Boeing Bird of Prey Stealth Fighter 645
An anonymous submitter writes: "Revealed: Boeings new secret stealth bat-plane! For years stealthchasers (those guys who sneak around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft) knew the Bird Of Prey existed. They knew it was being tested over the secluded Nellis Air Force Base ranges in Nevada. They knew what hangar it was being secreted away in at Nellis (on the northeast corner) and they even managed to obtain a squadron patch depicting the aircraft itself!... but the government still denied its existance until today. At a ceremony at Boeing's St Louis plant their super-secret Bird Of Prey batplane was revealed today for the world to see and marvel at. You can view exclusive photos of it at popsci.com and projectblack.net."
It's a bird... (Score:5, Funny)
(bombs exploding everywhere)
[Tango 2 to Mother Hen, The egg is in the basket]
Hmmm... Thirsty? (Score:4, Funny)
:P
another commercial tie-in (Score:5, Funny)
Who says WB shows are lame!
Has anyone seen ? (Score:5, Interesting)
A few things dont make sense to me though, I thought it was flying low because it *looked* to be quite large, but I hardly heard any sound (meaning it could have been far away), but from my perspective it was traveling very slow meaning it would have to have been far away to keep a minimum airspeed [paralax motion]... so I dont know :)
Re:Has anyone seen ? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Has anyone seen ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Has anyone seen ? (Score:5, Funny)
A second later I heard a quiet HONK (just one). Then it was like a switch was thrown in my brain and I saw it was just the white bellies of a bunch of geese coming into a landing in the marshes behind the houses across the street.
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article, you'd know they're announcing it because they're retiring it. It was only a prototype , a technology demonstration if you will. We won't be producing these jets.
Bzzzzt. Try again
Now I'm depressed... (Score:4, Funny)
Yet, I can't even find matching socks.
Re:Now I'm depressed... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Now I'm depressed... (Score:4, Funny)
EWWWW!!!!!
I wonder... (Score:3, Funny)
That's interesting. I wonder what other "denied" stuff is actually true.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean that Aurora exists as well? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does this mean that Aurora exists as well? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Design itself is retired.
2. No special technology on display (the bird of prey doesn't even have a computer and uses a bussines jet engine).
3. Only early prototypes (the bird of prey is a minimalistic design).
So I wouldn't expect an early announcement of the existence of a spaceplane...
Bird of Prey, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bird of Prey, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
And you thought you were joking, didn't you?
Neither... (Score:3, Informative)
It's got a cloaking device! (Score:5, Funny)
Exclusive pictures... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Exclusive pictures... (Score:5, Funny)
"Exclusive: (adj) Belonging to one entity. Or many more. Or none. Or whatever defition would lead you to purchase this product."
Re:Exclusive pictures... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Exclusive pictures... (Score:4, Funny)
Yr. Obedient Servant
A Brit.
Re:Exclusive pictures... (Score:5, Funny)
not exactly tailless! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photor
as you can clearly see in that picture (very high res, modem users beware!), the tail is beneath the plane, instead of the traditional spot, on top of the plane
it is pretty small, though
Re:not exactly tailless! (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to our new robot masters! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Welcome to our new robot masters! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, from the PopSci article (emphasis mine):
"The airplane was made from a small number of carbon fiber composite parts, and--amazingly, in view of its shape--had a simple all-manual flight control system without a computer in sight.
In this day and age, this fact impresses me more than its radar invisibility.
So, this will be the plane we use to fight back against the robot masters.
Re:Welcome to our new robot masters! (Score:3, Insightful)
- The test pilots will be highly skilled (you want the best on this kind of job) and probably don't need flight computers for anything other than complex navigation or flying in thick fog/cloud.
- Boeing wanted a rapid and fairly inexpensive development cycle; this is, after all a prototype.
- Computers need to be tested when you put them in aircraft, especially experimental ones where you have to throw out much of your previous learnings.
- In an experimental aircraft, the computer programming would have to change with each iteration of the aircraft; this 'tweaking' could cause bugs to creep in and would certainly add to the time required to create a new version of the craft.
