Speaker 1: Get in tests with technology with text stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a bright outlook on life. Now
Speaker 1: that the nice gentleman have had a little talk with me,
Speaker 1: Johnathan is suddenly a shiny, happy person. I have had
Speaker 1: what they like to call a personality readjustment. And I
Speaker 1: just want to say, yet again, thank you to all
Speaker 1: of the men and women who have worked at Lockey
Speaker 1: Skunk Works, the C I, A, N. S A, uh
Speaker 1: and all other type of secret organizations. Please God bless America. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: all right, let's move on to what was our timeline, right,
Speaker 1: that was where we left off. Yeah, we were right
Speaker 1: about to get to the sun Town. Yeah. Which that's
Speaker 1: something that Lauren and I know a lot about, seeing
Speaker 1: is how we're both such a complete translucent Yeah, we
Speaker 1: are vampire people. We we are the ones who hiss
Speaker 1: when the sun comes out. But the sun tan does
Speaker 1: not refer to anyone designed to you know, get an
Speaker 1: actual tan. That's not That's not what this is about.
Speaker 1: I believe it was so named. I imagine it was
Speaker 1: so named because it was a very high flying vehicle.
Speaker 1: And also it was using liquid hydrogen, hydrogen being very
Speaker 1: important with sun. Right, Yeah, hydrogens turned into helium the
Speaker 1: temperature of millions of degrees to do. So, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was meant to be a spy plane, So it was
Speaker 1: a sun. The Suntann was a spy plane that would
Speaker 1: fly on liquid hydrogen as its fuel. And as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that's that's kind of scary to develop because
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but hydrogen tends
Speaker 1: to be a volatile substance. Let's say. Yes, this project
Speaker 1: came about because of photos from a UTUB mission over
Speaker 1: Soviet Russia of hydrogen liquefication plants and they were afraid
Speaker 1: that that. The U. S. Government was afraid that the
Speaker 1: USSR was building a plane that could spy better than
Speaker 1: the U two. And we just can't have any of that.
Speaker 1: We could not have that. We do not truck with that,
Speaker 1: so says gunk Works was given nineties six million dollars
Speaker 1: to design their own hydrogen powered plane. So, uh, you
Speaker 1: just imagine this the early days of testing your liquid
Speaker 1: hydrogen production system. Uh, you you go to work in
Speaker 1: a bomb shelter. The walls of which are eight feet
Speaker 1: thick in case you happened to blow yourself up real
Speaker 1: good while you're working with liquid hydrogen, so that you
Speaker 1: don't blow your neighbors up real good as well. Really
Speaker 1: builds confidence. So the facility ended up investing in lots
Speaker 1: of stuff so that they could avoid any possible flames,
Speaker 1: including all the tools were non sparking. You weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to carry your keys in your pockets. To avoid any
Speaker 1: potential sparks. You had to have grounded boots so that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't create an electro statics charge. It was really
Speaker 1: really important, and they did pretty well up until they
Speaker 1: had a tiny, itsy bitsy fire. It was it was
Speaker 1: a stove fire. It wasn't it wasn't really that big,
Speaker 1: you know, and it but it took place like seven
Speaker 1: feet away from the main hydroge in tank. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying. I can't imagine what my reaction would be,
Speaker 1: nor can I imagine what my reaction would be when
Speaker 1: I found out the next thing that happened. Because this
Speaker 1: project was top secret, they wouldn't let firefighters into the
Speaker 1: building to control the flames, right, and they could not
Speaker 1: get the flames out with fire extinguishers. They had gone
Speaker 1: beyond that that level, and yet they could not also
Speaker 1: allow firefighters in because this top secret they did wind up,
Speaker 1: I mean, nothing exploded, turned out to be okay, Um,
Speaker 1: California is still there, so it didn't go boom. But
Speaker 1: but here's the things that the it really illustrated that
Speaker 1: that accident illustrate how potentially dangerous this this project was.
Speaker 1: And so because of its level of risk, it was
Speaker 1: decided that it was too much for lockeed to endure,
Speaker 1: and so they scrapped the project. Yeah. Also, Kelly, Kelly
Speaker 1: Johnson who we mentioned in the previous episode, wasn't personally
Speaker 1: sure whether these hydrogen engines were going to be able
Speaker 1: to go faster further than a conventional kerosene burning jet,
Speaker 1: and so you know, the final decision was like, here's
Speaker 1: your ninety million of the original ninety six back US government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want to blow things up like one. We cannot.
Speaker 1: We can't guarantee that it's going to perform at what
Speaker 1: we hope it will, and too, we can't guarantee it
Speaker 1: won't explode. So as an interesting side note, part of
Speaker 1: what spurred all this interest in liquid hydrogen was was
Speaker 1: also the CIA's discovery that Soviet scientists named Peter Kapista
Speaker 1: Yes had been taken out of a Soviet labor camp
Speaker 1: and put into a research institute. Um he he was.
Speaker 1: He was a specialist in in low pressure liquids, and
Speaker 1: it had turned out that he was working on the
Speaker 1: Sputnik for which he would win the Noble Prize in Sputnik,
Speaker 1: which we also refer to as the Satellite that Went Deep.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty much all it did apart from terrifying
Speaker 1: entire country, apart from kicking off a whole new section
Speaker 1: of the Cold War that we like to call the
Speaker 1: Space Race. Yeah, but that that old that'll that'll play
Speaker 1: in a little bit with Lockheed, although really skunk Works
Speaker 1: had very limited uh operations with the Space Race, although
Speaker 1: some of the people who would test fly some of
Speaker 1: their jets would end up walking on the fricking Moon,
Speaker 1: and NASA would continue to use some of their vehicles
Speaker 1: in testing exactly so May nineteen sixty a very important
Speaker 1: event happened, not directly related to Lockheed, but something that
Speaker 1: would would end up impacting them down the line. That
Speaker 1: was when the United States pilot Francis Gary Powers was
Speaker 1: shot down. He was flying a YouTube plane over Russia.
