On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 03:22:08 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:46:54 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

Funny, I keep finding quite large ones. Like the Predator, the
Darkstar, the Global Hawk, or one of several Russian designs that are
basically reworked large cruise missiles or former target drones.

Darkstar wasn't that big. I used to see it out on the ramp all the
time. It was definitely is T-37 size class at the most. That's
pretty small.

http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/darkstar.htm

The Darkstar has a 69 foot wingspan, about twice that of the T-37, and
about 50 percent wider than the F-22. I consider that big. Certainly
big enough to hit with cannon fire.

You wouldn't be comparing it to the F-22 if you'd ever seen it.
DarkSpot was really short and thin. Gliders have wing spans bigger
than the F-22, too, but no one really compares them.

Actually, the DarkStar-glider comparison isn't a bad one, now that I
think about it. About the same volume and bulk. Same kind of
materials for the airframe, too.

Of course you can hit it with cannon fire. You can hit a cruise
missile with cannon fire, too. You just have to work at it.

I am reminded of the story about the time an ALCM escaped control at
EDW. It went into some sort of holding pattern and AFFTC whistled up
some armed F-4s from George. They came over and chased it around the
sky, as it flew a predictable path without any sort of evasive
maneuvering, for about a half an hour. They took a fair number of
shots against it and missed it every time. The ALCM finally ran out
of fuel and fell out of the sky.

This may or may not be true, and accuracy was probably sacrificed for
laughs by the third time someone told it, but it was widely accepted
at EDW as being a reasonable representation of the events.

Maybe you saw a sub-scale prototype?

Nope.

Mary

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Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer