Northrop TACIT BLUE

Tacit Blue also had to meet a broad radar frequency band no matter where the aircraft was being illuminated since it was for near-front line battlefield surveillance plus had to deal with the infrared, visual, acoustic elements and operating the LPI radar, pretty tall order for that time period. B-2 had to meet the same requirements. Northrop did spend a lot of money to develop their RCS prediction code for any shaped air vehicle which definitely paid off and a lot of pole testing at the range to boot. TSSAM and YF-23 directly benefited from Tacit Blue and I would assume other non-acknowledged programs as well.
 
That’s the first belly pic I’ve seen…a big manned cruise missile ;)
 
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martinbayer said:
everything with wings looks better with canards.
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A bit of a tangent to the topic, but right under this monitor atop the stack of books which raise it to a better height is a Matchbox diecast SB82 Pusher Prop, an attractive little sky blue and white T-tail canard looking like something from Piaggio or Beechcraft or Velocity.
 
piko1 said:
You are not far from the truth but in Germany its called ET403 aka the father of the ICE
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Aw man, in the 1980s and 1990s I had one of those in DB paint scheme with red window band in HO scale by Lima; it vanished in a move.
Great looking train. Miss the model to this day. And very much remember it having picked up "Donald Duck" nickname.
 
Does anyone have information on any aircraft or programs that were post Tacit Blue but Pre YF-23 more in line with an F-111 sized aircraft or role?
 
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Hansblix said:
Does anyone have information on any aircraft or programs that were post Tacit Blue but Pre YF-23 more in line with an F-111 sized aircraft or role?
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You would have to look at Tony Chong's book but there may have been programs still classified and prohibited from publication during that time frame, the only one I know of would be FB-23 which was in parallel with YF/F-23 and a derivative.
 
USAFM R&D hangar as of 2015
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All the R&D stuff has moved into the new hangar 4 at the main museum complex. Which is partly unfortunate - in the R&D hangar, there were no barriers or anything. One could crawl around under the aircraft and take pictures of weirdo antennas and markings.
 
From what I understood, a production Tacit Blue would have been much more blended, I bet it would have been a pretty cool looking machine. When I started at Pico in 1986, I was supposed to get cleared to a revived program but then funding was pulled, could have been a continuation of TB for maybe other missions?
 
Hydroman said:
From what I understood, a production Tacit Blue would have been much more blended, I bet it would have been a pretty cool looking machine. When I started at Pico in 1986, I was supposed to get cleared to a revived program but then funding was pulled, could have been a continuation of TB for maybe other missions?
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Timeframe would fit for QUARTZ, which Northrop could have been brought back into at that point. To the best of my knowledge QUARTZ round 1 was Ventura though.

It also could have been TACIT BLUE itself, if they wanted to continue using it for ATB risk reduction.

QUARTZ was a reason that DoD was not interested in a production TACIT BLUE.
 
quellish said:
To the best of my knowledge QUARTZ round 1 was Ventura though.
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Just to make sure I understand you precisely, you are saying: "To the best of my knowledge, Northrop's submission for QUARTZ round 1 was developed and submitted by the company's Ventura Division."
 
aim9xray said:
Just to make sure I understand you precisely, you are saying: "To the best of my knowledge, Northrop's submission for QUARTZ round 1 was developed and submitted by the company's Ventura Division."
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Correct, under Kresa if I recall correctly.
"Round 2" was the 1986-1988 time frame, when the future of QUARTZ was in doubt because of design flaws in the chosen design for Round 1. In round 2 Lockheed and Boeing's relationships were changed drastically around a redesign of the aircraft.
It is entirely possible that Northrop submitted a revised/resurrected design of their own for round 2.
 
What do you see as the timeframe for Round One?
 
Thanks to all the folks that posted drawings. I was thinking of an RC version of it so I did some CAD work to figure out scale and parts locations.
Anyone know anything about the body flap in the tail? Was it used as a landing flap or something else?
 

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The flap may have been used for pitch up if required during landing similar to the Have Blue Platypus flap.
 
eflight said:
Thanks to all the folks that posted drawings. I was thinking of an RC version of it so I did some CAD work to figure out scale and parts locations.
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You'd work on wing/fuselage/chine interaction
 
Hydroman said:
The flap may have been used for pitch up if required during landing similar to the Have Blue Platypus flap.
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Thanks for that response. Made me do a search for "platypus" and I found a fantastic article on Tacit Blue development.
Turns out the flap on the back was a "Gust alleviation surface. Gust load alleviation surface, GLAS. "

For anyone interested in Tacit Blue or Have Blue read the following article.

Oral history interview with John Cashen. Second Interview.​


https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/45051/
 
eflight said:
Thanks for that response. Made me do a search for "platypus" and I found a fantastic article on Tacit Blue development.
Turns out the flap on the back was a "Gust alleviation surface. Gust load alleviation surface, GLAS. "

For anyone interested in Tacit Blue or Have Blue read the following article.

Oral history interview with John Cashen. Second Interview.​


https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/45051/
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Interesting that Tacit Blue used the flap as a GLAS. The B-2 Surface 1 ("Beavertail") was for gust load alleviation as well. At the B-2 CTF during flight testing, some of our flight test missions were "gust sniffer" flights to search for turbulence, fly low altitude in the gust conditions in order to test GLAS performance.
 
Hydroman said:
Interesting that Tacit Blue used the flap as a GLAS. The B-2 Surface 1 ("Beavertail") was for gust load alleviation as well. At the B-2 CTF during flight testing, some of our flight test missions were "gust sniffer" flights to search for turbulence, fly low altitude in the gust conditions in order to test GLAS performance.
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Bet those were pucker-inducing for the first few times...
 

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