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:
{ 131 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.
I think this is the worst way to ship a drone plane. These things are ship in C-5's which are faster and cheaper. This mode of transport just gives terrorists the chance to either study them or destroy them. These are steath drones. they are expensive and high tech. Why for the love pete, would we pack them on such slow target.
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.
Is it not a flying machine?
people are fricking out just to see it towing. Imaging if this thing is flying…
why didn't they fly it there?
becuz there r rules, u cant fly an unmanned aircraft in commercial airspace.
It's a drone – pilotless and not sufficently tested or approved to fly over populated citizens.
This project most likely funded many tiers of 'public infrastructure' on it's journey, by the Fees, Assessments, Taxes, Permits, Restriction relaxing $$$$, and multitude of Jobs created. Got to be a profit, to sustain bureaucracy of govt in some fashion, even if/especially if, the taxPayers are picking up the tab.
Beautiful craft. Reminiscent of the German 'Horton' (concept)…from the 1940's. Those Germans, always ingenious and productive. No wonder that Europe, even/especially today, desperately relies on them….. for financial Sustainability. Boeing is wise for following the Germans. Maybe things would be different,…. IF WWII had—???
Neither of these UAVs is cleared for flying in unrestricted airspace. They are not operational. Have to truck them or barge them. The program chose to truck them.
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.
what's the big deal…it would take my wife 11 hours to drive 95 miles!
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.
That's right, Wooly. This 18-wheeler has 26 wheels!
yeah, aliens put landing gear and landing lighting on their saucer to confuse us. lol. Knuckleheads
I am going to go with a UFO because that's just more… fun.
It cant be an UFO cuz its not flying :P
what a dope
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.
"… 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.
Reminds me of the scene from the movie "Flight of the Navigator"
http://imcdb.org/images/153/153.jpg
Looks real similar to that movie….. I loved that movie growningup!!!!
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.
I am in love with X-47B!
Finally, somebody gets this right. I want a job at DARPA so bad. ;-D
me too it looks awsome
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?
Even if they have a real drone, what are they going to do with it? They have no ability to deploy it or use it in any truly meaningful way. The drone itself is really just the tip of the iceberg as far as the operation behind the drone is concerned. Too bad to lose it, but it doesn't really benefit the Iranians all that much. It's a PR coup as much as anything.
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.
Ahhh yes…the nuber 47 with extra duck sauce!
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!.
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.
So you presume 'alien' ships don't need landing gear? Hovering silently in ground effect perhaps after its pilot toggles the systems shutdown switch? This information is classified.
we don't know how to fly it,so we attached some landing gear to the bottom of craft.That way we can transport it to the next gov. personal and see if they can make it go!
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!
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.
it was, the drone was bombarded with interference so it could not read the destruct message. In electronic warfare, he who has the more powerful transmitter wins and that power drops when moving away from the transmitter. If the destrcut code is sent from 1,000 miles in space, then Iranian would need less than 1/10th the signal strength to overide the command if the transmitter was 10 miles from the target.
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.
Learn how to spell or turn on your spell-check.
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…….
Yea, sure, they just want you to believe that we haven't captured the spacecraft from aliens landing on this planet who are out to take over the entire world. The gov't just wanted to carry this plane across the country because it can't fly and we don't have a place to land it when we do. The next thin you know, they will be telling us the moon landing was real and the Earth isn't flat ("it's turtles all the way down")
Nothing to see her, move along.
OOooooooooooo…………….. Lets go with the "freaky"………. It's really an alien space craft. The landing gear and intake nozzel are bogus and only there to throw you off. The unit is actually hovering above the trailer and can not escape due to the force shield eminating from the dark gray unit under the ass end of the Saucer. The Aliens that were flying the Saucer are actually disguised as humans and have taken over the 18-wheeler so they can get it to a remote and secure location to enact repairs or probably have the cosmic version of AAA come and tow it back to their service/repair center. It's all part of the Republican Coverup being conducted by the Alien Science Seminars With InvestigationsProperly Encouraged. (ASS WIPE). OOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooo………….. So-o-o-o-o-o Fre-e-e-e-eakyyy
The tires were a dead give-away. Why every decent respectable extra terrestrial I know don’t need tires on their vehicle; they generally glide and hover along.
that plane looks badass
Am I the only one wondering why they just did not fly it across country?
Thank you! Either fly it or ship repair parts to its location.
i saw it crashing
This looks like a jet with round wings.
X-47B shape not match what in the 18 weeler,so the military hide something
yeah i was looking at the shape too and no it does not match
They marched it through the DC area as a prequel to actual UFO's that will be visiting Washington later this summer so that we wouldn't freak out. It's all part of the conspiracy , man! Alien invasion…here it comes!
At least they did not say a big foot was flying it.. otherwise BOBO would be all over that
Is agent scully and molder on their way to investigate this?!!? The truth is out there…..
It's really a conspiracy it's really a UFO the government wants us to think its a X-47B
Could this really have been called a UFO in the first place? The vehicle was never in the air, so it pretty much rules out the "flying object" portion of UFO.
Also, if it was a UFO, dont you think that aliens that could navigate through space would find a better way to land? I would think that using wheels on an alien vessel would make them the laughing stock of all of their friends ;)
Military clears up or covers up?
WTF
this video is the one that brought me to this site lol
one of the truck drivers was quoted saying "Klaatu barada nikto" over and over and looking very nervous.
the 'landing gear' are fake, used to stabilize the craft during transport – they watched flight of the navigator and decided that they should prop it up and not cover it with a blanket to make it seem more plausible. Also, it's not the true shape of the craft, it's actually a composite shell used to disguise it.
Obviously its not some flying saucer,but instead something the military has been working on,but what's killing me is,i don't see why that's just as okay with everyone. i think it is making a mockery of the american peolpe,but obviously that's what our government does best anyways… they wont disclose certain secrets and bases to the public and taxpayers that pay for them,and with all the mystery,money and secrecy that surrounds this issue,you would think the citizens of the United States would demand better transparency! But no,we're just all excited like attention starved little kids. Shame,shame.
What kind of military secrets could they have if they told everyone?
Excuse me American public, could you sign this non-disclosure statement, then we will tell you all about the "secret" tests we conduct, and take you on tours of the "secret" installations. But you have to promise not to tell anyone, post the pictures on the web, or even have pillow talk with your spouse about it.
How do you propose a military maintain any kind of edge if they have "transparency"? And if they did have it, how many conspiracy people would say it was a lie to cover up the truth? Wait, maybe you're on to something, no one would believe our government was telling the truth, we can hide the facts right out in the open.
<adjusts hat for better coverage>
"… And they asked us not to say a whole lot about it."
So you go onto national TV and talk about what you saw. Good work, retard.
"Sumbitch just landed on my neighbors mobile home!"
hard to believe it could be a UFO when no serious science has proven that aliens exist.
Actually….the Govt. created the X47B just so they could ship this UFO across the country!!!!! LOL
it's a digital camera with wings
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.
http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2010/05/ancient-cave-p…
Flying saucers have been reported since the Neanderthal times. Yeah, the U.S. military must have been around before the U.S. itself!