Happy Monday, everyone. Below you’ll find an interesting video to give you material to show your crazy uncle during the holidays.
Despite the title, this video doesn’t show a UAV going cross country on a flatbed truck. It shows what looks like one of Northrop Grumman’s X-47B drones being shipped to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland from California, a Northrop spokesman just confirmed to DT. Remember, the two X-47Bs are being sent to Pax River where they’ll practice aircraft carrier take-offs and landings on a strip of runway painted to resemble a flight deck. After that, the drones will perform the real thing using this technology.
Yes, its shrink wrapped but you can clearly see the profile of the aircraft’s nose and air intake beneath the packaging. You can also see the plane’s landing gear, too.
Click through the jump for the video:
{ 87 comments… read them below or add one }
“Despite the title, this video doesn’t show a UAV going cross country on a flatbed truck.”
Uh, that’s exactly what it shows. It doesn’t show a UFO going cross country on a flatbed truck.
Define UFO. If you aren't some Aircraft Nerd you probably dont know what it is..
UFO: Unidentified Flying Object.
While this Object may not be immediately Identifiable to everyone it is most definitely not Flying therefore not a UFO.
that is so stupid its not flying so its not a ufo , so you see a plane on the ground does that mean it doesn't fly? its like where trying to add and your asking what is a number , …my thought are this looks not new but does look advanced , i belive they been having some equipment and or some sort of planes for years now and when people saw them back then they thought it was aliens but it was just planes we never saw before or were used to (roswell i think was in the 50, when you can see a change into technology)
Really? The author made a typo. It was supposed to say UFO. Why do I know this? Look at the title of the story. Also note, the aircraft IS a UAV. For those that say it is not flying and therefore not a UFO, then an aircraft on the ground is just a craft by your logic.
Unidentified Flatbed Object?
That’s a nice looking….drone….ufo…drone…airplane….spacecraft…drone thingy. I guess.
That has to be one hell of a freight bill. I know here in NC the permits required for something like that is crazy. It will probably come through here on I40. Why not fly it?
Versus the cost of losing the aircraft to some flight malfunction in transit? Case of being penny wise and dollar foolish.
Why not put it in a big crate?!
Might have been concerned some Iranian foreign exchange student would jam it.
Or, you know, in a cargo plane.
Its too wide for a cargo plane, and I doubt the 747s that carried the Space Shuttle would work either.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iBNhLVkZV1M/TQps-sRWfBI…
Mental picture of the person calling in to report "a flying saucer on the back of a 18-wheeler"…….LOL. Made my day.
@AirSix. Observe. The tractor has 2 steering wheels, 3×4 drive wheels + the lowbed had 3×4 tag wheels=26 wheels.
I am going to go with a UFO because that's just more… fun.
Disney's had one of those on their Backlot Tour for years now.
Was Flight of the Navigator a Disney film? I totally got that impression from the video.
Yep, that's the one.
I'm not sure you could get a UAV flight path across the US. They are restricted to very specific areas where they care allowed to fly. I suppose it would have been more expensive to ship by sea. There's probably going to be a lot more towns/highways where they will have to close traffic, take up power lines, remove signs, etc. You should have seen them take the COORS beer fermenting tanks from KIng George, Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley, only $180,106 just for local cost not including the truckers fee. They looked like huge rocket ships ( http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/112005/11… (http://www.virginiadot.org/newsroom/culpeper/2006/seventh_tank_transport_set15042.asp) 11 hours to go 95 miles
So basically our military flies into other countries whenever it wants but can't get a flight permit in our own?
Pretty much. The FAA isn't comfortable with unmanned aircraft in the same flight patterns as passenger jets. Figuring that out has been a work in progress for the last 10 years. Obviously we care a lot more about the safety of our airspace than other countries :)
I think the guy meant stick the thing atop one of those ugly 747-looking NASA planes used to move space shuttles from one coast to the other and fly it as cargo, not fly the thing itself.
Reminds me of the scene from the movie "Flight of the Navigator"
http://imcdb.org/images/153/153.jpg
i wonder was the shape of this too irregular to fit on a c-5 galaxy?
If that's the case, how did the X-47 get to Afghanistan in the first place?
Your thinking about the RQ-170…
Yep, you're right. All I saw was the flying wing.
Looks like they took the wings off for the truck ride. Even then it just might be too wide to fit in the C-5.
