Sep 192011
A few years ago, the movie “Stealth” came out. Lots of neato special effects, some cool sci-fi airplane designs, and something or other that may have bore some vague resemblance to a plot (I honestly don’t recall). Anyway, the two fighters were based on input from Northrop-Grumman engineers; input that was then “Hollywoodized.” One of the aircraft was “EDI,” an autonomous jet fighter. It looked like this:
Note the shape of EDI. Now, take a look at the second illustration here:
PHOTOS: Fighter, bomber & trainer concepts unveiled at AFA
Not an exact match… but pretty strikingly similar.
10 Responses to “Life imitates art: Northrop’s “EDI””
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I will meet on september 29,
Oliver Scholl, the Desiger of movie “Stealth” (and “Independence Day” )
I will ask him about this…
The funny thing is, I remember building a Testor’s model kit in the 1980s that looked almost exactly like the EDI.
I agree that the designs are cool, but if I remember right the movie itself got bad reviews, even by
Air & Space magazine because of the storyline.
The illustration looks like the X-44 MANTA also:
http://home.earthlink.net/~chadslattery/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/x44bweb.jpg
The wild looking one is the bottom Northrop bomber concept that looks like something out of the Star Wars universe.
Google up Patent #5984231. A Northrop design with ‘switchblade’ wings. Too bad the movie was cliche’.
Yeah, I’ve seen that patent.
When the first photos from the movie leaked, a lot of people thought they were seeing a real aircraft based on that patent There was a lot of scuttlebutt about Northrop developing a swing-wing variant of the YF-23 as a stealth attack aircraft for the US Navy also after it lost to the YF-22.
I wonder how the Lockheed F-117 team felt when they saw the faceted forward fuselage structure on the “Firefox”?: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/firefox-pics.htm
I remember I was 19 when “Firefox” came out….very good movie.
Yeah, it wasn’t bad at all.
There were complaints that the Russians were portrayed as crude stereotypes, but I was over there for two weeks a few years earlier, and that’s just how they acted.
My favorite scene was when the Firefox went into a climb, and the front canards swept back.
The twin vertical fin delta wing with a canard MiG design proved to be prophetic also:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/mfi.htm
I’d still like to know what the cream-colored stuff inside the exhaust nozzles is all about… ceramics of some sort to cut down IR emissions?
EDI was the best thing out of the movie, that’s why I ended up buying the resin kit from Fantastic Plastic.
Here the oral accound by Oliver Scholl
the Producer of “Stealth” had hardware consultation by Grumman-Nortrop
from those infos, Scholl never saw anything of it ,
so he start to design the The F/A-37 “Talon” and UCAV “EDI”, inspire from US aerospace journals
also a Submarine Aircraft carrier, wat was not use because of budget.
From F/A-37 was build a full scale mockup and Parts of UCAV “EDI” cockpit
but that was in Australia, so they packed the stuff up and send them to US
the producer had found a cheap alternative to Submarine Aircraft carrier: the US Navy Fleet Carrier USS Carl Vinson.
The F/A-37 “Talon” was move wrapped up on US Navy Base were the USS Carl Vinson was Dock and move in its Hangar
here thing get out of control, the Crew know there film-crew on Board,
but Wat is this about wrapped up Aircraft ?! is this a cover-story for Top secret US Navy Aircraft Test ?
after Carrier reach Atlantic the “Talon” was unwrapped and pulled on flight deck wat the crew saw this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/ASW_Fake_FA37_1.jpg/800px-ASW_Fake_FA37_1.jpg
Now the crew take picture and send them per E-mail all over the World…
about the actual AFA studies, Oliver Scholl grin with pleasure…