The Northrop B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying wing with a crew of two, the plane was designed by Northrop as the prime contractor, with Boeing, Hughes, and Vought as principal subcontractors, and was produced from 1987 to 2000. The bomber can drop conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged in-service aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.
Aurora is a rumored mid-1980s American reconnaissance aircraft. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth.
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and merged in 1995 with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-unrelated Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was operational from 1912 to 1920.
The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is a retired long-range, high-altitude, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed and manufactured by the American aerospace company Lockheed Corporation. The SR-71 has several nicknames, including "Blackbird" and "Habu".
Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified research and development programs, and exotic aircraft platforms. Known locations include United States Air Force Plant 42, United States Air Force Plant 4, and Marietta, Georgia.
The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is an American twin-engine, all-weather, supersonic stealth fighter aircraft developed and produced for the United States Air Force (USAF). As a product of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, the aircraft was designed as an air superiority fighter, but also incorporates ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence capabilities. The prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, built most of the F-22 airframe and weapons systems and conducted final assembly, while program partner Boeing provided the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.
Stealth technology, also termed low observable technology, is a sub-discipline of military tactics and passive and active electronic countermeasures, which covers a range of methods used to make personnel, aircraft, ships, submarines, missiles, satellites, and ground vehicles less visible to radar, infrared, sonar and other detection methods. It corresponds to military camouflage for these parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Black project is an informal term used to describe a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors.
The Aviation Week Network is a New York–based B2B publishing and event production company owned by Informa. The company was owned and published by McGraw-Hill until it was purchased by Penton Media in 2013. It was then bought by Informa in 2016
The Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics YF-22 is an American single-seat, twin-engine, stealth fighter technology demonstrator prototype designed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The design team, with Lockheed as the prime contractor, was a finalist in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) competition, and two prototypes were built for the demonstration/validation phase. The YF-22 team won the contest against the YF-23 team for full-scale development and the design was developed into the Lockheed Martin F-22. The YF-22 has a similar aerodynamic layout and configuration as the F-22, but with notable differences in the overall shaping such as the position and design of the cockpit, tail fins and wings, and in internal structural layout.
Benjamin Robert Rich was an American engineer and the second Director of Lockheed's Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991, succeeding its founder, Kelly Johnson. Regarded as the "father of stealth", Rich was responsible for leading the development of the F-117, the first production stealth aircraft. He also worked on the F-104, U-2, A-12, SR-71, and F-22, among others.
A nuclear-powered aircraft is a concept for an aircraft intended to be powered by nuclear energy. The intention was to produce a jet engine that would heat compressed air with heat from fission, instead of heat from burning fuel. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union researched nuclear-powered bomber aircraft, the greater endurance of which could enhance nuclear deterrence, but neither country created any such operational aircraft.
Blackstar is the reported code-name of a secret United States orbital spaceplane system. The possible existence of the Blackstar program was reported in March 2006 by Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine; the magazine reported that the program had been underway since at least the early 1990s, and that the impetus for Blackstar was to allow the United States government to retain orbital reconnaissance capabilities jeopardized following the 1986 Challenger disaster. The article also said that the United States Air Force's Space Command was unaware of Blackstar, suggesting it was operated by an intelligence agency such as the National Reconnaissance Office.
Bill Sweetman is a former editor for Jane's and currently an editor for Aviation Week group. He is a writer of more than 50 books on military aircraft. He lives in Oakdale, Minnesota. He is noted for his dogged pursuit of the Aurora project. He appeared as an Aerospace Consultant on in the Nova PBS TV program "Battle of the X-Planes" about the Joint Strike Fighter Program.
Pyotr (Petr) Yakovlevich Ufimtsev is a Soviet Russian electrical engineer and mathematical physicist, considered the seminal force behind modern stealth aircraft technology. In the 1960s he began developing equations for predicting the reflection of electromagnetic waves from simple two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects.
Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson was an American aeronautical and systems engineer. He is recognized for his contributions to a series of important aircraft designs, most notably the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird. Besides the first production aircraft to exceed Mach 3, he also produced the first fighter capable of Mach 2, the United States' first operational jet fighter, as well as the first fighter to exceed 400 mph, and many other contributions to various aircraft.
The Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, nicknamed Wraith, is an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by Lockheed Martin and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While the USAF has released few details on the UAV's design or capabilities, defense analysts believe that it is a stealth aircraft fitted with aerial reconnaissance equipment. Introduced in 2007, it was deployed to Afghanistan in late 2007, and to South Korea two years later, in September 2009. Some images and details of the aircraft were released after Iran captured an RQ-170 in 2011. It has a flying wing design, and uses a single engine, speculated to be either a General Electric TF34 turbofan or a Garrett TFE731.
The Lockheed Martin X-56 is an American modular unmanned aerial vehicle that is being designed to explore High-Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) flight technologies for use in future military unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
The Lockheed Martin SR-72, colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird", is an American hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) proposed privately in 2013 by Lockheed Martin as a successor to the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. In 2018, company executives said an SR-72 test vehicle could fly by 2025 and enter service in the 2030s.
The Northrop Grumman RQ-180 is an American stealth unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance aircraft intended for contested airspace. As of 2019, there had been no images or statements released, but evidence points to the existence of the RQ-180 and its use in regular front-line service.
