This ad for Northrop Grumman, the airplane manufacturer and
defense contractor (Why do they have a TV spot? It’s not like we can just go
have them design and build a stealth fighter for us, the TV watching public.),
really reminds me of a luxury car commercial. We see a series of beautifully
designed, innovative airplanes, and then some pilot walks up to one under a
cover, and he smiles, anticipating the wonder with which he will admire this
new aircraft. And then we see a splash screen for Northrop Grumman. It’s a pretty effective ad for the company.
But usually this kind of approach would be used in some braggadocio
luxury car commercial, where after seeing a series of amazing stealth aircraft we’d
see the cover pulled off of the new groundbreaking example of engineering, and
it would just be some luxury sedan that has no apparent relationship to the
design of the cutting-edge technology that was displayed before it as though the
car were the culmination of the same technological advancement, even though it
clearly isn’t, and in fact isn’t even related whatsoever in the manner of
transportation (What does the design of a sedan have to do with developing the
technology of stealth bombers?) or the manufacturer that makes it.
So in this case we get surprised when we find out that this
ad actually is not giving us a twist at the end to try to ride on the coattails
of military aircraft technology; the military aircraft technology is what they’re advertising. I just don’t
know why a defense contractor would need to (or even want to) run ads on TV.
Wow, I hope this ad does not give away any military aircraft
design technology to our enemies in the same way all those TV shows on Discovery
and TLC reveal all the design secrets of current stealth aircraft so our
enemies can build them too (as they are currently doing).
Here’s the stealthy spot:
