Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: job and Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech and it's time
Speaker 1: for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode published
Speaker 1: November two thirteen. It's actually the second part of a
Speaker 1: two parter. So if you haven't listened to Sniffing Out
Speaker 1: skunk Works Part one that published last Friday, go check
Speaker 1: that out, because this is Sniffing Out Skunk Works Part two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really creative with the titles back then, but
Speaker 1: we will continue to hear about the fascinating work done
Speaker 1: at this top secret R and D facility. Let's listen
Speaker 1: in 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 translucent are Empire people.
Speaker 1: We we are the ones who hiss when the sun
Speaker 1: comes out. But the sun tan does not refer to
Speaker 1: anyone designed to you know, get an actual tan. That's
Speaker 1: not That's not what this is about. I believe it
Speaker 1: was so named. I imagine it was so named because
Speaker 1: it was a very high flying vehicle and also it
Speaker 1: was using liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen very important with sun right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: hydrogens turned into helium the temperature of millions of degrees
Speaker 1: to do. So, yeah, it's it was meant to be
Speaker 1: a spy plane. So it was a sun the Sun
Speaker 1: Tan was a spy plane that would fly on liquid
Speaker 1: hydrogen as its fuel. And um, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of scary to develop because I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know this, but hydrogen tends to be
Speaker 1: a volatile substance. Let's say. Yes, this project came about
Speaker 1: because of photos from a YouTube mission over Soviet Russia
Speaker 1: of hydrogen liquefication plants, and they were afraid that that.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Government was afraid that the USSR was
Speaker 1: building a plane that could spy better than the YouTube.
Speaker 1: And we just can't have any of that. We could
Speaker 1: not have that, so says gunk Works was given nineties
Speaker 1: six million dollars to design their own hydrogen powered plane.
Speaker 1: So you just imagine this the early days of testing
Speaker 1: your liquid hydrogen production system. Uh, you you go to
Speaker 1: work in a bomb shelter, the walls of which are
Speaker 1: eight feet thick in case you happened to blow yourself
Speaker 1: up real good while you're working with liquid hydrogen, so
Speaker 1: that you don't blow your neighbors up real good as well.
Speaker 1: Really builds confidence. So the facility ended up investing in
Speaker 1: lots of stuff so that they could avoid any possible flames,
Speaker 1: including all of the tools were non sparking. You weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to carry your keys in your pockets to avoid
Speaker 1: any potential sparks. You had to have grounded boots so
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't create an electro statics charge. It was
Speaker 1: really really important, and they did pretty well up until
Speaker 1: they had a tiny, itsy bitsy fire. It was it
Speaker 1: was 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 hydrogen tank. Yeah, which absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what my reaction would be, nor can
Speaker 1: I imagine what my reaction would be when I found
Speaker 1: out the next thing that happened. Because this project was
Speaker 1: top secret, they wouldn't let firefighters into the building to
Speaker 1: control the flames, right, and they could not get the
Speaker 1: flames out with fire extinguishers. They had gone beyond that
Speaker 1: that level, and yet they could not also allow firefighters
Speaker 1: in because this top secret. They did wind up, I mean,
Speaker 1: nothing exploded, turned out to be okay, Um, California is
Speaker 1: still there, so it didn't go boom. But but here's
Speaker 1: the things that the it really illustrated that that accident
Speaker 1: illustrate how potentially dangerous this this project was. And so
Speaker 1: because of its level of risk, it was decided that
Speaker 1: it was too much for lockeed to endure, and so
Speaker 1: they scrapped the project. Yeah. Also, Kelly A. Johnson, who
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the previous episode wasn't personally sure whether
Speaker 1: these hydrogen engines were going to be able to go
Speaker 1: faster further than a conventional kerosene burning jet, and so
Speaker 1: you know, the final decision was, like, here's your ninety
Speaker 1: million of the original ninety six back US government. We
Speaker 1: 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
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 terrify
Speaker 1: an entire country. It also did that from kicking off
Speaker 1: a whole new section at the Cold War that we
Speaker 1: like to call the Space Race. Yeah, but that that'll
Speaker 1: that'll that'll play in a little bit with Lockheed, although
Speaker 1: really skunk Works had very limited UH operations with the
Speaker 1: Space Race, although some of the people who would test
Speaker 1: fly some of their jets would end up walking on
Speaker 1: the freaking move and NASA would continue to use some
Speaker 1: of their vehicles in testing exactly so May nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: a very important event happened, not directly related to Lockheed,
Speaker 1: but something that would would end up impacting them down
Speaker 1: the line. That was when the United States pilot Francis
Speaker 1: Gary Powers was shot down. He was flying a YouTube
Speaker 1: plane over Russia. Um he was shot down after I
Speaker 1: think they fired something like seven or eight missiles at him,
Speaker 1: and they also had a MiG in pursuit. The MiG
Speaker 1: got hit by one of the missiles and was destroyed.