Speaker 1: Um he was shot down after I think they fired
Speaker 1: something like seven or eight missiles at him, and they
Speaker 1: also had a MiG in pursuit. The MiG got hit
Speaker 1: by one of the missiles and was destroyed. Um and
Speaker 1: Uh and Power said that he saw another parachute open
Speaker 1: after he had to eject. He actually could have bailed earlier,
Speaker 1: but stayed in his plane to make sure that would
Speaker 1: crash in an unpopulated forest area as opposed to crashing
Speaker 1: in a town, and he ejected from his plane. He
Speaker 1: landed safely. He was captured by the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: sentenced to three years in prison, followed by seven years
Speaker 1: hard labor, so ten years total. He would not have
Speaker 1: to serve out all that time. In nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: he was part of a prisoner exchange along with another
Speaker 1: Soviet prisoner and Uh. He was exchanged for a Colonel
Speaker 1: William Fisher. Uh It was was a Soviet KGB colonel
Speaker 1: on every tenth nineteen sixty two in Berlin, so he
Speaker 1: would return home. He was He was faced with lots
Speaker 1: of criticism, people who said that he should have activated
Speaker 1: a a self destruct mechanism that would have destroyed the
Speaker 1: equipment aboard the You two so that the Soviets couldn't
Speaker 1: get in charge of it. Some people said that he
Speaker 1: should have taken the c I A cyanide pill and
Speaker 1: committed suicide rather than be taken captured by the Soviets.
Speaker 1: I guess it's your job or something. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: eventually like the Officially people said, you did exactly what
Speaker 1: you were supposed to do, but he faced a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism at home. Um this this also sparked discussions
Speaker 1: about needs for for better spy plane. Something has to
Speaker 1: replace the YouTube because remember the You two had been
Speaker 1: launched the previous decade, and so you know clearly you
Speaker 1: don't want to have that spy plane flying ten years later.
Speaker 1: I say, as the You two is currently flying right now,
Speaker 1: more than fifty years after. So um this the the
Speaker 1: new project would be called the Youth three. Yeah, originally
Speaker 1: that was the original designation. They of course would change that,
Speaker 1: but that was what they first called it. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is also when I wanted to take a little
Speaker 1: side note to talk about what it's like to work
Speaker 1: at Lockheed, because I was reading an article that had
Speaker 1: an interview with Edward Lovick, who was a retired He
Speaker 1: retired Lockeed employee, and he was a radar expert. And
Speaker 1: the reason why I bring him up now is because
Speaker 1: this is about when Lockheeds started looking into ways to
Speaker 1: make planes harder to detect. So one of the ways
Speaker 1: of makeing a better spy plane is making one that
Speaker 1: can't be seen by radar or ground or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so U Lovick, who was probably one of the leading
Speaker 1: experts in radar at the time, simply he says, because
Speaker 1: he just started playing with it earlier than most people were. Um,
Speaker 1: he was very instrumental in trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: would make a plane harder to see by radar, and
Speaker 1: it took a while for them to figure this out.
Speaker 1: He talked about the fact that he would go with
Speaker 1: Kelly Johnson to some of these meetings with the CIA.
Speaker 1: And by the way, at that time, Lockheed was referring
Speaker 1: to the CIA as quote the customer end quote, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a great way of putting it. And
Speaker 1: he said that right before Lockeed got the new spy
Speaker 1: plane contract, we went to a hotel room for a meeting.
Speaker 1: It was Kelly Johnson. A few science advisors to the President,
Speaker 1: someone from the CIA, and myself. Pillows were put over
Speaker 1: the heating events and the room was checked for bugs
Speaker 1: before any of us spoke. He said that at the
Speaker 1: time he thought it was pretty silly, but by uh,
Speaker 1: you know, here's the thing is that during the Cold
Speaker 1: War there was a lot of spying going on on
Speaker 1: both sides. So while it sounds like you were being
Speaker 1: like incredibly paranoid to go to those kind of extremes
Speaker 1: to make sure that no one's listening, the fact is
Speaker 1: people were trying to listen. People are absolutely trying to listen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Luck heat. Around the same time, it also instituted a
Speaker 1: policy that if any of the employees were approached by
Speaker 1: someone uh born out of the US who wished to
Speaker 1: befriend them, that that they were supposed to inform management.
Speaker 1: It ran, Yeah, yeah, you don't like your your friend
Speaker 1: Boris who seems to be incredibly helpful and wants to
Speaker 1: introduce you to cheese plates. Yeah, introduce you to this
Speaker 1: new drink called vodka. You might want to report that first, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love It also ended up talking about what it
Speaker 1: was like to develop the technology they were working on
Speaker 1: at the time because at this point they weren't using computers.
Speaker 1: Computers were around in the in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: but very few places were using them at this point.
Speaker 1: So he says that the engine years were actually going
Speaker 1: about the old fashioned way with slide rules and just
Speaker 1: they were actually writing things down, planning it out on paper,
Speaker 1: and mixing chemicals by hand. Yeah, sometimes sometimes by feet.
Speaker 1: He talked about how they would mix chemicals and vats
Speaker 1: and it would often be like if you were stomping
Speaker 1: on grapes for wine exactly. He said, it was exactly
Speaker 1: the same stuff they were using. So they were really
Speaker 1: using foot power power to mix some of the stuff,
Speaker 1: which when you consider what some of that stuff is,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that all those people are okay. But
Speaker 1: then we get to nineteen sixty two. This is when
Speaker 1: they start working really seriously on developing a a stealth vehicle,
Speaker 1: although at the time they had not quite perfected the
Speaker 1: way of going about it, and they started with a
Speaker 1: program called the A twelve also known as ox cart Um.
Speaker 1: They wanted to make it an invisible plane. So nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two is when they started this ox cart program, right,
Speaker 1: But the CIA wouldn't declassify it until two thousand seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how secret it was. So it was again another
Speaker 1: collaborative effort between air Force CIA and lockeed just like
Speaker 1: the you two. It could travel at speeds of around
Speaker 1: two thousand miles per hour, and it was meant to
Speaker 1: reduce the radar cross section of the aircraft compared to
Speaker 1: earlier vehicles by making it smaller and making it out
Speaker 1: of other materials besides just you know, metal materials. Um.
