The Black Aerospace Project that Was About To Be Disclosed That Wasn't

This is an update on various posts about the possible public release of information about a black aerospace project from over a year ago.

It is a personal pet peeve of mine that we have on the Internet and other venues (e.g. Aviation Leak and Space Mythology) breathless sightings of what may be a black (e.g. very secret) aerospace project, and then dead silence. Nothing.

Well, nothing is a little hard to interpret. So I am going to attempt to interpret “nothing” for my readers, and for what it is worth.

To recap, there were some very interesting sightings reported on www.foxtrotalpha.com. These sightings were of what appeared to be a manned flying wing aircraft which was not the B2. More than one, in fact. The B2 is a very distinctive plane and the observers, who seem to be respectable, knowledgeable and who took reasonable pictures of what they had seen, were of the opinion that it was not a B2. Well, nothing else of that type of airframe that is manned is flying, so that it seemed to be a reasonable conclusion that they had in fact sighted something not only secret, but also in (at least) limited production, as there was more than one of them.

The speculation was that whatever they had seen (and I liked the theory that it was a stealthy tactical reconnaissance aircraft that came from work in the mid-1980s and went into very limited production in the 1990s) was that this aircraft was about to be made public. Hence, they were less careful about bringing the plane back from somewhere (Iraq? Africa?) in broad daylight and so forth.

Ok that was the speculation.

Well, a fair amount of time has passed since those sightings and whatever they may or may not have seen has not been publicly announced which means one of several things. If it was an aircraft in limited production use, then whatever it is still has its uses or in some way has technology that still needs protecting and is not just ready for public release. Or maybe they saw nothing at all so there was nothing to announce. Or maybe they were B2 bombers after all.

Actually, I think they probably did see something but whatever.  In a sense this is good news, because if it is in limited production this means it is still of value, which means that the money was well spent, at least to some extent. Alright, thats a bit of a stretch.

One more thing, there are a variety of aerospace forums that discuss these things. I am not a regular reader of them but this is often where more information is found, if you have the patience to read through them and all the tendentious bullshit that accompanies the occasional nugget of interest. You can find them by searching for "black aerospace discussion forum" or words to that effect.

Update on Secret Aerospace Projects May 2015

Perhaps now is the time.  Perhaps now they are ready to have the esoteric knowledge revealed.  The truth behind the rumors of the various secret aerospace projects discussed on the internet.

But are they worthy of this knowledge?

Probably not, so we will only discuss a few of the more obvious ones.  The really interesting ones about the CIA reverse engineering the alien anti-gravity drive will be held for another day.

Now students, prepare to be enlightened but first a little philosophy.

These are no mere secret aerospace projects produced at hideous cost and hidden out of a desire to thwart the enemies of freedom and justice!  No!  These projects demonstrate our national will and character. They are more than mere airplanes, they are nothing less than flying metaphors.

But first let us build a little anticipation by reviewing basic principles:

1. A black project is generally not outed unless it is no longer necessary to keep it secret or, on occasion, when there is an explicit decision to make something public as part of an elaborate and foolish hope that doing so will put our enemies off their stride for some imaginary reason, in other words, when there is real (perceived) value in making it public. 2. Most black projects are technology demonstrators that do not become production vehicles, or if they do, not as secret programs.   3. Usually it is the case that if they do not want you to see something, then you won't.  But sometimes operational necessity or safety issues throw a wrench into that and it is possible for a knowledgeable observer to see things that they really should not see.  This is particularly true for large, loud things that fly in the air.   4. The fact that a black project is announced does not mean it is totally obsolete and will no longer be used. The U2, SR 71 and B2 are examples of formerly secret projects made public yet still in use.

That said, I think that there are three black programs that we can be certain exist and are likely to become public eventually.  Two of which are technology demonstrators and one that is probably in limited production, and they are (a) two different prototypes of the new bomber, (b) something that involves a repurposed Valkyrie XB70 as some sort of mothership for a project probably cancelled, and (c) a limited production flying wing similar to the B2 in shape, but probably for tactical reconnaissance although we don't really know.

First, we know that there are demonstrators / prototypes of the next generation bomber, whatever they are calling it these days. We believe there are two competing vehicles, possibly one of each or possibly several of each. These prototypes will probably only become visible when the details of this new plane become known as its prototypes will no longer need to be kept secret, so that suggests within 5 years or so, possibly less. 