Speaker 1: Um and Uh and Power said that he saw another
Speaker 1: parachute open after he had to eject. He actually could
Speaker 1: have bailed earlier, but stayed in his plane to make
Speaker 1: sure that would crash in an unpopulated forest area as
Speaker 1: opposed to crashing in a town, and he ejected from
Speaker 1: his plane. He landed safely. He was captured by the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and sentenced to three years in prison, followed
Speaker 1: by seven years hard labor, so ten years total. He
Speaker 1: would not have to serve out all that time. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, he was part of a prisoner exchange
Speaker 1: along with another Soviet prisoner and Uh. He was exchanged
Speaker 1: for Colonel William Fisher uh It 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: It's your job or something. Yeah, he was eventually like
Speaker 1: the Officially people said, you did exactly what you were
Speaker 1: supposed to do, but he faced a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: at home. Um. This this also sparked discussions about needs
Speaker 1: for for better spy plane. Yes, something has to replace
Speaker 1: the YouTube because remember the You two had been launched
Speaker 1: the previous decade, and so you know clearly you don't
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, so um this the
Speaker 1: the new project would be called the Youth three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: originally that was the original designation. They of course would
Speaker 1: change that, but that was what they first called it.
Speaker 1: And uh, this is also when I wanted to take
Speaker 1: a little side note to talk about what it's like
Speaker 1: to work at Lockheed, because I was reading an article
Speaker 1: that had an interview with Edward Lovick, who was a
Speaker 1: retired he retired Locke to employee, and he was a
Speaker 1: radar expert. And the reason why I bring him up
Speaker 1: now is because this is about when Lockeeds started looking
Speaker 1: into ways to make planes harder to detect. So one
Speaker 1: of the ways of making a better spy plane is
Speaker 1: making one that can't be seen by radar or ground
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so Lovick, who was probably one of
Speaker 1: the leading experts in radar at the time, simply he says,
Speaker 1: because he just started playing with it earlier than most
Speaker 1: people were. Um, he was very instrumental in trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what would make a plane harder to see
Speaker 1: by radar, and it took a while for them to
Speaker 1: figure this out. He talked about the fact that he
Speaker 1: would go with Kelly Johnson to some of these meetings
Speaker 1: with the CIA. And by the way, at that time,
Speaker 1: Lockheed was referring to the CIA as quote the customer
Speaker 1: end quote, which I thought was a great way of
Speaker 1: putting it. And he said that right before lockeed got
Speaker 1: the new spy plane contract, we went to a hotel
Speaker 1: room for a meeting. It was Kelly Johnson, a few
Speaker 1: science advisors to the President, someone from the CIA, and myself.
Speaker 1: Pillows were put over the heat events and the room
Speaker 1: was checked for bugs before any of us spoke. He
Speaker 1: said that at the time you thought it was pretty silly,
Speaker 1: but but you know, here's the thing is that during
Speaker 1: the Cold War there was a lot of spying going
Speaker 1: on on both sides. So while it sounds like you
Speaker 1: were being like incredibly paranoid to go to those kind
Speaker 1: of extremes to make sure that no one's listening, the
Speaker 1: fact is people were trying to listen. People are absolutely
Speaker 1: trying to listen. Yeah. Luck you. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: it also instituted a policy that if any of the
Speaker 1: employees were approached by someone uh born out of the
Speaker 1: US who wished to befriend them, that they were supposed
Speaker 1: to inform management it ly, Yeah, yeah, you don't like
Speaker 1: your your friend Boris who seems to be incredibly helpful
Speaker 1: and wants 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
Speaker 1: computer 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 engineers were actually going about
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way with slide rules and just they
Speaker 1: 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, and they said it was
Speaker 1: exactly the same stuff they were using. So they were
Speaker 1: really 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. This
Speaker 1: was before they had figured out that the real secret
Speaker 1: to making a plane signature disappear was not in how
Speaker 1: large or small the plane was, but rather in the
Speaker 1: surface angles and how they create bounts of of of
Speaker 1: the radar signal 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 A 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 vehicles 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, notther one of
Speaker 1: 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: old the fact that these other sneaky planes were flying around, right,
Speaker 1: So this interceptor. They everyone acknowledged the fact that these
Speaker 1: interceptors existed. They did not acknowledge that the A twelves existed,
Speaker 1: so if you were to spun A twelve, you would
Speaker 1: think it's just one of those y F twelve a's
Speaker 1: and everything would be hunky dorry. And originally the Air
Speaker 1: Force was going to end up purchasing a bunch of
Speaker 1: planes the next generation of this, and that designation was
Speaker 1: YF twelve B, and and that would have that would
Speaker 1: have really worked. We think this this one was really
Speaker 1: mostly used as a test craft and as that kind
Speaker 1: of decoy, right right, and um that program was canceled,
Speaker 1: didn't didn't happen. But one of the test pilots for
Speaker 1: the y F twelve A interceptor was Jim Irwin a
Speaker 1: k A. One of the astronauts who eventually landed on
Speaker 1: the moon. Yep, he uh, he's done a moonwalk literally,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe figuratively too, maybe did the dance.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he definitely has walked on the moon.