Speaker 1: This was before they had figured out that the real
Speaker 1: secret to making a plane signature disappear was not in
Speaker 1: how large or small the plane was, but rather in
Speaker 1: the surface angles and how they create bounts of of
Speaker 1: of the radar exactly. So you know, we would eventually
Speaker 1: learned that you could actually have a pretty large aircraft
Speaker 1: that could still be effectively invisible to radar if the
Speaker 1: surfaces were shaped the right way. This was before we
Speaker 1: knew that. So UM thirteen A twelve aircraft were produced
Speaker 1: under ox Cart and they actually would be tested again
Speaker 1: at Groom Lake, also known as Aera fifty one, which
Speaker 1: while I still want to do that episode, I have
Speaker 1: been convinced that we can put that off for a
Speaker 1: little while uh So, anyway, there were other vehicle that
Speaker 1: looked just like A twelves. And again it was another
Speaker 1: one of those kind of cover stories, right, the idea
Speaker 1: being that, well, if any of these vehicles are spotted,
Speaker 1: we can always say no, no, no. That was this
Speaker 1: other designation that looks just like the one you think
Speaker 1: it is. Nineteen sixty four, that's when we get the
Speaker 1: y F DASH twelve A interceptor, which was based on
Speaker 1: the A twelve design. So that was the ox cart
Speaker 1: design that was talking about just now, So same sort
Speaker 1: of idea. So the A twelve ox Cart was really
Speaker 1: meant as a surveillance vehicle, okay, but the y F
Speaker 1: twelve A was meant as an interceptor and not one
Speaker 1: of those fighters that could intercept other aircraft. Right. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: as Jonathan was just saying, um so, so president the
Speaker 1: president at the time was Lyndon B. Johnson, and he
Speaker 1: announced its existence, you know, only a year or so
Speaker 1: after it had been in existence. Um but uh and
Speaker 1: and and that was in order to kind of shield
Speaker 1: the fact that these other sneaky planes were flying around, right,
Speaker 1: So this interceptor they they everyone acknowledged the fact that
Speaker 1: these interceptors existed. They did not acknowledge that the A
Speaker 1: twelves existed. So if you were to spun A twelve,
Speaker 1: you would think it's just one of those y F
Speaker 1: twelve ays and everything would be hunky dorry. And originally
Speaker 1: the Air Force was going to end up purchasing a
Speaker 1: bunch of planes the next generation of this, and that
Speaker 1: designation was YF twelve B and and that would have
Speaker 1: that would have really worked. We think this this one
Speaker 1: was really mostly used as a test craft and as
Speaker 1: that kind of decoy, right right, and um, that program
Speaker 1: was canceled, didn't didn't happen. But one of the test
Speaker 1: pilots for the y F twelve A interceptor was Jim
Speaker 1: Irwin a k A. One of the astronauts who eventually
Speaker 1: landed on the Moon. Yep, he uh, he's done a
Speaker 1: moonwalk literally, you know, and maybe figuratively too, maybe did
Speaker 1: the dance. I don't know, but he definitely has walked
Speaker 1: on the moon. I imagine that there was a pop
Speaker 1: culture imperative for anyone who had actually walked on the
Speaker 1: moon to get a moon walk at some point, I suppose. So.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you invent something retroactively, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure they've worked on that. Also. In nineteen four, that's
Speaker 1: when they introduced the s R. Well, they didn't introduce it.
Speaker 1: They built it and it was in operation, but we
Speaker 1: sure as heck didn't know about it yet, certainly not.
Speaker 1: The SR also known as the Bird. This is a
Speaker 1: gorgeous aircraft's scary looking. Again. You look at this and
Speaker 1: then you look at the aircraft again in g I Joe,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned the last podcast, Cobra's got some aircraft
Speaker 1: that look like the Blackbird. They do. I had never
Speaker 1: thought about that before because it's all sleek and and
Speaker 1: and it just looks it looks like it's going fast. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's staying still, but it could go very fast. This
Speaker 1: this was a mock three plane, which is which is
Speaker 1: like over two thousand miles per hour or like thirty
Speaker 1: six thousand kilometers per hour, and it could fly even
Speaker 1: higher than the YouTube. The YouTube that the cap on
Speaker 1: the youtubo is about seventy thousand feet. This could go
Speaker 1: eighty five thousand feet. So uh, the it flew a
Speaker 1: lot of missions, but it would turn out that the
Speaker 1: YouTube would end up being more reliable and less expensive
Speaker 1: to maintain, and would end up remaining in service longer,
Speaker 1: so the Blackbird ended up getting retired earlier. In fact
Speaker 1: that Youtubo is still in operations, so it's not been retired.
Speaker 1: The last Blackbird mission was in about although I've heard
Speaker 1: the latest NASA still had one for environmental research, right right, yes,
Speaker 1: so there are some that are being flown in non
Speaker 1: military applications, but as a military vehicle it was retired
Speaker 1: in It was another one of those that won one
Speaker 1: of those Collier trophies, which is understandable. Uh, it made
Speaker 1: a trip between New York to London in just under
Speaker 1: two hours. It was like one hour fifty four minutes.
Speaker 1: I can't get to Florida and under two hours on
Speaker 1: on my airplanes. I mean they're not my airplanes there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten to the point yet where we have
Speaker 1: our private aircraft. If anyone would like to donate an
Speaker 1: aircraft tech stuff or you know, you just want to
Speaker 1: convince somebody. Well Discovery anyway, So it beat the previous
Speaker 1: speed record. So so the previous speed record was held
Speaker 1: by a plane that did that same trip and just
Speaker 1: under five hours, so three hours different, yea. So moving
Speaker 1: up to nineteen sixties six, this seems really early to me.
Speaker 1: We just did an episode about drones. When I say,
Speaker 1: just did it actually isn't that recent, but in the
Speaker 1: in the memorable past, and most of the drones that
Speaker 1: we were talking about in that episode really didn't start
Speaker 1: kicking off until or so and so's in sixty six
Speaker 1: we we kep across the D twenty one. You have
Speaker 1: the tag Board, which was an unmanned drone. It was
Speaker 1: classified as above top secret, would not be declassified until
Speaker 1: two thou seven. That that when c I. A was
Speaker 1: just like, let's just go ahead and de classify all
Speaker 1: this stuff. I'm here, let's get to give me the
Speaker 1: D classify stamp. I'm just gonna go bunkers. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the tag Board was a drone that was had antenna.
