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Mysterious aircraft spotted at Area 51 in satellite image

240 点作者 benlumen超过 3 年前

20 条评论

aerostable_slug超过 3 年前
As noted by others, a.) it really looks like a Draken, an old Swedish supersonic jet fighter used by contractors and the National Test Pilot School for a variety of roles, and b.) nothing like this ever gets &quot;caught out&quot; by a satellite unless it&#x27;s the result of a crash (recall the panic over an F-117 going down decades ago because it &#x27;pancaked&#x27; in a manner that could reveal its shape).<p>I have had acquaintances and a grad school mentor that worked on projects out at the remote test site (among other facilities). They had very, very good situational awareness about what was overhead and when, and established &amp; practiced procedures on sanitizing things before anything got to where it could image the site. We also have decades of lessons-learned on things like heat signatures where airplanes were parked, such that their shape could be divined even when the test article was safely ensconced in a hanger.<p>We also practiced (and I would assume still practice) a variety of denial &amp; deception activities to foil all manner of collectors and confuse the opposition, from RF to visual to various MASINT measures. One example is the Wet Site at China Lake, which was covertly built to assess the RCS of various maritime platforms (most famously Sea Shadow). When Soviet birds went overhead the radar dishes were pointed in a different direction and radiating on misleading frequences. The dirt spoil and vehicle tracks from the concealed construction of the test facility&#x27;s saltwater pond was hidden like the tunnels in <i>The Great Escape</i>. Cool stuff.
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sethammons超过 3 年前
Does the image not look like a printed tarp laid over the hangar? I think it is simple deception
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unit486超过 3 年前
Quite a few arms control discoveries have been made by civilians using open source satellite imagery. For example, US citizens discovered the massive new missile silo complexes that China has been building. They have identified rocket motor static test burns in Iran,and preparations for missile test launches at the Novaya Zemlya test facility in Russia.
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WalterGR超过 3 年前
<i>We came upon this development after doing our regular scans of Planet Labs&#x27; low-resolution imagery of various locales of interest across the globe… When glancing at daily 3-meter resolution images of the base</i><p>Whoa. I didn’t know that daily satellite imagery was available to civilians.<p>How much of the planet’s surface is imaged and available daily?<p>Edit: Ooh, just posted and relevant: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30193804" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30193804</a> . 10cm imagery from high-altitude balloons!
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etempleton超过 3 年前
Almost certainly a prototype for the NGAD. With rhetoric and now actions from both China and Russia the US is feeling the threat.<p>There is a need. The F35 is really a multi-role fighter&#x2F;attack jet. F22 reportedly still reigns supreme in air to air combat, but they killed that program and it would apparently be impossible to start back up, so there is incredible pressure to have a new viable air superiority fighter.<p>The F22 is also a short range fighter that the US has too few of to risk losing. It is valuable for domestic defense and NATO defense, but less valuable for defending airspace in places such as Ukraine or Taiwan.
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pwned1超过 3 年前
There is no way this isn&#x27;t on purpose. They wouldn&#x27;t expose something sensitive to satellite imaging unless they wanted to.
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vmception超过 3 年前
Why even still use that base except to troll enthusiasts?<p>At this point, people could have been born anew, grown up with the lore, had a full career and achieved decision making roles in using those bases with no budget oversight whatsoever.
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Someone超过 3 年前
So, what’s the chance this is faked (not the photos, but the device) by the US Air Force?<p>It could make others invest in protection against such an airplane, or in copying an ineffective design.
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chadcmulligan超过 3 年前
This reminds me of how they hid the U2 from prying eyes in &quot;Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed&quot; by Ben Rich, that I&#x27;m currently reading. For anyone who&#x27;s interested in experimental aircraft, the secrecy and the engineering this is a great read. He talks about the lengths they went to hiding the U2 and the Stealth Fighter from surveillance and everyone else.