Speaker 1: I imagine that there was a pop culture impair it
Speaker 1: for anyone who had actually walked on the moon to
Speaker 1: get moon walk at some point, I suppose. So. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you invent something retroactively, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: they've worked on that. Also. In nineteen four, that's when
Speaker 1: 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 Blackbird. 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: will 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, the cap on the
Speaker 1: youtubo is about seventy thousand feet. This could go eight
Speaker 1: five thousand feet. So, uh. The it flew a lot
Speaker 1: of missions, but it would turn out that the You
Speaker 1: two 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 you two is still in operations, so it's not
Speaker 1: been retired. The last Blackbird mission was in about although
Speaker 1: I've heard the latest NASA still had one for environmental research,
Speaker 1: right right, Yes, so there are some that are being
Speaker 1: flown in non military applications, but as a military vehicle
Speaker 1: it was retired in It was another one of those
Speaker 1: that won one of those Collier trophies, which is understandable. Uh,
Speaker 1: it made a trip between New York to London in
Speaker 1: just under two hours. It was like one hour fifty
Speaker 1: four minutes. I can't get to Florida and under two
Speaker 1: hours on 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. So moving up
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty 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 it's in sixty
Speaker 1: six we we came across the dent one. We have
Speaker 1: the tag Board, which was an unmanned drone. It was
Speaker 1: classified as above top secret. It would not be declassified
Speaker 1: until two thousand seven top secret. That when c I
Speaker 1: was just like, let's just go ahead and de classify
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I'm here, let's get to give me
Speaker 1: the d classify stamp. I'm just gonna go bonkers. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the tag Board was a drone that was and antenna.
Speaker 1: It was meant to receive commands through the antenna, so
Speaker 1: you would actually roll 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, right right.
Speaker 1: I've I've read that some Blackbirds were used for this purpose.
Speaker 1: Is interesting. I was designed to fly out over territory
Speaker 1: where the U S didn't strictly have permission to fly over,
Speaker 1: because the idea was that since it was smaller, that
Speaker 1: it would be less likely to be noticed, and it
Speaker 1: was meant to take photos of sites like weapons facilities
Speaker 1: at altitudes of around feet pretty low. And then in
Speaker 1: June nineteen sixty six, there was a tragic accident which,
Speaker 1: uh what happened was the drone was supposed to launch
Speaker 1: off the back of one of these ox cart A
Speaker 1: twelve aircraft, but it did not launch properly. It was
Speaker 1: going at an incredible speed like mock three, and it
Speaker 1: didn't launch properly, and it ended up cutting that aircraft
Speaker 1: in half. Yeah that the pilot and test engineer both
Speaker 1: ejected safely, but um but I believe drowned. Well the
Speaker 1: test the test engineer did. Yeah, what happened was apparently
Speaker 1: the face plate on his uniform went up and water
Speaker 1: started rushing into suit. Yeah, so he and he tragically
Speaker 1: drowned in this accident. And uh so the project was
Speaker 1: wound up being scrapped. Yeah, it was. People at Lockeed
Speaker 1: were absolutely devastated by this. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: a complete freak accident. It was unforeseen, and it really
Speaker 1: shook things up back at Lockheed. I mean it was
Speaker 1: you know, anytime anything like this happens, obviously that's a
Speaker 1: terrible tragedy and this one just really affected them quite deeply. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy Lockheed would then go on to fire
Speaker 1: the test pilot, Francis Gary. Powers were listening earlier. That's
Speaker 1: the guy who was in the YouTube plane that got
Speaker 1: shot down over Russia. So he came back and he
Speaker 1: was still working for Lockheed. But then he decided to
Speaker 1: write down some of his experiences. Yeah, he published a
Speaker 1: memoir about the whole experience and it was not really
Speaker 1: um shall we say, favorable to the CIA in particular,
Speaker 1: and then mysteriously he lost his job. Well, it may
Speaker 1: also be that, you know, lockeed very very serious about
Speaker 1: this whole let's keep our secrets kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: it may be that that also played a pardon. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that happened. Two. That's when this was crazy.
