Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on November 02, 2023 at 20:52:13 PST:
In a 1995 World Air Power Journal Special issue about the F-117, there is mention of an unmanned experimental stealth aircraft which made a few flights at Groom Lake and later crashed before being broken up. Peter Merlin mentions on page 311 of "Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 that Lockheed test flew a classified unmanned aerial vehicle with a reliable, lightweight flight control system utilizing both unstable aerodynamics and aerodynamic-load alleviation technologies. Since Lockheed was one of two companies to be awarded contracts in 1983 to build technology demonstrators for the AARS/Quartz stealthy strategic reconnaissance UAV (the other being Boeing), and it has been mentioned elsewhere on this forum by quellish that experimental hardware was built for the Quartz program, including one vehicle that crashed during flight testing (which led to Lockheed teaming up with Boeing), my opinion is that the Lockheed experimental UAV test flown at Groom Lake in 1986 was the unmanned aircraft mentioned in the 1995 World Air Power Journal Special issue dealing with the F-117 as having made a few flight tests before being lost in an accident and most probably was related to the Quartz/AARS program.
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