Black World Planes Fly Dark Skies
Source: Antelope Valley Press
PALMDALE - Along with the much photographed, sleek F-15
Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons blasting over Edwards Air Force Base,
there are beyond-Top Secret "black aircraft" swooping like stealthy
ravens above the Antelope Valley. These planes criss-cross the dark
skies of the Southwest on their way
to perform missions too secret to tell about.
The black world planes wing their way out toward remote
regions of Nevada and other stations of the southwestern states
military complex, carrying a half-century’s history of Cold War
mystery into the 21st century.
Recent murmurings in the black project community, along
with the current November issue of the national magazine Popular
Science, indicate that another mystery plane may materialize soon,
with industry sources saying a bird could come out of the black by
Election Day.
Or, it may never happen.
That is just the way it goes with black world programs,
known in Pentagon argot as Special Access Programs. Such programs are
overseen by a select few who keep a limited number of members of
Congress and their staff informed on program development in classified
briefings.
The November cover story of Popular Science depicts a
black world-style fighter-bomber nicknamed "Switchblade" by pilots
because of its switch-wing capability.
The plane dubbed "Bird of Prey" by magazine writer Steve
Douglass is described as a follow-on to the FB-111 Aardvark
switch-wing fighter-bomber of Vietnam vintage that bombed Libyan
strongman Moammar Khadafy’s palace in 1985.
Existence of a plane like the one described in Popular
Science was denied unequivocally by an Air Force official
knowledgeable about cutting-edge programs.
The official - with a flight test background - contended
that the plane depicted in Popular Science’s speculative illustrations
defies certain engineering principles and aspects of "low observable,"
or stealth, technology.
Members of the community who monitor developments in
defense, however, cite historical precedents for de-classification of
covert programs during election season, particularly by Democratic
administrations.
During his election battle with the late Arizona Sen.
Barry Goldwater, former President Lyndon B. Johnson revealed the
cutting edge "Blackbird" spy plane as a means of showing his
administration was not soft on defense.
A similar occurrence erupted during the campaign end
game between Ronald Reagan and former President Jimmy Carter, who
lifted the veil of black secrecy for an announcement of the
development of stealth technology aircraft.
"There certainly is a historical precedent, in a close
election where you have a Democrat with Republicans snapping at their
heels," aviation writer Bill Sweetman said Wednesday in a telephone
interview.
Sweetman is author of seminal open source works on
secret aircraft programs, including "Stealth Aircraft - Secrets of
Future Airpower."
Stealth unveiled
Sweetman recounted how the announcement of the existence
of stealth by the Carter administration backfired politically, with
Reagan forces accusing the Democrats of revealing precious secrets to
make political hay.
"The Reagan team did that very well to Carter .... What
political advantage could you gain by unveiling (now) without it
backfiring?" Sweetman said. He speculated the current administration
could decide that a technology or aircraft is mature enough to place
into operational command, so it could be unveiled the way former
President George Bush decided to when he brought the F-117 stealth
fighter out of the black more than a decade ago.
Another defense watcher remained skeptical about an
election year unveiling.
"I’ve been waiting for a plane to come out of the black
for 10 years," said John Pike of the Washington D.C.-based Federation
of American Scientists. "I am still waiting. I will believe it when I
see it."
Pike attributes his logic to deduction rather than
inside sources. But he said he doesn’t believe any classified aircraft
program has created secret planes in sufficient numbers to deploy in
squadron strength, like the F-117 fleet at Holloman Air Force Base,
N.M.
"There may be some onesies and twosies out there," Pike
said. "As for an operational deployment ... I just don’t believe it."
Black plane watchers seeking the Holy Grail of secret
aircraft still pine for a "white world" view of a mysterious aircraft
popularly known as Aurora, which has mutated from a Defense Department
line item notation to a myth.
If it exists, or existed, Aurora is wrapped so tight
within the cloak of secrecy that it remains in the black the same way
that the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber remained long
hidden from view.
Such programs develop under the auspices of a kind of
"shadow" Air Force, Sweetman said.
