10/22/2002: Boeing's Bird of Prey
 

http://cellar.org/2002/birdofprey.jpg

War is hell. Amongst the bad parts of war are death, destruction, mayhem, risk, pain, injustice, etc.

Which makes it quite obscene to enjoy the parts of war that some people would call "really wickedly cool". The technology, the accomplishments, the strategy, the really wild videos of stuff blowing up, the night vision cameras watching tracer shots trying vainly to take out some hidden aircraft. We should never forget that these are nothing more than unfortunate side-effects of the struggle to kill effectively. There's nothing "cool", nothing to enjoy about the machinery or war.

<b>P S Y C H E !</b> Gotcha! Hee hee hee.

Let's all sit back and enjoy the latest equipment from Boeing. It's a new variety of stealth fighter, built to hold a single pilot but which may eventually wind up being unmanned.

http://cellar.org/2002/birdofprey2.jpg

Called the "Bird of Prey", it's intended to be incredibly stealthy. The Boeing press release sums it up.

The whole project was classified under the deep, dark recesses of the black budgets where taxpayers suddenly have no way to know what's happening with their money. This plane was started in 1992 and probably had several test flights at "Area 51" but the general public didn't hear anything until last Friday. (No "stealth" puns plz)

This thing is a "technology demonstrator" built fairly cheaply to show what can be done. (So maybe we will have to wait until the *next* war to see planes based on these concepts... not the upcoming war.) Speculation is that it will eventually be able to change colors with special panels on its bottom side, doing a chameleon act against the sky, and making it safe to run sorties during the day that normally would have waited until night.

i suppose the design is purely functional, because that is one ugly-ass plane.

if i had to say there was one nice thing about living in colorado springs, its that i get to see lots of cool military aircraft in action. we have norad, the airforce base and the airforce academy. sundays in fall are especially cool, when the afa falcons have a home game. demonstrations before the game and at halftime. its wicked cool.

~james

Not that you'd ever actually see it...

One more thing - if you download the entire 50MB file of the Bird of Prey in flight, expect about 40 MB of that to be marketing.

The marketing of war. My Ghod.

thank god. its like the 'new beetle' of stealth aircraft. :)

~james

HEY! Goddammit, I like that thing. The New Beetle is stupidly appealing to me for some reason. So just leave it alone. :)

Hey, that thing is beautiful! Looks like a really jazzed up Burt Rutan design.

http://www.velocityaircraft.com/airmodel.html
We have this one in pieces in my garage

i dunno, it just doesnt do it for me. this, on the other hand, is one of the coolest things ive ever seen.

~james

Nothing new about it. This is ancient history. You ought to see the new stuff!! No black budget here. Boeing spent $65m to prove all sorts of technology (including stealth) they developed.
Of course they have sold that technology to the military on many
other projects.
Have to agree with Perth. The Warthog is very impressive.

Perth's is a Harrier II rather than a Warthog.

http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRTy...il/F-18EUn.JPG

The Super Hornet at a cool $48.5 million, armaments extra.

4 crew members died this week in a collision of two unarmed Super Hornets, in a training exercise off the coast of California.

One of those guys was from my area as I recall. Not that I knew him -- I just happened across it in the paper.

in all fairness, tho, the warthog is pretty damn cool too.

~james

I stand corrected.
Hey , does the reply box have spell check?

No spell check yet. Possible in the future, I'm sure.