It's a Boo... or is it?
Did a mystery aircraft get caught over California late in April?
Someone going by the name Mackbolin posted this image on file-sharing site LiveLeak on May 8.
So far, efforts to ID or contact the poster have been fruitless. The discussion over at Dreamland Resort has been inconclusive, with noted X-plane hunter Peter Merlin leaning towards the "hoax" side.
On the other hand, the pic has passed one suggested hoax test on DLR. It's also free of some of the other trace scents of rat. It doesn't overtly contravene the laws of physics or optics; you could take such a photo from a vantage point on the ground. It doesn't look like an ordinary airplane seen from an odd perspective (it's easy to misinterpret against a blue-sky background). The sighting was (ostensibly) in a pretty remote end of California. The alleged spotter isn't after money or fame.
It's not an obvious attempt to hornswoggle the Snark-hunting community with something that clearly resembles our favorite white whales - the Aurora or Bill Scott's Blackstar. It does look like a plausible configuration, resembling McAir studies from the 1970s, but not many people know that.
The Woracle points out in an email that it also looks like an early design for DARPA's RASCAL small-sat launcher. And it's not an SR-71 or an F-14, unless it's been messed with (see "hoax" above).
The idea that it might be a secret US aircraft is not fantasy or paranoia. The US tested and sometimes deployed entirely secret projects in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, there is more money in there than ever and the USAF's secure flight-test center at Groom Lake is still busy (see DTI for March).
Check the original and weigh in. Debunkers welcome. And you know where we are if this looks familiar.
Edit: Welcome to Ares, Instapundit readers. We're the defense blog of the Aviation Week group, including Defense Technology International magazine.
Edit2: In the light of Sherlock's comments, here's a version of the original with the contrast boosted and a little stretching, to adust for the likely perspective in the shot... pure guesswork, so don't read too much into it. The pattern beneath is the shape of the Greek letter omega.
By the way, the codename OMEGA was used in the USAF budget in the early 1990s. The same element number (0207591F) has remained in use and is a classified line item named Advanced Program Evaluation in the FY2009 Air Force R&D budget.
Edit 3: Here's a Draken:
Having personally had a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? moment with a Mojave Draken a few years ago, I'd say it doesn't look like one of those. And here is the Glasgow UFO pic mentioned by Sherlock:
In a vertically banked turn, 500-foot altitude, over the third largest city in the UK? Opsec violation, if you ask me.
Edit4: Sherlock's montage of Calfornia, Scotland and Chile:
Edit 5, 2.04 pm ET on May 22: Commenter PresidenToor has been working on the image over on his own blog, with some interesting observations. He also says (and anyone's welcome to pitch in, voting up or down) that his enhancements show two booms sticking out of the nose - which is interesting, since you might see a device like that if you were fooling around with generating a plasma in front of the airplane to protect it from radar.
Ha, you say. Next you'll be telling us that the CIA tried that in the 1960s as part of a blackworld high-speed project.
Oh SNAP. They did.
pics via Liveleak, and NASA via Secret Projects; post title allusion credit to Lewis Carroll.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/images/content/108492main_F-16XL-1_firstflight.jpg
http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/1813-Awesome_Experimental_Aircraft_II_Screen_Saver.gif
but it could be anynumber of fighter aircraft (dassault and convair spring to mind)
The wings have too much sweep and have a strange 'block' shape at the front. It's either doctored or a secret technology demonstrator. And considering they had a vehicle a lot like this one for years for R&D (the YF-12/SR-71). Doesn't make sense to make another unless you really, really needed Mach 3+ data.
Many of the designs for aircraft with high thrust engines have big boxy intakes under the forward section of the wing, the apparent notch could just be the corner edge of that sticking down, not forwards.
The centre of the tail is odd though, as the only designs I can think of with tail edge notches have one notch per engine exhaust, (feel free to correct me).
Overwing upright tailfins could be invisible from this angle if the tail edges were swept downwards.
Given that the overall shape is reminiscent of the SR-71, maybe it's not really that new, and whatever project has been previously reported as Aurora et al really did fly at least one airframe.