US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

SlothmanAllen

Senior Member
Registered Member
There are clearly a couple of unknown aircraft that have been very well hidden from the public. The RQ-180 is probably the most famous of these aircraft, to the point that people speculate that the aircraft might already have ended its service and may in the the process of being replaced by another aircraft.

I have no clue what aircraft these pictures show, but they clearly have been using some unknown aircraft going on for over a decade now.
 

Aqrab

New Member
Registered Member
I don't think the the above perfect triangle is reconnaissance or ground attack drone. It would not make sense neither from more sophisticated aerodynamic, stealth or even flight dynamics point of view.

Firstly aerodynamically sure, you can in principle fly anything if you can get high enough control bandwidth (and lift generation mechanism of course). But a perfect or near perfect triangle is not suitable for ultra-high altitude (unless supersonic but that too has its own problems especially with this aspect ratio). At mid to low altitude, any meaningful maneuvers and this thing will bleed off energy so fast that range etc. will get hurt. Unless it moves in a very motherly/less agile fashion in a hostile territory. Not to mention manoeuvrability and post maneuver stability would require rather large control surfaces. Which means along unnecessary energy depletion, you have large control surfaces acting now as large incident radar energy scatterers that too scattering highly time varying field with complex interaction with the rest of the aircraft. . Also that would require rather large electrohydraulic actuators which will ultimately act as large internal reflectors in their own right, requiring complex internal multipath absorption strategy.

Then we have space-based radars. Once spotted, this thing with fewer allowable incident wave diffraction directions, using a combination of ground or just space alone, one can turn this kind of design into a “radar light house” tracking and shooting it down would be easy. Especially since it can’t maneuver much. It could allow more easy internal multipath absorption under certain restricted conditions. But internal volume constraint will make it hard too.

I think this aircraft’s meaningful purpose is to test and validate distributed radar detection and tracking algorithms as well as perhaps training machine learning algorithms to learn to detect, track and/or simulate shooting it down.

A triangle shape then creates much better invariant (partially invariant to certain incident radar waves) that can exploit symmetries, known straight triangle edges ( rather than having complex step or other kind of geometry) to test new radars or real time networks of such radars without having to move them too much or not move at all for various flight scenarios. It would be easier to derive digital twin radar reflection models of such aerospace vehicle not just for monostatic but also bi and even multi-static radars (or multiple moving airborne radars).

Once you have reference empirical models of scattering as well as other characteristics, one can built large number of these aircraft in a simulation environment, give them arbitrary agility, mobility and fine tune optimal search, detection and tracking algorithms. Time consuming but certainly NOT difficult.

We know that US tracking satellites had poor search performance in finding Iranian ground missile launch vehicles ( Good competent job Iran) despite claiming to finally have Realtime distributed optimal search algorithms. That’s like saying someone has discovered Unified field theory or on the other end of spectrum the theory of complexity, meaning not going to happen soon or at all especially the complexity theory. Finding P = NP true? Would be easier. Combinatorial nature of such problems alone make even ad-hoc algorithms discovery rather hard.

On a positive side, a triangle shape will be rigid enough to reduce scattered field distortions due to say lensing effects as airframe bends etc.

But purely for reconnaissance it would be very inefficient unless there is some psychological purpose.

US is known to synthesis an exaggerated image among “slave nations” (certainly Not where I am from) where they attribute magical powers to US aircraft.

These strange nations apparently don’t have even slightly above average scientists, engineers or mathematicians who can tell them that listen “physics is NOT america’s bitch that it can create such magical results often stated regarding American defense products”.

They literally surrender to the miracles that they themselves imagined and attributed to US war machines.

Such as maduro body guards describing microwave heating array that US had on its helicopters during mission to capture him, as if it is was some magical technology. With some effort one can built rather crude but effective such device at home (would be highly illegal though).

