Kandahar’s Loch Ness Mystery Plane Returns
December 1st, 2009Via: Flight Global:
Kandahar’s Loch Ness monster has been spotted again. This time an actual photo of the beast was published by French journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet, who writes for the Liberation newspaper, on his Secret Defense blog. We last saw the mystery Kandahar aircraft in a drawing by Shephard’s Unmanned Vehicles and a very grainy photo published by Air & Cosmos.
The new photo offers a slightly better view of the nose. Is that a canopy screen above the nose? I wondered in May if this might actually be a manned aircraft, even if it was first sighted on UV.com. If there is a cockpit, where is the air intake for the engine? The half-moon exhaust pipe strikingly resembles the P175 Polecat, a Skunk Works product.
Regardless of how it is piloted, the Kandahar aircraft’s existence raises several existential questions: What does it do? Why do you need a stealthy-looking aircraft to spy on Al Qaeda and the Taliban? What’s all the secrecy about? While I’m asking, can somebody please get a head-on picture?
[UPDATE: Bill Sweetman, of Ares blog infamy, believes the aircraft is the Skunk Works’ Desert Prowler, which would make it a UAV.]
it looks like an evolved vari-eze, missing the elevator canard upfront and the rudders on the wingtips… -except the front gear seems to want to stow in what ostensibly would be the cockpit if it were manned… and that bit about the scale of the thing because of the size of the runway light? -about as it would be for a vari-eze in my estimation (& i’ve worked with perspective scale a great deal for years). moreover, i *think* ‘skunk works’ refers to rutan’s outfit, Scaled Composites, or at least in part. i think. i used to know this stuff better…
lovely craft. needs a better mission. like, oh, sport aviation.
It looks tremendously like the Northrop Grumman X-47C. It’s hard to find a reference picture from that perspective though.
X-47B, high from the starboard.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_UAV_X-45C_F-18F_F-15E_lg.jpg
A better 3 points view in a design drawing.
http://www.456fis.org/X-PLANES/NORTHR2.jpg
.. and a very similar shot of a full scale mockup of the X-47C
http://www.air-and-space.com/20091016%20Edwards/BL2_9507%20X-47C%20mock-up%20left%20side%20l.jpg
The X-47C would still be in development. And ya, it’s a UAV. The cockpit is either paint or a shadow, on the forward part of the intake.