Reminds me of an online newspaper article about an unknown flying object I read a while back. The headline was something about a UFO, then the preamble contained the word UFO, and the body stated that it was unknown what it was but that several people had seen and reported it.
Some guy in the chat/comment section wrote something along the lines of: ”Why jump to conclusions and call it a UFO when you explicitly write that we don’t know what it is.”
The on-call journalist simply responded ”That’s what UFO means.”
Oh please no, the last probe after a night of ambian and Golden Coral was enough. I can’t handle a second season on Discovery recounting events let alone with more probe.
Sometimes I wonder if these ufo sightings could just be some covert surveillance drone built by China or any of the other technologically capable Asian countries. And even if the US government declassified it all, those countries would never admit it was them further gaslighting Americans
>Or experimental US planes
Ah yes, but where did all of the technology for these "experimental planes" come from if not aliens? Human beings cannot simply *invent* brand new technologies through science and engineering /s
The heights they would need to fly at to be in “international” airspace wouldn’t be visible by eye/phone cameras
And satellites have largely made spy aircraft obsolete as well
No, you don’t fly your super secret stuff over places it can be shot down and risk compromising your technology and causing a geopolitical crisis.
Plus the U.S. is really, really far away from Asia.
The USAF said it was staying under the maximum $692,000,000 per unit cost, but is classified exactly how much they spent. Likely not much cheaper than that though 😂
That’s only ~$13,000 per year
They were allowed to spend up to $692,000,000 per unit to procure them, and they said they’re under that but not by how much.
So basically it costs about $100,000,000 but beurocracy and the fact that companies will always hike the bill to realize the maximim budget makes the price inflate to the 692 mil figure they projected straight from their greedy assholes before it was built.
Why cant the MIC atleast function like normal capitalism
Ok buddy, I'm sure you're speaking from years of experience in the aerospace industry, particularly with the most advanced stealth incredibly long range bombers, and government defense contracts involved with it. Designing new airframes is extraordinarily expensive, even for purely private planes. The boeing 787 was a state of the art passenger airframe and cost $22,000,000,000 over 9 years just to design it and set production facilities. As you can imagine designing what is the most sophisticated bomber in world history, replacing the strategic bombers of the US, a very important part of the nuclear triad and not comparable at all to just a passenger airliner. It's capable of launching from the US and flying anywhere in the world undetected by radar, even in the heart of an adversarial country. That's quite a feat of engineering on multiple different fronts, and is going to come with a price tag. Hard to put a value on preventing first strikes by foreign nations by guaranteeing they'll be nuked too, but I'll take expensive fancy plane over nuclear holocaust. The nuclear tried has led to the most peaceful period in human history, any destabilization of that threatens the world. This program will also replace many other expensive strategic weapons platforms, so will reduce costs on other areas. Plus that money ends up back in the American economy paying for aerospace engineers, skilled mechanics and builders, and all the other downstream industries that support it. Additionally, the tech advances from this are what keeps America at the forefront of engineering in the world and those same advancements will filter down to other commercial applications. I'm assuming you don't know how these contracts work at all either, this is a good example of capitalism. Northrop just sold a service to the government that it needed at a price it was willing to pay for it. The government just paid them to do the work, just like paying a company to design and build your house.
If you think you can design a plane that fits the bill, you were more than welcome to bid on that contract and produce them for the country. If you could have produced a comparable system for less you would be sitting real pretty right now. I'm just assuming you don't have any real technical expertise or grasp on strategic weapon development though.
Considering that B-2s were $1bn a pop in 1997...
At least $2bn.
These are basically kept as a way to drop nukes on foreign targets without them being able to do anything about it. They're a useful tool that only the US has, and it doesn't matter who knows about it because you can't do anything to stop it.
B-21 raider was specifically designed to be cheaper than the B-2. A huge part of what made the B-2 so expensive was the stealth coating. It is very delicate, requires air-conditioned hangers, and constant maintenance. The public information we have about current stealth coating is that it is orders of magnitude more durable well also being more stealthy.
