Summary
Lockheed Martin P-420 LightStar
This project once again illustrates the fact that each manufacturer of aeronautical wants to grab their piece of cake at any price and offer potential clients a variety of ways to meet their needs, even if at a given moment clearly meets the competition. beginning of the project Tier III Minus Darkstar, which serve as the competition and ultimately replacement machines planned Tier II Plus Global Hawk, was on his own initiative to the manufacturer’s internal project Lockheed P-420, which got its name LightStar. It was a small tactical unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, primarily designed to pay future exploration machinery RQ-1 Predator. The main difference was the use of low observability technology. Although the project began around 1994 and has been actively offered even in the new millennium, the entry into operational service at all. It took place very similar to the project by General Atomics Predator with a provisional designation C. Although its development has continued very slowly, indicating that the fact that the priorities and requirements of potential users were somewhere else. In any case, the lessons learned were used in subsequent projects, Lockheed Martin. On the aircraft was even in mid-1996 and issued patent number D382851 , which became the source of Internet speculation.