Скачать или смотреть RAT-55. World`s Most Secretive and "Shy" Plane, NT-43A. Radar Airborne Testbed.

The nearly 50-year-old aircraft has no definitive home. It lives at either Area 51 or the Tonopah Test Range Airport and spends its very limited time in the air flying, usually in formation with stealthy aircraft, high over the desolate and sometimes inaccessible ranges that span large swathes of desert in California and Nevada. While online plane trackers have seen data associated with RAT 55 pop up here and there in recent months, nobody had spotted the bizarrely shaped test jet for what seemed like at least a couple of years, that is until now.

I did a full profile on RAT55 six years ago. It definitely caught many people's imaginations. The one-of-a-kind NT-43A is the strangest looking and most secretive Boeing 737 ever created, and that is saying something considering over 10,000 of the type have been built over nearly 60 years, with the airframe being adapted for many purposes.
The NT-43A radar aircraft testbed (probably where the “RAT” callsign comes from) is most likely the last stop in advanced low-signature testing and validation for new stealthy aircraft, new radar-absorbent coatings and heat mitigation technologies, as well as exotic and stealthy structural modifications to existing aircraft. In other words, whether it be a whole new aircraft or just a new radar absorbing material applied to an existing stealthy aircraft, the NT-43A evaluates it under realistic flight conditions with its powerful radars and infrared energy detecting devices. Even repairs and depot-level work on existing stealth aircraft may be validated in flight via the NT-43A.