This popped up on ebay a few years ago. It purported to be a Boeing design for an advanced subsonic stealth bomber… but the design is, clearly, rather silly. Supposedly it dates from 1984 and was produced at, by and for Boeing, intended to be a decoy for the B-2 Advanced Technology (Stealth) Bomber competitors. I’m not sure Lockheed or Northrop would have looked at this and seen a serious design, however.
*Some* aspects of it seem like they might have been taken from an actual stealthy bomber design… the inlets and exhaust, indeed much of the middle part of the wing/body, look about right. But the stubby wing and especially the straight-vertical fins in substantial numbers are goofy aerodynamics and spectacular corner reflectors.
At least two of these were made and wandered out into the wild over the years.
5 responses to ““XB-2002 Stealthawk””
the intakes/exhaust remind me of the A-12 Avenger II.
like they took an avenger II, split the intakes, discarded the wings after the folding mechanism, added a curved wingtip, some tip fins and those weird rudders on the back, grafted a B-1 nose on it with a shortened radome and called it a day.
the “hump” on the back looks like the exact spot the A-12 cockpit would be…
Seeing “Man Tech” on the label explains everything to me. They once produced a large poster for a US Navy project that included a photo of a fighter on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It was a FRENCH fighter (Rafaele) photo for a US Navy project!
One of the left hand/port side pics showing the underside kinda look like Vulcan bomber at least a little bit.
The left hand/port side pic shot from underneath kinda sorta looks like Vulcan bomber if you squint at it a little.
A 50-foot wingspan for a bomber is nonsense.