It was a heavily classified project, as evidenced by the enclosure to hide its shape. I don't think they would want to be flying it out of Burbank in plain view of everyone. Additionally, its first test flight occurred at Area 51, after this move, which is an ideal location for testing such things. Test flights near a city are probably not a good idea.
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It was a heavily classified project, as evidenced by the enclosure to hide its shape. I don't think they would want to be flying it out of Burbank in plain view of everyone. Additionally, its first test flight occurred at Area 51, after this move, which is an ideal location for testing such things. Test flights near a city are probably not a good idea.
All they have to do is issue a press release saying that it most definitely was not a UFO and the rest will take care of itself.
Had this been a few years later, they could've transported it via helicopter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-12
Perhaps, but then this Russian helicopter, which the US didn't learn about until much much later, would have taken it home to Mother Russia :-)
I also doubt they would have long enough runways in Burbank to take off with that beast.
Burbank is actually somewhat infamous for having one of the shortest runways in the US used by full sized jets.