# YO-3 quiet aircraft



## a_majoor (25 Dec 2011)

Little historic tidbit. The US needed some means of locating the main force NVA and "Popular Force" VC at night, and one program was to create a very quiet aircraft to overfly potential infiltration routes and scan them with night vision equipment. The YO-3 was the result, evolving from a glider (the Wikipedia article lays out the development sequence).

Something like this might still have some use today as an spotter or FAC aircraft (where you might desire a man in the loop), but most of the tasks are now taken by UAVs and powerful sensors mounted on high performance or high altitude aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YO-3
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/stalker.html
http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/lok_yo-3.php


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