Based on that, adding flight computers would have been expensive, time consuming and wouldn't add to the value of the experiments. It would also have added weight & power consumption to the craft, neither of which is desirable. If it were to go anywhere near production and real use, that is when you start looking at the computers.You got French robots halfway wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Only imagine what they have now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only imagine what they have now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then they're really creeped out.
Re:KH-11 (Score:5, Funny)
current keyhole resolution: ~30cm or 1 inch (!)
Surely you mean 30mm. Or maybe NASA did the metric conversion for this too...
Re:Only imagine what they have now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except the only cutting-edge technology that counts is what you can get to the battlefield in question. It doesn't matter if what they're playing with now in the middle of Nevada makes the F-22 look like a Sopwith Camel, the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.
Of course this doesn't make these black projects any less interesting to think about...
F-22? Not quite yet. (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. There are only 6(?) airframes so far. No operational squadron. The initial base has been decided, but they're not there just yet.
Gulf war? (Score:5, Interesting)
shortly before attacking Irak the first time?
Panama (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gulf war? (Score:5, Insightful)
when we "invaded" panama during the regan years (i use scare quotes 'cause we were already there... hard to invade a country you're already basically occupying), that was the first time the public was made aware of the F-117.
well, wouldntcha know it, the government let slip that it's been keeping a new jet secret -- just in time for another unnecessary war against another dictator it imposed and now sees fit to blow up!
way to parade the forces to the proles to get us to rally around the flag, bushie!
Re:Gulf war? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:you mean Bush right? (Score:5, Funny)
Score one for the Trek fans! (Score:4, Funny)
The bird of prey is so damned cool even the military tried to mimic it... all you star wars fans were crazy! Lasers in space... HA! Klingons RULE!
Re:Score one for the Trek fans! (Score:5, Funny)
No you can't...
:P
Re:Score one for the Trek fans! (Score:3, Offtopic)
Erotic Ferengi encounters (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard more stories about strippers playing with his "lobes" than I care to.
And you call yourself a NERD! No self-respecting geek could get enough Star Trek related erotic stories! Sheesh...
GMD
Boeing is desparate... (Score:5, Insightful)
With Boeing losing so much ground in the commerical markets to Airbus it really needs to prove to the USAF and the military at large that is a prime contender.
Quite frankly this is an expensive PR campaign whose prime audience is not the commerical markets, but the U.S. and NATO military.
Re:Boeing is desparate... (Score:3, Informative)
And, if it is a PR campaign, they couldn't do better than produce a plane that looks so damn cool...however with a "a maximum speed of 300 mph and a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet" I doubt it's going to enter production anytime soon, stealth or not...
er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey? (Score:5, Informative)
I was always under the impression that the Bird of Prey was a Romulan design, as first revealed in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror". I don't recall the Klingon version appearing until "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", and the canonical explanation was that the Romulans and Klingons had entered into a sort-of free-trade agreement for sharing technology....
Re:er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I hate to show the true horrifying depths of my fanboyism...but, the Klingons developed it first, and sold the Romulans older designs. I believe that the Klingons got the cloaking device in return...
Re:er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey? (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, the original BoP was debuted in Balance of Terror, that's true. But the trade of technology you refer to was the use of the old-school Battlecruisers from the original series that were seen used by both the klingons and the Romulans (K'tinga class, I think? Mostly to save on model costs) - the ones that look like the TNG Vor'cha class cruisers, but...well, boxier, like they were designed in the 60's or something.
o-()-o ---that (but cooler).
Yeah, trek-dork, right here. Pelt me with tribbles.
Triv
Last thing you want to hear a pilot say (Score:5, Funny)
Nananananana BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE!!!... OVER. *pssh*
Re:Last thing you want to hear a pilot say (Score:5, Funny)
Nellis (Score:5, Insightful)
UFOs (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I was there they had two B-2 Stealth Bombers parked near the runway. Seeing one of those things from the back, I am convinced they are the cause of 95% of saucer-shaped ufo sightings in the last 20 years.
Actually the cause of 95% of UFO sighthings is that people are fucking idiots.
GMD
Attack of the Raptor (Score:3, Funny)
Boeing release, photos, and movies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Boeing release, photos, and movies (Score:5, Funny)
And getting slower. I think we just /.ed a Bird of Prey. Now it's decloaking...firing a torpedo...S*1T![carrier lost]
It's part of UCAV development. (Score:5, Informative)
It did look pretty cool, though.