Speaker 1: It was meant to receive commands through the antenna, so
Speaker 1: you would actually control it from the ground or from
Speaker 1: an aircraft. And in fact it was supposed to launch
Speaker 1: off one of those A twelve ox Cart aircraft. Uh
Speaker 1: right right, I've I've read that some Blackbirds were used
Speaker 1: for this purpose. Is interesting. I was designed to fly
Speaker 1: out over territory where the U S didn't strictly have
Speaker 1: permission to fly over because the idea was that since
Speaker 1: it was smaller, that it would be less likely to
Speaker 1: be uh noticed, And it was meant to take photos
Speaker 1: of sites like weapons facilities at altitudes of around fIF
Speaker 1: feet pretty low. And then in June nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: there was a tragic accident which, uh, what happened was
Speaker 1: the drone was supposed to launch off the back of
Speaker 1: one of these ox cart A twelve aircraft, but it
Speaker 1: did not launch properly. It was going at an incredible
Speaker 1: speed like mock three, and it didn't launch properly, and
Speaker 1: it ended up cutting that aircraft in half. Yeah that
Speaker 1: the pilot and test engineer both ejected safely. But um,
Speaker 1: but I believe drowned. Well the test the test engineer did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened was apparently the face plate on his uniform
Speaker 1: went up and water started rushing into his suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he and he tragically drowned this accident, and uh,
Speaker 1: and so the project was wound up being scrapped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. People at Lockeed were absolutely devastated by this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just a complete freak accident. It
Speaker 1: was unforeseen, and it really shook things up back at Lockheed.
Speaker 1: I mean it was you know, anytime anything like this happens,
Speaker 1: obviously that's a terrible tragedy, and this one just really
Speaker 1: affected them quite deeply. Uh. In nineteen seventy Lockheed would
Speaker 1: then go on to fire the test pilot, Francis Gary
Speaker 1: Powers were listening earlier. That's the guy who was in
Speaker 1: the YouTube plane that got shot down over Russia. So
Speaker 1: he came back and he was still working for Lockheed,
Speaker 1: but then he he decided to write down some of
Speaker 1: his experiences. Yeah, he published a memoir about the whole
Speaker 1: experience and it was not really um shall we say,
Speaker 1: favorable to the CIA in particular, and then mysteriously he
Speaker 1: lost his job. Well, it may also be that, you know,
Speaker 1: lockeed very very serious about this whole let's keep our
Speaker 1: secrets kind of thing, and it may be that that
Speaker 1: also played a pardon absolutely, But yeah, that was that happened. Two.
Speaker 1: That's when this was crazy. The HMB one Glomar Explorer. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is a submersible barge, a barge that can
Speaker 1: go under the water. It actually was designed to go
Speaker 1: under the water and land on some underwater supports and
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of this thing was to act as
Speaker 1: a cover so that the United States could do a
Speaker 1: salvage operation on a sunken Soviet submarine. The idea of
Speaker 1: being that this thing would cover up all of their operation.
Speaker 1: They would retrieve the submarine, pull it into the barge,
Speaker 1: bring the barge back above water, and sail it back
Speaker 1: and no one would have known that that's what they
Speaker 1: had done. It sounds like it came out of Hunt
Speaker 1: for October. If if Sean Connery was not aboard that
Speaker 1: saying chump things don't react well to bullish, I'd be
Speaker 1: really disappointed. We can only hope. And it ended up
Speaker 1: eventually becoming once it finished its job. Now what do
Speaker 1: you do with a big submersible barge at that point,
Speaker 1: so it's been converted into a above water dry dock
Speaker 1: where you the ships would come in and then be
Speaker 1: serviced and fixed or decommissioned or whatever. For a long
Speaker 1: time it was dry dock for another ship called the
Speaker 1: Sea Shadow, which we will talk about shortly. And then
Speaker 1: nine seven Here are two of my favorite aircraft that
Speaker 1: have ever come out of skunk works. These were also
Speaker 1: incredibly important. They were flown extensively at Groom Lake Slash
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, So I wrote about them quite a
Speaker 1: bit when I wrote my article about how Area fifty
Speaker 1: one works. That's when the first time I ever learned
Speaker 1: about these These already have blue craft. Yeah one and
Speaker 1: two have Blue one and have Blue two. And these
Speaker 1: were proof of concept prototypes. These two aircraft were incorporating
Speaker 1: all the information that Lockeed had been gathering about stealth
Speaker 1: technology in order to decrease their radar signature. So they
Speaker 1: were again top secret vehicles. They were tested quite a
Speaker 1: bit at Groom Lake, and the whole idea was now
Speaker 1: that getting those angular uh surfaces. So it looked a
Speaker 1: little weird because it had all these angles to to
Speaker 1: bounce the radar in random places. It was almost like
Speaker 1: a non Euclidean Cathulhu type aircraft. And it's not quite
Speaker 1: that much, but I mean it's like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen those old stealth bombers, they look clunky,
Speaker 1: right because of those weird angles. Yeah, it's totally the
Speaker 1: you know, like the opposite of the aero dynamic kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you think of when you think of
Speaker 1: something that's supposed to be flying. Its nickname wound up
Speaker 1: being the hope the hopeless diamond. The hopeless diamond because
Speaker 1: it had these weird angles to it like the Hope
Speaker 1: diamond does, because you know, it's been cut a very
Speaker 1: specific way. So it's called the hopeless diamond. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I said, you look at the s R seventy
Speaker 1: one Blackbird and that thing looks like it's going fast
Speaker 1: standing still. You look at one of these things and
Speaker 1: you're like, that is not meant to go in the air.
Speaker 1: That that is just wrong on every level. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, they decided to really go into this after
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War because during the Vietnam War, U S
Speaker 1: Forces kept on in countering trouble with surface to air
Speaker 1: missiles where a lot of aircraft were getting shot at
Speaker 1: and shot down by these missiles, and so they wanted
Speaker 1: to have something that could operate without being spied, you know,
Speaker 1: spied by. You don't want that to happen. So that
Speaker 1: was the main purpose. Um. Now they have Blue one
Speaker 1: and two. They were just men as prototypes. It was
Speaker 1: really approve of concept was to show the US military, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is going to work. We can build this into
Speaker 1: an actual working aircraft that we will use for real
Speaker 1: military purposes. We just need the funding, and uh so
Speaker 1: it wasn't ever meant to go into combat, didn't They
Speaker 1: didn't really go anywhere but um, but the concepts behind
Speaker 1: it would wind up being used later on, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about in our second half. Yes, so let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and thank our sponsor. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get back into talking about the super secret stuff.
