Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on March 07, 2023 at 19:16:11 PST:
I'm not sure why the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and High Technology Business reports from January and April 1988 described Lockheed's in-development spyplane as being a Mach 5 aircraft, even if it's clear that the $1.1 billion in government funding for 1988 allotted to Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Group for unspecified research & development was unrelated to the "Aurora" codename for funding of B-2 production and that the AARS/Quartz subsonic flying wing UAV was the only design study for an SR-71 replacement that Lockheed had on the drawing board. These news reports from early 1988 omitted mention of the Lockheed's YF-22 at the same time that they referred to the Nighthawk as F-19 (the true designation for the Nighthawk turned out to be F-117 when the existence of that aircraft was revealed in November 1988), and mention of the YF-22 in aviation news reports in the late 1980s further signals that the unspecified research & development work by the Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Group that received $1.1 billion in funding almost certainly referred to the AARS/Quartz program. I do wish to clarify the Mach 4 reconnaissance aircraft design study by Lockheed mentioned in the article "Mach 4, 200,000-Ft. -Altitude Aircraft Defined" from the January 1979 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology used turboramjets, and that same AW&ST article also mentioned a design study by Lockheed for an SR-71 follow-on with a top speed of Mach 7, an altitude of 250,000 feet, and scramjet engines.
In Reply to: Re: Possibility of Aurora legend being a cover for the Quartz project posted by quellish on March 07, 2023 at 8:57:05 PST:
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