So it could be just image making. US used to fly strange very large precisely shaped lighter than air “inflatable” objects out of its airbases with strange lights implying uncle aliens have just given uncle sam some otherworldly technology which US would soon use to show its ultimately supremacy over the rest of human race. TV channels have documentaries over it. Some strange American instead decided to claim they were probed in inappropriate places by aliens inside these planes. Its hard to tell who is madder. Military that makes such drama queen events or people who claimed to be probed by non-existing aliens. Recently easily debunk-able pentagon declassified alien tracking videos and even Rubio in one documentary implying He knows far more that proves such aliens are real, makes me feel it’s the US government and the military that is more insane. Why would they do that? Triangular large objects were more common in olden days (when I was a kid).

Anyway it this aircraft could be a tested requiring symmetry of form (e.g. certain electronic warfare in dense environment ?? may be). It still would be poor aerodynamic and electromagnetic design as far low as observability is concern.

It could be that US used outer skin sections that emit far more infra-red energy in a preselected triangle area, causing “saturation cut off” in a thermal imager where only the most bright area can be seen while surrounding area appears dark (Thermal meta-Materials ??) . Just to hide true shape. That’s unlikely and silly. Shape hardly tells much quantitatively and so not of much use. But triangle shape may create psychological effects among the "dumb chosen ones".
 

gpt

Junior Member
Registered Member
Anyway it this aircraft could be a tested requiring symmetry of form (e.g. certain electronic warfare in dense environment ?? may be). It still would be poor aerodynamic and electromagnetic design as far low as observability is concern.

It could be that US used outer skin sections that emit far more infra-red energy in a preselected triangle area, causing “saturation cut off” in a thermal imager where only the most bright area can be seen while surrounding area appears dark (Thermal meta-Materials ??) . Just to hide true shape. That’s unlikely and silly. Shape hardly tells much quantitatively and so not of much use. But triangle shape may create psychological effects among the "dumb chosen ones".
TLDR it is a B-2. The triangle shape is due to the cheap aperture of the camera (ever wonder why there is never a single high res photo of these alien sightings?)
This phenom was already debunked in 2014. The triangular platform on apparent display in those shots is the result of an optical illusion that obscured the trailing edge of the B-2s design. “Given the resolution of this photo, we can’t even tell if it is a military
aircraft, much less an Air Force one,” Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy told USNI News on April 21.
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Tomboy

Captain
Registered Member
TLDR it is a BThe triangle shape is due to the cheap aperture of the camera (ever wonder why there is never a single high res photo of these alien sightings?)
This phenom was already debunked in 2014. The triangular platform on apparent display in those shots is the result of an optical illusion that obscured the trailing edge of the B-2s design. “Given the resolution of this photo, we can’t even tell if it is a military
aircraft, much less an Air Force one,” Air Force spokeswoman Jennifer Cassidy told USNI News on April 21.
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Could really be any other flying wing aircraft though, they all look the same from below anyways. Size is hard to say for sure especially when it's that far away and blurry. USAF/manufacturer testing some experimental flying wing drone isn't impossible or even unlikely given how China does this regularly.
 

subotai1

Junior Member
Registered Member

Nautilus

New Member
Registered Member
New National Defense Strategy document from Pentagon, published yesterday:

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I want to highlight this bit:
We will defend the Homeland and ensure that our interests in the Western Hemisphere are protected. We will deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation. We will increase burden-sharing with allies and partners around the world. And we will rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base as part of the President's once-in-a-century revival of American industry.

It looks like they're giving up on the idea of armed conflict with China, probably understandably so though backing down without so much as a whimper is not something I expected.

P.S. I cannot in earnest recommend looking through the actual document, it is so full of Trump-glazing and superlative adjectives that it hurts to read.
 

siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
New National Defense Strategy document from Pentagon, published yesterday:

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I want to highlight this bit:


It looks like they're giving up on the idea of armed conflict with China, probably understandably so though backing down without so much as a whimper is not something I expected.

P.S. I cannot in earnest recommend looking through the actual document, it is so full of Trump-glazing and superlative adjectives that it hurts to read.
Seems like a bunch of weasel word for “you are on your own now bye bye”.
 
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