It's difficult to determine, but a group of aviation enthusiasts say they caught a glimpse of a mystery aircraft earlier this month flying slowly across the Amarillo, Texas sky. 
 
 "We looked southwest and there they were," Steve Douglass, a journalist and member of the group, told FoxNews.com. "We thought they were B-2s, but when we studied our pictures, we ruled that out." 
 
 Douglass and his group, armed with cameras and binoculars, met on March 10 at the Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport. The airport is a perfect venue because it offers expansive views of Texas' big sky and a steady stream of military air traffic. On a good day, the group can see various military jets, and even the elusive F-22 Raptor. 
 
 It was a clear day, and the group was alerted to three aircraft flying across the southwest skies. Douglass estimated that the planes got within 20 miles of the group and they started taking pictures with their 300mm zoom cameras. They looked at the photos, and saw that one appeared to be a silver-grey B-2 bomber. 
 
 The prospects of spotting a B-2 bomber was exciting, and Douglass said he got home to observe his photos when he noticed the aircraft in his picture had a smooth backside. The B-2 bomber has a distinct "W"-shaped back. 
 
 "The trailing edge is wrong," Douglass shouted, according to his March 28 blog post. 
 
 Few items provoke public interest like an unidentified flying object. These stories are often attached to other theories about hidden testing bases or alien life forms. But these images have prompted some interest in the industry. 
 
 "The photos tell us more about what the mysterious stranger isn't than what it is," Bill Sweetman writes in Aviation Week, which first reported on the story. The report said that Douglass picked up some apparently related voice signals, which would indicate the aircraft had a pilot. Editors at Aviation Week reportedly say the images appear to be "something real." 
 
 "If I had to guess, I'd say we took a picture of a stealthy transport aircraft," Douglass said. 
 
 Douglass writes that he reached out to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which houses B-2s, to see if it flew any planes over Texas on that day and did not get a response. 
 
 Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report ||||| Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett were taking photos at Amarillo when they spotted the contrails of some mystery aircraft. What did they shot flying over Texas? 
 
 The images you can see in this post were taken in the afternoon of Mar. 10, 2014. Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett, along with other fellow photographers were at Amarillo International Airport when they saw the contrails of three high flying aircraft. 
 
 Even though the aircraft were barely visible at distance, the photographers pointed their lenses at the unidentified planes, and took several shots. 
 
 As Douglass recalls in his blog, it was only when they reviewed the images that they noticed that the aircraft were not B-2s as they initially thought: “At one point the aircraft had banked and the trailing edge was quite clear. It wasn’t straight but had a slight curve, the aircraft was almost boomerang shaped.” 
 
 Indeed, an inquiry to Whiteman Air Force Base has ruled out the possibility that a flight of three B-2s was flying over Texas on Mar. 10. 
 
 Stealth expert Bill Sweetman and the rest of the AW&ST team have investigated the mystery aircraft sighting, coming to the conclusion that the photos show something real. 
 
 
 
 Even if its shape loosely resembles that of an X-47B, the mystery aircraft seems to be larger than Navy’s new killer drone. 
 
 Obviously someone will argue that exposing three Black Aircraft in plain daylight is not that smart, especially if you want to keep the project classified. 
 
 Unless, you think the moment has arrived to show some potential resurgent enemy (Russia?) that you have an ace in the hole, as done some 30 years earlier with the F-117. 
 
 Image credit: Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett 
 
 Related articles ||||| For defense wonks, today was bigger than Christmas. After all, that holiday comes once a year. The creation of a new stealth bomber is once-in-a-generation, and today the U.S. Air Force announced that Northrop Grumman won a contract that amounts to $55 billion or more to build the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB.) That amount could grow to as much as $100 billion over time. 
 
 The company beat a team formed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build what Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter called the "backbone" of the Air Force's ability to strike and deter enemies. Northrop's LSRB is scheduled to have "initial operational capability" in 2025, and fly for real starting in 2040. There is no mission designator for this aircraft yet. It will cost $564 million per plane in current year dollars. 
 
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 There's more to this than just a new warplane. The LRSB is also a cultural and economic event with enduring ripple effects. It will set the standard for military aviation; become the chief talking point for bitter debates over defense acquisition; influence nuclear weapons arsenals in Russia and China; kick foreign espionage efforts into higher gear… and all of this will happen before a prototype even flies. 
 
