Boeing Bird of Prey
The Bird of Prey is a stealth testbed aircraft manufactured by Boeing.
In 1992, Bird of Prey’s development began by McDonnell Douglas’ Phantom Works division for special projects. The aircraft’s name was based from the Star Trek television series warship, the Klingon Bird of Prey. After the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger in 1997, Phantom Works later became part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. McDonnell Douglas funded the Bird of Prey aircraft, which is a black project aircraft at a price of $67 million. The program was cost-effective since it was later used on Boeing X-45 UCAV. Bird of Prey wasn’t given an X-plane designation.
The Bird of Prey has a commercial off-the-shelf turbofan engine and manual hydraulic controls rather than fly-by-wire, since it was a demonstration aircraft and it reduced the cost significantly. The aircraft’s shape is aerodynamically stable enough to be flown without computer correction. The aircraft’s configuration, without a horizontal tailplane and a conventional vertical rudder, is now a standard in modern stealth aircraft. The Bird of Prey has a crew of 1. It has a maximum speed of 260 knots. It incorporates a Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5C.
There are no public plans of making the Bird of Prey as production aircraft and it will still be in experimental phase. There’s only a single Bird of Prey built.
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