Speaker 1: So you know, we had just talked about to have
Speaker 1: Blue one and two obviously not meant for combat. I mean,
Speaker 1: they could got centered miles per hour, which is about
Speaker 1: six kilometers per hour. That's not that fast compared to
Speaker 1: other aircraft at the time. The prototype that's that's that's
Speaker 1: as fast as um that that first P A D
Speaker 1: that we were talking about, right, So obviously that was
Speaker 1: just sort of hey, look what we can do well.
Speaker 1: One that's when we started seeing a new version of
Speaker 1: the U two. Remember that was YouTube came out in
Speaker 1: the fifties and one you get. The U two are
Speaker 1: also known as the t R one, also known as
Speaker 1: the Dragon Lady, which granted was the original designation for
Speaker 1: the c I A U two's way back when. But
Speaker 1: that was the thing is that the YOU two had
Speaker 1: largely become the domain of the Air Force, and now
Speaker 1: the You two ARE was this kind of super secret
Speaker 1: version of the U two which had an increased fuel
Speaker 1: capacity so it could fly longer, and the t R
Speaker 1: stood for Tactical Reconnaissance, and it had a super pod
Speaker 1: which was kind of a little think of like a
Speaker 1: bulbous kind of projection where all of their super secret
Speaker 1: sensors were so very very um precisely tuned sensors to
Speaker 1: get all kinds of information about the area they were
Speaker 1: flying over. Um. The current designation for this aircraft is
Speaker 1: now YOU two ARE, so it's no longer called the
Speaker 1: t R one, it's just the U two ARE. But
Speaker 1: there are other you two rs that are that don't
Speaker 1: have the superpods, so it's a little confusing. And there's
Speaker 1: been a whole bunch of different versions and designations of
Speaker 1: this over the years. The U two S one one
Speaker 1: of those call your trophies. But the U two R
Speaker 1: I believe, is still the highest flying single engine airplane
Speaker 1: in service. Yeah, and also you've got to remember that
Speaker 1: skunk Works did not work on every variation of the
Speaker 1: U two. They worked on the first one, and they
Speaker 1: worked on the U two ARE, but by that time
Speaker 1: a lot of that work was going out to other
Speaker 1: branches of Lockeed, so this was, uh, you know, we're
Speaker 1: really just focusing on the skunk work stuff here. If
Speaker 1: we were talking just about Lockeed, this we have to
Speaker 1: do like in six Yeah, that would be like a
Speaker 1: nine part. So let's talk about the F one seventeen,
Speaker 1: the night Hawk. The night Hawk the first radar evading aircraft.
Speaker 1: So we actually had these F one seventeen aircraft in
Speaker 1: use during Operation Desert Storm back in Lauren. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: remember that. You were I think, you know, two at
Speaker 1: the time, so it was like nine okay. So the
Speaker 1: that was, by the way, the only jet in the
Speaker 1: coalition forces that had the authorization to strike targets within
Speaker 1: the city limits of Baghdad, because they thought that it
Speaker 1: was the only one to g get close enough to
Speaker 1: guarantee that the strike would hit the precise target and
Speaker 1: not hit something else instead. Um it was often as
Speaker 1: referred to as a stealth fighter, although it was really
Speaker 1: an air took round combat vehicle, not air to air
Speaker 1: because when we think of fighters, we usually think of
Speaker 1: you know, aircraft that are designed to shoot down other aircraft.
Speaker 1: This was more of an attack vehicle than a fighter.
Speaker 1: The designations get a little confusing. I would have to
Speaker 1: keep looking them up, but because you know what can
Speaker 1: I'm a podcaster, not a fighter. So despite what Ben
Speaker 1: Bowling will tell you, because I did shake him up
Speaker 1: a bit this morning, I hear that that was for
Speaker 1: completely legit work purpose. Yeah, there's gonna be a stuff
Speaker 1: Mom never told you video that I will link out
Speaker 1: so that you can see me rough up Ben Bowling.
Speaker 1: It happens on a daily basis anyway, but this time
Speaker 1: I was call on camera. Anyway. The night Hawk was
Speaker 1: retired in two thousand and eight. It's another one of
Speaker 1: those called your trophy winners. It's kind of interesting how
Speaker 1: many of these have one. That's when we get into
Speaker 1: something that's not an aircraft, the Sea Shadow. All right,
Speaker 1: this was a prototype stealth ship. Yes, so funky. Did
Speaker 1: you see a picture of this? I have not known.
Speaker 1: You got to look up a picture. When we're done,
Speaker 1: I'll definitely have to link a picture of this on
Speaker 1: social as well, because it just looks really odd. We
Speaker 1: should make a gallery. We can do. That's the excited
Speaker 1: to the most excited I've ever been about making a
Speaker 1: gallery because there's some pretty cool jets in this. We'll
Speaker 1: make a gallery for it. Sure. So the Sea Shadow
Speaker 1: is this prototype stealth ship. It had those weird angular
Speaker 1: surfaces kind of like stealth bombers, stealth fighters, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, but it think of it like it
Speaker 1: almost felt like it was suspended over the water, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you have these two wings that come down on
Speaker 1: either side, like think of a manta ray that has
Speaker 1: its wings down towards the ocean floor. Right. The edges
Speaker 1: of the wings are obviously in contact with the water.
Speaker 1: The rest of the body appears to be above the water,
Speaker 1: and it's bulky. So you're like, how the heck is
Speaker 1: this thing? Turns out it's got a submerged hull. There's
Speaker 1: got this enormous hall that's underneath the water that submerged
Speaker 1: that is keeping it bulliant so it's not sinking down
Speaker 1: and just flopping over on its side. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: look at this thing and you're like that just like
Speaker 1: the just like some of the aircraft like that should
Speaker 1: not be allowed to happen. That doesn't look like that
Speaker 1: only works if that's non Newtonian fluid in that ocean,
Speaker 1: and I know that waters Newtonian, so that can't be it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was also a designed to show off the usefulness
Speaker 1: of automation. The idea being that we could really have
Speaker 1: these vehicles that would need a relatively small crew because
Speaker 1: we automate as much of it as we possibly can.
Speaker 1: So there are twelve bunks aboard crew of twelve UM
Speaker 1: and it had a microwave. That was the only uh
Speaker 1: thing in the galley. There was no like stovetop or anything.
