Hacker News Reader

Comment by giuliomagnifico | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I’ve never heard about them, I wonder how many new planes/weapons that are under test now and we will know about them only in 20/30years!

> Northrop’s Tacit Blue

This really looks like something that went out from Minecraft or a pixelated ‘90 game.

View on HN

Tacit Blue is at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright Paterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio. Absolute gem of a museum, also free admission last time I went (2019). Plus the XB-70, plus an X-15, PLUS an F-12 or YF-12 (can't remember which), and a stealth fighter, and....just awesome stuff. I haven't even mentioned the 3 other hangars full of planes from every era of aviation, or Memphis Belle, or Bock's Car.

Oh yeah, they managed to fit a B-36 INSIDE a building. :)

And a B-2 air frame.

Can confirm, this museum is huge and a must see if you're interested at all in planes (don't even have to be that interested, there's plenty of cool stuff there). And free admission, also.

I looked it up, and it looks like the Boeing X-36 and Bird of Prey[2] mentioned in the article are in this museum. They have a lot of experimental aircraft there, including a flying saucer[3]. Also you can walk inside four different Air Force Ones[4], which I thought was especially neat and interesting.

[1]: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...

[2]: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact...

[3]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/avrocar

[4]: https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Pres...

> I’ve never heard about them

They are designed to be stealthy, so the fact that they’re not on our radar means they are doing their job!

It'd take me a while to find it, but I remember reading an interview with an engineer about that aircraft. He said it was one of the least airworthy aircraft to ever have flown. It was a technology demonstrator, so that doesn't really surprise me too much.

Interesting article about Tacit Blue: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41892/new-light-shed-o...

tl;dr from the article: "Tacit Blue's notional concept of operations involved flying over or very near the forward edge of the battlefield at around 25,000-30,000 feet and orbiting overhead at 250 knots or so while its radar scanned the area below."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com