From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #247 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Friday, 21 April 1995 Volume 05 : Number 247 In this issue: German Stealth Fighter Black project declass...? See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kathryn & Andreas Gehrs-Pahl Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 12:32:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: German Stealth Fighter On Friday, March 10, 1995, John Burtenshaw mentioned an article from _Flight International_ about a German stealth fighter project. Here is some more information, summarized from the German aviation magazine _Flug Revue_, issue 3/95, page 59. From 1981 to 1987, engineers at MBB / Messerschmidt Boelkow-Blohm (later DASA / Deutsche Aerospace, and now Daimler-Benz Aerospace) worked on the development of a stealth fighter for the German Air Force (Bundes Luftwaffe). The project was called _Lampyridae_ (which means 'Gluehwuermchen' in German and 'Firefly' in English) and was headed by Dr. Gerhard Loebert. MBB also developed a software package for RCS calculation, similar to Lockheed's 'Echo' RCS-calculation program. They finally built an unpowered 3/4 scale model (length 12 m, span 6 m), which was 'flown' by a test pilot inside the 9.5 x 9.5 m2 test area of the Deutsch-Niederlaendischen Windkanal (German-Dutch-Wind-Tunnel). Before the tethered model was flown to speeds up to 225 km/h (120 kts) followed by a safe landing, the pilot trained several hours in a flight simulator. The 15 test flights confirmed the good aerodynamic nature of the concept. At any speeds and AoA between zero and 27 degree, the sharp angles of the fuselage and wings created a stable vortex-system, which was responsible for very constant forces and momentums. The aircraft was supposed to be small, light and stealthy, utilizing only half the number of facets of the F-117, and would avoid any air-to-air engagements. Its RCS was supposed to be 20 to 30 dB below the RCS of a conventional design. MBB built a full-scale RCS-measurement model (length 16 m, span 8 m) in 1987, which confirmed the predictions made with the software program, showing a lower RCS than even the F-117. The project did not result in any other hardware, and it seems that there are no procurement plans for stealthy aircraft for the German Air Force. Any more specific data is still classified. The article also includes a three-view drawing of an mid-delta-wing (F-106 planform) aircraft, which looks like a cross between a 'Have Blue' XST prototype and the W.W.II Lippish DM-1 glider. One interesting point is that the layout dosen't show any angle repetitions at all. All angles (except the fuselage cross-section, which looks like a "<>") are unique. - -- Andreas - --- --- Andreas & Kathryn Gehrs-Pahl E-Mail: schnars@ais.org 313 West Court St. #305 or gpahl@raptor.csc.flint.umich.edu Flint, MI 48502-1239 or gehrs-pahl@buick.flint.umich.edu Tel: (810) 238-8469 or gpahl@cyberspace.org - --- --- ------------------------------ From: MiGEater2@aol.com Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 15:12:20 -0400 Subject: Black project declass...? I received this from another news group. Should be interesting to see what comes out of this regarding past Skunk Works projects. Cheers to all, John >> You may not have noticed, but President Clinton signed an interesting Executive Order two days ago. To quote the Seattle Times: "The primary element of the order is the automatic declassification without review of most documents that are 25 years oldor older. Previously, documents remained classified indefinitely. Now, unless the document fits into a group of narrow exceptions, it will automatically be open to public view." "The order also puts a 10-year-limit on how long documents remain classified, requiring that after that period they become public unless a review determines they should not be. A number of other steps - less substantive and called mostly rehtorical by outside experts - also puts the Clinton White House on the side of quicker, easier declassification." As noted later in the article, "millions, perhaps billions, of pages of documents might emerge in numerous areas". - ------------------------------------------------------------------- David Lednicer | "Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics" Analytical Methods, Inc. | email: dave@amiwest.com 2133 152nd Ave NE | tel: (206) 643-9090 Redmond, WA 98052 USA | fax: (206) 746-1299 << ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #247 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@mail.orst.edu A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from mail.orst.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).