Talk:Lockheed Have Blue

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This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 10:21, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Have Blue what?
Do any of the mil aircraft regulars have a explanation of the code-name Have Blue? (And, for example, does it relate to the naming of the Northrop Tacit Blue?) It's an odd name, I would expect most casual readers would be curious -- PaulxSA 18:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Excellent question. The various projects flying out of Groom Lake (AKA Area 51) all seem to have the 'Have' prefix, Have Blue, Have Ferry (MiG17), Have Doughnut (MiG21), etc, so it is possible the 'Have' part could refer to the basing at Groom Lake. TBH Im just guessing, the 'Have' might just be a standard code word applied to projects secured under a certain fiscal period. You might as well ask why the various laser tracking and targeting pods developed in the late sixties through to the nineties have the prefix 'Pave' . . . Pave Penny, Pave Pod, Pave Knife, Pave Tack, Pave Spike, and so on.Loates Jr (talk) 13:59, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Designed from an electrical engineering perspective?
Why is this sentence relevant enough to be in the introductory paragraph? It's even questionably true- nobody sat down and wondered what would happen if they started an aerospace design process with the perspective of an electrical engineer. The story is, recounted in Ben Rich's autobiography, one of the radar specialists at Lockheed realized that he could write a computer program to fully calculate and predict radar cross-section (which was not possible at that time). The program worked, and so the aircraft was designed around using computer simulation to minimize that cross section.

To be accurate, this was the first aircraft designed by shaping the airframe to scatter radar beams. This required an unprecedented amount of computer involvement in the design of the aircraft, and it was the first aircraft that had unstable flight dynamics in all three control inputs (pitch, roll, and yaw). Both of these are related to electrical engineering, but I don't see how you can make the statement that the aircraft was designed from an electrical engineering perspective. 24.107.185.147 (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Agreed, will reword.Pieter1963 (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Correction needed
Regarding the full-scale demonstrator: "Under the control of Harold Farley, the aircraft took off on 18 June for its maiden flight, nine months after the July 1980 first flight originally envisaged."

18 June 1981 is not nine months after July 1980. At least one of the three values is incorrect. Pete.pereira (talk) 23:42, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation Question
Is "Have Blue" pronounced have as in "to have something" or have as in "pave a road" but with an "H" instead of a "P"? Taffy boeing b 17 (talk) 22:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Fan art
One problem with articles about classified aircraft is that there aren't many publicly-available photographs, this being no exception. As such two of the images are essentially fan art made by Wikipedia users. They both have issues. - seemingly a digital painting of an F-117 with new tail fins pasted on - shows the tails with conventional rudders, but the actual aircraft had a system whereby the entire top half of the vertical stabiliser swivelled left and right. It's more obvious in the image at the top of this article. The artist seems to have mistaken the facet seam in the stabilisers for the hinge of a rudder. Meanwhile, which is ancient, shows Have Blue and the production F-117 layered on top of each other with the same wing sweep angle, but the actual F-117 was around 5 deg less sweepy. It's nice that the article has more than one image, but they're basically original research. We have to just trust that the two artists knew what they were doing. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 15:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * In fact the first image seems to be a retouch of the photograph of a model kit at the top of this page here. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 16:08, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Is this correct?
"The aircraft's faceted shape was designed to deflect electromagnetic waves in directions other than that of the originating radar emitter, greatly reducing its radar cross-section."

That's not my understanding of how the stealth works. Or not exactly anyway. The idea is that the reflections only come off whatever exact surfaces of the aircraft are exactly perpendicular (or at the correct angle to reflect in any case) to the emitter. It's like how like flashes of off a reflective surface, you only see the bright flashes from small parts of the surface at any time, and that surface changes as the object moves in relation to the light source. Think of a disco ball (that's actually a really good analogy now they I think of it), you only see the flashes coming from whatever facets are reflecting directly back at you, the rest are aimed elsewhere. The faceted stealth approach just ensures that the possible reflective area seen from any angle is small enough that it will be very difficult to pick up on radar, since they are carefully designed so that no two facets reflect in the same direction. So it does scatter the beams, not that's not what makes it stealthy, all objects scatter the beams. It's strealthy because no reflective surface is large enough to generate a useful return from any one direction. And the few larger areas like the leading edges are angled and straight so that if they are registered on radar, it will only be for a moment while the emitter is in exactly the correct relative location to pick up the reflection, or flash, from that surface. The moment it moves on a little way, it will no longer be visible at long range. This is why the aircraft might be detected, but not tracked, and why at closer ranges is still possible to track one with a sufficiently powerful radar, although the return will still be iffy, since it will seem to move around as the signal reflects off of different parts of the aircraft. Idumea47b (talk) 19:32, 18 June 2024 (UTC)