The highlight of the ceremony however, was the free ice cream they gave us all.
Not impressed (Score:5, Funny)
Shares some interesting similarities with past (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shares some interesting similarities with past (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shares some interesting similarities with past (Score:3, Insightful)
sPh
Alaska (Score:5, Funny)
Stealthchasers (Score:5, Insightful)
During the cold war they would have been known as spies. However, in the present they are classified as terrorists.
Sneaking around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft is a great way to have your citizenship status abruptly changed to "Enemy combatant", enjoying all of the privilleges that such a title brings.
Re:Stealthchasers (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was the way to change your status to "Dead".
Re:Stealthchasers (Score:4, Funny)
No... That's only if you flame Apple on
:P
So now we have a Bird of Prey... (Score:5, Funny)
This is just an airframe technology demonstrator (Score:5, Informative)
But note the project timing, 1992-1997. This may have been a test vehicle for Boeing's bid for the Joint Strike Fighter program. (Boeing lost to Lockheed-Martin on that program.) Boeing built two announced test aircraft for that program, the X-32A and X-32B. Those were aimed at the carrier-landing and VTOL requirements. The Bird of Prey may have been a third test aircraft, to test stealth aspects.
American Maginot Line (Score:5, Interesting)
The Bird of Prey looks pretty, but I'm worried that it will turn out to be a costly debacle. Does anyone who knows more about this than I do than I care to comment?
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I have heard that too. But I am quite skeptical, because neither in Kuwait, former Yugoslavia nor in Afghanistan were such supposedly simple and inexpensive technologies used by America's enemies.
Tor
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:5, Informative)
Conventional radar *can* detect stealth craft. Most of the stelath craft around these days reduce the cross section of the plane, not masking it completely. So if the enemy has a net of radar sites surrounding its capital city, then you can make it easier to navigate between radar sites. So they either have to pack in the sites a lot tighter or just try and get the most out of the ones they have.
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it was an F-117 Stealth Fighter, not a B-2 Stealth Bomber. And from the reports I heard from the news, at the time it went down, a reporter witnessed a barrage of many missiles flying up towards its location. Basically, the Serbians simply proved that if you fire enough shots one will hit on sheer chance. Also, many SAMS use a proximity warhead... I can't get into details about the blast radius or anything, but a dozen missles blowing up near a fighter will take it down without a single missile scoring a direct hit.
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:5, Informative)
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:5, Informative)
The B-2, OTOH, also uses radar absorbing material to further reduce its radar cross section.
BTW... the problem with lower frequency radars us that they are not as precise. Furthermore the emitters are vulnerable to HARM missiles.
The use of existing transmitters (TV transmitters for example) is sneakier. You don't necessarily know which transmitters to destroy! You have to take them all out.
But then, one can also use the signals from TV satellites. This was first demonstrated at LAX in the late 60s or thereabouts. But they are low power so they require lots of receiving antenna against a low reflectivity aircraft like a B-2.
And then, of course, there are active techniques to hide a stealth aircraft. Jamming the radars is an old and crude one. Deceiving them is also old. Both are no doubt used in a big way today, but with a lot more sophistication. A radar is at a fundamental disadvantage due to the fourth power exponent in the radar range equation. A jammer is only dealing with a 2nd power term (both of these are powers of the distance).
And then there's all the stuff we DON'T know about this stuff. The physics are obvious, but the applications are not and I am sure some clever engineers on both the stealth and the detection side have done things we won't hear about for some time.
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:5, Informative)
Stealth planes by virtue of their shape and RAM (radar absorbent material) will optimally absorb and reflect off certain frequencies. So they HAVE to be designed against optimal frequency radars- since the one country that could destroy us was the USSR, it made sense to design them to defeat USSR systems. And given the fact that Russian SAMs are still a huge threat (especially the S-300), we will probably continue to design with them in mind.
That having been said, even if one were using multifreq radars the fact remains that these shapes will make the stealth planes low-observable and thus darn hard to hit.
