This is a weird one, a Lockheed saucer....

The photo of the “saucer” appears to have been taken at the Helendale RCS range in the low bay under the pole.

I believe there was a photo published of the same saucer a few years ago when press got a tour of the Skunk Works facility at Palmdale.

More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
 
quellish said:
More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
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This is Ronnie Olsthoorn art for a famous AWST NG RQ-180 revelation article based on one of dropped NG SensorCraft iterations.
 
flateric said:
quellish said:
More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
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This is Ronnie Olsthoorn art for a famous AWST NG RQ-180 revelation article based on one of dropped NG SensorCraft iterations.
Click to expand...

Well at some point in the future I hope to have accurate renderings made of the actual QUARTZ design from accurate 3 views for my “new” project

At any rate the “saucer” is almost definitely a pole calibration model. I am fairly certain it was photographed inside Palmdale in the last several years and posted to Twitter or Facebook while someone was on an X-59 tour or similar. I have not been able to locate that photo though
 
I don't think I've ever seen any Lockheed's ATB proposal depiction up until today, Thank you so much for sharing sublight_!
 
quellish said:
The photo of the “saucer” appears to have been taken at the Helendale RCS range in the low bay under the pole.

I believe there was a photo published of the same saucer a few years ago when press got a tour of the Skunk Works facility at Palmdale.

More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
Click to expand...

Maybe the saucer and the artists rendering/quartz are "substitute" photographs for the actual projects that he cannot place on the wall.
 
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
 
You must study QUARTZ thread then
 
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
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Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
 
bcredman said:
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
Click to expand...
Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
Click to expand...
Very plausible indeed, but I figured the OP knows the engineer in question and if he worked at both companies he would have told us so… but maybe I’m assuming to much.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
I'm more interested in the ATB drawing. Where's the video from? I'll try to capture and perspective correct the various photos.
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These came from a zillow virtual walk through of a real estate listing in 2020. If somebody wants to figure out which listing this was, I am sure Zillow could pull up the original images. But if anybody can figure out who listed it, I will just ask the owner for a copy of the pics....
 
I've reverse searched the image and found the original in a Reddit post.
The poster is new-to-reddit-20 and seems to be still active as of a week ago, if anyone wants to ask him more details.

This is what he said about the picture further on in the thread:
This photo is from a virtual home tour of couple that worked at LM Skunkworks. Unfortunately As I no longer work at the same organization as one of them, I can't ask directly. I find it funny they left all this stuff on the wall, on a public resource... Let me know your thoughts! The room this was taken from was a treat to view. So much cool history hanging on walls and sitting on shelves.
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Q-nimbus said:
bcredman said:
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
Click to expand...
Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
Click to expand...
Very plausible indeed, but I figured the OP knows the engineer in question and if he worked at both companies he would have told us so… but maybe I’m assuming to much.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but I worked closely with someone at a company, and I did not find out until I retired that we both had worked in the same branch of a government lab, but at different times earlier in our careers. I found this out only because I happened to read a research paper that he co-wrote with the same scientists we both had worked with in that branch. Because of proprietary restrictions and classification restrictions, often the safest default was not discussing one's previous work.
 
quellish said:
At any rate the “saucer” is almost definitely a pole calibration model. I am fairly certain it was photographed inside Palmdale in the last several years and posted to Twitter or Facebook while someone was on an X-59 tour or similar. I have not been able to locate that photo though
Click to expand...
The saucer at Helendale was nicknamed the Big Mac. There also was a smaller version for compact range testing called the Chicken McNugget. They were both RCS models related to the configuration development of the RQ-3A Darkstar, and very likely, a larger predecessor for the original Tier 3 UAV program.
I don't know when ADP's unique arrangement of an unswept wing with clamshell fuselage was first defined, but my best guess is the late 1980s. So it may have been part of AARS, possibly after the X-56-like HALE configuration (which I think was Quartz) was abandoned circa 1986.
 
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I see it as a 360 degree extrusion of a planar projection of a potential configuration used to test the easiest way an all aspect RCS (no need to rotate a model on the pole - all aspect RCS can be tested at once).
 
Lockheed was probably using the saucer shape to see what kind of LO results they could get. I had heard one of the stealthiest shapes is that of the saucer, just got to be able to control it. I remember in one of the wind tunnel model rooms at Northrop ASD-Pico around 1990, there was a model not of a pure saucer but of a very organic looking flying wing, almost manta/sting ray like. A couple of the guys in the shop said it was an evaluation project model, not a black program but a "gray" company funded IRAD project, I see some aspects of the model in the B-21. The model was very, very blended, almost a blended delta wing shape with a semi-pointy tail, kind of cool looking.
 
joewee said:
The saucer at Helendale was nicknamed the Big Mac. There also was a smaller version for compact range testing called the Chicken McNugget. They were both RCS models related to the configuration development of the RQ-3A Darkstar, and very likely, a larger predecessor for the original Tier 3 UAV program.
I don't know when ADP's unique arrangement of an unswept wing with clamshell fuselage was first defined, but my best guess is the late 1980s. So it may have been part of AARS, possibly after the X-56-like HALE configuration (which I think was Quartz) was abandoned circa 1986.
Click to expand...

The "clam" with a straight wing was defined and analyzed late in the DarkStar (not QUARTZ/AARS or Tier III) program (1994ish). In fact, an earlier configuration was built as an RC model and flown to demonstrate Lockheed knew what they were doing. Obviously any configuration that could be flown as an RC model was not anything like the final DarkStar configuration - that would require a complex flight control system.