Speaker 1: There was a microwave and twelve bunks, so luxury, um
Speaker 1: and UH. It was really just kind of designed to
Speaker 1: be a proof of concept. It was never meant to
Speaker 1: be a production vehicle. It was never meant to go
Speaker 1: to the military. Is more to say like, let's see
Speaker 1: if this works kind of thing. Um So nothing. It
Speaker 1: was never built into any other kind of ships. Eventually
Speaker 1: it was retired. It went to that that barge I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, that was the dry dock. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the eventually the United States government allowed the
Speaker 1: I want to say it was I want to say
Speaker 1: the Navy took control. I didn't write this down in
Speaker 1: my notes, I remember reading it, but anyway, the military
Speaker 1: organization in charge of the Sea Shadow decided to sell it, yeah,
Speaker 1: to to recoup some of some of this costs. They
Speaker 1: sold it m to a company under under the stipulation
Speaker 1: that they had to immediately dismantle it. Yeah, they could
Speaker 1: not sail it. The United States government said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna sell this. We're gonna let you sell this
Speaker 1: off to whoever bids the most. But they cannot sail it.
Speaker 1: They have you can look at all the bits, you
Speaker 1: have to take it apart. So it was it's been dismantled.
Speaker 1: So the Sea Shadow is no more. It was dismantled
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. So that's kind of sad
Speaker 1: because when you see pictures of this thing. As soon
Speaker 1: as I saw I thought, I hope this is at
Speaker 1: a museum somewhere where I can go and see it.
Speaker 1: And nope, it is gone. So maybe someone will build
Speaker 1: a replica at some point. That's when they introduced the
Speaker 1: y F twenty two, also known as Yeah and usually
Speaker 1: we just called the F twenty two, which was a
Speaker 1: stealth air superiority fighter superiority fighter. Yeah, it's meant to
Speaker 1: be souper. It's a fifth generation supersonic fighter. Single seat
Speaker 1: twin jet engine aircraft can also be an attack vehicle,
Speaker 1: so not just a fighter, but also can can act
Speaker 1: out against land based targets. And it can serve as
Speaker 1: a signals intelligence vehicle. So the n s A is
Speaker 1: probably pretty interested in these things. That means that it
Speaker 1: can intercept electronic messages. UM and it formally entered the
Speaker 1: United States Air Force service in two thousand five. Son
Speaker 1: is when they start really working on it. Two thousand
Speaker 1: five is when it enters into service. So that's a
Speaker 1: long time, you know, more than a decade before it
Speaker 1: entered into service. Yeah, and there are still a few
Speaker 1: squadrons of them in UH in service today. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think there's somewhere something like ten squadrons totals something like that. UH.
Speaker 1: And the final F twenty two was delivered to the
Speaker 1: United States Air Force on May second, two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: so not long ago, no longer in production, but just barely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these things. By the way, obviously, when you put in
Speaker 1: an order for two thousand, five hundred UH jets, it
Speaker 1: takes a while to fill that order, as as you
Speaker 1: could possibly imagine. UM. UH corporate note in Lockheed and
Speaker 1: Martin would combine in what was called a merger of equals, right,
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about Lockeed all this time. But
Speaker 1: remember if you listen to the beginning of the last podcast,
Speaker 1: we talked about how the Martin Company was also instrumental
Speaker 1: in early days in aircraft. Well, they had been quite
Speaker 1: busy themselves and it developed many aircraft that also were
Speaker 1: incredibly innovative. And at this point the two companies merged
Speaker 1: together to make a mega innovative aircraft company. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: n they come out with the Lockeed. Martin skunk Works
Speaker 1: come out with the r Q three A Dark Star
Speaker 1: Dark Star also known as Tier three or sometimes Tier
Speaker 1: three Minus, which was an unmanned aerial vehicle designed to
Speaker 1: be a high altitude drone. So, uh, this was another
Speaker 1: one of those innovative approaches to trying to do surveillance
Speaker 1: without putting an actual human pilot at risk, right, And
Speaker 1: and this was a project that would I I think
Speaker 1: that both Tagboard and have Blue Um really influenced this
Speaker 1: one definitely. Yeah, because it had stealth technology making it
Speaker 1: harder to to act. It also had a lot of autonomy.
Speaker 1: It could take off, fly to its mission, complete its mission,
Speaker 1: and come back and land all without a human controller
Speaker 1: taking control of that but also it had the ability
Speaker 1: for a human controller to get in there and change
Speaker 1: the parameters of the mission on the fly. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, you had this preprogrammed route that
Speaker 1: it had to take and once you press play, that's it.
Speaker 1: You gotta wait till it comes back. You could actually
Speaker 1: change things on the fly and change the programming. So
Speaker 1: really innovative, particularly in nineteen. And it had a jet engine.
Speaker 1: It used jet engines for propulsion. It wasn't like a
Speaker 1: little rotor based drone. This is this is a jet
Speaker 1: um So officially that program was shelved sometime around nineteen,
Speaker 1: but there are some rumors that it's not really shelf
Speaker 1: shelved so much as totally in operation. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: like totally secret. And uh, that's all I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: about that, because honestly, I do not need another coffee break. Um.
Speaker 1: So two thousand, that's when we get the F thirty
Speaker 1: five Lightning or Lightning Too. Yeah, Lightning Too. It's the
Speaker 1: sequel to Lightning. So if you remember in our previous
Speaker 1: episode we talked about the first Lightning jet aircraft, which
Speaker 1: was way back in the very earliest days for Lockheed
Speaker 1: when they were doing their work with the military. So
Speaker 1: the Lightning two is sort of the idea of the
Speaker 1: next generation of military aircraft. It's a single seat, single engine,
Speaker 1: multi roll fighter. So multi roll also means they can
Speaker 1: do multiple things. It can be the ground attack, the
Speaker 1: air defense, reconnaissance. That yeah, it's like, you know, throw
Speaker 1: it at me, bro, I'm gonna do it. So there
Speaker 1: are three variations on the F thirty five that allow
Speaker 1: it to take off or land in different environments. So,
Speaker 1: for example, there's one version of the F thirty five
Speaker 1: that can land and take off from aircraft carriers, but
Speaker 1: the others don't have that capability that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: So depending on what you need, you use that particular
Speaker 1: type of of F thirty five. And the military has
Speaker 1: ordered a bunch these happen things. Yeah more uh, and
Speaker 1: they are going to the Air Force, the Navy, and
Speaker 1: the Marines. Different branches are using them. For those of
Speaker 1: you who aren't familiar with the branches of the military
Speaker 1: in the United States, there are pilots in these different
Speaker 1: branches like air forces. Obviously you would you would immediately
Speaker 1: assume Air Force. I remember talking to a friend of
Speaker 1: mine who was telling me about how much he thought
Speaker 1: it was weird the way that the Air Force was
Speaker 1: depicted in Top Gun, and said, do you mean the Navy,
Speaker 1: because those were Navy pilots. The top Gun program was
Speaker 1: a Navy program, not an Air Force program. I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely positive that, um that the strict military accuracy was
Speaker 1: what people are watching Top Gun for. I don't know either.
