US NAVY ATA (Advanced Tactical Aircraft) program: A-12 Avenger II & its rivals

What got me about the A-12 after watching the above YouTube video, was that the A-12 was the only stealth aircraft at that time that would have carried air-air missiles (AIM-120 AMRAAMs no less) in seperate internal weapon bays, the B-2 in comparison only relied on it's stealth technology to get through enemy air defences.
 
FighterJock said:
What got me about the A-12 after watching the above YouTube video, was that the A-12 was the only stealth aircraft at that time that would have carried air-air missiles (AIM-120 AMRAAMs no less) in seperate internal weapon bays, the B-2 in comparison only relied on it's stealth technology to get through enemy air defences.
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Yeah, I thought that was wild. Typical mission load was 2x 2000lb, 2x HARM, and 2x AMRAAMs...
 
FighterJock said:
What got me about the A-12 after watching the above YouTube video, was that the A-12 was the only stealth aircraft at that time that would have carried air-air missiles (AIM-120 AMRAAMs no less) in seperate internal weapon bays, the B-2 in comparison only relied on it's stealth technology to get through enemy air defences.
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OTOH this was the period when USN was planning to stick BVRAAMs on everything that would fly in order to maximise carrier air defence capability in the Outer Air Battle against Russian regiment or multi-regiment sized attacks. If they were planning to put AIM-152 on A-6F then putting AAMs on the near-contemporary A-12 would have been the obvious thing to do. (See Friedman, Fighters Over The Fleet)
 
Quick question, does anyone have the physical dimensions for the Northrop design? Wingspan, length, etc.? I used a measuring tool on one of the images and it looks to be roughly 44 feet long with a 78 foot wingspan, by I'm not that confident it's correct.
 
apparition13 said:
Quick question, does anyone have the physical dimensions for the Northrop design? Wingspan, length, etc.? I used a measuring tool on one of the images and it looks to be roughly 44 feet long with a 78 foot wingspan, by I'm not that confident it's correct.
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Pretty sure that is in Tony Chong's book "Flying Wings & Radical Things: Northrop's Secret Aerospace Projects & Concepts 1939-1994".

Crazy - the book was published in 2016, doesn't seem that long ago... Mark

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Even though Paul Metz came out with his YF-23 book, everyone notices there is not a lot of info available, no other books, ATF dem/val videos/images, etc, YF/F-23 is still kind of a ghost, not much for public release, really just tidbits. Same for our competing ATA (mini-original B-2 and B-21), hence look at the B-21 configuration but nothing of any substance to our ATA accept two book images of a model. I would assume there have or has been a theater strike platform demonstrator built and flown but it also has to have value to move the program forward.
 
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quellish said:
Sadly that relates to the A-12 lawsuits and this was justification for destroying or misplacing many, many records.
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The Northrop ATA had a dozen wind tunnel models, Full scale mock up, which I used to see several times a week while working, and a functional full scale cockpit fixture. Somewhere, there is a secure storage of this data, photos, etc. We had a location for guarded secure storage we call "the dead sea scroll" storage. The mock up was disassembled, I doubt it survived as it would take up a fair amount of space. There is lots of photos somewhere, as we documented everything we did. The A12 lawsuit effected the other team, not Northrop. We just declined to bit fixed price, and shut it down. The Navy was insane about the security on that program so they may have dictated the destruction of everything. It would be awesome if NG released so of the Mock up photos, you guys would love it!
 
Cancerman said:
The Navy was insane about the security on that program so they may have dictated the destruction of everything.
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Everything the Navy was involved with / controlled was either destroyed or “misplaced” . That includes material produced by Northrop under Navy control or produced with Navy funds.

I’ve asked for these records, several agencies were able to produce basically the same response - it’s gone
 
quellish said:
Everything the Navy was involved with / controlled was either destroyed or “misplaced” . That includes material produced by Northrop under Navy control or produced with Navy funds.

I’ve asked for these records, several agencies were able to produce basically the same response - it’s gone
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How or why is this even possible when these weren't black projects? Is this also why we've never seen several of the designs by the different teams working on the following A-X and A/F-X program?

Everything I've read about modern NAVAIR procurement really makes me think Kelly Johnson was onto something with that "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy" rule sometimes attributed to him.
 
Colonial-Marine said:
How or why is this even possible when these weren't black projects?
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ATA was a special access program. After the program was terminated there was a big multi year lawsuit. The government did not want to make discovery of documents too easy for the opposing party.
 
Cancerman said:
The Northrop ATA had a dozen wind tunnel models, Full scale mock up, which I used to see several times a week while working, and a functional full scale cockpit fixture. Somewhere, there is a secure storage of this data, photos, etc. We had a location for guarded secure storage we call "the dead sea scroll" storage. The mock up was disassembled, I doubt it survived as it would take up a fair amount of space. There is lots of photos somewhere, as we documented everything we did. The A12 lawsuit effected the other team, not Northrop. We just declined to bit fixed price, and shut it down. The Navy was insane about the security on that program so they may have dictated the destruction of everything. It would be awesome if NG released so of the Mock up photos, you guys would love it!
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I remember when the ATA full-scale mock-up at Pico was chopped up, pieces no bigger than around 16 to 18", I forget how many large trash containers it filled. I was a shame too, it was a real nice mock-up, definitely museum material, I remember the Blue and Gold room across from B-2 FCHIL fondly. Again, the NG basic wing design has evolved many times for sure, you agree?
 
Hydroman said:
I remember when the ATA full-scale mock-up at Pico was chopped up, pieces no bigger than around 16 to 18", I forget how many large trash containers it filled. I was a shame too, it was a real nice mock-up, definitely museum material, I remember the Blue and Gold room across from B-2 FCHIL fondly. Again, the NG basic wing design has evolved many times for sure, you agree?
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The containers filled the hallway down the rear loading ramp. I didn't think it was cut up that small but it was so long ago. I've slept since then. Yes, between the crank-arrow and others, along with airfoil shapes and the RCS technology, things have improved quite a bit. Computer modeling and software has cut development effort and range time quite a bit. They don't have to build near as many RCS models and do the small surface changes near as much. I think it (ATA) was chopped up at customers requirement and NG was more than happy to rid itself of the program, even though they came back to us to help save the A12. They also came back to us to design and test Arrowhead, and others for them, which they never of course bought.
 

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