Yeah, too wide for the C-5. To transport F-18s and F-16s they basically have to slice the wings off the fuselage to fit it in a C-5. Wiki says with the wings folded the X-47 is about 30 feet wide. Looking at the video that seems correct.
they should of shipped two of them at once. They drill a hole through the middle of each and fasten a fork to the front one and some gears and chains to the back one and make a huge motorcycle.
I am in love with X-47B!
Finally, somebody gets this right. I want a job at DARPA so bad. ;-D
"… And they asked us not to say a whole lot about it."
So you get on national TV and talk about what you saw. Good job, retard.
That was probably said so as to keep people out of the way so they could ship it.
Gee…I think maybe they know more than you do about what they were and were not supposed to say. He didn't say ANYTHING about it other than they shipped it.
By the way What can do the X-47B? Or What do they research with it?
It's a chinese spy! lol
wish i could give you more thumbs up for that one :D
I appreciate your sensitivity to nuance. No sarcasm.
Would it be too much to ask for them to take a detour around Roswell N.M., just to keep the conspiracy theorists occupied for another couple of decades?
Iranian export or import?
Better to have self destruct mode for export
What about the drone the Iranians have?….is the US just screwed about that one?…what would be the consequences of an airstrike to blow up the building its housed in, dammit, we are the US, what the hell can they do about it if the building was leveled?…..just bomb it late at night when the least amount of people would be present….someome help me out, what am I missing?…
About half of your brain, I should think.. You simply can't go around flipping bombs/missiles at targets in sovereign countries. Not that it's stopped the US before, mind you. It's the breathtaking arrogance of (some) Americans, which gobsmacks me: "…we are the US, what the hell can they do about it?…".
I would love to see your reaction if another country bombed a target in the continental US. I doubt you'd be quite so gung-ho.
Come on now Mick the U.S. have been flying those types of missions since the Cold War and those were manned missions.
There's still something "fishy" about the whole RQ-170 snafu. Typically the mlitary replies with "No Comment" or "We can neitther confirm or deny". But they replied and validated auhtenticity almost too quickly. It was as if theey were anxious to say, "Yup you got us all right". Then there are the cosmetic anomalies. Seems there is more propaganda flyying around than UAVs. in Iran…
Maybe they didn't knock down the real one. Send in a mockup and see what that electronic warfare team was doing. Now they have the electronic signatures for what they were doing. Keep the real one hidden and only flown at night. We keep our bird, the Iranians have a really good model made by some special effects team in hollywood.
"dammit, we are the US, what the hell can they do about it if the building was leveled?"
Ummm, perhaps incite a deep hatred of the US throughout the Islamic world until once again some very determined individuals decide to fly plane loads of people into our tall buildings… or something like that.
I would think: Common Sense
we don't want it blown up or returned because it's a fake. just the fact that the iranians don't have it torn apart to show the world our tech should be the first clue. then there's the color and sheen (look at the X-47B), also the inlet has a "grill" (again look at the real aircraft) and they won't show the bottom (because it's unfinished and they couldn't match the landing gear). lastly the story upon how they acquired it keeps changing so add all of this up and it's reasonable to say it's a poor mockup of pictures of prototypes and the real deal.
here's the real question, why is our military and government going along with this farce?
this is not an X-47B its an RQ-170 copy that i ordered on ebay from China! and it just shipped :)
It's the same thing back in the cold war when I head this story.
Back then, when the Russians firt made the huge Typhoon class SSBN, they wanted to test it out to see if our defense can detect it. So they send a Typhoon on a "stunt" run on our East Coast to test our defenses. Unfortunatly, it got tracked by a L.A. class hunter-killer sub all the way from the mid atlantic to the coast. We got some great sound sigiture on the Typhoon also.
So the story goes, when the navy got it, they were really happy, then someone piped up, "Now What?" he asked. Everyone went "What do you mean?" "What I mean is this, is it a really good idea to let the Russians know they've been had?" Everyone all of a sudden went silent cause there was a point. If we acted like a blind man, then we will have a HUGE tactical advantage. The Russian will be kept blind and dumb, they will think they got the advantage when they dont. If we let them know, then the Russians will of course improve the Typhoon and try to find a way around our defenses, which will let us out to dry. It was such a connundrum that it went all the way up to Sec of Navy to decide.
So is this next drone to crash in Pakistan or Iran? I am sure this one really does have secrets we don't want the Chinese to steal.
Are you sure the "secrets we don't want the Chinese to steal", are not already in their hands?
