Skunkworks Top Gun - The Darkstar, a large but fictional aircraft built by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, will be on static display at the Edwards Air Force Base air show from October 14 to 16. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works will have a secret hypersonic jet on static display at the Edwards Air Force Base air show Oct. 14-16. But It Will Never Fly This is the full-scale model of Darkstar featured in the opening scene of this year's hit movie "Top Gun: Maverick."
Skunkworks Top Gun
The exhibition will be the main attraction, at least on the first day of the show, when about 12,000 students from high schools in the region will participate. Lockheed and show organizers hope it will stimulate interest in space careers.
Lockheed Darkstar From Top Gun Maverick [add On] 1.0
Skunk Works is currently on a hiring spree, securing several contracts, mostly classified in the Pentagon over the past few years. Last year, it opened a new 215,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility at its Palmdale headquarters.
"Darkstar may not be real, but it has power. Hypersonic technology is a capability that our team is advancing today with more than 30 years of hypersonic investment and experience in development and testing," Skunk Works said when the film debuted last month. april
Rumors and speculation about such a development in Palmdale, California have circulated for years. First it was "Aurora" and later "SR-72".
But the only fully recognized Hi-Mac program underway at Skunk Works is the X-59, an unclassified demonstration of quiet supersonic technology for NASA that is scheduled to fly later this year. Last year, Skunk Works released partial details of the Speed Racer, a UAS or airborne missile, but the project is demonstrating rapid digital development and manufacturing technology rather than super-fast flight.
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There was an actual aircraft built by Skunk Works in the mid-1990s called the Darkstar. It was a joint effort with Boeing for a stealthy, subsonic, high-altitude UAV.
The plane was funded by the Pentagon and first flew in 1996. But the prototype, designated RQ-3, crashed on its second flight. A modified version - designated RQ-3A - flew in 1998, but the program was canceled the following year.
The Edwards event is officially called the Aerospace Valley Open House, Airshow and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Expo. This is the first time in 13 years that the iconic airbase has opened its doors.
Organizers promise "performances from nearly every aircraft in the current Air Force inventory, various NASA aircraft, and a world special 'Race to Mach 1' to wow the crowd."
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Next Wednesday's event will be preceded by a "STEM Outreach Flyover" to about 50 schools in 14 communities with trainers, fighter jets and cargo planes.
Meanwhile, the locally based Museum of Flight Test Foundation (FTMF) will be celebrating the bravery of its new building being constructed just outside the main gate at Edwards. The building will replace a small museum inside the base that was closed to non-military visitors a few years ago for security reasons. Skunk Works helped dream up Maverick's high-speed experimental jet at the end of Top Gun, bringing another layer of realism. I am happy today.
The film, which is scheduled to release on May 27, may be more realistic than we previously thought. James Teichlett, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation, confirmed that the company's Skunk Works Advanced Projects Division worked with the film's producers and helped create the fictional design.
Skunk Works was contacted directly about this collaboration. They wouldn't comment directly but directed us to a LinkedIn post Teyclet made later this week after the film's premiere at the Lowry Theater at US Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California. Taiclet said Skunk Works team members “partnered with them
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Its producers will bring cutting-edge, futuristic technology to the big screen before citing "critical work in hypersonic flight."
The admission follows an earlier tweet by Lockheed Martin executive John Nielsen, director of communications for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in which he pointed to rumors that the hypothetical jet "may give a sneak peak at what could be. " Lockheed Martin SR-72."
This, at least, would explain the fictional configuration of the Darkstar, which is largely reminiscent of the rendering of the long-teased SR-72 hypersonic jet. The latter was the subject of no small amount of public discussion by Lockheed Martin between 2016 and 2017.
Billed as a potential spiritual successor to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, the SR-72 concept proposes a reusable unmanned hypersonic military aircraft capable of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as strike missions.
Sr 72 Darkstar Skunkworks Top Gun Maverick Navy Experimental Test Aircraft Vx 31
In 2016, Skunk Works executive vice president Rob Weiss said that a hypersonic demonstration aircraft could be ready for first flight by 2018. "We estimate that it will cost less than $1 billion to build, build and fly a demonstration aircraft. The size of an F-22," added Marilyn Hewson, then CEO of Lockheed Martin, who spoke at the same event.
References to SR-72 efforts related to the US Air Force's secret Mayhem hypersonic air vehicle program also surfaced, which you can read more about here.
The SR-72 has already been widely speculated as the inspiration for the Darkstar. Like the conceptual artwork for the SR-72, the Darkstar jet we've seen in previous trailers and a Lady Gaga music video related to the film has a long, chin-forward fuselage that extends into a delta-like wing , climb back. Midpoint of fuselage. One of the differences compared to the SR-72 concept is the Darkstar's two tail fins.
Also, the fictional plane's cockpit configuration has remarkably zero forward visibility, something we've also seen in the real-life X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology Aircraft, or QueSST, that Skunk Works is building for NASA. Again, the SR-72 will be unmanned, but a demonstration of its high-speed technology will be manned.
Top Gun Maverick Darkstar Skunkworks Patch
The music video below for Lady Gaga's "Hold My Hand", featured in the film, gives a good look at the design of the fictional Darkstar starting at about 1:08 in.
The name also says something. Darkster is already part of the Skunk Works legacy. The name was assigned to the short-lived RQ-3 Darkstar low-observable reconnaissance drone. This program was canceled in the late 1990s and its technology was transferred 'in the dark' and affected several programs. A similar concept eventually became operational in the guise of the RQ-170 Sentinel.
Separately, we have now also learned hints that some physical mockups of Darkstar were created for the film, as well as the CGI versions we have already seen.
In a Twitter post, Sandbox Blog editor Alex Hollings recounted that producer Jerry Bruckheimer told him that Darkstar was "originally designed with Skunk Works engineers." The text is accompanied by an image of a CGI Darkstar in a hangar alongside Maverick's iconic Kawasaki Ninja.
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More tantalizingly, Hollings also wrote that Bruckheimer claimed that the US Navy told him "China rebuilt a spy satellite to get pictures of the [Darkstar], thinking it was a real experimental aircraft."
Claims that a Darkstar mock-up alerted Chinese intelligence agencies, prompting them to deploy spy satellites to get a better look at it,
Fantastic, even if it is possible. We don't really know what kind of mockup was used, though most of the images we saw in Darkstar appear to be largely CGI rendered. Moreover, how the navy knew the exact situation of the Chinese surveillance of a large military installation, which is carried out on a daily basis, seems a bit mysterious, although the redirection of a high-resolution satellite to an area of interest may be an indication of this circumstance a. . It seems strange that the Navy would share this information with Bruckheimer, but anything is possible. Hopefully, we can clear this up with the Navy and report back in the near future.
Looking back at history, the cockpit mock-up of the B-52 strategic bomber was used in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 dark comedy.
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Its accuracy is widely reported to have caused consternation in the Air Force. Production designer Ken Adam, himself a former fighter pilot, later recalled: "At some stage, we invited some US Air Force personnel to look at the set and they went white because it was so accurate."
Regardless, Lockheed Martin's involvement in developing a hypothetical hypersonic aircraft concept should not be entirely surprising, if only from a public relations perspective. After all, despite the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Skunk Works design, in the past, the SR-72 concept was the subject of Lockheed's public pitch and fueled much speculation.
Perhaps our best comprehensive look at Darkstar is the Matchbox game that was released long before the movie premiered due to COVID-19. It clearly has the classic look of high-speed aircraft concepts that have floated over the years.
No doubt the new - and many delays - will help raise expectations on the end At the same time, the benefits of public relations must also be felt
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