If Lockheed had beaten Northrop for the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) contract, this would be flying instead of the B-2A Spirit: the Lockheed Senior Peg

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Ian1231100@reddit

I'd appreciate it if Lockheed didn't do that it seniors

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QueerLongboarder@reddit

Honestly read that as the Lockheed Simon Pegg at first

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Spirit-Hydra69@reddit

Reminds me of the XB-10 prototype bomber from Acecombat 2.

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HKTLE@reddit

Could of come up with a cooler name lol

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HKTLE@reddit

Indeed , that's what I'm saying something that is not going to let the cat out of the bag as they say and one that sounds utterly amazing and totally ambiguous.

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Johnny-Cash-Facts@reddit

“Could of” is incorrect & makes zero grammatical sense. It’s “could have.”

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BobbiePinns@reddit

because its a reeaaally common mistake.

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Maeros@reddit

That was a 30 word sentence with only one comma, which inexplicably had a space before it.

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I get that thing where it hurts at the top of your nose between your eyebrows every time I read "could of." You know what I'm talking about? When you need to close your eyes and scrunch up your face and rub that area... 😐

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not1or2@reddit

Wasn’t “senior” +something a common name for stealth project back then?

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Drenlin@reddit

The primary use of that prefix was actually used for USAF-run programs for ISR aircraft, sensors, or systems, which makes me really interested in why it would be applied to a bomber.

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Southern-Bandicoot@reddit

Yes. SENIOR CROWN was the name of one such project.

I'm surprised that PEG was the allocated second word here; CONSTANT PEG was the name for the Soviet aircraft flown by the 4477th TES ... and PEG was chosen as it was the name of the wife of the senior officer(!)

Yes, words can be re-used. But with a whole dictionary of words available, it surprises me that one is repeated so quickly.

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Awkward-Feature9333@reddit

Maybe this peg is named after another peggy or a similarly named activity...

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HKTLE@reddit

I thought that would be the offical name of the aircraft lol

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Cuddlypoo2@reddit

I dunno, “Señor Peg” sounds….very threatening. I would not want to meet Señor Peg.

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ScissorNightRam@reddit

Simon Peg’s dad

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HKTLE@reddit

Northrop deserved to win clearly.

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actuallyserious650@reddit

I read the skunkworks book and the author makes it sound like the opposite- that Lockheed had superior designs but the government deliberately spreads out contracts so Northrop got it.

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Nodsworthy@reddit

Makes sense to have some diversification in the sector. I guess it reduces to tendency to 'group think' and enhances the chances of original solutions to problems.

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PhoenixFox@reddit

Supposedly this went the other way by the time the YF-23 came around, so it balanced out in the end.

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WalnutDesk8701@reddit

The Ben Rich book is great, but also read “Stealth” by Peter Westwick. I’m inclined to believe Ben Rich, but Peter Westwick paints a more broad picture by including Northrop in the conversation.

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Lampwick@reddit

Yeah, it's important to consult a non-interested party when assessing who has better tech. I have no doubt that from Ben Rich's POV inside Lockheed it looked like they had a tech lead based on what he knew from outside Northrop. The reality is, he didn't have a big picture view of the entire competition, nor have any idea what the Northrop Advanced Technology Development Center showed the USAF.

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WalnutDesk8701@reddit

Yeah that’s true. If I recall correctly, Rich said that they had a Pentagon insider telling them they wanted a small bomber, not a huge long range bomber. Turns out the insider was wrong about what the Air Force would want.

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actuallyserious650@reddit

I could see that.

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

The answer was obvious before the program even started, and Lockheed knew that. By 1979, Northrop already had 50 years of experience building flying wings and they already had a contract for building another stealth aircraft

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HKTLE@reddit

Might be true , that kind of makes sense Lockheed definitely had the experience, but Northrop definitely wanted to win no matter what, I've always hear that Lockheed have been known to play dirty to get big military contracts and Northrop are more let the work do the talking.

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FormCheck655321@reddit

Northrop also had stealth experience at the time - Tacit Blue.

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AverageAircraftFan@reddit

And had been building flying wings since 1928

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HKTLE@reddit

Very true.

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nasadowsk@reddit

They likely had the R&D leg up. And when the proposals came across the table, the leg up on the cool factor. This thing? Meh, just another weird Lockheed plane. A genuine flying wing? Let's face it, that's just cool. Even today, they look cool doing stadium bombing runs...