Speaker 1: The HMB one Glomar Explorer. Okay, so this is a
Speaker 1: submersible barge, a barge that can go under the water.
Speaker 1: It actually was designed to go under the water and
Speaker 1: land on some underwater supports and the whole purpose of
Speaker 1: this thing was to act as a cover so that
Speaker 1: the United States could do a salvage operation on a
Speaker 1: sunken Soviet submarine, the idea of being that this thing
Speaker 1: would cover up all of their operation. They would retrieve
Speaker 1: the submarine, pull it into the barge, bring the barge
Speaker 1: back above water, and sail it back and no one
Speaker 1: would have known that that's what they had done. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it came out of Hunt for October. If
Speaker 1: if Sean Connery was not aboard that saying chumping ship
Speaker 1: don't react well to bullish, I'd be really disappointed. We
Speaker 1: can only hope, and ended up eventually becoming one once
Speaker 1: it finished its job. Now what do you do with
Speaker 1: a big submersible barge at that point? So it's been
Speaker 1: converted into a above water dry dock where you ships
Speaker 1: would come in and then be serviced and fixed or
Speaker 1: decommissioned or whatever. For a long time it was dry
Speaker 1: dock for another ship called the Sea Shadow, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about shortly. And then seven. Here are two
Speaker 1: of my favorite aircraft that have ever come out of
Speaker 1: skunk works. These were also incredibly important. They were flown
Speaker 1: extensively at Groom like slash Area fifty one, so I
Speaker 1: wrote about them quite a bit when I wrote my
Speaker 1: article about how Area fifty one works. That's when the
Speaker 1: first time I ever learned about these these already have
Speaker 1: blue craft. Yeah one and two have Blue one and
Speaker 1: have Blue two. And these were proof of concept prototypes.
Speaker 1: These two aircraft were incorporating all the information that Lockeed
Speaker 1: had been gathering about stealth technology in order to decrease
Speaker 1: their radars nature. So they were again top secret vehicles.
Speaker 1: They were tested quite a bit at groom like and
Speaker 1: the whole idea was now that getting those angular uh surfaces.
Speaker 1: So it looked a little weird because it had all
Speaker 1: these angles to to bounce the radar in random places.
Speaker 1: It was almost like a non Euclidean cthulhu type aircraft.
Speaker 1: And it's not quite that much, but I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've ever seen those old stealth bombers,
Speaker 1: they look clunky, right, those weird angles. Yeah, it's totally
Speaker 1: the you know, like the opposite of the aero dynamic
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you think of when you think
Speaker 1: of something that's supposed to be flying. Its nickname wound
Speaker 1: up being the Hope the Hopeless Diamond, the Hopeless Diamond
Speaker 1: because it had these weird angles to it like the
Speaker 1: Hope diamond does. Because you know, it's been cut a
Speaker 1: very 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 into 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 encountering trouble with surface to air missiles
Speaker 1: where a lot of aircraft were getting shot at and
Speaker 1: shot down by these missiles, and so they wanted to
Speaker 1: 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. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with more from Sniffing Elt skunk Works Part two in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get back into talking about the super
Speaker 1: secret stuff. So you know, we had just talked about
Speaker 1: the have Blue one and two obviously not meant for combat.
Speaker 1: I mean they could go six hundred miles per hour,
Speaker 1: which is about six kilometers per hour. That's not that
Speaker 1: fast compared to other aircraft at the time. The prototype
Speaker 1: that's that's as fast as um that that first p
Speaker 1: A D that we were talking about, right, So obviously
Speaker 1: that was just sort of hey, look what we can do.
