Message posted by Chris on January 21, 2003 at 7:33:48 PST:
1) I honestly haven't seen any photos of the Lockheed ATB design anywhere on the net. But I will say this. I have the book "Skunkworks" by Ben Rich, and in that book he says that his version (which was extremely similiar to the Northrop design) would cost half the pricetag of the B-2, and could carry almost the same payload.As for Suntan I don't really know, I'll look into that and get back to you on this board. The "switchblade" you are referring to was made public knowledge by Steve Douglass in an article he wrote in Popular Science 2 years ago. However, if you look at the design that Douglass had and the fact that he even had the codename correct "Bird Of Prey", then it may be the UAV that the Phantom Works at Boeing unveiled to the world 2 months ago. But that particular demonstrator doesn't possess that kind of wing-alternating technology, so who knows. There was a patent filed for by Northrop I believe in terms of the kind of technology you are talking about. I would say that something like that could be under testing as we speak, or it is definantly on someone's drawing board somewhere for the near future. I'd say that it's something that is happening at the moment though.
In Reply to: Three questions - Lockheed ATB, Suntan, Switchblade posted by Chris McDowell on January 21, 2003 at 0:08:39 PST:
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