stealth blimp

[sublight]

The Vulture RFP specifies that it be NOT an airship and/or nuclear powered.

Interesting that they specifically mention nuclear power. I thought the last time that was even considered was the Convair X-6....

[Orionblamblam]

The Vulture RFP specifies that it be NOT an airship and/or nuclear powered.

Interesting that they specifically mention nuclear power. I thought the last time that was even considered was the Convair X-6....

The short-lived thrill of hafnium isomers gave the promise of nuclear aircraft, just a few years ago.

[Wembley]

The thrill of nuclear isomer triggering (though not necessarily Hafnium 178m2) continues; the Army, Navy and DTRA have known projects still working on isomer triggering - or quantum nucleonics as it tends to be called these days - and there may be other black projects out there.
However, because of the cost factors it's likely to be confined to small niche applications and not anythign as big as a full-sized aircraft.

[flateric]

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2420.msg23479.html#msg23479

[sublight]

Here is something interesting. Its an FAA recording made in 1995, apparently one of the earliest known stealth blimp sightings.
It was seen by the pilots of America West Airlines Flight 564.

http://www.nicap.org/audio/950525.mp3

[Sundog]

I remember, back in the 1990's, a Brit was proposing a delta winged LTA for a cargo plane. I think I read about it in PopSci or PopMech. Unfortunately, that was all I ever saw on it.

Of course, the purpose of it is that it makes it easier to control if it's wing shaped. I don't recall if it was like the new Hybrid aircraft, like Lock-Mart flew, where it isn't a complete LTA vehicle, in that the boyancy is just under the weight of the vehicle so that it needs to develop some lift to fly.

[sublight]

There was a segment on the discovery channel about this tonight. They interviewed Steve Douglass....

[sublight]

This Steve Douglass: http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=2223257

I am hoping that Steve's impressive resume will give the theory some traction....

[sublight]

Stealth Chaser Steve Douglass talks about taping the Stealth Blimp segment on the Discovery Channel....

http://deepbluehorizon.blogspot.com/2010/04/weird-or-what.html

[sublight]

Dr. Adam Chu Chief Scientist at Global near space services has an interesting resume:

"Dr. Chu worked on concepts for powered blimp applications in the late 1980s, primarily in the systems analysis role. He helped design a phased array radar integrated into a powered, station-keeping stratospheric blimp"....

http://www.globalnearspace.com/executive_team.shtml

[edwest]

What did Ben Rich say? The public doesn't need to know. What I find interesting here, and elsewhere on the web, is an almost psychotic skepticism. Perhaps, one day, people will get tired of it, but so far, the trend is stable.

Electro-optical camouflage is possible now. How long was the "stealth fighter" a secret? A triangular craft with a flat bottom was one of the shapes for a low radar return as determined in the 1950s. Defense contractors need the business.

[Sundog]

Electro-optical camouflage is possible now.

Although I don't think it's what most people think it is. Most people think of fish and lizards that change color to mask them against a static background. With aircraft, I think it's just a skin lighting system, a modern version of Yehudi lights, that matches the scattered light at whatever altitude the aircraft is flying to eliminate the "black dot" effect.

[Gridlock]

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc680.htm

I know, it has *that* TLA in the title and it's hardly a photograph but why would thousands of people all see something huge, low-flying and triangular in such a, well, non-DET 3 place?

Mass hysteria? Aliens? LM Skunkworks string snapped?

On the other hand, you have the best UFO report ever, bar none:

SAN FRANCISCO - On the evening of Super Bowl Sunday, January 30, 2000, I was hauling up a line of crab traps off Faralon Island aboard our 25' boat. My dog started to bark furiously. I looked up and saw a huge triangular object hovering above with NO sound.
 
I was hit by a beam of white light and fell backward. I grabbed my Ruger 10-22 rifle loaded with a 100 round banana magazine and stared firing as fast as I could until the clip was empty. I was able to shoot out the light.
 
While grabbing for a second clip, I saw a hatch open up on the bottom side of the object and two people leaned down to yell, "STOP SHOOTING AT US YOU IDIOT."
 
The only other noise I heard was a hissing sound like air escaping from a flat tire. As the object moved off to the south, I saw a helicopter come out off the top and move in next to my boat about 20 feet off the water and only feet away. Someone in the side door held up a camera and the flash shot off a picture of me in the boat holding the rifle.
 
The helicopter made no noise and had no markings on it. It was solid flat black as was the huge Triangle. The chopper then took off toward the Golden Gate Bridge climbing up.
 
The Triangle slowing gained altitude and was last seen heading south. At first I thought it was an alien UFO and was genuinely startled by it. However, I now believe it was an experimental military platform for transporting a small fleet of black helicopters that leave and enter out of the top of a huge silent floating triangle the size of a football field. A rigid airship if you will.

Interesting that this thread assumes surveillance when force projection or prompt global strike is an equally likely contender.

You also have Bob Woodward's "top secret" which he states is in use over CENTCOM's back yard for ELINT purposes - indubitably there's not an Iraqi Telecom building in the country that doesn't have a crosslink to Cyprus but maybe as well we have a persistent platform hoovering up everything from above?

There's plenty of circumstantial evidence out there for LTA/dirigible platforms, but as stated earlier it's the nuts and bolts, the line items and squadron patches and logistical infrastructure that is lacking.

[sublight]

After the Reagan administration took office they embarked on what could only be described as a staggering number of psyops and penetration exercises against the Soviets. Testing a new platform or terrorizing the populace of Hudson Valley at a time when the movie "close encounters" is still fresh in the public mind would not make a lot of sense, yet thousands of witnesses all made the same claims. I wonder if the CIA had knowledge of Soviet spies living in the area and knew they'd report their sightings back to the motherland? That would drive the politburo bonkers with fear, and would definitely distract them from the stealth work going on at the same time at the other end of the continent....

[saintkatanalegacy]

I wonder if they could make the whole thing appear like a cloud... in a not so suspicious way