Pictures: Phantom Ray Rides Shuttle Carrier to Edwards

Boeing has ferried its Phantom Ray unmanned combat aircraft demonstrator from St Louis to Edwards AFB in California, atop NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The unlikely pair completed a 50-min test flight on Dec. 13, and flew to Edwards the following day.


Photos: Boeing

Phantom Ray is the first aircraft other than a Space Shuttle orbiter to fly on the modified 747 in its 33-year history, says Boeing. More than a year of engineering and planning preceded the flight, the company says, computional fluid dynamics and structural analyses showing there wouldn't be any problems carrying the 30,000 UCAV and adapter in place of the 220,000lb orbiter.





Phantom Ray will never be launched off the SCA, but it joins a distinguished line of aircraft that have been carried aloft on other aircraft. These include the British Short Mayo Composite seaplane and flying boat of the late 1930s, and a decade later France's Leduc 0.10 ramjet research aircraft, which was launched from atop a Sud-Est Se.161 Languedoc.


Mercury atop Maia = Mayo (via Wikipedia)