mastazi超过 3 年前
Can someone explain how those planes work, without a rudder or a vertical stabilizer?<p>The Chinese aircraft depicted in the article has large vertical surfaces on the wing tips, but other prototypes depicted in the same article have no vertical control surfaces whatsoever.<p>I don&#x27;t understand how you achieve controlled flight without those. Am I being dense?<p>Edit: specifically I don&#x27;t understand how do you control yaw.
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EMM_386超过 3 年前
They obviously have to surrender to satellites in terms of &quot;hiding things out in the desert&quot;, they can&#x27;t hide things anywhere on the planet anymore.<p>But they seem to have hidden this well enough, it has to come out of a hanger at some point and everyone&#x27;s obviously looking.
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rkangel超过 3 年前
One aircraft that I have always assumed existed was the SR-71 replacement. When they retired it the official story was that it was superceded by satellites, but satellites have a level of predictability and trackability that is best complemented by an aircraft. I have always assumed that they had a replacement with capabilities that were once again classified.<p>That said, I don&#x27;t think you&#x27;d find it at Area 51 given the fact that it would have been in service for a while by now and that Area 51 is more about testing experimental aircraft.
freeslave超过 3 年前
That Chinese WZ-8 looks just like the paper airplanes I made as a kid.
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nabla9超过 3 年前
Looks like Saab 35 Draken.
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vlark超过 3 年前
143 comments and not one person has said the obvious yet: it&#x27;s an alien fighter craft. Duh.
Sosh101超过 3 年前
Reminded me a bit of the F16XL - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;General_Dynamics_F-16XL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;General_Dynamics_F-16XL</a>
sgt101超过 3 年前
Looks like a D21 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lockheed_D-21" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lockheed_D-21</a>
iam-TJ超过 3 年前
So far I&#x27;ve not seen any comments that consider the wider context of the location in speculating what the aircraft may be.<p>Specifically, this aircraft is on the D1 taxi-way of the isolated EXTREMELY tall hanger 25 (H25) [2] at the south end of the runways, away from almost all other facilities.<p>Hanger 25 and the E1&#x2F;D1 taxi-ways connecting it can be fully appreciated in aerial photographs [3] looking north published by dreamlandresort (DR). The hanger has direct links to both runways - the primary 14&#x2F;32 (via taxi-way E1) and the short secondary (unmarked) 12&#x2F;30 that only serves category A or B aircraft (via taxi-way D1).<p>Back in 2014 as hanger 25 was being constructed there were ground and aerial photographs that revealed the hanger&#x27;s large size and especially its height which could accommodate a Boeing 747 tail rudder. There was much speculation [4] that it may support a project that has a mothership with &#x27;parasite&#x27; aircraft attached.<p>It may be what we&#x27;re seeing in this new imagery from Planet Labs is a &#x27;parasite&#x27; flying-wing aircraft.<p>It&#x27;s possible, based on remote location on the airfield, that this facility is supporting an ultra-high altitude or space launch system (think Virgin Galactic style). Mothership carries the parasite aircraft to a high altitude (taking off from runway 14&#x2F;32) before it is released to climb to a higher altitude or possibly into very low earth orbit (100km+ altitude).<p>Note: structure references from page 5 of the Jeppesen HOMEY&#x2F;KXTA airfield&#x2F;airspace charts [0] published at dreamlandresort (DR) [1]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;KXTA.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;KXTA.pdf</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;index.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedrive.com&#x2F;the-war-zone&#x2F;5279&#x2F;area-51s-massive-new-hangar-shows-up-in-new-google-earth-images-of-the-secret-base" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedrive.com&#x2F;the-war-zone&#x2F;5279&#x2F;area-51s-massive-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;area51&#x2F;aerial_1220_07.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dreamlandresort.com&#x2F;area51&#x2F;aerial_1220_07.jpg</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jalopnik.com&#x2F;new-panoramic-images-show-area-51-s-new-mystery-hanger-1628823466" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jalopnik.com&#x2F;new-panoramic-images-show-area-51-s-new...</a>
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karlkloss超过 3 年前
Looks like something that Batman would fly.
JoeAltmaier超过 3 年前
Curious. How do they even know which end is the &#x27;front&#x27;? Assumptions being made there.