Speaker 1: That's when we started seeing a new version of the
Speaker 1: U two. Remember that was You two came out in
Speaker 1: the fifties and one you get. The You 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 superpod which
Speaker 1: was kind of a little think of like a bulbous
Speaker 1: kind of projection where all of their super secret sensors
Speaker 1: were so very very um precisely tuned sensors to get
Speaker 1: all kinds of information about the area they were flying over. Um.
Speaker 1: The current designation for this aircraft is now you two ARE,
Speaker 1: so it's no longer called the t R one, it's
Speaker 1: just the U two ARE. But there are other you
Speaker 1: two rs that are that don't have the superpod, so
Speaker 1: it's a little confusing. And there's been a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different versions and designations of this over the years,
Speaker 1: and the utwo S one one of those, call your trophies.
Speaker 1: But the U two R, I believe, is still the
Speaker 1: highest flying single engine airplane in service. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: you've got to remember that skunk Works did not work
Speaker 1: on every very a of the U two. They worked
Speaker 1: on the first one, and they worked on the U
Speaker 1: two ARE, but by that time a lot of that
Speaker 1: work was going out to other branches of Lockeed. So
Speaker 1: this was, uh, you know, we're really just focusing on
Speaker 1: the skunkworks stuff here. If we were talking just about
Speaker 1: Lockeed this, we'd have to do like a six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be like a nine party. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the F one seventeen. That is the night Hawk.
Speaker 1: The night Hawk the first radar evading aircraft. So we
Speaker 1: actually had these F one seventeen aircraft in use during
Speaker 1: Operation Desert Storm back in Lauren. You wouldn't remember that.
Speaker 1: You were I think, you know, two at the time,
Speaker 1: so it was like nine okay. So the that was,
Speaker 1: by the way, the only jet in the coalition forces
Speaker 1: that had the authorization to strike targets within the city
Speaker 1: limits of Baghdad, because they thought that it was the
Speaker 1: only one that he get close enough to guarantee that
Speaker 1: the strike would hit the precise target and not hit
Speaker 1: something else instead. Um it was off is referred to
Speaker 1: as a stealth fighter, although it was really an air
Speaker 1: took round combat vehicle, not air to air because when
Speaker 1: we think of fighters, we usually think of you know,
Speaker 1: aircraft that are designed to shoot down other aircraft. This
Speaker 1: was more of an attack vehicle than a fight fighter.
Speaker 1: The designations get a little confusing. I would have to
Speaker 1: keep looking them up because you know what, can I'm
Speaker 1: a podcaster, not a fighter. So despite what Ben Bowling
Speaker 1: will tell you, because I did shake them up a
Speaker 1: bit this morning, I hear that that was for completely
Speaker 1: legit work purpose. Yeah, there's gonna be a stuff Mom
Speaker 1: never told you video that I will link out so
Speaker 1: that you can see me rough up Ben Bowling. It
Speaker 1: happens on a daily basis anyway, but this time I
Speaker 1: was calm camera anyway. The night Hawk was retired in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. It's another one of those called
Speaker 1: your trophy winners. It's kind of interesting how many of
Speaker 1: these have one. That's when we get into something that's
Speaker 1: not an aircraft, the Sea Shadow, right, this was a
Speaker 1: prototype stealth ship. Yes, so funky. Did you see a
Speaker 1: picture of this? I have not known. You got to
Speaker 1: look up a picture. When we're done, I'll definitely have
Speaker 1: to link a picture of this on social as well,
Speaker 1: because it just looks really odd. We should make a gallery.
Speaker 1: We can do. That's the excited to the most excited
Speaker 1: I've ever been about making a gallery because there's some
Speaker 1: pretty cool jets in this. We'll make a gallery for it. Sure.
Speaker 1: So the Sea Shadow is this prototype stealth ship. It
Speaker 1: had those weird angular surfaces kind of like stealth bombers,
Speaker 1: stealth fighters, that kind of thing. Um, but it think
Speaker 1: of it like it almost felt like it was suspended
Speaker 1: over the water, Okay, And you have these two wings
Speaker 1: that come down on either side, like think of a
Speaker 1: manta ray that has its wings down towards the ocean floor. Right.
Speaker 1: The edges of the wings are obviously in contact with
Speaker 1: the water. The rest of the body appears to be
Speaker 1: above the water, and it's bulky. So you're like, how
Speaker 1: the heck is this thing? Turns out it's gut submerged hole.