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HKTLE@reddit

Ahahha true

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Vecna_Is_My_Co-Pilot@reddit

It's like you just scaled up an F117 in the horizontal axis only.

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Raguleader@reddit

The F-117 Nightchonk.

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pope1701@reddit

F-117 Widehawk

Come on, it was right there

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firemansam51@reddit

Chonkhawk.

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neddie_nardle@reddit

I was thinking with that tail ... ahhh...thingy: F-117 Strapon.

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notsurwhybutimhere@reddit

This does not pass the “looks right” test

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Chimpville@reddit

Like a stretched jpg

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ZuStorm93@reddit

The W I D E Hawk

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RollinThundaga@reddit

Facet Blue

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TacTurtle@reddit

Fattest Blue

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FormCheck655321@reddit

That was the whole idea. Lockheed claimed it was low risk just to scale up the F-117.

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Orlok_Tsubodai@reddit

F11111117

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Foreign_Implement897@reddit

F117-Ctrl-T

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hypercomms2001@reddit

Yes it looks like Lockheed have an upgraded their design software for developing stealth aircraft since the 1970s...

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a_mannibal@reddit

Chibi F117

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coffecup1978@reddit

Thanks giving edition

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Ambitious_Farmer9303@reddit

Had Jack Nortrop bern not suffocated by vexed interests on behalf of the B-(whatever) Peacemaker, none of the US bombers would have a tailplane.

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veryfastslowguy@reddit

The right decision was made .

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Expensive-Way1116@reddit

Horton mk2

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Vegetable-Ring-1760@reddit

Good thing they lost

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bCup83@reddit

Is anybody else glad we got the B-2?

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Spiritual_Fox_8393@reddit

I’ve read an interesting analysis, maybe on the warzone, that we would have been better off if this design had won. It was simpler, cheaper, and many more could have been ordered for the price of a few B-2s. So instead of 20 B-2s, we could have had 100 of these.

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CyberSoldat21@reddit

Hideous honestly. Looks like an F-117 that someone hit 10x on

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theyoyomaster@reddit

That’s what it is. The RCS for the F-117 is purely a function of its shape so they could have scaled it and it would have been exactly the same on radar. It would have been waaaaay cheaper than th B-2 and we would have actually gotten a bunch of them like originally intended. Northrop overdid literally every aspect of the B-2 and made an amazing plane, but it was too expensive to make a full run of them so rather than replacing the B-52 it just became its own thing.

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MrScootini@reddit

Looks like it was built in the game Flyout

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shedang@reddit

Swept wings?

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Carne-humana@reddit

The contract went to the right place

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mandatorysin@reddit

"Senior Peg"? Isn't that how they normally get their contracts?

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fromkentucky@reddit

Ew

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jocax188723@reddit

I love how comically tiny the V tail is.
Also kinda ironic the chinese H-20 probably looks quite similar, without the tail.

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fourunderthebridge@reddit

I don't think we have any idea what the H-20 looks like, right? Other than the fact it's a flying wing?

For a project that's been in development for this long, it's interesting how we never got a definitive spy shot of it.

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EventAccomplished976@reddit

Looks like the sign of a rather troubled project tbh… I wouldn‘t be surprised if at some point we found out that they got quite far along in development and then scrapped the whole thing and started over for some reason. Maybe they found they just couldn‘t meet the requirements and had to wait for some of the tech that now went into those „sixth gen fighter“ demonstrators.

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Uranophane@reddit

I believe they have definitely gone through several drastically different iterations. There was a flying wing drone the size of B-21 spotted a while ago, so they definitely have the flying wing technology. They likely decided to either refine it further or went with a different design altogether.

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Awkward-Feature9333@reddit

Possibly. Could also be part of a good disinformation strategy, leaking plausible but different pictures every now and then, so others do not really know what they are really building.

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fourunderthebridge@reddit

I think they definitely prioritized the J-36. A networked heavy air superiority fighter is much more useful in than a long range bomber if China has to go against the USN over the Taiwan strait.

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DOSFS@reddit

I don't know, they developed long range strike that didn't rely on just expensive ballistic and hypersonic missiles is pretty importance for China in case US involved in Taiwan. If they can reach and shut down Guam or other far away bases then the risk is too great for any big invasion.

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