Northrop Grumman "RQ-180"

Hull down said:
That at least made sense though. Black on the bottom camo up top. This one is black on the bottom and white on top. The opposite of standard counter shading. I wonder if the bottom was haphazardly painted black for night time operations (assuming they are actually painted white as standard practice. Or if this represents something more special, perhaps for high altitude operations it provides visual camouflage from satellites?
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I'm thinking high altitude camo. Something not easily seen against a cloud layer.


djj said:
What would the rcs of RQ-180 be, relative to the B-2? To B-21? To QUARTZ/AARS? Perhaps the RQ-180 is even a modern incarnation of the QUARTZ/AARS program.
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To my knowledge, QUARTZ was never completed as a flying airframe in the 1990s/early 00s.

Mission-wise, RQ180 absolutely is a modern incarnation of QUARTZ.
 
Is there any good images of the Israeli flying wing for comparison? It doesn't seem the "180" needs to be a large aircraft even if it is the basis for the B-21, sensors have gotten smaller in size including radar antennas. Look at the belly and picture the aircraft in the grayish-white scheme and compare to the sighting image over Cal City and EAFB, very similar. Now there also could be another derivative of the aircraft as well, could be larger for longer missions and maybe different payloads. The plot thickens.
 
quellish said:
So glad to see other profiting from my years of difficult research without even attribution.
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I had read, and just re-read, the article. My impression was that for Quartz/AARS history, Trevithick/Rogoway relied on the cited Ehrhard monograph, heavily if not exclusively. What particular facts or background did TWZ lift from your earlier research?
 
Plus what appears to be a nose gear gravel deflector/fender to protect the underside and underside sensor windows/apertures.
 
quellish said:
So glad to see other profiting from my years of difficult research without even attribution.
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This sucks. I'm really bummed for you. I wish there were a way for you to receive your due credit. I have noticed that TWZ just happens to publish articles on subjects that just so happen to co-op the big weekly discussions here and their conclusions.
 
timmyjohn said:
I had read, and just re-read, the article. My impression was that for Quartz/AARS history, Trevithick/Rogoway relied on the cited Ehrhard monograph, heavily if not exclusively. What particular facts or background did TWZ lift from your earlier research?
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It is academic plagiarism to use someone's bibliography without attribution. Ehrhard's thesis/monograph are pretty obscure.
 
quellish said:
So glad to see other profiting from my years of difficult research without even attribution.
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Well please know that many of us have appreciated your efforts since the days of Black Dawn 30 years ago. I'll never forget the hours I spent reading every article on my Powerbook at UMBC when I should have been studying!
 
dark sidius said:
There is a new generation in secrecy if the RQ-180 is now public ?
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No, there is a major war going on and operational use has prevalence over secrecy. The only reason I can think of why they would choose to show it just to hide another secret airframe it is because the Lady of Larissa has a weaponized sister as that they want to keep under wraps.

I do think that is unlikely, as the B-21 will soon be ready to fill that role, and the B2 currently already has that capability.

Unlike Flateric, based on the new pictures I still come to a rough estimate of a wingspan of just over 30 meters, maybe smaller.

It’s also interesting, on a side note perhaps, now that the RQ-180 has come into the light, that for all it’s technological might the USA still lost the Iran war both politically and military. The future of war is not huge flying airframes like the RQ-180.
 
Thank you for your span estimate, very useful, but for the rest, I see only a frantic attempt to draw an hasten conclusion. The question that prevails mostly, rationally, is were the US even engaged in a War (given the powers of Congress)?

Lady of Larissa checks all what we knew about the rumored 180: it´s big, it´s built for high altitude, it´s a platform sized for endurance and specific sensors, it has a modern CFRP construction and matches Northrop SkunkWorks history of design.
 
You would think LM-ADP could have parlayed Polecat into the fray given the similarities (basic wing planform) of the 180 and Polecat. But if you look at Polecat closely, it was ADP's (and Boeing's) unmanned, subscale demonstrator for their LRSB platform (cockpit and inlet features) just like the 180 paved the way for the NG B-21. Sized properly, I think a Polecat derivative would possibly been a better platform vs. the RQ-170 (bigger and possibly higher altitude?). I had a couple of buddies at ADP who were involved in the 170 systems design area of the aircraft which was a rapid development and rapid deploy type of program. My gut tells me the USAF is about to take the wraps off the 180, we're approaching the 10 year time period anyway. Now, what is the next new toy in the highly-classified toy box?
 
bob225 said:
Why bother?

Don't they just read and copy everything from here anyway?
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It happens a lot. Here is a thread from the ARC Air Forums in which I discussed a Special Ops helicopter that I identified. They published a piece on it soon after.


www.twz.com

This Ghost Of A Helicopter Likely Had A Secret Role In Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Speech

All the available information we've uncovered indicates that this helicopter was assigned to a top-secret covert aviation unit called Seaspray.
www.twz.com www.twz.com

And again with this photo of helicopters from a classified US Army unit active in Somalia in 1993. I posted about this on December 11, 2017 after I discovered that photo, and TWZ posted a piece on it some time later, featuring similar commentary to that undertaken by the ARC community.

www.twz.com

These Secret Helicopters Were Flown By A Shadowy Unit During The Battle of Mogadishu

Few photographs exist of these unique helicopters, but all evidence points to them belonging to the Army's highly secretive Flight Concepts Division.
www.twz.com www.twz.com

We joked about it on ARC that TWZ could at least acknowledge the efforts of the people on ARC! I guess once you write something on a public forum or post up one of your own photographs, they are open to use by all. I have other stuff related to a classified version of the MD500 that TWZ would love to learn of, but I ain't putting the info out there.