Speaker 1: There's got this enormous hole that's underneath the water that
Speaker 1: submerged that is keeping it bulliant so it's not sinking
Speaker 1: down and just flopping over on its side. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at this thing and you're like that just
Speaker 1: like the just like some of the aircraft, like that
Speaker 1: should not be to happen. That doesn't look like any
Speaker 1: thing that only works if that's non Newtonian fluid in
Speaker 1: that ocean, and I know that waters Newtonian, so that
Speaker 1: can't be it. Yeah, it was also a designed to
Speaker 1: show off the usefulness of automation. The idea being that
Speaker 1: we could really have these vehicles that would need a
Speaker 1: relatively small crew because we automate as much of it
Speaker 1: as we possibly can. So there are twelve bunks aboard
Speaker 1: crew of twelve UM and it had a microwave. That
Speaker 1: was the only uh thing in the galley. There was
Speaker 1: no like stovetop or anything. It was a microwave and
Speaker 1: twelve bunks, So luxury, um and UH. It was really
Speaker 1: just kind of designed to be a proof of concept.
Speaker 1: It was never meant to be a production vehicle. It
Speaker 1: was never meant to go to the military. Is more
Speaker 1: to say like let's see if this works kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Um so nothing. It was never built into any other
Speaker 1: kind of ships. Eventually it was retired. It went to
Speaker 1: that that barge I was talking about earlier, that was
Speaker 1: the dry dock. Uh. And then the eventually the state's
Speaker 1: government allowed the I want to say it was I
Speaker 1: want to say the navy took control. I didn't write
Speaker 1: this down in my notes, I remember reading it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the military organization in charge of the Sea Shadow decided
Speaker 1: to sell it, yeah, to to recoup some of some
Speaker 1: of this costs. They sold it to a company under
Speaker 1: under the stipulation that they had to immediately dismantle it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could not sail it. The United States government said
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna sell this. We're gonna let you
Speaker 1: sell this off to whoever bids the most, but they
Speaker 1: cannot sail it. They have you can look at all
Speaker 1: the bits you have to take it apart. So it was.
Speaker 1: It's been dismantled. So the Sea Shadow is no more.
Speaker 1: It was dismantled a couple of years ago. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of sad because when you see pictures of this thing.
Speaker 1: As soon as I saw I thought, I hope this
Speaker 1: is at a museum somewhere where I can go and
Speaker 1: see it. And nope, it is gone. So maybe someone
Speaker 1: will build a replica at some point. That's when they
Speaker 1: introduced the y F twenty two, also known as Yeah
Speaker 1: and usually we just called the F twenty two, which
Speaker 1: was a stealth air superiority fighter. Superiority fighter. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: meant to be souper. It's a fifth generation supersonic fighter.
Speaker 1: Single seat twin jet engine aircraft can also be an
Speaker 1: attack vehicle, so not just a fighter but also can
Speaker 1: can act out against land based targets, and it can
Speaker 1: serve as a signals intelligence vehicle. So the n s
Speaker 1: A is probably pretty interested in these things. That means
Speaker 1: that it can intercept electronic messages. UM. And it formally
Speaker 1: entered the United States Air Force service in two thousand five.
Speaker 1: Son is when they start really working on it. Two
Speaker 1: thousand five is when it enters into service. So that's
Speaker 1: a long time, you know, more than a decade before
Speaker 1: it entered into service. Yeah, and there are still a
Speaker 1: few squadrons of them in 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 now long ago, no longer in production. But these things,
Speaker 1: by the way, obviously when you put in an for
Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred UH jets, it takes a while
Speaker 1: to fill that order, as as you could possibly imagine. Um. UH.
Speaker 1: Corporate note in Lockheed and Martin would combine in what
Speaker 1: was called a merger of equals. Right, so we've been
Speaker 1: talking about Lockheed all this time. But remember if you
Speaker 1: listen to the beginning of the last podcast, we talked
Speaker 1: about how the Martin Company was also instrumental in early
Speaker 1: days in aircraft. Well, they had been quite busy themselves
Speaker 1: and it developed many aircraft that also were incredibly innovative.
Speaker 1: And at this point the two companies merged together to
Speaker 1: make a mega innovative aircraft company. Meanwhile, in nine six
Speaker 1: they come out with the Lockeed Martin skunk Works come
Speaker 1: out with the r Q three A dark Star Dark
Speaker 1: Star also known as Tier three or sometimes Tier three Minus,
Speaker 1: which was an unmanned aerial vehicle designed to be a
Speaker 1: high altitude drone. So uh, this was another one of
Speaker 1: those innovative approaches to trying to do surveillance without putting
Speaker 1: an actual human pilot at risking right, and and this
Speaker 1: was a project that would I I think that both
Speaker 1: Tagboard and have Blue Um really influenced this one definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it had stealth technology making it harder to detect.