In a recent article for International Defense Review,
the author noted that the Air Force $7.4 billion budget for classified
procurement is more than a third of the service arm’s total budget. In
fiscal year 2001, Sweetman noted, the Air Force plans to spend $4.96
billion on classified research and development.
That extraordinary amount of public funds is concealed
within programs that American taxpayers must take on faith are
well-run and well-maintained to the benefit of the security of the
United States.
If it exists, Aurora remains in the black, along with a
range of as many as 150 covert programs that are approved by the
Department of Defense at the secretary level, with varying levels of
congressional oversight.
Aurora footprints
Aurora, reported through the 1990s in publications
ranging from the Washington Post to Aviation Week & Space Technology,
was believed to be a high-altitude spy plane with revolutionary
propulsion technology.
The plane, subject of rare but unacknowledged glimpsed
sightings, was believed to be able to travel in the Mach-6 regime,
leaving space shuttle-like sonic cracks in its wake.
"Aurora was described as everything under the sun," Pike
observed. "It was every exotic, highaltitude technology imaginable."
Seven years ago, author Sweetman published a book about
Aurora, deducing that it was a hypersonic spy plane, a kind of
follow-on to the Blackbird spy plane variants. Seven years later, with
Aurora still elusive, Sweetman wonders.
"I don’t know," he said. "It could have been. It was
technically feasible."
Sweetman also observed that some black programs exist
behind a kind of fig leaf, a form of cover. He cited the white world
development of the National Aerospace Plane project, curtailed in the
early 1990s. Perhaps a cover for a covert program, it could be that
such a project dropped from sight, vanishing into the secret military
realm.
One characteristic of the Aurora footprints were space
shuttletype sonic booms, some actually recorded by the U.S. Geological
Service on the same inbound trajectory a space shuttle would achieve
on its way to a landing at ... Edwards Air Force Base.
"There were those mysterious sonic boom reports,"
Sweetman said. "And they continue."
And the sonic boom reports continue periodically, he
noted. His views, now, he said, are open to the idea that such a plane
might be "high-supersonic" as opposed to hypersonic.
Programs denied
If a significant program is undergoing de-classification
study as reported by Popular Science, it won’t be the first time that
Air Force officials have denied it, or just said, "That isn’t the
plane."
In an article for International Defense Review, Sweetman
noted that officials in charge of "core secrets" for so-called
unacknowledged or black programs have the authority - even the duty -
to deny existence of a program.
In the mid-1980s, speculation abounded about the
existence of a stealth fighter that could elude radar, and a stealth
bomber that resembled the old Flying Wing bombers designed by Jack
Northrop in the 1940s.
In 1986, the famous scale model company - Testor -
invited Congressional scrutiny when it unveiled its own "F-19 stealth
fighter" model, three years before the F117 came out of the black.
With bland equanimity, Air Force officials said
"beautiful" but that wasn’t any plane in the Air Force inventory.
When the F-117 was unveiled, to the uninstructed viewer
it bore at least as many visual similarities as differences to the
Testor model.
John Andrews, designer of the Testor model, noted that
he was within 3% of the size dimensions of the Real McCoy. That may be
close in horseshoes - far away in engineering scale - but not bad for
a model configured by dead reckoning.
The model was smooth and rounded, black and sleek. The
F117 Nighthawk, faceted like a diamond, was black and sleek.
The black program was known as Have Blue. And its
security remained tight until the veil was removed at the highest
level of authority.
The plane, though invisible to the public for a decade -
guarded and maintained by a cadre of secret patriots - was real
enough.
Model-makers
In similar fashion, a model of a stealth bomber bore
more than passing resemblance to the Real McCoy unveiled at the end of
the 1990s. That model by Revell also bore close resemblance to
technical sketch speculations published by Sweetman in his "Secrets of
Future Airpower" book.
Recalling the 1980s, defense analyst Pike said there are
key differences about trying to scope out what was happening with
black budget projects then vs. now.
"There was a paper trail," he said. "With the F-117 and
the B-2, there never was a doubt that they existed."
Internet sites now abound that explore the fascinations
that black program aircraft hold for aviation enthusiasts.
They also carry freewheeling discussions between people
who believe there is a connection between black world aircraft
programs and UFO sightings.
The Air Force has had little to say about UFO sightings
since it closed its own Project Blue Book early in the 1970s, or
issued its own report "Roswell - Case Closed" citing the 1947 Roswell
incident as a black world classified project to send reconnaissance
balloons over the Soviet Union.
Programs or nicknames for suspected programs turn up on
such sites with enough abundance to satisfy any Tom Clancy junkie.
Black Manta. Blind Buzzard. Senior Citizen. Gaspipe. All
join the list of the great "maybe, babys" lined up next to Aurora on
the black world runways that pipe aircraft along on their paces from
Edwards Air Force Base to other facilities in the southwestern United
States, particularly the still unacknowledged air base at Area 51 in
Nevada.
Publications including the International Defense Review
journal and Aviation Week & Space Technology cite Area 51 as
essentially an extension of test operations at Edwards.
Such reports cannot be admitted by an Air Force command
authority that still does not officially acknowledge existence of a
base at the area described as Area 51, also known as "The Ranch."
More to the point, those in the know, those with access
to Special Access Programs, assert that it is inappropriate to discuss
or report about the topic.
An anonymous caller to the Valley Press said, "Security
is a joke now. That is not the way it used to be. Many people in this
Valley have done work at the Ranch, and have never spoken about it.
There is nothing funny about it."
The case for security that denies knowledge of programs,
technologies or tactics to foreign powers is valid, defense analyst
Pike noted, even though his own organization, the Federation of
American Scientists, pushes for more open program scrutiny.
"It’s more fun to run in the black, where no one knows
what you are doing ... and you can bury your mistakes," Pike observed.
Certainly, the history of black programs has a
distinguished record of secret victories and achievements in addition
to the potential for concealing spending and program failures.
But there are failures. A 1995 congressional report
noted that part of the failure of the Navy’s A12 stealth carrier
aircraft could be attributed to program over-compartmentalization of
secrets about stealth technologies that never got shared with the
teams working on the Navy plane.
Finally, sightings of inexplicable airborne phenomena
can trigger fears, worry, anxiety about government cover-ups, and
contribute to the questions people have of the government regarding
reports about UFOs.
Stealth blimps?
Sightings by numerous witnesses have ranged in recent
years from a Valley community like Rosamond just west of Edwards to
the sightings shown on CNN of triangular lighted formations moving at
eerily slow speeds over the environs of Phoenix.
Aviation writers including Jim Wilson of Popular
Mechanics, Sweetman, Pike and others speculate the government is
flying nonrigid airships that may be used for battlefield information
or cruise missile defense - phased array radar platforms mounted in
football-field size aircraft.
The big blimp, one writer called it.
"Blimps are very likely," Sweetman said. "They make a
lot of sense. There’s nothing better to put a big antenna in. And it
would be one of the quickest and easiest ways to detect small
targets."
Wilson recounted in a Popular Mechanics article
published in 1999 that "optical stealth" could provide a kind of
starlit-emulation for cloaking a large aircraft. In the International
Defense Review journal, Sweetman also recounted, "visual stealth
measures were part of the original Have Blue program."
Some lax security, particularly the leakage of nuclear
weapons technology to China from the Los Alamos National Laboratories,
can have strategic consequences, potentially harmful to the security
of the United States, but can media reports derived from open source
materials affect program security?
A writer for a respected trade industry publication
noted that the Air Force, specifically, and the Defense Department in
general have a history of keeping the lid wrapped effectively since
the days of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
Sweetman’s body of work over more than a dozen books and
hundreds of articles is both full of praise and insightful critical
analysis of defense project security.
"It is a safe bet that foreign intelligence agencies
know more than the Valley Press, if only because they have more time
to look," Sweetman said.
Concluding his Defense Review Article, Sweetman
observed, "If nothing else, the dearth of hard information shows that
the (black) system - expensive, unwieldy and sometimes irrational as
it might seem - keeps its secrets well."
by Dennis Anderson
Valley Press Editor
October 19, 2000