http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/09/mysterious-boom-part-4-wisconsin-n.html]
Part 2: Why does it seem that they are
always building secret airplanes for reconnaissance ?
In our previous episode, we
discussed some of the reasons to believe that there is both a history
of development of various kinds of aerospace technologies in secret,
but that in general they do not deploy those technologies secretly,
except on a few occassions, because it is so expensive.
Often these technologies that are
proven as a black project are incorporated into the next generation
of aircraft (e.g. fighter, bomber, drone, whatever) and becomes a
normal military secret. Or the technology doesn't work well or is
not worth the expense and is dropped.
But in a few cases, they go ahead and
develop a limited-production model, and put it into special, black,
operational use. That is so expensive that they only do so when
there is a serious advantage in doing so.
And, it just so happens that in
reconnaissance there are a number of reasons why keeping things very
secret is desirable.
The more the opposition knows about how
you get your information, the more countermeasures he can take and
the more you have to worry that they are trying to fool you. A
classic example of deception was the creation of an imaginary, second
attack army in England before the Normandy invasion, and then making
sure that the Germans found out about it. And the last thing you
want is for your reconnaissance to be predictable, e.g. they always
look every 3 days at 10AM, which is exactly what happens with
satellites. They are very predictable, unless you move them around,
and that is very expensive. On the other hand, it is much harder to
know when a high flying stealthy aircraft is about to be overhead.
Spontaneity is one advantage airplanes
have over satellites, but it is not the only one. The others include
the ability to put the airplane right over the area of interest, and
put it at a much lower altitude than a satellite which makes it much
easier to get detail and to collect various kinds of electromagnetic
signals. And even very expensive airplanes are much less expensive
to build and operate than a satellite.
So if you have built a new vehicle that
would work for reconnaissance, then you may very well wish to build an
operational reconnaisance unit to operate it and keep it all black.
That is what has happened in the past with the U2 and with the CIA
Oxcart / SR-71 project. It may be the most effective way to get
the information, and less expensive than other options, however
expensive it may be in its own right.
So it is plausible that they (e.g. the
CIA, the USAF, and others) might do such a thing again.
(Continued in Part 3)
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