Speaker 1: It also had a lot of autonomy. It could take off,
Speaker 1: fly to its mission, complete its mission, and come back
Speaker 1: and land all without a human controller taking control of that.
Speaker 1: But also it had the ability for a human controller
Speaker 1: to get in there and change the parameters of the
Speaker 1: mission on the fly. So it wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: you had this pre programmed route that it had to
Speaker 1: take and once you press play, that's it. You gotta
Speaker 1: wait till it comes back. You could actually change things
Speaker 1: on the fly and change the programming. So really innovative,
Speaker 1: particularly in n and it had a jet engine. It
Speaker 1: used jet engines for propulsion. It wasn't like a little
Speaker 1: rotor based drone. This is this is a jet um
Speaker 1: So officially that program was shelved sometime around but there
Speaker 1: are some rumors that it's not really shelf shelved so
Speaker 1: much as totally an operation. Yeah, and and like totally secret.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's all I'm going to say about that,
Speaker 1: because honestly, I do not need another coffee break. Um
Speaker 1: so thou That's when we get the F thirty five
Speaker 1: Lightning or Lightning Too. Yeah, Lightning Too. It's the sequel
Speaker 1: to Lightning. So if you remember in our previous episode
Speaker 1: we talked about the first Lightning jet aircraft, which was
Speaker 1: way back in the very earliest days for Lockheed or
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 our land and a front environment.
Speaker 1: So for example, there's one version of the F thirty
Speaker 1: five that can land and take off from aircraft carriers,
Speaker 1: but 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 of these have been things yeah more
Speaker 1: than uh, and they are going to the Air Force,
Speaker 1: the Navy, and the Marines. Different branches are using them.
Speaker 1: For those of you who aren't familiar with the branches
Speaker 1: of the military in the United States, there are pilots
Speaker 1: in these different branches, like air forces. Obviously you would
Speaker 1: you would immediately assume Air Force. I remember talking to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who was telling me about how
Speaker 1: much he thought it was weird the way that the
Speaker 1: Air Force was depicted in top gun and do you
Speaker 1: mean the Navy, because those were Navy pilots. The top
Speaker 1: Gun program was a Navy program, not an air Force program.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely positive that that the strict military accuracy
Speaker 1: was what people are watching Top Gun for. I don't
Speaker 1: know either. I I knew that by the end of it,
Speaker 1: I I who had the need, the need for speed,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know exactly how accurate it was
Speaker 1: all the way from the beginning to end. We'll return
Speaker 1: to the conclusion of our two part series on skunk
Speaker 1: Works in just a second after this quick break. Two one.
Speaker 1: That was the introduction of the Desert Hawk, and that's
Speaker 1: another drone. Yeah, another u a v on manned aerial vehicle.
Speaker 1: It was designed to be really portable. It was extremely 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 to. 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 that's 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 foam, 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. It's 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 Lockheed 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 this is a stealth blimp. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: spies on you. Um yeah. So it's got surveillance and
Speaker 1: communications gear and flies in the stratosphere. So for those
Speaker 1: of you who listen to our Google Loon podcast, you
Speaker 1: know all about that. We're not gonna 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 hours. So right, the contract for this was was
Speaker 1: awarded to Lockeed Martin in two thousand nine. But but
Speaker 1: I think that we had did we have something else?
Speaker 1: It's 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 YAH. Also in two thousand nine,
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: also reducing the kind of problems that you get with metals,
Speaker 1: like like corrosion and fatigue from those temperature differentials that
Speaker 1: you're going to get going up and down. That's that's
Speaker 1: very true. So this is a way of getting around that.
Speaker 1: And uh, really again, this is one of those programs
Speaker 1: where it's not like the A c c A is
Speaker 1: going to become a leading aircraft. It's more like the
Speaker 1: technologies being explored while they're design stuff blue kind of
Speaker 1: thing where it's a working Yeah, we'll find it. It
Speaker 1: will end up emerging in other aircraft, right that Lockheed
Speaker 1: makes and that other companies make. Then we have two
Speaker 1: thousand ten. That's when the Harvest Hawk took flight. So
Speaker 1: you might remember back in the other episode I talked
Speaker 1: about the Hercules cargo plane. I said, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a cargo plane, you know, for for propell our cargo plane.
