I mean, they livestreamed the rollout on YouTube on the Edward’s AFB YouTube channel and said it was at NG’s Palmdale facility (paraphrasing). I’m not sure any of this was a secret…
Which I think is also why the thread is so X-marks-the-spot / parallel-reconstruction-y. I think it's more of a "here's the kind of thing we can do with these star-matching tools, applied to an interesting image as an example" than an expose.
Also the Airforce and Northrop Grumman must be familiar with the idea of celestial navigation. And the shot was clearly taken in the evening on purpose (I assume, at least, that a PR shot has to justify being taken outside of maximum daylight).
They probably want it to feel vaguely spacey for the sci-fi vibes.
They’ve got at least as good star charts as the rest of us, so if they really wanted to be jokers they could photoshop some stars in, make it look like it is flying over an adversary’s country…
Not only that, they had three bombers (B1, B2, and B52) fly over during the live stream of the unveiling that could be tracked live on commercial flight tracking websites. This simply wasn’t a secret at all.
This livestream is the best caricature of American culture I've seen, thank you.
It is the unveiling of a bomber, with the national anthem sung by an employee of the company who built it, as in a proper performance, while more bombers fly ahead so loudly he has to stop. Then it proceeds to have the CEO read an engineered speech from a teleprompter, completely devoid of her own existence. Followed by a hollywood action movie style reveal, with the attendees going wild, clapping and shouting for the new, shiny bomber. It is a gift that keeps on giving.