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 In a sign of the program's importance to aerospace industry and U.S. economy, the Air Force intentionally delayed today's announcement until stock markets closed to avoid disruptions when the news broke, according to Pentagon sources. Shares of Northrop Grumman were up 6.3% in after-hours trading. 
 
 The only people who would have been sure-fire winners no matter what the outcome today are the locals in southern California, where the contenders develop secret warplanes. No matter who won, this aerospace development program was fated to reshape the economy in the Palmdale area and spawn a generation of engineers. 
 
 But the entire world is paying attention to this program, or soon will be. New military planes come and go, but an American bomber is in its own league. Like aircraft carriers, they symbolize the United States' ability to go anywhere in the world and exert its influence, no matter who or what is in the way. Or, to borrow a phrase from the Air Force, the Pentagon wants to reassure the Commander-in-Chief that they can "hold any target in the world at risk." 
 
 If the USAF wants to make good on its promise to blow up anything, anywhere, it will need this new hardware to get it done. The Air Force's newest bomber, the B-2 Spirit, rolled off the assembly line in 1988. The aircraft that the LRSB is meant to replace are getting old—the average B-52 Stratofortress is more than 50 years old, and the B-1 Lancer fleet has a mean age of 27 years. These workhorse man-killers will fly until 2040, when the new bomber is ready for action. 
 
 But how do we even know what that fight will look like in 2040? We don't. "We're designing the aircraft to be adaptable," said Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. 
 
 What little we know about the LRSB already paints a picture of a bleak future glimpsed by the USAF trend-spotters: Advanced radar and deadly surface-to-air missiles will guard targets, making full-aspect stealth shaping and radar absorbing materials necessary in a strike bomber. Senior Air Force officials have told Popular Mechanics that the bomber will be rated to carry nuclear weapons, acknowledging the enduring existential threat posed by Russia, China, and North Korea. The initial focus on carrying conventional weapons envisions a future of deep strike missions using precision-guided munitions. 
 
 When people in 2045 wear "Peace through Superior Firepower" T-shirts, they'll be stenciled with an outline of the LRSB's profile. 
 
 This bomber will have to accommodate exotic weaponry, such as directed energy beams, advanced decoys, and computer viruses. "A platform with terrific penetrating capability and wonderful avionics, from a cyber-warfare standpoint, is a fantastic asset," aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group told Popular Mechanics. 
 
 So a new era has begun. Or, perhaps more accurately, the beginning of a new era just ended. What happens next is anyone's guess. Some aircraft programs die, but most survive to be produced in lesser numbers than envisioned. Many programs lose their way, produce huge cost overruns, face Congressional scorn and generate inevitable comparisons to teacher salaries. Sometimes the companies endure lengthy rematches with their competitors after the latter successfully challenges the awarding of the contract. There's plenty of loot at stake, after all. (No wonder Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James made it a point to say the Air Force made its choice with a "high level of transparency with industry partners and scrutinized by Department of Defense peer reviews.") In this case, Boeing and Lockheed have a 100-day window to protest the decision. 
 
 In fact, in many ways a bomber's existence is most at risk during its development, before its first sortie. So savor this moment, bomber fans, because from here on out it'll be a bumpy ride.
– Aviation enthusiasts spotted three mystery planes over Amarillo, Texas, earlier this month, and buzzed online about what they had seen, Fox News reports. Initially they thought B-2 Bombers had flown by on the afternoon of March 10, but the aircraft lacked the B-2's W-shaped back. They "loosely resembled" the Navy's new X-47B killer drone, but were too big, The Aviationist reports. Which leaves what, exactly? "If I had to guess, I'd say we took a picture of a stealthy transport aircraft," said one of the enthusiasts, Steve Douglass. He blogs in greater detail, saying the US military may be trotting out new planes (probably piloted) to make its enemies shiver or go broke trying to replicate them. This last happened when the world took note of the Air Force's F-117, and "the Soviet Union went bankrupt" seeking "ways to counter stealth," writes Douglass. "Ask yourself an important question—what's going on in the world right now?" he asks. "Who (has of late) has decided to roll back the clock to the good old days of the Cold War and MAD?" Another analyst looks at "gaps in the USAF's line-up" for answers, noting that the Air Force has sought a "penetrating, stand-in electronic attack" for its strike systems; see that analysis at Aviation Week.