MBB Lampyridæ Stealth Fighter
- Thread starter Brit
- Start date
That was a german research project on construction of a stealth fighter aircraft, supposedly conducted between 1981 and 1989. Unfortunately I can only offer information in german and even there exact data remains suspect.
Apparently there was no indication/intention of fielding any operational aircraft based on that research. The end of the Cold War in 1989 resulting in decreased overall funding terminated all such research anyways.
It is said that RCS was better than with the F-117 and aerodynamics were quite convincing. The low RCS was achieved both with shaping of the fuselage/RAS and limited RAM coating. However there was no full 1:1 prototype, also no engine was used at any stage of development.
edit:
Found a short paragraph of information here:
http://www.lowobservable.com/Protos.htm
Apparently there was no indication/intention of fielding any operational aircraft based on that research. The end of the Cold War in 1989 resulting in decreased overall funding terminated all such research anyways.
It is said that RCS was better than with the F-117 and aerodynamics were quite convincing. The low RCS was achieved both with shaping of the fuselage/RAS and limited RAM coating. However there was no full 1:1 prototype, also no engine was used at any stage of development.
edit:
Found a short paragraph of information here:
http://www.lowobservable.com/Protos.htm
In 1987, a year before the Reagan administration revealed the existence of the F-117A, a fact-finding group of US Air Force officers was taken to a closed-off section of Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm's (MBB's) plant at Ottobrunn in Bavaria and shown a three-quarter-scale wind-tunnel model of an aircraft that MBB had been developing under the tightest secrecy since 1981. According to high-level Luftwaffe sources, the Americans were startled by what they saw: a stealth aircraft, dubbed the Medium Range Missile Fighter or Lampyridae (Firefly), whose core design principle - deriving an efficient aerodynamic shape out of an arrangement of radar-deflecting flat panels or 'facets' - mirrored the technique employed on the then top secret F-117A. The demonstrator was subsequently tested in a series of tethered flights in a wind-tunnel complex owned jointly by the German and Netherlands governments.
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