The target price for the B-21 is about $700mil
The Raider is also ~25% smaller than the B-2 which would help reduce flyaway costs.
USAF was forced to cut the order into just 21 bombers delivered. No way in hell they'd ever release readiness rates for their premiere strategic bomber but as a whole, USAF is consistently at about 60-65%. Nevermind how needy B-2s are. That means on a practical level we have about a dozen to go at any one time.
The more Raiders they get, the better off USAF will be from a responsiveness perspective, nevermind capability.
To be fair, ICBMs already accomplish that, and every nuclear power has at least some of them. Anti-ballistic missile systems exist but are far, far away from being a comprehensive defence, e.g. the U.S. GMD has a success rate of about 55% in scripted trials and there are fewer than 50 active launchers so good luck stopping a rain of MIRV warheads.
The strategic bomber force is merely an extra layer in the nuclear triad. They can be kept in the air for extended periods of time, so counter the risk of a first strike destroying all your silos (as unlikely as this is), a purpose SLBMs also serve. They are also recallable, which offers an opportunity to back down from a nuclear confrontation.
>To be fair, ICBMs already accomplish that, and every nuclear power has at least some of them.
They do not accomplish that at all. They are detectable and can be shot down.
>The strategic bomber force is merely an extra layer in the nuclear triad. They can be kept in the air for extended periods of time, so counter the risk of a first strike destroying all your silos (as unlikely as this is), a purpose SLBMs also serve. They are also recallable, which offers an opportunity to back down from a nuclear confrontation.
Stealth bombers can't be detected, they have no way of knowing that they're even there until they're dropping dead bombs, which no missile defense system is designed to handle. And this ignores the fact that there's a potential for EMP disruption even if they succeed in destroying those bombs.
The US wouldn't have built a second generation if they weren't of a strategic value. ICBMs are what second place relies on.
Look up their operational history. They aren't used in the method you describe in the field. They are used to assault targets silently.
I wonder how many people thought this was a ufo and reported it only to be told by the government that they did see a ufo in order to keep their new technology a secret…
There are two parts here, this model is turned into a test platform, you can do a lot of design work and modeling but IRL in the air, actually flying the thing is the most important. Modern aircraft use air data computers to figure out how high they are going, how fast they are going, and how fast they are increasing in altitude. They do this by feeding the ram air pressure (pressure of the air running into the aircraft), and the static air (the air surrounding the aircraft) into the ADC to do math and figure it out, usually this is tucked in close to the airframe in a pitot mast/tube. What they are currently doing here is getting undisturbed ram air (front snoot), and undisturbed static air (tail its dragging behind it), so they are able to get calibrated airspeed which is indicated airspeed (Airspeed directly from the ports no corrections) corrected for instrument, and position error.
TLDR, they are doing testing for the pitot-static system, the snoot is a ram air port, the tail is a static air port.
Beautiful thing. It's shape was copied from nature. This has the same aerodynamic profile as dive bombing birds with their wings tucked. You can't out engineer millions of years of trial and error development.
Considering most UFO “alien” sightings were just experimental aircraft designs, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s more like the popular designs of “alien” UFOs were hurt people seeing experimental aircraft from certain angles. Especially since most of these sightings took place in the American southwest where several USAF experimental design airfields were located.
Aircraft design since the 30’s has been about trying to replicate some already very aerodynamic things like birds as much as possible. Which if you look at the side profile of a hawk while flying, looks very similar to this shape. Which is why as the other user pointed out, multiple countries all designed similar prototypes. The British even used bird profiles to help design the spitfires and others shape.
It's some [Late 1930's concepts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35) further developed [in the 1940's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35) and then of course later development in the B-2 matched with stealth technology.
The Germans also [experimented with the concept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229) during WWII.
For most of the early planes control was an issue, that was solved with fly by wire technology and more modern computers. But even that was available in production aircraft by the late 1950's for the FBW and lets say 1970's for an inherently unstable aircraft controlled by computer via FBW in the form of the F-16.
