CSBA report says that “operations and maintenance” accounts are the fastest-growing chunk of the Black Budget.

Hiring Bloggers, Probably.

(Second line chuckles to himself.)

-Edrick

reply to post by intelgurl


Hi intelgurl, and yes thank you for the picture. I apologise for the delayed response.

My honest opinion on that picture? it appears to be a two thirds model - complete with fixing points for lifting it up onto the pole for RCS testing, taped up rear fuselage and all thats had some fixed unders added so it can be displayed for something or some one.

My thoughts on the clear pictures of 'it' in flight? old - decade or greater without a doubt, and I would bet that its as old or slightly younger than the F-117 (designation support airframe? could it actually be the mysterious 'TR-3' - (which we now know was Tier 3)). It certainly does not appear to benefit from any post 2000 technology developments!

Another point is from those whom have seen a flying wing airframe in Afghanistan. These are RAF personell and have written accounts of 'it' online. The airframe they have seen is 30 feet long, 50 feet wingspan and 8/10 feet high at the apex of the 'humps'.

Released pictures just don't make sense to me when comparing the size if its the same airframe as what we see sat on the tarmac. Anyway, sorry for the ramble - but again thank you.

that porition is just a small partion I believe there is something like the stargate program and they have disclosued it to some of the UN countries and they are pushing for global warming money to be raised and collected and from the bilions gahtered that way only several millions are going to be spend on so called spear point project so they can say there is the money going towards.. but the 90 procent of the money is going to project like the stargate project or something similar because they need money to fund the things they do and they can not say openly that they have such a program.
They have to find ways to make or get money ,
Iraq war and the afghansitan war , oil spill due to sabotage ect they will do everything to free up funds for something really spectacular. and secret.
the war in afghanistan and iraq doesn't cost that much they proclaim nor are there as much soldiers there as they say ,, they can say it because we cannot go there and phycicaly control if there are really as much soldiers there and that all of the money they say they use is used there its uncontrollable and we know it they know it but big portions of budget being said spend there aren't being spend there and are going to a secret project otherwise I cannot see where all the hundreds of billions are going to..
DOD buys foods and clothing ect with huge discounts and tax breakes and send there or bought locally so on food and clothing they aren't spending that much , weapons ect aren't that expancive for the DOD so that cant't be to so if you take all the money you can scrape of that as a surplus it has to be spend somewhere else and my opinion is that is spend in a major secret program.