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Company owned test aircraft, perhaps?There's been quite a few photos throughout the internet, but the first thing I notice is this UAV carries an "N" number
Possibly or the DD250 not signed off.Company owned test aircraft, perhaps?
There's been quite a few photos throughout the internet, but the first thing I notice is this UAV carries an "N" number
Company owned test aircraft, perhaps?
Funny thing. Back when they were going to fly the X-34 first from New Mexico and then from the Cape for the longer range missions, the people in NM found out that it was unmanned and panicked. I got a call from the Pentagon and they asked me, "What happens if it is landing at the Cape and a fire truck pulls out onto the runway?" They literally had a question on that directed to them! I told them that the X-34 would hit the fire truck, but that we did not let our fire trucks run out onto an active runway with an operation underway. They asked if we were worried about the X-34 being unmanned. I replied that we were not at all worried; almost nothing we supported at the Cape had anyone driving it, and the Skid Strip was built to enable unmanned cruise missiles to land.
They moved the X-34 program from NM to Edwards AFB as a result of the panic associated with it being unmanned. I guess that there has been more acceptance of UAVs since then.
What a good looking airframe. Except for the tail. Need a big ole b-17 , b-29 tail. I will sent a fax about that. That will sort them out.
Yeah, plenty of images and video about. Start with here:There's been quite a few photos throughout the internet, but the first thing I notice is this UAV carries an "N" number
I notice they seem to be using the fan powered buddy pack external store refueling units for probe and drouge refuling. I would have expected them to make the refueling capability integral, but given that the other role of the aircraft is ECM I suppose the external stores approach makes more sense.
Seeing an "N" number on this brings up another point. I'm going to assume that when they did the air-to-air refueling trials it was done in a MOA. The reason why I bring this up, about 22 years ago I worked on a modification program where we converted a 707 into a tanker. Now before you say "I think someone else has already done that," our mod consisted of a refueling module that can be removed from the aircraft along with the extra tankage and then the aircraft can be operated as a transport or covertly converted into a tanker. The program was known as "Omega."
When it came time for us to do air-to-air refueling testing, the FAA gave us a bunch of grief, in their opinion, once the refueling hose contacted the receiving aircraft, it was considered a "mid-air"!!! Eventually we were able to do the test in a MOA north of Edwards AFB.
I'm wondering if the FAA has the same (dumb) requirement on this aircraft?
There were several of these aircraft modified after the one I worked on;
View attachment 679615
The one I did work on did not have a long life!
View attachment 679616
Photo of Boeing 707-321B N707AR - Aviation Safety Network
Photo of Boeing 707-321B N707AR taken by NTSB at Port Hueneme-Point Mugu NAS, CA (NTD/KNTD)aviation-safety.net
What's funny was the tail section of this mod was really gone through, some of the structure was removed and replaced 3 times, it looks like it survived the crash pretty well!
photos courtesy of the internet!