Yeah, you always had it in the back of your mind, what if I was some secret soldier guy with all the neato stuff. Well, you’re not, but you always wondered what kind of gear you’d have anyway. Well here’s a great blog that actually tells you!

It’s called Kitup, and it’s brought to you buy some of the guys at Military.com It’s all the really useful military gear that those guys need (not the extraneous crap they typically hand out like heavy batteries for radios that last far longer than you need, but they make you pack in 6 of them!) Check them out.

Also there’s a great link to an article on the retirement of the stealth fighter (F-117a Nighthawk). Why would this be important you ask? Read on for more juicy thoughts!

The stealth fighter’s retirement is a really intriguing point in aviation history, going back to when the Testors F-19 stealth model was available to us in stores. This amazing new jet we’d never known about that had been flying since 1981. Now, 25 years later, it’s retiring with little to no fanfare.

Hmmm…

So if the stealth is retiring, that means a few things,,

1. There is something new that does it’s job (the new F-22 fits the bill as we all know).

2. There are a lot of somethings we don’t know about that do a similar job far better that’s entirely secret.

The leading candidates are..

The polecat a recently publicized stealth UAV.

The ever notorious “aurora” (even if it’s out there, they’re not telling us for another 20 years, deal with it)

The Mothership/Darkstar program, similar to the old M/D-21 Tagboard effort of years ago but listed at the scale of the old XB-70 project, (MD/21 was a 2 seat SR-71 with a Scramjet powered drone with cameras that would overfly a target and then drop it’s film cargo and ditch in the sea).

The aforementioned F-22 is waaaay better than they’ve stated.

Finally, maybe the F-22 follow-on is out and about (in the dark world) and is operating with processors faster then the x86 legacy systems that for some reason still reside on the F-22. If this is the case, it is similar to the technology testbed that is the DS-1 spacecraft with ion propulsion that is now rocketing it’s way out of our solar system. Before you jump to really erratic conclusions, I am not theorizing on ion propulsion for planes just stating that there are high technology testbeds flying around in our airspace.

Next time you look up, wonder.

Thanks DefenseTech! for the tip on the stealth and Kitup!