There is no such thing as infrared radar (used to be IR homing beams but that is a different beastie). There are IR sensors and IR targetting systems (which is probably what you meant), and defenses against that is built into the planes (note the exhausts are generally on top of the plane and the planes fly subsonic thus no afterburner to light up the sky).
There were those who claimed during the Gulf War that the F117s could be spotted by French radar. Turns out they were spotted when they had their gear down or otherwise made themselves visible for air safety reasons.
Stealth will be an expensive obsolesence, especially when LIDAR goes into wide use. Computing power also makes other opportunities possible as noted in other posts. Also, with enough cheap Mig-25/31s or UAVs airspace can simply be covered by enough eyeballs.
Consider the cost, however of the lost aircrews from 'cheaper' alternatives, or how some campaigns wouldn't happen at all if we were going to lose more of our pilots during aerial attacks (thus yielding more dead Kosovars, for instance), or the ultimate cost of a Soviet Union that did not have to spend itself into oblivion to deal with it's PVO paranoia. This is more like spending on battleships, it will be obsolete but it's done some good in the meantime and the alternative of not having them was unacceptable.
Re:American Maginot Line (Score:5, Informative)
Basically you can never make an aircraft 'disappear' off of radar for a number of reasons. Radar works by sending out frequency pulses and then reading the returns . The key is to reduce those returns to nearly nothing by reducing the planes RCS (radar cross section? something like that). You do THAT by doing a large number of simple things. First you make sure that no matter what no flat on angle is presented to the beam, instead you want everything to be angled as to deflect as much as the energy away from the aircraft as possible (think of the f-117A). You also shield the turbine intakes behind multiple radar absorbing screens, wierd angles in the ductwork, etc (believe it or not one of the biggest sources of radar returns are the turbine blades in the engines). You also plaster the thing with radar-absorbing material.
Also, look at the B-2 from head on. Not much there is it? Incredibly small and you won't find a flat, head-on angle anywhere on the aircraft except.. well here is where this gets tricky. Operating at perfection in ideal conditions the B-2 is about as small a radar cross section as a hummingbird or so. Yes, it can still be detected by modern radar and it can instantly become trackable by doing a number of things (the biggest being a nice angle from the top/bottom of the plane where it's RCS is huge). What B-2, and other stealth aircraft pilots, are trained to do is approach the target from the best possible angles maximizing the time you aren't detected. Now, they can also use standoff missles with long ranges (20+km) to avoid the radar and find 'holes' in the radar coverages to launch their weapons from. Not to mention that it is presumed that the target will also be saturated with Jamming and wild weasal missions. The air force ain't stupid and wouldn't send a flight of b-2's into a potentionall hostile target enviroment unless they where fairly sure they would come out on top w/o any losses (1 billion a plane makes you do that =).
Also note that the only things that can detect B-2's/F-117A/Other stealth aircraft are only the most modern of radars. You instantly elimante 90% of the world's anti-aircraft defenses.. and the 10% that HAVE those defenses tend to be our allies. The 'tiny investment' you speak of isn't so tiny.... even the best, most advanced radar systems of western nations (which have the best, most modern radar systems) have an extremely hard time picking up stealth aircraft - and they can't be everywhere at once. Deploying a full-time AA grid is extroadanirly expensive
Finally consider the new F-22 raptor fighter. Extremely stealthy (nearly as much as a B-2) with AMRAAM fire-and-forget missles, supersonic cruise ability... quite simply nothing can touch it - and I mean nothing. They can usually detect, find, and kill a target before that target can even see them (for those of yuo paying attention they can use targeting data downloaded from a AWACS plane to lock/fire the AMRAAM so as to be undetectable).
Oh, for things like infra-red a number of techniques are used including burying the engines inside to fuselage, spreading the exhaust over a larger area, and a number of other features to make them more 'stealthy'.
The Air Force's obsession with stealth is a good thing... and I hope this answers your questions.
Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't the US is too worried about us though, particularly as Lockheed Martin is a joint venture partner in the project...
How does it do vs. gigantic birds? (Score:3, Funny)
What about the JSF? (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that this thing will produced in any significant quantities - the decision for fighter spending has already been made. It might, however, be important from a development point of view - testing new technologies and so on.