I would hope they are, perhaps a lil smallpox too ;) How stupid do u really think we are?
hide and watch ;)
Actually, why didn't they just go down to Whitehouse, OLF, down outside of Jacksonville, FL, where they already have a land-based carrier deck located? The folks at Pax River could send a detachment down there for a year or so to get the stuff done.
Because the Navy tests everything at Pax. Kinda like the Air Force tests everything at Edwards. Its easier to move the Jet to Pax rather than move the jet, and the teams and equipment to test these things elsewhere.
Hey yall it's official. Japan has officially selected the F-35 as the F-X program winner.
Wait !! That is the drone we shot down over the Mojave Desert from Iran…now we are even!!
just saw one of the two X47B's getting delivered to PAX Naval Air Station.. quite a sight.
You can see the landing gear clearly in lower right hand of that photo…like they say on ESPN…C'mon man!.
I can not believe that this is UFO. I am wondered so thanks for this post with picture. If you need any information you can click here.
http://cmtfordummy.blogspot.com
Made with Chicom parts??
Geez some small town housewife reporting….".it's a flying saucer!!!" First thing anybody should have noticed was the conventional lading gear it was sitting on.
I dunno, this is a tough one. I'm gonna have to go with it being a UFO.
Potato or potatoe? Millions of opinions.
The Military better smarten up and put a self-destruct package on these things to preserve their secrets. Who's the moron flying them without one!
Who do you think?
The commander and idiot.
Obama Bin Lyin!
Of course it's a UFO!
look at the chatter. It obviously is un identified and it is flying down the road.
Ergo UFO!
Back in the days of the NIKE series missiles testing at WSMR. each missile was equiped with an explosive device. If the missile veered off course, Range Safety Officer could detonate the explosive and destroy the missile. WHY WASN'T THE DRONE FITTED WITH A DEVICE SUCH AS THE MISSILES SO IT COULD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED INSTEAD OF FALLING INTO ENEMY HANDS.. ME THINKS I SMELL A RAT SOMEWHERE
I think I smell an ignorant person who doesn't realize that a drone is not a missile, and the "safety feature would notcome into play. And unless you had A LOT of explosives (which would make these harder to fly) then they would just get hte parts anyway.
No wonder America is in trouble. These people vote. Morons.
Are there dimwits that REALLY thought this was a spaceship??
What the hell is wrong with that lady? She calls is a "funny sphere" then proclaims "That looks like a UFO!" while bobbing her head like a maniacal clown. It is not funny, nor is it a sphere. . .and more importantly it was not flying! Is it any wonder that we need vigilant people in law enforcement? Citizens such as she don't even know what the hell they're seeing, and they proudly proclaim to the world that they are so stupid that they don't know what a sphere is and that something being hauled on a truck must be flying.
What is wrong with you that you don't realize that the word UFO has become more than just the what the acronym stands for. Most people are not pathetically anal like you and think "Well…it is not flying! So it can't be a UFO."
If an alien civilization ever did visit us in a ship, yes…99.99999% of the world would STILL call it a UFO even after it landed.
…They are restricted to very specific areas where they care allowed to fly…
Wait a minute – It's a stealthy UAV, so you don't need permission…
Silly Obama voters!
On Auguast 12, 1957, the Navy conducted operations aboard CVS-36 Antetium thre planewas an F3D and the piklotand co-pilot were passangers Flying drtoneson to or from aircraft carriers are old stuff. We did it in WW2 withtgeTDR -2.
I was a member of the Ukrainian underground movement from 1944 – 1948. I a sense
we were primitive in communication, but from present view modern because all none wire communications could be eavesdropped. But the population sent us intelligence
messages by hanging certain pots on the fense to be "Dried", or performing certains daily chores sound of which could be heard far away in forests, or at night pasting them
in a certain form to stop cold air from broken window pain. It's all in my UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) memoirs, http://www.windingpathtofreedom.com
I wondered what that was when it went through my town. Thought it might have been something from the A.F. museum.
It doesn’t look like the craft on the truck. Flight of the Navigator sh.t
I don't think it came from CA. I think it shipped from a hanger at Wright Pat…….
Can the editors delete this thread? It is dumb.
That is a different aircraft, it is Boeing owned and not Navy owned, so Boeing could do what it wanted to it. The Navy does not have the assets or the money in the program pay the bill to have a 747 refitted for the X-47B specs.
And it cannot fly across the country because of the FAA rules preventing unmanned aircraft operating in commercial airspace.