Is that Groom Base in the backround? Or is it just a trick "Mock-Up" Picture?

See for yourselves...

defense.aol.com...

Yes... It is...

Is it a real pic... who knows...

The background is real, but the aircraft is CG. It has been used in other scenes on other blogs. It is just an artist's guess of what the next-gen bomber could look like.

Government secrets are cancer to a free society. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

reply to post by darpa999


Groom Lake does not exist.
Area 51 does not exist.
s4 does not exist.
Papoose Lake does not exist.

gratuitious fifth line.

Looking at the photo, I have to be honest with you. I suspect it's photoshopped. Not a biggy, they just photographed the plane on the ground, and then added an aerial background in the picture to make it look like it was photographed while in flight. Among my reasons - no sign of exhaust from the engines, it would probably be very difficult to photograph such a fast plane and in such a photogenic angle from another - higher - airplane as it appears to be done, and, most significantly, although the plane's wings seem to be more or less level with the camera, the way the earth in the background is tilted it would indicate that the port side wing must be dipping something like 25 degrees which is very unlikely.

Looks like an artist concept photo/painting.

I ran "tin eye" on the image and it was lifted from Aviation Week.



Note Northop Grumman is not in the original image. I didn't expect it to be there since it would be a WTF kind of moment. I mean seriously, would Northrop put Area 51 in the background on a released photo!

BTW, Tin Eye is a plug in for firefox. You click on "your" photograph, and it finds matches.

That's a Google Earth screenshot, and a renderering dropped in the foreground of the new B2-replacement.

Gariac came to the same results and the same thing I was going to say.


OP, thanks for posting the pic nonetheless!

reply to post by weavty1


There is no shortage of hoaxers out there, so it pays to look at the photos carefully. Putting Northrop's name on the photo is way over the top. That is the kind of thing that gets a cease and desist letter from a lawyer.

One of the problems with what passes for news reporting these days is the writer often never sees the image that goes with the text. They have a photo editor (if your lucky) that attaches some stock image to the page. Maybe it is relevant, and maybe it is not.

A bit OT, but here is an over the top example of such crappy journalism. The article is about wifi effecting an aircraft, but the photo is of a known accident totally unrelated to wifi. The plane incident was due to a brake failure:
www.gearfuse.com...

Essentially the editors at these news websites feel that the article is "naked" if there isn't a photo to go with it, so attached any photo, relevant or not. Even good news websites like Arstechnica have photos of dubious relevance.

Same fake plane, different background.
www.popsci.com...

reply to post by questforevidence


I agree, we should make all our new weapon designs public knowledge so every government in the world can steal what we spend billions to create. Great idea.