Monday, May 18, 2009

Was Polecat Part of a Litter with the Kandahar UAS?

Was Polecat Part of a Litter with the Kandahar UAS?: "

Does Lockheed Martin's ill-fated Polecat UAS demonstrator share a lineage with the so-called Beast of Kandahar?

Graham Warwick posted this pic of the UAS flying out of Afghanistan last week. It isn't much to go on, but you can see a basic outline of the airframe, and the landing gear down.'

Realizing this is nothing but speculation -- and hopefully educated speculation -- it does resemble the Skunk Works's Polecat, no? I pulled these photos of the UAS at a similar angle to the mystery aircraft.

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Skunk Works has been mum for years on their UAS projects, except of course for their Polecat, which crashed for about as silly a reason as a UAS can crash. A ground controller accidentally flipped the switch which told the system to crash -- at least that was the best version I heard. The intakes -- or whatever they are -- on the top of the Kandahar UAS are interesting ... I found this old pic of Polecat that shows its angled 'eyebrows.'

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What do you think; has Skunk Works been busy?

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(Via Ares.)

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