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A comment on Mysterious aircraft spotted at Area 51 in satellite image. Parent comment

Re:Mysterious aircraft spotted at Area 51 in satellite image by paulmd on Thursday February 03, 2022 @07:01PM (#30200867)
The general profile of the aircraft also resembles the F-16XL, which the USAF/NASA do periodically pull out for various reasons. It has that same sort of delta profile - which is of course shared with many other aircraft.

(the F-16XL is a very interesting story and would have been an interesting airframe to explore! It's sort of like the relationship between the F-15E and the F-15, a heavier fighter-bomber airframe built on the F-16 airframe.)

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Re:Mysterious aircraft spotted at Area 51 in satellite image by runjake on Thursday February 03, 2022 @07:42PM (#30201235)
The F-16XL is mostly white and is housed at Edwards (last I knew) and there are detachment people there for testing. Can't think of a good reason that F-16XL would be at Groom.

But people are over-thinking it here. There's not enough information in the photo to determine (other than the aircraft isn't white).

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Re:Mysterious aircraft spotted at Area 51 in satellite image by invalidator on Thursday February 03, 2022 @08:27PM (#30201627)
> There's not enough information in the photo to determine

There's enough that I can say it's not an F-16XL. The mystery aircraft is much larger - 20 meters long x 15 meters wingspan, vs the F-16XL at 16m x 10m.

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