The QUARTZ/AARS HALE configuration was very much like the X-56. In/about 1986 flight testing began, and ended in little pieces all over the Nevada desert.

The successor program, Tier III, settled on a Polecat-like configuration. Tier III-, the successor to the successor, tried to meet most of the RCS requirements in a smaller package that had much relaxed payload and capability. It was during Tier III and Tier III- that Lockheed and Boeing looked at many, many different configurations for meeting the always evolving requirements.

Hydroman said:
Lockheed was probably using the saucer shape to see what kind of LO results they could get. I had heard one of the stealthiest shapes is that of the saucer, just got to be able to control it. I remember in one of the wind tunnel model rooms at Northrop ASD-Pico around 1990, there was a model not of a pure saucer but of a very organic looking flying wing, almost manta/sting ray like. A couple of the guys in the shop said it was an evaluation project model, not a black program but a "gray" company funded IRAD project, I see some aspects of the model in the B-21. The model was very, very blended, almost a blended delta wing shape with a semi-pointy tail, kind of cool looking.
Click to expand...

The original "flying sauvers are stealthy" idea comes from GUSTO. At the time SEI tested a "flying saucer" (actually based on two bowls places on top of each other, one inverted), found it to have a "low" RCS, and took that information to Lockheed. Keep in mind, this was during the 1950s. The capabilities of their measurement facilities were..... less than what we have today. 0 dbsm would be "very low" by those standards.

Lockheed tested aircraft configurations based on the "flying saucer" as part of GUSTO. These were flying wings with chined triangular center bodies.

The key here was the chines. If you look at the A-12, TACIT BLUE, or the Helendale RCS model flying saucer in cross-section you will see some similiarities. Having an outer mold line that is a Gaussian distribution is a good thing for RCS (from some angles). This is the key thing about the "flying saucer". The Gaussian distribution has advantages. It is not magical stealth sauce, and it does not by itself produce a "stealthy" object, but it is another tool in the toolbox.
 
quellish said:
The "clam" with a straight wing was defined and analyzed late in the DarkStar (not QUARTZ/AARS or Tier III) program (1994ish). In fact, an earlier configuration was built as an RC model and flown to demonstrate Lockheed knew what they were doing. Obviously any configuration that could be flown as an RC model was not anything like the final DarkStar configuration - that would require a complex flight control system.

------

The successor program, Tier III, settled on a Polecat-like configuration. Tier III-, the successor to the successor, tried to meet most of the RCS requirements in a smaller package that had much relaxed payload and capability. It was during Tier III and Tier III- that Lockheed and Boeing looked at many, many different configurations for meeting the always evolving requirements.
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Sorry to take issue with your post-1986 chronology...

My firsthand knowledge is that the Big Mac and Chicken McNugget RCS models were built and tested under Lockheed IR&D in the 1987-1989 timeframe.

So working backwards from this firsthand knowledge point gets me to circa 1986 as the time when the saucer-wing configuration was initially laid out. That date conveniently fits our speculation that the X-56-like HALE vehicle crashed and burned in 1986, likely due to flutter divergence (per Ed Burnett). I don't know firsthand when it was adopted as the Lockheed/Boeing baseline design, but I'm quite sure it was before 1990.

The saucer-wing configuration pre-dates AARS cancellation (1992), as well as the initiation of Tier III (1993) and Tier III- (1994).

The assertion that the late-1980s AARS and subsequent Tier III both employed the same saucer-wing arrangement as the RQ-3A Darkstar is based on the following published accounts (in addition to other supporting info that is not for a public forum):
  • "Although AARS had been canceled in late 1992, [DoD acquisition chief] Deutch considered a smaller, less capable AARS as Tier III, for it was the only platform that fully satisfied the JROC mission need statement of 1990.", (Thomas Ehrhard's Mitchell Institute paper, pg 17).
  • "Tier III [was] a scaled-down AARS in the $150 million per copy range" (Ehrhard paper, pg 53).
  • "AARS, once a giant 200-plus-foot-wing bird with intercontinental capability, now as DarkStar shrunk to a 69-foot wingspan" (Ehrhard paper, pg 53).
  • "A Phase I design study and source selection was planned for Global Hawk, but that phase was skipped for DarkStar on the presumption that such work was performed in previous efforts.", (1999 Rand study Innovative Management in the DARPA HAE UAV Program, pg 14).
  • "The DarkStar was initiated as a sole-source procurement based on prior work on an analogous (but larger) system, whereas the Global Hawk went through a competitive phase" (Rand, pg 65).
  • A 1995 report on the stealthy DarkStar UAV, a direct descendant of AARS, said, “Most of the design was developed in technology work conducted over the last decade or more.” Michael A. Dornheim, “Mission of Tier
    3- Reflected In Design,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 19, 1995: 55.
Since the late 1980s, the saucer-wing arrangement has been scaled down from the original 250-ft wing span (AARS), then to a 150-ft wing span (Tier III) and then to a 70-ft wing span (RQ-3A Darkstar). An interesting footnote: according to Aviation Week (July 6, 2003 issue), two pre-production vehicles described as bigger Darkstars (100-ft wing span?) operated over Iraq in Gulf War II.

Prior to Darkstar, these LO HALE activities with changing names were unknowledged, and some activity may have also been waived SAPs. (definition: only the Congressional 'gang of eight' were privy.) Certainly we remain intrigued with these decades-old mysteries.

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edit: added some timeline detail
 
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