She is sleek, sexy and stealthy with a cute little round tummy that wiggles when she giggles. Well, not really. Speculation about Great Satan's latest unmanned flying wonder weapon confused the heck out of people: Why cause deploy a stealth drone in Afghanistan? Taliban has no air defense systems worth mentioning, and at last check, al Qaeda doesn't deploy anti aircraft artillery batteries.
True! None of those cats deploy radar - though there are certain cats in the nearby hood that a stealth drone could cause problems for - like the Gay Free Republic of Preacher Command and Land of the Pure.
Great Satan's Air Force recently let the cat out of the bag. With her low-observable design, the beast might be useful for flying the borders of Iran and peering into China, India and Pakistan for useful data about missile tests, telemetry as well as gathering signals and multi-spectral intelligence.
Beast of Kandahar, is widely believed to be created by Lockheed’s magical Skunk Works, home of the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. She bears a striking resemblance to the ancient Luftwaffe Horton HO (what a name!!) and maybe related to Skunk Works’ Polecat drone, unleashed in 2006. 'Polecat' was a private venture, costing some $27 million of Lockheed’s own money, designed to operate stealthily at high altitude and at supersonic speed.
Beast is not Polecat, as one look at the exhaust will indicate.
Her real name in military nomenclature talk is RQ-170 Sentinel - a taillessflying wing design with sensor pods faired into the upper surface of each wing, was developed by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), better known as Skunk Works.
An Air Force official revealed Dec. 4 that the service is "developing a stealthy unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces."
The RQ means Recon baby! Like the MQ means military as in the prefix applied to the armed Predator and Reaper drones.
Yet the rumour that she beast hangs out with 'Desert Prowler' program and she sports a really cool icon of a cartoon Grim Reaper may mean she can swing both ways.
The 911 hidden in Roman numbers is a killer reminder that Beast will thoroughly enjoy providing Great Satan with righteous intell and righteous kills.
My first thought was why bother with stealth where there is neither Radar of AA.
ReplyDeleteThen I thought, what better way to test the various sensors and such, as well as not a bad way to make the various bad guys a tad nervous.
Remember, the Syrians had what the Ruskies said was state of the art radar and AA gear and the Izzies blew right through it where there wasn't a shot fired against them.
And this new toy is at least two or three generations past anything the Izzies have. Cool.
I have a plastic model of the Horton wing. Nice bird.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever get your hands on Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe computer game, you're on to something badass!!!!
I have not been blogging in a long time because of my book work....but it is about to hit distribution!!!! You might see a book media blitz on FB so watchout!!!!
Gee Steve. I have that too.
ReplyDeleteBut the drone actually looks more proportioned like the B2; which in contrast looks like Horton's flying machine.
The Nazis were ironically way ahead in avionics. Too bad they were driven by a madman who wanted to make the Me262 a bomber instead of a fighter.
Now please come to my blog and help me with THE BOOK!