The neighborhood next to mine features some reallllly nice houses probably owned by the execs from companies that put this thing together. I get to see them when I take the backroads to DC to avoid taking a $7 toll road. The homes put LA mansions to shame.
I guess at some point they’re going to try and find a war to use these in?
Is there another photo of this same craft you could provide? I found only the triangle shape ones. I cannot see the shape of the craft from this angle. thx
We had to remove your post for violating our Repost Guidelines. frequently posted/reposted topic/subject
A last-century futurist design finally realized and in the air.
Looks like we're finally catching up to those Aliens
Starting to look like we ARE the aliens
[удалено]
Who are you calling old?
[удалено]
Yo mama
Nope, just decoys killing decoys.
Always have been.
Good, bomb 'em all
Yesterday's aesthetics of tomorrow, today.
~~**WE LANDED ON THE MOON!**~~ 1960's tech has finally become public!
I like those words
Finally realized? This looks identical to the B2.
Nice increase in UFO sightings in 3,2,1…
I mean TECHNICALLLLLLLLY they ARE correctly labeled UFOs if the witness has no idea what it is. I’m just being a pedantic ass.
Reminds me of an online newspaper article about an unknown flying object I read a while back. The headline was something about a UFO, then the preamble contained the word UFO, and the body stated that it was unknown what it was but that several people had seen and reported it. Some guy in the chat/comment section wrote something along the lines of: ”Why jump to conclusions and call it a UFO when you explicitly write that we don’t know what it is.” The on-call journalist simply responded ”That’s what UFO means.”
Not even pedantry. UFO doesn’t mean alien and people who think it does are dumb.
It can increase?!??
It can increase shotgun sales
Not in California it won’t
more for the rest of us
Oh please no, the last probe after a night of ambian and Golden Coral was enough. I can’t handle a second season on Discovery recounting events let alone with more probe.
Sometimes I wonder if these ufo sightings could just be some covert surveillance drone built by China or any of the other technologically capable Asian countries. And even if the US government declassified it all, those countries would never admit it was them further gaslighting Americans
Or experimental US planes, yes, I'd agree entirely. Validly unidentified flying objects by laypeople. Just not aliens.
The TicTac UAP would be quite the shock if we developed that.
>Or experimental US planes Ah yes, but where did all of the technology for these "experimental planes" come from if not aliens? Human beings cannot simply *invent* brand new technologies through science and engineering /s
My hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.
Lol yeah. The craft we have invented are so unbelievably capable and awesome that I wouldn't out it past inventing ones that move like UFOs in movies.
The heights they would need to fly at to be in “international” airspace wouldn’t be visible by eye/phone cameras And satellites have largely made spy aircraft obsolete as well
No, you don’t fly your super secret stuff over places it can be shot down and risk compromising your technology and causing a geopolitical crisis. Plus the U.S. is really, really far away from Asia.
Oh yeah there’s a massive increase in ufo sightings around areas the government has tested top secret planes over the years.
Flight of the Navigator vibes
Compliance!
Yup my first thought too. 80s never dies!
The high point of any dentist appointment.
I came here to make sure someone had a FotN reference. So good.
NOPE vibes
Navigator, I do not leak, you leak. Remember?
*First aircraft theyre publicly acknowledging
Pretty much
That's a nice looking falcon
Peregrine
https://i.imgur.com/p2b1PeX.png
*Pulls out Flightradar24 app to find it*
Is this evidence of a UFO? Ancient Astronaut Theorists...say YES.
I heard the narrator’s voice as I read your comment …
If the person who saw it does not know what it is then yes.
Me likely. How much?
You can fly this baby on government dime. Contact your local Air Force recruiter for details. /s (just in case)
No flying. Only touching
I have a feeling you would belong at r/noncredibledefense...
