Somewhere between Boeing, Amazon and Microsoft

I said I got some goodies from the Museum Shop. Sorry, I could have specified the Plaque.

Darkstar!!!

That was the drone you had to defend in one of the missions in one of the old Janes’ Fighters games. Apparently never made it as a production system, was unstable inflight or something like that.

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YOU DONT SAY!?! It looks like a pancake with wings LOL

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The unstable part wasn’t the problem, a lot of planes are. The FCS not being able to control it properly was! :slight_smile:
I’m sure today it would’ve worked fine after 2 decades of refinement to FCS design.

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Well, if that is the case then anything can fly given enough power and artificial stabilization. I think that design went a little too radical and it ended up costing them a contract. I believe some shapes will lend themselves to easier flight and less “artificial” stabilization. This is not one of them.
It could probably work the other way. We could “neuter” a Cessna till nobody cannot stall it or do anything silly with it. But what is the point? While I appreciate some FCS intervention, if that is the main means of stabilization, you are setup for failure… And I fail to see how this is needed on a surveillance platform.

Like the F-117 before it (which also crashed a couple of times), I believe it was a case of stealth-over-stability. May not have flown well, but was very hard to see.

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It probably could have been fixed with better computer control. But the Predator and Reaper obviously don’t need that, so have more space and weight available for better cameras and are cheaper…

But if it had flown well they’d have to come up with a different reason to cancel it - probably cost :wink:

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