Message posted by Peter Merlin on April 21, 2010 at 9:20:05 PST:
I think you guys are all suffering from "Vindicator Syndrome." The job post is for a current Boeing position and identifies the "Model 119" as a (presumably recent) prototype. It doesn't make any sense to associate it with a 1960s-vintage business jet or even the F119 engine. Just because something has the same number doesn't mean it is the same thing. Think, for example, how many times the name "Falcon" appears in aerospace projects as a business jet, an airborne hyperspectral sensor, and a hypersonic technology testbed, just to name a few. In 1994, when I first posted questions on the Internet about a Lockheed Skunk Works patch I had seen with the name "Vindicator," it caused the same kind of problem. The guy who was wearing it said he couldn't talk about it. Another Skunk Works guy who had worked on SENIOR TREND said he was surprised I had even seen the patch as the program had been "much more sensitive than the F-117A" when it was still in the black. Another inside source said that, "Vindicator was a system, not an airplane, but you will probably never hear anything about it." People on the discussion forums couldn't get past the name despite clear evidence that Lockheed's project involved something very interesting from the blackworld. Instead, they insisted on associating it with the failed Vought SB2U Vindicator carrier-based dive bomber developed for the United States Navy in the 1930s or the fictional Vindicator supersonic bomber from the movie "Fail-Safe." This kind of mental constipation prevented any progress on solving the mystery. It took me another 12 years and an extraordinary bit of luck to learn that the patch represented a laser velocimeter. In other words a velocity indicator (or V-indicator). Don't let this happen again. Free your minds.
In Reply to: Re: Boeing Job in "Las Vegas" posted by gordy on April 21, 2010 at 0:03:11 PST:
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