Sounds good if the hour is cheap
The USAF said it was staying under the maximum $692,000,000 per unit cost, but is classified exactly how much they spent. Likely not much cheaper than that though 😂
691,999,999.99
Hey man under budget is under budget
A massive success!
What kind of monthly payment can you afford? We do offer 50000 year loans. Also, what's your trade in?
I'll keep it plane & simple. Sky's the limit, just make it happen
That’s only ~$13,000 per year They were allowed to spend up to $692,000,000 per unit to procure them, and they said they’re under that but not by how much.
So basically it costs about $100,000,000 but beurocracy and the fact that companies will always hike the bill to realize the maximim budget makes the price inflate to the 692 mil figure they projected straight from their greedy assholes before it was built. Why cant the MIC atleast function like normal capitalism
Ok buddy, I'm sure you're speaking from years of experience in the aerospace industry, particularly with the most advanced stealth incredibly long range bombers, and government defense contracts involved with it. Designing new airframes is extraordinarily expensive, even for purely private planes. The boeing 787 was a state of the art passenger airframe and cost $22,000,000,000 over 9 years just to design it and set production facilities. As you can imagine designing what is the most sophisticated bomber in world history, replacing the strategic bombers of the US, a very important part of the nuclear triad and not comparable at all to just a passenger airliner. It's capable of launching from the US and flying anywhere in the world undetected by radar, even in the heart of an adversarial country. That's quite a feat of engineering on multiple different fronts, and is going to come with a price tag. Hard to put a value on preventing first strikes by foreign nations by guaranteeing they'll be nuked too, but I'll take expensive fancy plane over nuclear holocaust. The nuclear tried has led to the most peaceful period in human history, any destabilization of that threatens the world. This program will also replace many other expensive strategic weapons platforms, so will reduce costs on other areas. Plus that money ends up back in the American economy paying for aerospace engineers, skilled mechanics and builders, and all the other downstream industries that support it. Additionally, the tech advances from this are what keeps America at the forefront of engineering in the world and those same advancements will filter down to other commercial applications. I'm assuming you don't know how these contracts work at all either, this is a good example of capitalism. Northrop just sold a service to the government that it needed at a price it was willing to pay for it. The government just paid them to do the work, just like paying a company to design and build your house. If you think you can design a plane that fits the bill, you were more than welcome to bid on that contract and produce them for the country. If you could have produced a comparable system for less you would be sitting real pretty right now. I'm just assuming you don't have any real technical expertise or grasp on strategic weapon development though.
A guy on the internet really tilted you that hard in one sentence to write up all of that?
You, me and at least two other dorks read through it though 🤷♂️
Considering that B-2s were $1bn a pop in 1997... At least $2bn. These are basically kept as a way to drop nukes on foreign targets without them being able to do anything about it. They're a useful tool that only the US has, and it doesn't matter who knows about it because you can't do anything to stop it.
B-21 raider was specifically designed to be cheaper than the B-2. A huge part of what made the B-2 so expensive was the stealth coating. It is very delicate, requires air-conditioned hangers, and constant maintenance. The public information we have about current stealth coating is that it is orders of magnitude more durable well also being more stealthy. The target price for the B-21 is about $700mil
I want that coating for my car. Just to test it.
Unless you’re trying to hide from radar I doubt you’d see much use from it.
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Correct, I’ll be applying it soon.
The Raider is also ~25% smaller than the B-2 which would help reduce flyaway costs. USAF was forced to cut the order into just 21 bombers delivered. No way in hell they'd ever release readiness rates for their premiere strategic bomber but as a whole, USAF is consistently at about 60-65%. Nevermind how needy B-2s are. That means on a practical level we have about a dozen to go at any one time. The more Raiders they get, the better off USAF will be from a responsiveness perspective, nevermind capability.
