Northrop Tacit Blue

The program cost approximately $165 million and was executed under a contract to Northrop Corp. as the prime contractor. TACIT BLUE was developed and tested at several different locations and flown by both Air Force and contractor pilots.

"TACIT BLUE was a leading edge program that took innovative stealth technologies out of laboratory and onto the flight line.

Tacit Blue is a single-seat technology demonstrator for stealth aircraft, originally designed as a battlefield surveillance aircraft. Tacit Blue had an "inverted bathtub"-shaped fuselage, straight wings and a V-tail. It flew between 1982 and 1985 in great secrecy, and was then stored until it was suddenly put in a museum in 1996. Only one was reported to have been built.

The aircraft has a wingspan of 48.2 feet and a length of 55.8 feet and weighed 30,000 pounds. A single flush inlet on the top of the fuselage provided air to two high-bypass turbofan engines. Tacit Blue employed a quadruply redundant, digital fly by wire flight control system to help stabilize the aircraft about the longitudinal and directional axes.

Tacit Blue Cockpit