Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on July 05, 2010 at 6:59:11 PST:

Just like any crime (and with congress and the Pentagon involved in determining the spending allocations - it is not a big leap) the first thing to determine is motive. The question is WHY we need a strategic, stealth transport. Is the intent is to proceed into denied areas that have sophisticated radar and land - that makes little sense. The vulnerability at that point is huge - much bigger than any radar evading ability when some grunt with a .50 can see and shoot the plane on approach or when it is on the ground. You don't need a stealthy transport for intra-theater or intercontinental ash and trash runs, or to move people around. Even for LAPES (look it up) or for the rare HALO or HAHO insertions, funding such a program makes little sense - even as a theoretical demo model.

So their MUST be a mission for this aircraft that we just don't know. A mission that supports multi-billions for R&D and conceptual efforts. Could it be for use with the new military space plane as a launch and/or recovery platform? That would be useful. Hmmm imagine that - a stealthy transport that could be refueled by say - equally stealthy tankers - that could reach anywhere in the world undetected to launch and/or recover a hypersonic platform that could observe or attack any spot on the globe within an hour - a stated goal of the Pentagon.

Now THAT makes sense.

In Reply to: Re: Speed Agile - stealth cargo aircraft posted by reeb88 on July 05, 2010 at 3:53:35 PST:

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