Tor
Funny, now that you look back on it... (Score:5, Informative)
Here [air-attack.com] is another 'version' of the article with more diagrams and speculation
mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Built for... (Score:5, Insightful)
how much money, with what purpose, to counter which threat, and at the expense of what other potential priorities?
While I'm all in favor of high technology, especially that which saves military and civilian lives or deters armed conflict, our awe of this plane should consider this context:
The United States' military budget for 2003 is:- larger than the budgets for the next 25 countries combined
- 26 times that of the combined budgets of the 7 countries the Pentagon names as most likely to be our adversaries (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria)
- 3 times that of the 7 adversaries plus China plus Russia.
(Source: Center for Defense Information [cdi.org])So while I like looking at this plane as much as the next geek, we need to consider the resources that went into it, and its global context.
----
mithras
Re:Built for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nifty little prototype & Multipath radar (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem is that stealth has a limited technology lifespan. All these "high tech" stealth approaches rely on radar deflecting: it's like trying to find a mirrored cube in a black room with a flashlight: only if you hit it face on will you see it.
But multipath radar, where one uses many radar sources and a network of receivers, akin to dropping a whole bunch of LEDs of different color around the room, and then looking for reflections, makes stealth aircraft highly detectible.
It also counters US military doctrine, which is heavily ceneterd around eliminating radar installations through the use of antiradiation missiles. With multipath radar, one has many radiators, all of very low target value. All the smarts, at the receivers, is nowhere near the radar emitters. A nasty signal processing problem, but we have so much CPU power these days...
Umm actually (RE: flight computers) (Score:5, Insightful)
You need a flight computer in aircraft that are inherently unstable. Think about it this way, flying an F-16 or F-117 without a flight computer is like trying to throw a dart tail first. The design wants to flip and spin and generally make a pilot's day a living hell. It's also why those designs can be so manuverable, or an odd shape.
Bottom line, this aircraft is inherently stable. I.e. a good UAV, a very poor fighter. It almost reminds me of the lifting body aircraft that preceeded the Space Shuttle.
Demonstrator for what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see where this plane was an interesting technology and process exercise for the engineers, but I don't see what can be carried forward from the airframe. Why spend so much time on a design which clearly isn't capable of military applications? I thought the whole point of UCAV design (aside from lowering risk to pilots and lowering cost) was to design aircraft which weren't subject to human factor limitations -- lighter, faster, more maneuverable.
Giant Stealth Blimp? (Score:4, Funny)
<jedi>This is not the classified aircraft you are looking for.</jedi>
Damn, I was hoping this was about the über-large, super-low-speed, really gigantic, maybe-helium-inflated, possibly-heavy-duty-troop-transport aircraft previoulsy reported (several times) on Slashdot [slashdot.org].
Now, that would be killer. I'm really very disapointed here.
It's not a fighter. Look at the specs (Score:5, Insightful)
The aircraft has an operational ceiling of 20,000 feet, and a cruising speed of 260 knots (mach 0.4). It's weight is 7,400 lbs. that's less than half the weight of an empty F-16 and a sixth that of an F-14. The weight alone doesn't mean it can't be a fighter, but it's no good for any sort of mixed-use, because of its minimal load capacity.
It's also an unlikely choice for surveillance because of its low ceiling. the U-2 was good because anti-aircraft munitions couldn't reach it. The SR-71 was good because they could outrun missiles. This thing, as stealthy as it may be, is a sitting duck as it patrols below its 20,000 foot ceiling, putting along at 280 knots.
No, the point of this aircraft is that it proves new design and fabrication techniques. the prototype was built for $64 million, soup to nuts, and that's a huge deal. Boeing financed the design and production out-of-pocket, and my best guess is that they did it to rpove to the DoD that they could come up with innovative designs, fabricate and test them cheaply and quickly, and maintain a veil of secrecy while they do it.
After losing the F-22/23 battle to Lockheed Martin, Boeing has to rebuild cred with the DoD as more than a missile and satellite maker. My guess is that this is their 'see what we can do' project for the military, since the Skunkworks facilities were't working on much else nowadays.