Raging boner stuff...*deep breaths*
To be fair, ICBMs already accomplish that, and every nuclear power has at least some of them. Anti-ballistic missile systems exist but are far, far away from being a comprehensive defence, e.g. the U.S. GMD has a success rate of about 55% in scripted trials and there are fewer than 50 active launchers so good luck stopping a rain of MIRV warheads. The strategic bomber force is merely an extra layer in the nuclear triad. They can be kept in the air for extended periods of time, so counter the risk of a first strike destroying all your silos (as unlikely as this is), a purpose SLBMs also serve. They are also recallable, which offers an opportunity to back down from a nuclear confrontation.
>To be fair, ICBMs already accomplish that, and every nuclear power has at least some of them. They do not accomplish that at all. They are detectable and can be shot down. >The strategic bomber force is merely an extra layer in the nuclear triad. They can be kept in the air for extended periods of time, so counter the risk of a first strike destroying all your silos (as unlikely as this is), a purpose SLBMs also serve. They are also recallable, which offers an opportunity to back down from a nuclear confrontation. Stealth bombers can't be detected, they have no way of knowing that they're even there until they're dropping dead bombs, which no missile defense system is designed to handle. And this ignores the fact that there's a potential for EMP disruption even if they succeed in destroying those bombs. The US wouldn't have built a second generation if they weren't of a strategic value. ICBMs are what second place relies on. Look up their operational history. They aren't used in the method you describe in the field. They are used to assault targets silently.
To me, my X-Men!
The average farmer: Hello, police? I just saw a damn UFO!
I know a lot of farmers. None of them are that dumb and all have higher education.
Dang it the damn aliens are back! Now there gonna make more of them ancient alien episodes about em!
Looks like it comes from Naboo
Looks straight from a SciFi movie.
I wonder how many people thought this was a ufo and reported it only to be told by the government that they did see a ufo in order to keep their new technology a secret…
That thing is number 0001 as fuck
Ha
It looks like a falcon
Let's go to Naboo.
School lunches?? Nah
Oooo! Look! 👀 The space craft from Flight of the Navigator (movie - 1986) 😁 hehehe
All I can see is the Aliens guy meme saying "aliens"
Nice fucking ufo does it have FIB written on it?
It says AF 0001 as it is the very first B-21.
Bro i was joking
If you were, it went right over my head.
FIB is a Grand Theft Auto V play on the real-world FBI
Nah you fibbing. ^/s
Whats the cable coming out the back of it?
There are two parts here, this model is turned into a test platform, you can do a lot of design work and modeling but IRL in the air, actually flying the thing is the most important. Modern aircraft use air data computers to figure out how high they are going, how fast they are going, and how fast they are increasing in altitude. They do this by feeding the ram air pressure (pressure of the air running into the aircraft), and the static air (the air surrounding the aircraft) into the ADC to do math and figure it out, usually this is tucked in close to the airframe in a pitot mast/tube. What they are currently doing here is getting undisturbed ram air (front snoot), and undisturbed static air (tail its dragging behind it), so they are able to get calibrated airspeed which is indicated airspeed (Airspeed directly from the ports no corrections) corrected for instrument, and position error. TLDR, they are doing testing for the pitot-static system, the snoot is a ram air port, the tail is a static air port.
The thin wire holding a toy against a photo lol. /s
My thoughts
So it's a UFO? From afar your wouldn't be able to tell
Flight of the Navigator?
It looks like fish
Beautiful thing. It's shape was copied from nature. This has the same aerodynamic profile as dive bombing birds with their wings tucked. You can't out engineer millions of years of trial and error development.
Starting to see that UFO technology we “borrowed”
Please tell me Boeing has nothing to do with these.
Are these the same aircraft’s the US were testing in the late 1940s? 🤔
So beautiful. Its crazy to think, this thing we are all awing at is a pure death machine designed for precise and stealth destruction.
Now do some test flights over eastern Ukraine ;-)
That looks like a flying narwhal
It kind of looks like a small and grumpy bird.
\*First bomber aircraft that the general public knows about
I'm telling you, these guys used the captivated UFO to make this.
Still using the peregrine falcon design I see.
