What a fly by night outfit. kek
Image © Dayon Wong. Yep that figures.
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When it comes to shy aircraft that we know exist, the Air Force’s wildly modified NT-43A flying signature measurement aircraft, known by its callsign “RAT 55,” really takes the cake. The nearly 50-year-old aircraft has no definitive home. It lives at either Area 51 or the Tonopah Test Range Airport and spends its very limited time in the air flying, usually in formation with stealthy aircraft, high over the desolate and sometimes inaccessible ranges that span large swathes of desert in California and Nevada. While online plane trackers have seen data associated with RAT 55 pop up here and there in recent months, nobody had spotted the bizarrely shaped test jet for what seemed like at least a couple of years, that is until now.
I did a full profile on RAT55 six years ago. It definitely caught many people’s imaginations. The one-of-a-kind NT-43A is the strangest looking and most secretive Boeing 737 ever created, and that is saying something considering over 10,000 of the type have been built over nearly 60 years, with the airframe being adapted for many purposes.
https://www.twz.com/40003/the-worlds-most-secretive-737-just-showed-its-bizarre-self-over-the-mojave-desert