Speaker 1: It's pretty big, neat, looking sort of useless at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like it wasn't useless, but it certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: like super secret like it wasn't like some sort of
Speaker 1: surveillance craft. Well, now we've got the Harvest talk, which
Speaker 1: is the uh. The reason why it's called Hawk is
Speaker 1: it's the Hercules Airborne Weapons Kit. So it's a weaponized
Speaker 1: cargo transport aircraft. It's armed with hell Fire or Griffin missiles,
Speaker 1: guided bombs, and a thirty millimeter cannon and it's operated
Speaker 1: by the United States Marine Corps. I am terrified of this.
Speaker 1: This is terrifying. And now we're up to current day,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen and it's time to talk about the
Speaker 1: s R seventy two. So this would be kind of
Speaker 1: the the black Hawks successor. This is a concept aircraft.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that it hasn't even been
Speaker 1: funded yet, but Lockheed skunk Works has been working on it,
Speaker 1: and it would end up using two different jet systems
Speaker 1: to have a hypersonic jet. Hypersonic being super wicked fast.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem. So there are to the two different
Speaker 1: types of engines. Would be your standard jet turbine engine,
Speaker 1: which tends to work at speeds at mock two or
Speaker 1: or slower, right, And that that's that's the kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing with these ramjets that we've talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about and scram jets, which stands for
Speaker 1: a supersonic combustion ramjet. Although I just really like the
Speaker 1: word scramjet a whole bunch um is that you know,
Speaker 1: they can't they can't start moving until they're going really
Speaker 1: really fast because of that, because of that air drag
Speaker 1: that they need in order to fuel their Combustiblewise it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work. So you you have to be going
Speaker 1: really fast to to operate your scramjet. So this combines
Speaker 1: a jet engine and a scramjet using an over under
Speaker 1: fuel approach because you can't use the same fuel for
Speaker 1: both of these either. It's actually a very complex system.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that the jet engine would get
Speaker 1: the the SR seventy two moving at around mock three,
Speaker 1: and then the scramjet would start to take over and
Speaker 1: then you would get up to your full speed, which
Speaker 1: is mock six, which is twice the old Blackbird and
Speaker 1: is about four thousand, five hundred miles per hour or
Speaker 1: I I recorded the other in meters per second and
Speaker 1: it's about two thousands per second. But really fast is
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. Yeah, And they would be
Speaker 1: armed with high speed strike weapons or h s S
Speaker 1: double US and so you can just think of it
Speaker 1: as a missile that is able to fly at hypersonic speeds.
Speaker 1: So they hope that they'll have a demonstrator program demonstrating
Speaker 1: this technological ability by prototype. Yeah so right now, like
Speaker 1: I said, there's no funding as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast for this particular project, but it's one of
Speaker 1: those things we're trying to do about. Yeah, there could
Speaker 1: be I mean, c I A might be you know,
Speaker 1: maybe an essay. Maybe they're like, we need to get
Speaker 1: 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 within an hour anywhere in the world it could
Speaker 1: hit its target. Keeping in mind it's both the aircraft
Speaker 1: and the missile, which is HSSW. It goes at that
Speaker 1: hypersonic speed. To big challenge involves actually heat management because
Speaker 1: when traveling at that speed, the friction from the air
Speaker 1: is intense. So they had kind of two different approaches
Speaker 1: they could go. They could go with a 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. Cooked, 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 inst meentation. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like operating a submarine, except you I'll bring a
Speaker 1: submarine that's traveling at mocks six thousands of feet in
Speaker 1: the air. So um, for those of you who have
Speaker 1: fear of flying, imagine that where you can't see out
Speaker 1: and you're going really fast. Yeah, yeah, again, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna respectfully bow out of that particular job. I
Speaker 1: think that podcaster is much better suited for me. Um
Speaker 1: they have. They have also announced, though a collaboration with
Speaker 1: Boeing to compete in the U. S. Air Forces Long
Speaker 1: Range Strike Bomber Program, which is a challenge to deliver
Speaker 1: stealth long range bombers for operation in the twenties, with
Speaker 1: an upper price limit of only five fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: per unit, which I say only but is really not
Speaker 1: gone much for that thing prices people, We're just we
Speaker 1: can't give these things away. Yeah, no, that's so I'm
Speaker 1: excited to see whether they actually come up with anything
Speaker 1: for that 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 let's us see it. I hope you guys enjoyed
Speaker 1: that classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, please let me know. Reach out
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter. The handle is text stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an i heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.