Anyway, great to see this aircraft (RQ-180?) creeping out from the shadows and emerging into the light. I'd imagine that its revelation is very much calculated by the USAF and U.S. Government. The commentary suggesting that there must be an even more capable classified asset now flying that possesses greater capabilities than the RQ-180 is equalling interesting.

500 Fan.
 
500 Fan said:
I guess once you write something on a public forum or post up one of your own photographs, they are open to use by all.
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Not true under copyright law, if you made it it’s yours.

TWZ’s parent company has been taken to court over this numerous times. Apparently theft is part of their business model.
 
Whisperstream said:
From a design standpoint, the RQ-180 seems to have been derived largely from the SensorCraft studies. There is a lot of good background information on RQ-180 design development and flight-testing in this book: https://schifferbooks.com/products/...kzpywZFYyCc1QWZ4L0hNYnep7m2le0h15e3esPjPmEdto
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Right, IIRC the timeline was QUARTZ->Sensorcraft->RQ170->RQ180



quellish said:
Not true under copyright law, if you made it it’s yours.

TWZ’s parent company has been taken to court over this numerous times. Apparently theft is part of their business model.
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Guess it's time to start demanding RICO triple damages.
 
Flyaway said:
Will you be contacting them about this?
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The effective ways to hand this are:

1. Stop posting material they can use. Everybody loses, but it fixes the problem.
2. Engage their investors.
3. Engage them through the courts.

I have already done 1 and 2. TWZ's parent company has been engaged in copyright and IP related litigation , yet they keep doing these things. Using photos they do not have rights to , etc. It appears to be part of their business model.


xstatic3000 said:
Well please know that many of us have appreciated your efforts since the days of Black Dawn 30 years ago. I'll never forget the hours I spent reading every article on my Powerbook at UMBC when I should have been studying!
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I appreciate that. I actually did some of the research for that in Silver Spring at the main campus while I was living on the Eastern Shore.

I had been planning recently to build a new site and I do have a lot of progress on it, however I have been overcommitted elsewhere and with TMZ, etc. republishing things I would have to make it paid and absurdly expensive.


To get slightly back on topic here, another issue with TMZ's stories like this is that they draw unwanted attention to things. I am aware of several times in the past where TMZ stories have triggered (unnecessary) responses from the federal government. Some general reading TMZ on his iPhone gets pissed off and it triggers a shitstorm.

In this case, I have been working for years with several agencies to get QUARTZ material released. Many of these records are nearing their destruction dates (they passed any classification dates long ago). There is a very good chance that this story will make all QUARTZ and AARS records permanently unreleasable.

Great job TMZ.
 
quellish said:
I had been planning recently to build a new site and I do have a lot of progress on it, however I have been overcommitted elsewhere and with TMZ, etc. republishing things I would have to make it paid and absurdly expensive.
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Don't you mean TWZ?
 
quellish said:
The effective ways to hand this are:

1. Stop posting material they can use. Everybody loses, but it fixes the problem.
2. Engage their investors.
3. Engage them through the courts.

I have already done 1 and 2. TWZ's parent company has been engaged in copyright and IP related litigation , yet they keep doing these things. Using photos they do not have rights to , etc. It appears to be part of their business model.
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Which means even more court time, and requesting sufficient relief through the courts to bankrupt the parent company. Like I said, claim RICO because they keep doing the same shit after getting taken to court and get your triple damages (plus legal fees).
 
quellish said:
In this case, I have been working for years with several agencies to get QUARTZ material released. Many of these records are nearing their destruction dates (they passed any classification dates long ago). There is a very good chance that this story will make all QUARTZ and AARS records permanently unreleasable.
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Is disposing of these documents legal when presumably you and others have been engaged with their release/declass?
 
Q-nimbus said:
Unlike Flateric, based on the new pictures I still come to a rough estimate of a wingspan of just over 30 meters, maybe smaller.
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My estimates are based on known Proteus dimensions and simple math. Wingspan is ~40 m, central section is ~8 m long, wing sweep is very moderate, 23-25°
 
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flateric said:
My estimates are based on known Proteus dimensions and simple math. Wingspan is ~40 m, central section is ~8 m, wing sweep is very moderate, 23-25°
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My estimates are based on a higher wing sweep of at least 30 degrees, main gear wheel size of 37” and the white patches being 20 by 20 cm (which I think is generously overestimated, probably closer to somewhere between 10-15 cm).

So far, every time new pictures or information came out seems to point at it being smaller than initially thought: but don’t get me wrong, 30 meters is still BIG!
 

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