Speaker 1: I I knew that by the end of it, I
Speaker 1: I too had the need the need for speed. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how accurate it was all the
Speaker 1: way from the beginning to end. But anyway. Two one,
Speaker 1: that was the introduction of the Desert Hawk, and that's
Speaker 1: another drone. Yeah, another ua V on manned aerial vehicle.
Speaker 1: It was designed to be really portable. It was dreamly light.
Speaker 1: In fact, the original Desert Hawk was made out of
Speaker 1: essentially kind of foam, So think of like styrofoam or
Speaker 1: packing foam that you would find in a box. That's
Speaker 1: essentially what this thing was made out of. That makes
Speaker 1: more sense. Your next note is that they were launched
Speaker 1: by hand, and therefore, okay, I get that now. I
Speaker 1: think they even use bungee cords, so it's almost like
Speaker 1: a slingshot. Launch, and they had electric motors, so they
Speaker 1: were almost silent. Yeah, incredibly light, incredibly quiet. We now
Speaker 1: no longer use the Desert Hawk actively. We have a replacement,
Speaker 1: the Desert Hawk three. I'm just given over too, but
Speaker 1: the Desert Hawk three is what we use today. It's
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated and it uses a gyro stabilized three
Speaker 1: sixty degree sensor turret has mounted on the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. It's also made out of very lightweight
Speaker 1: composite material, so it's it's gone beyond the pham, but
Speaker 1: it's still very lightweight. Two thousand six. This might be
Speaker 1: my favorite, the hybrid. This is a This is an airship, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that if you are at all of the steampunk vein,
Speaker 1: this is the aircraft for you. It looks like a
Speaker 1: blimp or a dirigible. It's it's an airship and it
Speaker 1: is beautiful and so it's meant to act as transportation.
Speaker 1: So it's got a large capacity for carrying lots of
Speaker 1: people and low operating costs, and it can operate from
Speaker 1: either existing infrastructure, meaning like some sort of landing field
Speaker 1: or landing strip like an airport, or it could just
Speaker 1: land anywhere that's a remote open space. So as long
Speaker 1: as there's not like stuff for it to bump into,
Speaker 1: it can land there. And the first commercial airship is
Speaker 1: scheduled for And uh, this is similar to another vehicle
Speaker 1: that's actually more of a military vehicle. In fact, it
Speaker 1: is a military vehicle that is also a future item
Speaker 1: that we'll be seeing from Lockeed won't Maybe we won't
Speaker 1: see it, but it'll see us. I'm talking about ISIS,
Speaker 1: which is the integrated Sensor is Structure aircraft which looks
Speaker 1: a lot like the Hybrid. It's another blimp type thing,
Speaker 1: but it's a stealth yeah, and it's spies on you.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. So it's got surveillance and communications gear and
Speaker 1: flies in the st atosphere. So for those of you
Speaker 1: who listen to our Google Loon podcast, you know all
Speaker 1: about that. We're not going to go over it again,
Speaker 1: but you know that's really yeah. So, and it also
Speaker 1: is able to actually detect targets that are undercover or
Speaker 1: under camouflage. It's got like camouflage piercing radar. It's pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff. So it's similar to the hybrid, and it
Speaker 1: also uses fuel cells, so that makes sense because it's
Speaker 1: like the Hybrid two and solar panels to to get
Speaker 1: its powers right. The contract for this was was awarded
Speaker 1: to Lackeed Martin in two thousand nine. But but I
Speaker 1: think that we had did we have something else? It's
Speaker 1: it's not. No, it's not. It's not going to be.
Speaker 1: The isis. As far as I know, the delivery date
Speaker 1: has not been divulged necessarily. I know that it's coming.
Speaker 1: It is listed on Lockheed Martin's website. If you go
Speaker 1: to their skunk works website, they talk about it, so
Speaker 1: you can actually read about it. Um it is able
Speaker 1: to cover five million nautical square miles with surveillance from
Speaker 1: one and then you can locate it relocated anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world in within ten days. For something that floats.
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive. All right, So let's get back I
Speaker 1: talked about the hybrid. Yeah. Also in two thousand nine, uh,
Speaker 1: they advanced composite cargo aircraft, the A C C A.
Speaker 1: So again, this is another look at using composite materials.
Speaker 1: And the idea of using composite materials is finding something
Speaker 1: that has the strength of something like steel but is
Speaker 1: far lighter. So you want something that's really durable but
Speaker 1: very light, so that it ends up making your aircraft
Speaker 1: much more efficient. You don't need as much fuel, and
Speaker 1: I also reducing the kind of problems that you get
Speaker 1: with metals, like like corrosion and fatigue from those temperature
Speaker 1: differentials that you're going to get going up and down.
Speaker 1: That's that's very true. So this is a way of
Speaker 1: getting around that. And uh, really again, this is one
Speaker 1: of those programs where it's not like the A c
Speaker 1: c A is going to become a leading aircraft. It's
Speaker 1: more like the technology is being explored while they're design stuff.
Speaker 1: Have blue where it's you know, it's well working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll find it. It'll end up emerging in other aircraft,
Speaker 1: right that lockeed makes and that other companies make. Then
Speaker 1: we have two thousand ten. That's when the Harvest Hawk
Speaker 1: took flight. So you might remember back in the other
Speaker 1: episode I talked about the Hercules cargo plane and I said,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a cargo plane, you know, for for
Speaker 1: propell our cargo plane. It's pretty big and neat, looking
Speaker 1: sort of useless at the time. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 1: it wasn't useless, but it certainly wasn't like super secret
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like some sort of surveillance craft. Well,
Speaker 1: now we've got the Harvest talk, which is the the
Speaker 1: reason why it's called Hawk is it's the Hercules Airborne
Speaker 1: Weapons Kit. So it's a weaponized cargo transport aircraft. It's
Speaker 1: armed with hell Fire or Griffin missiles, guided bombs, and
Speaker 1: a thirty millimeter cannon and it's operated by the United
Speaker 1: States Marine Corps. I am terrified of this. This is terrifying.
