10/22/2002: Boeing's Bird of Prey

[Undertoad]

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.



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.