Top Secret Tombs: The Classified Stealth Aircraft Burial Grounds of Area 51

Urban Ghosts ^ | January 3rd, 2013 | Tom

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

Maybe they got mothballed because they were so easy to track over Bosnia.. Cellphone triangulation or something like that.

[Terry Mross]

Wife and I saw some strange stuff in the sky near Tonopah, Az one night. I asked the locals about it at a gas station and nobody wanted to talk about it.

[DesertRhino]

I believe you on that. There’s realistically nothing foreign that can tangle with them. They could address threats at speeds and distances that super hornets could only dream of.
And that bombing capability was something else. They have had a fantasy that one airframe can do everything a carrier needs.

The truth is, a carrier air wing has but a shadow of the air-to-air and strike capability it did before they improved everything for the sake of procurement officer careers.

[DesertRhino]

The dirty secret of stealth is that SAMs will get them again very soon. They have always been able to “see” them, tut computing power wasn’t there to make sense of it. NOw computers can notice and analyze the “hole” in the sky where the stealth is, and target it.

Stealths were never truly invisible.

As computer power expands at an exponential rate, the SAMs will be back in the drivers seat again. And we will be married to a bunch of retarded F-35s that paid a huge penalty for their stealth that was stealthy in 2011, but not so much anymore in 2019.
And then they will scrap the F-35s and build some new design!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks DogByte6RER.

[Hot Tabasco]

For some reason a Twinkie comes to mind.....

[bmwcyle]

bttt

[joe fonebone]

when the f-14 shut down after flight, you had to roll out the 55 gallon drums on wheels to catch the leaking hydraulic fluid... when those seals shrunk, it left behind a helluva mess..

[a6intruder]

The A-12 program was cancelled before the decision to retire the A-6E fleet was made. Heads rolled at NAVAIR up to the 2 star level over cost overruns. In fact, the A-12 would have been a maintenance nightmare. Every time a panel on the airframe was removed, the low visibility coating had to be restored.

The real driver behind the retirement decision was the A-6's tailhook box. The max number of arrested landings was 2500. There was no economical way to replace the tailhook box without replacing the entire empannage. In addition, the A-6 was 1960's technology regarding survivability. The aircraft needed self sealing wing fuel tanks, a Halon firefighting system, improved ECM and DECM equipment to name a few upgrades to make it combat worthy.

At the same time, the F/A-18 was coming on line and DOD and the Navy mistakenly thought it could replace both the A-6 and the F-14. It hasn't. Although a capable platform, the F/A-18 still hasn't the "legs" or the munitions carrying capability of either of the aircraft it replaced.

Now, we are faced with the F-35, a further degradation of an ability to defend the CVBGs.

We used to joke about how Grumman built aircraft..."you take a block of iron and cut away everything that isn't an A-6". Sad to se that legacy go away.

[skinkinthegrass]

Ahhh..Pave Blue

[bgill]

If they were so super duper secret, then why bury them whole and intact instead of blowing them to smithereens so they stay secret?

[Longbow1969]

Hi null and void, please take me off this ping list. I am trying to reduce to the number messages I get at the moment. Thank you.

[null and void]

Done!

[pfflier]

Good point.

[LucyT]

.

Thanks, rq.

Would have missed both articles without your pings.

Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year.