Message posted by   on July 20, 2006 at 14:58:00 PST:

This is a typical Lockheed internally funded air craft. It has no avionics -- only a minimal flight control system. No payloads, no flight envelope. It is designed for air shows. LM Aero's JSF was the same way. Now they can't make the avionics work with the aircraft.

Darkstar crashed and burned shortly after the article in 2003. That was the end of the program. They couldn't make the mission of that vehicle work either.

Note the Farnborough article states that the demonstrator development was launched in March 2003 and completed 18 months later (September 2004) But it did not fly until last year (2005 sometime). So it took numerous months to fix everything so it could fly. And how is it launched? Is it launched from an aircraft, from the ground? Does someone fly it with a joy stick? And they showed a picture of it at Farnborough -- they did not bring the aircraft to the show. Maybe it crashed also but they don't want to tell anyone. Typical Skunk Works marketing.

LM got frustrated with Darkstar and did not want to do anymore unmanned aircraft. Now they see themselves losing all this business so they invested money to try to get into the market. And that is what they are doing. They are trying to sell an aircraft to someone.

I can't tell you about the other P-xxx LM Aero unmanned vehicles that were underway while I was there because they were all Top Secret. They also all went away.

In Reply to: POLECAT Revealed.... posted by RcTeller on July 19, 2006 at 11:58:02 PST:

Replies: