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Around the turn of the decade, Northrop had designed an aircraft that was so ugly that it had to be genius, and it was. Resembling a whale, including its blow-hole on top (the jet air intake!) the Tacit Blue was a marvel of function over form. Instead of using the faceted, almost diamond like approach to designing their stealth aircraft, as Lockheed had done a couple of years prior, Northrop engineers took a different approach, one of continuous curvatures, chined edges, and masked vulnerabilities. Much of this design philosophy was demanded by the “loiter” part of Tacit Blue’s mission requirements. The aircraft had to feature “all aspect stealth,” whereas an aircraft like the F-117 could be optimized for front and rear, or “coming and going” stealth aspects, as their mission was sneak inside a defense network, drop bombs, and high tail it out of danger. Tacit Blue had no such luxury as it would have to loiter for hours over enemy territory, and thus every angle would be susceptible to radar surveillance for prolonged periods of time. Tacit Blue’s rounded approach to stealth, known as curvilinear design, would be a massive development that would affect future stealth technology arguably more than the famous F-117′s “faceted” approach to masking radar signatures.
The Tacit Blue Weighed in at some 30,000lbs, measured around 55′X55′ and looking more like a motor-home than an aircraft. With a massive phased array radar, provided by Hughes, shoehorned into its boxcar fuselage, the ugly Whale was one unaerodynamic flying creature. It’s surfaces were so smooth that it almost took on a sculpted appearance. This does make some sense as one of its main designers actually sculpted its unique fascia while sitting on a park bench after being stumped on how to come up with a solution for DARPA’s BSAX challenge. By its very nature, Tacit Blue was a highly unstable design and thus had to utilize an advanced fly-wire-system similar to the one used on YF-16. Making the aircraft even more awkward, the design team utilized many parts from existing aircraft to minimize design time, complexity and cost. At a price tag of about $130,000,000 to build, with a total program cost of about $170,000,000, the Whale was an expensive ugly duckling, but it would pay for itself in spades over some 135 test flights between 1983 and 1985.
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צ'אט
14-03-2008, 23:39
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