Original F-117 Sketch

robert arndt wrote:
the "Hopeless Diamond" version:

http://www.f-117a.com/images/XST/hdiamond1.gif

Looks much different from the designs the Germans came up with for
their MBB Lampyridae (Firefly)... independently, of course.

Lampyridae reportedly began development in 1981. Have Blue flew in the
1970s. Who was copying whom?

The German
design was much better at radar defraction and was from the onset
designed as an armed interceptor.

It might have occurred to them that a LO aircraft with conventional active
radar (State fo the art for the 1980s) was a fairly pointless undertaking.
Ther'es a good reaosn the F-117 does not have radar.

But US pressure cancelled the program just like the Canadian
CF-105 Arrow.

Ah, the eternal lament of would-be super-plane builders everywhere. Easier
to blame the US than their own governments, I guess.


p.s. However, it is not quite confirmed that the Germans actually
stopped with their stealth program. Reports of Firefly II stealth
aircraft being tested in South Africa have persisted for years just as
the now-confirmed German-assisted firing of an Israeli cruise missile
off South Africa's coast on one of the Dolphin subs.

Confirmed? Sez who? I've seen viogorous denials of these alleged cruise
missile tests, but no evidence that they actually happened.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)