Speaker 1: And now we're up to current day, two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: and it time to talk about the s R seventy two.
Speaker 1: So this would be kind of the the Blackhawks successor.
Speaker 1: This is a concept aircraft. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that it hasn't even been funded yet, but Lockheed skunk
Speaker 1: Works has been working on it. And it would end
Speaker 1: up using two different jet systems to have a hypersonic jet.
Speaker 1: Hypersonic being super wicked fast. Here's the problem. So there
Speaker 1: are to the two different types of engines. Would be
Speaker 1: your standard jet turbine engine, which tends to work at
Speaker 1: speeds at mock two or or slower, right, and then
Speaker 1: that that's that's the kind of thing. I mean, the
Speaker 1: thing with these ramjets that we've talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about and and scram jets, which stands for a supersonic
Speaker 1: combustion ramjet. Although I just really like the word scramjet
Speaker 1: a whole bunch um is that you know, they can't
Speaker 1: they can't start moving until they're going really really fast
Speaker 1: because of that, because of that air drag that they
Speaker 1: need in order to fuel their combust it just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So you you have to be going really fast to
Speaker 1: to operate your scramjet. So this combines a jet engine
Speaker 1: and a scramjet using an over under fuel approach because
Speaker 1: you can't use the same fuel for both of these either.
Speaker 1: It's actually a very complex system. But the idea is
Speaker 1: that the jet engine would get the the SR seventy
Speaker 1: two moving at around mock three, and then the scramjet
Speaker 1: would start to take over and then you would get
Speaker 1: up to your full speed, which which is six which
Speaker 1: is twice the old blackbird um and is about four thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred miles per hour or I I recorded the
Speaker 1: other in meters per second and it's about two thousand
Speaker 1: meters per second. But really fast is what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. Yeah, And they would be armed with high
Speaker 1: speed strike weapons or h s S double US and
Speaker 1: uh so you can just think of it as a
Speaker 1: missile that is able to fly at hypersonic speeds. So
Speaker 1: they hope that they'll have a demonstrator program demonstrating this
Speaker 1: technological ability prototype. Yeah so right now, like I said,
Speaker 1: there's no funding as of the recording of this podcast
Speaker 1: for this particular project. But it's one of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there could be I mean, c I A might be
Speaker 1: you know, maybe an essay. Maybe they're like, we need
Speaker 1: to get away now that we've been looking at everybody's stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, this could theoretically hit any target on any
Speaker 1: continent in less than an hour. So it takes off
Speaker 1: and then within an hour anywhere in the world it
Speaker 1: could hit its target. Keeping in mind it's both the
Speaker 1: aircraft and the missile, which is HSSW because at that
Speaker 1: hypersonic speed, to big challenge involves actually heat management because
Speaker 1: when you're traveling at that speed, the friction from the
Speaker 1: air is intense. So they had kind of two different
Speaker 1: approaches they could go. They could go with sort of
Speaker 1: a cool approach, which is where they use some form
Speaker 1: of heat shielding type stuff, kind of like the stuff
Speaker 1: that the Space Shuttle program used, or they could go
Speaker 1: with a warm approach. Warm is a relative term. It's
Speaker 1: actually quite high temperature where it allows the aircraft to
Speaker 1: warm up, but you have the crew um sequestered in
Speaker 1: some way where they are able to operate without being hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: being cooked essentially. So if they go with the warm approaches,
Speaker 1: which is what they said they're going to do, and
Speaker 1: assuming it's going to be a manned vehicle, which that's
Speaker 1: still I hate to use this phrase, No, I don't
Speaker 1: know in the air. It's still up in the air. Um,
Speaker 1: it could be manned or unmanned. But assuming it is manned,
Speaker 1: that probably means that the cockpit will not be a
Speaker 1: cockpit where you actually have a window out to see
Speaker 1: where everything is. They would be flying this thing that's
Speaker 1: traveling at MOX six using instrumentation. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like operating a submarine, except you're o bring a submarine
Speaker 1: that's traveling at mos six thousands of feet in the air.
Speaker 1: So um, for those of you who have fear of flying,
Speaker 1: imagine that where you can't see out and you're going
Speaker 1: really fast. Yeah, yeah, again, I'm gonna I'm gonna respectfully
Speaker 1: bow out of that particular job. I think that podcaster
Speaker 1: is much better suited for me. Um they have. They
Speaker 1: have also announced though a collaboration with Boeing to compete
Speaker 1: in the U. S. Air Forces Long Range Strike Bomber Program,
Speaker 1: which is a challenge to deliver eight one hundred stealth
Speaker 1: long range bombers for operation in theies, with an upper
Speaker 1: price limit of only five fifty million dollars per unit,
Speaker 1: which I say only but is really not much for
Speaker 1: that thing. That's bargain prices people. We're just we can't
Speaker 1: give these things away. Yeah, no, that's so I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see whether they actually come up with anything for that.
Speaker 1: This this was only announced I think in October. UM.
Speaker 1: We are recording this at the beginning of November, and
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe we won't actually see evidence of this
Speaker 1: till because that will be when the CIA declassifies it
Speaker 1: and lets us see it. Anyway, this has been really
Speaker 1: an interesting subject to tackle. I mean, it's it's always
Speaker 1: kind of weird to take a subject that was under
Speaker 1: such secrecy for so long and now it's much more open.
Speaker 1: Although we know there's obviously our projects that are from
Speaker 1: the sixties, is much more open decades. There's a website
Speaker 1: where they list the stuff they're working on. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that's everything. In fact, I would I
Speaker 1: would be shocked if it's even a significant percentage of everything,
Speaker 1: But the fact that they show anything is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to me. So anyway, skunk Works is interesting, and
Speaker 1: as soon as that car moves away from the corner,
Speaker 1: I'll start planning on when we'll do our Area fifty
Speaker 1: one podcast. But man, they are persistent. So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for topics that we
Speaker 1: should cover an up future episodes of tech Stuff, let
Speaker 1: us know. Send us a message our emailog just as
Speaker 1: tech stump at Discovery dot com, or drop us a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook, Tumbler or Twitter. You can find our
Speaker 1: handle It is tech Stuff hs W M Lauren and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how
Speaker 1: staff works dot Com