Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on December 10, 2023 at 9:15:47 PST:
Thanks for the PDF link of the 2014 interview with John Cashen. As you've pointed out, the book "Have Blue and the F-117A" notes on page 63 that the cruise missile program which became the TSSAM began in the early 1980s (when tests of the Lockheed Senior Peg experimental cruise missile were ongoing), and the book "Flying Wings and Radical Things" (of which I have a copy) corroborates this by citing the 2014 interview with Cashen, in which case the TSSAM only received the internal designation N-370 after its design was revised to look like an upside down Tacit Blue upon handed to Northrop's Aircraft Division in 1984. Given that the list of designations for Radioplane and Northrop Ventura designs lists the NV-150 designation as "AP-3 Vehicle" and Carlo Kopp described the NV-150 as a stealthy cruise missile in his September 1984 article "Precision Guided Munitions: The New Breed", is it reasonable to assume that the AP-3 project number was applied by Northrop's Advanced Projects Department to its notional stealth cruise missile design and that the initial TSSAM design worked out by the Ventura Division in 1982 was designated NV-150 after Kent Kresa handed Northrop's idea for a cruise missile to the Ventura Division? As Cashen states in the interview, the TSSAM design was revised to look like an upside down Tacit Blue after it was handed back to Northrop's Aircraft Division in 1984, hence the Northrop company designation N-370 being assigned to the revised TSSAM design that eventually was designated AGM/MGM-137 in 1986. Moreover, Northrop submitted a cruise missile design for the ACM competition that was won in 1983 by General Dynamics (I don't know if the losing Northrop submission for the ACM contest was envisaged by the company's Ventura Division), so I can only guess that the Northrop ACM submission might have been more or less similar to the initial TSSAM design and also had some design attributes of the preliminary AP-3 cruise missile concept from the Northrop Advanced Projects Department.
In Reply to: Re: Northrop Advanced Projects Division designations posted by quellish on December 09, 2023 at 22:01:46 PST:
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