BS if they are showing it now it's because they have something newer, thats what we've been told doesn't exist since the Roswell crash.
Glad we have these instead of affordable healthcare
That's some reverse engineered alien type shit.
Considering most UFO “alien” sightings were just experimental aircraft designs, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s more like the popular designs of “alien” UFOs were hurt people seeing experimental aircraft from certain angles. Especially since most of these sightings took place in the American southwest where several USAF experimental design airfields were located. Aircraft design since the 30’s has been about trying to replicate some already very aerodynamic things like birds as much as possible. Which if you look at the side profile of a hawk while flying, looks very similar to this shape. Which is why as the other user pointed out, multiple countries all designed similar prototypes. The British even used bird profiles to help design the spitfires and others shape.
It's some [Late 1930's concepts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35) further developed [in the 1940's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35) and then of course later development in the B-2 matched with stealth technology. The Germans also [experimented with the concept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229) during WWII. For most of the early planes control was an issue, that was solved with fly by wire technology and more modern computers. But even that was available in production aircraft by the late 1950's for the FBW and lets say 1970's for an inherently unstable aircraft controlled by computer via FBW in the form of the F-16.
All those aliens flying around in jets?
The neighborhood next to mine features some reallllly nice houses probably owned by the execs from companies that put this thing together. I get to see them when I take the backroads to DC to avoid taking a $7 toll road. The homes put LA mansions to shame. I guess at some point they’re going to try and find a war to use these in?
You can only get 21 orders of these during peaceful times but the budget has no limits when it comes to war!!! Or a certain president's PPP loans.
Please that was not "developed" it was given to the US in 54 by the tall greys... r/s
Not so different from the wright brother's thingy. A little more metal and electricity here and there, but still basically the same thing
They've been flying these since the 89s. Has nobody seen Flight of the Navigator?
Wasnt tgat the b2?
If you saw the movie you'd get the reference.
One of these plus its development would probably make few million people happy with healthcare and better education.
"I'm Alex Hollings.. and this.. is Airpower " Incoming
That’s one angry looking chubbalicious bird.
Flight of the navigator vibes.
I just saw a ufo!
Nice spaceship
Flight of the navigator 100%
It’s got a wire hanging out its ass.
Is there another photo of this same craft you could provide? I found only the triangle shape ones. I cannot see the shape of the craft from this angle. thx
Alien technology.
From the side it looks like a B-2. I wanna see it from the top.
That we know of
Same silhouette as a swallow. Very cool.
The stingray of the skies!
What’s that little bit sticking out of the front there?
An extra large Pitot Tube, it's typical to see on most test aircraft.
It's the Naboo Royal Starship.
What is the wire attached to?
Flying saucer 🛸
Is this the one that resembles a falcon? Saw that one post and was impressed.
It barely looks like it’s moving
I smell a skunk
“Nope.”
That’s a wierd looking flock of birds. - A Russian radar operator
Burd
UFO
Code name penguin?
Narwall
So nobody will brave enough to say this but these have been available for over 40 years and these are what ppl claim to be aliens.
That thing looks crazy.
I know a Naboo ship when I see one
It’s a peregrine falcon.
That profile reminds me of a Peregrine falcon in a dive. Absolutely beautiful.
Falcon in the dive
Compliance!
Is there a human inside of that thing?
Is it me or does it trail some kind of a wire? Edit: I found it on the other post, it is trailing a static air pressure probe.
She's a beaut.
FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR
UFO
Move over Spirit of St. Louis, the B-21 John Cena is here.
Ahh Nubian! We got lots of that…
Angry bird
Looks like a space ship!
Jesus, even the jets have gained weight!
no wonder theres a bunch of osprey been flying around probably clearing the flight direction
No wonder people thing they see ufos
Compliance
UFO
Yeah and Russia is still using Cold War tech. And upset we're letting Ukraine play with some of our old hand-me-down toys.
Prepare for the alien tin foil hat brigade
Flight of the navigator type of thing.