Commentary: It won't be 'produced'. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, for those that haven't paid enough attention (i.e. didn't actually go and read the article,) here is the short of it:
Now, what this means:
This aircraft was made by Boeing so they could make sure that developmental technologies would work. They did this because they had other contracts with the DoD that would benefit from this technology. As the press release says, technology from this aircraft was used in development of the X-45A.
This is very common for defense companies. They know that they need to work on some piece of technology to get their DoD project working right, but they already told the DoD that they had said technology. So what do they do? They develop the technology in secret (seperately from the DoD project,) do it cheaply, and do it with in-house money. This way, the DoD project gets its technology, and they don't have egg on their face from the fact that they didn't actually have this technology developed in the first place.
Spyplane? Special weapons? (Score:4, Insightful)
The name "bird of prey" indicates it to be a hunt-and-destroy type aircraft as well.
A last thought is, of course, that perhaps it has something really cool like a "frickin laser beam" [slashdot.org], or perhaps some photon torpedos?
Side note: How many people who make these things grew up having a lower sense of limits because of star-trek etc. If one day we have an actual cloaking device and warp drive, it will probably be made by trekkies or ex-trekkies.
America's most powerful weapon.
You are, of course, referring to the DaisyCutter?
No, it's the K10 b*tchslapper - killfrog.com
Re:Stealthy yes....but fighter? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stealthy yes....but fighter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also remember, as others have pointed out, the fact that we even know about this plane proves that it's quite out-of-date. God only knows what's in that hangar in Area 51 today.
Re:Stealthy yes....but fighter? (Score:3, Informative)
With the F-22, and the JSF as well, the plan is to make it stealthy by hiding the missiles in payload bays (the F-22 has a belly bay and a bay on the side of each air intake), and once air dominence has been acheived, then the aircraft can mount external ordinance.
Re:Stealthy yes....but fighter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show some respect. The Skunk Works turned in a revolutionary, extraordinarily capable, STUPENDOUSLY RISKY airplane on a shoestring budget. We need more engineers like that.
Re:Yet more jobs for the boys (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean the U2... in the 60s... which wasn't necessarily stealth, but simply because it could fly higher than any missile at that time (or at least they thought... until Russia shot one down!)
Also, regarding your post in general, it's kind of an ignorant statement. Your opinion is a popular one. Why do we need to continue spending? Why waste the money? There is no war out there to fight anymore!
WRONG, there is always a war to fight. Spending money on technology NOW prevents wars in the future. Spending money is what caused the USSR to fall (they ran out of money quicker than we did). Smart weapons must be delivered somehow. You can not launch a "smart weapon" from the U.S. and expect it to hit Baghdad. You need to have a platform to launch it from.
In the specific case of the "Bird of Prey", it is a concept only... says so in the Popular Science article. Concepts are used all the time from our friends in Detroit (ever been to a big auto show) to CPU manufacturers. Concepts are to prove something can be done... which then lead into more useful items later on.
As with much military technology, lessons learned from this concept vehicle could possibly make it into everyday life.
Re:EMP... just curious... (Score:3, Interesting)
They never figured out how to protect more than a few critical systems from a 50,000+ volt atmospheric burst, so it was expected that even if the nuclear blasts didn't destroy *everything* the EMP would render *everything* useless anyway. Think of it - every single car made after 1975 (electronic starters), all TVs, microwaves, cellphones, computers, pacemakers, all commercial and most military aircraft, etc. etc. Everything that contains an electronic circuit goes poof in less than a second. All this with a single relatively cheap nuclear weapon exploded in high orbit over North America and two or three over the USSR.
In fact, it was expected that EMP attacks would be the opening salvos in an all-out nuclear exchange and most military planners didn't expect enough of either the US or Soviet military infrastructure to survive *that* and allow them to continue the battle. Everything would have simply collapsed. We would have gone back to 1950's technology. But at least not to the stone age.
Re:Looking at the pictures in the article. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the colour that makes it most difficult to see planes at a distance is a kind of pastel pink shade.
I read a possibly apocryphal tale that the F117 and B2 were originally going to be pastel pink, so they'd be harder to see in daylight as well. But some USAF bigwig said that no pilots of his were flying sissy pink planes...
Re:Looking at the pictures in the article. (Score:4, Interesting)
The tale the parent poster was referencing was mentioned in Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich. It's an excellent book.