Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on May 06, 2023 at 13:53:03 PST:
Why did it take so long for Lockheed Martin to reveal the X-44 unmanned flying wing to the public almost two decades after its first flight? I know that the Boeing Bird of Prey was publicly unveiled three years after its last flight, but that the duration of time between the last flight of the Northrop Tacit Blue and the public unveiling of the Tacit Blue was much longer, spanning 11 years. Given that the P-175 Polecat flew a few years after the X-44 and its existence disclosed shortly afterwards, I'd imagine that the Defense Department re-used X-44 for the Lockheed Martin UAV for security reasons to give some insiders in the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin the impression that the X-44A UAV simply utilized some of the in-flight stability principles encapsulated by the canceled X-44 Multi-Axis No Tail Aircraft (a similar thing happened in 1942 when the designation P-59 previously used for an unbuilt Bell design for a pusher-engine fighter was re-used for the Airacomet jet fighter).
In Reply to: Re: Lockheed Martin X-44 Manta posted by Peter Merlin on May 04, 2023 at 9:54:03 PST:
Replies: