When I began to be interested in aviation, one of my favourite themes was the mysterious Tier III. Over the years I managed to find, sort and process a lot of stuff to uncover one of the most secret and one of the most ambitious projects of the cold war together with all its competitors and successors. My current article about it is the first one (that I produced), which gives you more answers than questions. It coveres projects and programs like AARS, QUARTZ, Senior Pine, Boeing Condor, Tier III, Tier IV, RQ-3A DarkStar, StrikeStar, P-420 LightStar, P-175 Polecat, Frontier Systems/Loral W570A, Arrow, Shadow, PHAE, RQ-170 Sentinel or SensorCraft.
A few hints:
– part of the AARS program was also the high speed component, managed by USAF and designed to replace the SR-71 fleet. This is what people used to call the mythical Aurora.
– QUARTZ component of the AARS was very big superstealth autonomous ISR UAV, designed to search large Soviet territory for the mobile ICBMs and direct the B-2 attack force to them
– TR-3 is not a Black Mantha, nor flying triangle, but the modified Grob G500 Egrett, which was low-cost alternative, that emerged short before the termination of the AARS
– the mysterious Lockheed patent from 1996, that is for a long time used to describe Tier III, is in fact in-house effort called P-420 LightStar
– Loral and Frontier Systems flown in the mid 90s their secret high aspect ratio flying wing UAV demonstrator called Shadow
– the primary purpose of the RQ-170 is to be the communication relay in the NCCT countries and stealthy AESA search platform. It is going to be equipped with the kinetic and non-kinetic weapons.
Note: because of the length of the text, in the case to obtain the full google English translation, you will be probably forced to press your browser “refresh” button a few times to translate also the last paragrahs of the text.
By: Vahe.D - 9th May 2024 at 04:59
The US Air Force is currently operating in secret an unmanned stealthy flying wing built by Northrop Grumman and tailored for the same stealthy strategic reconnaissance role that the Quartz and Tier III would have filled. Informally dubbed “RQ-180” because it was referred to by this label in a December 2013 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology (although that may not be its true designation), it first flew on August 3, 2010 and nine service test vehicles were built before production began in 2016-2017. The “RQ-180” draws upon Northrop Grumman’s SensorCraft design studies conducted under contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory, and it is apparent from Northrop Grumman financial records that NG won a secret USAF competition initiated in 2007 for a stealthy strategic reconnaissance drone drawing heavily upon the requirements laid out for the SensorCraft program. Northrop Grumman’s experience with development and flight testing of the “RQ-180” probably helped the company with design of the flying wing bomber proposal that won the LRSB competition in September 2015 and became the B-21 Raider.
Although the US Air Force has yet to publicly unveil the “RQ-180”, ground-based sightings of the drone flying at high altitudes in 2020 and 2021 show that the USAF may lift the cloak of secrecy surrounding this UAV program sooner of later. In short, the Northrop Grumman “RQ-180” fills the penetrating ISR niche left vacant by the SR-71’s retirement in the 1990s, and notwithstanding the fact that rumors in the early 1990s about the Air Force deploying a hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71 turned to be untrue due to the “donuts-on-a-rope” contrails being dismissed as being produced by airliners and the fact that scramjet and turbine-based combined cycle engine technology was in its infancy in the 1980s and 1990s, Lockheed did work on designs for a hypersonic spyplane for the USAF in the late 1970s and 1980s, including the methane-fueled Mach 5 Penetrator.
References:
Merlin, P.W., 2023. Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing. (available for purchase at Amazon)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/09/07/americas-new-stealth-d…
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/possible-pho…
https://premium.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/rq-180.htm
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November 4, 2010 at 10:23 am