Defense Tech: Area 51: Hype vs. Reality
In the October Popular Science, veteran aviation journo Bill Sweetman writes about secret airplanes he believes might be under development at the Air Force’s remote Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, a.k.a. Area 51. Sweetman describes three demonstrators unveiled in recent years — the Northrop Grumman Tacit Blue and Boeing Bird of Prey manned stealth planes and the Lockheed Martin Polecat drone — but insists these are just consolation prizes offered up by a military that is keeping its major black airplane programs under wraps.
area51_thingy.jpgNot that he has a ton of proof. “Hint[s]” and guesswork, mostly. The new construction at Groom Lake must mean something, he figures. And then there are those “obvious… significant gaps in the military’s known aviation arsenal — gaps that the Pentagon can reasonably be assumed to be actively, if quietly, trying to fill.”
It’s a strange series of calculations to make. The perceived holes — high-speed, penetrating reconnaissance and long-range, stealthy strike — are fairly well plugged up, at least until 2020. And the proposed gap-fillers are some of aviation history’s more discredited flops and boogeymen. [...] KEEP READING
This is a somewhat long, but very well written article countering the Popular Science article. I have to agree with most of it, but there is some part of me that laso believes that there are at least one, and more then likely more projects “hidden” out there, be they new planes, upgrades for planes, or more then likely just new ideas that the military has come up on it’s own.
Tags: Aviation, Interesting, Military, OpEd, Technology