Second, there had been sightings of a modified XB 70 Valkyrie bomber on several occasions. You can not miss a Valkyrie in flight, it is unmistakable. When the first reports started coming in by puzzled observers, the more aerospace-knowledgeable who heard these reports knew exactly what airplane they were talking about.   There has only been one airplane built that looks anything like this.  Since the last Valkyrie is in a museum this is some other vehicle repurposed for another reason. The word on the street is that it was used as mothership for a prototype earth orbital vehicle that was not living up to expectations and was canceled. This seems plausible to me.   So I feel confident that something about these sightings exists and is, or was, a technology demonstrator of some sort, but less confident about when or if they will ever talk about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

 When people described what they saw it was clear that it was related to a Valkyrie.  Nothing else looks like this.

Third, there have been sightings of a flying wing that (a) is not the B2, (b) is big enough such that it is manned and talking to various control towers, (c) been seen flying in groups of three which suggests that it is not a technology demonstrator and is in limited production. That means it pretty much has to be a black aerospace project of some sort. 

For the best writeup of the sightings, see

http://deepbluehorizon.blogspot.com/2014/03/mystery-aircraft-photographed-over.html
and
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/so-what-were-those-secret-flying-wing-aircraft-spotted-1555124270

There are many theories out there for what this is but I am just going to jump to the one that makes the most sense to me.

In the 1980s, when “stealth” was being pioneered, there was a perceived need for a variety of airplanes based on that technology. One mission was for strategic bombing, and that became the B2. One mission was for a stealth fighter and that became the F-22 and F-35. One mission was for a variety of stealth UAVs some of which have been announced and others are in development. There was also a need for a tactical ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) vehicle that could linger unseen above a battlefield for many hours and deliver real time information on the battle taking place below. This vehicle would be very valuable for any military operation on the ground whether regular US Army, Marines, or special forces. It would have a multitude of uses if it was stealthy enough that the enemy would not realize it was there. We know that there are several UAVs in development to serve this role. But there were also some rather well known, quirky 1980s technology projects along this line that were canceled and nothing seemed to come of them. 

One particular project, a technology demonstration, was called Tacit Blue and it was made public a decade after it took place in the mid 1990s.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Tacit_Blue

So many people suspect that in the 1980s they canceled the technology demonstrator and went black to develop a stealth tactical ISR airplane.   This airplane would have started flying in the 1990s. Because of when it was developed it would be manned. Because of what it was to be used for there would have been a significant advantage to keep it as secret as possible. The best situation is that the opponent does not even realize the airplane exists so they are not looking for it.

If I am correct, it would have become operational in the mid 1990s and therefore have been in service for 20 years. It is being supplanted by other vehicles now in development which we know are in development. Furthermore, it has been used on many occasions and is therefore likely to be known about by our various opponents such that there is less need to keep it secret. Even if they know it exists, that does not make it trivial to detect and shoot down.

So that is my guess for what is flying out there as a production black aerospace project and which is likely to be announced in the next few years.   Beyond this, we can be fairly sure there were other secret technology demonstrators such as, for example, tests of exotic propulsion technology.  But there is no particular evidence that suggests any of these are about to be made public, or even that they were particularly successful although of course it is the nature of these things that we do not know.

We will see what happens.

Of course what is important about these things beyond a purely techno-archaeological viewpoint is how these devices are used to implement policy and what those policies are.   But that is a whole other kettle of fish.

There.  I hope you are happy now.

Archaeology of the Cold War: The CIA Comes Clean on the Black Helicopter

As a student of the intelligence community, of conspiracy theories and of the archaeology of the cold war, I want to bring to your attention an entertaining footnote to one of the memes of the nutty boy, lunatic fringe, the concept of the “black helicopter”.

We all know the joke “just because he is paranoid doesn't mean that people are not out to get him” or variations on that theme. In a similar fashion, just because something is part of a conspiracy theory by lunatics does not mean that it is impossible for certain elements of that theory to be true, even if only partially true. Its a delicate subject, for those of us who believe (or pretend to believe) that there is a hollow earth wherein live benign superior races in a utopian society do not want to sneer too loudly at those fools who believe in other equally ridiculous fantasies. One must tread lightly when confirming a part of a conspiracy theory that one does not step on the toes of fellow-travelers by dismissing their particular craziness. It is also the case that even a clock that has stopped working is correct twice a day, as some wit once put it.

But nevertheless, when studying the history of the intelligence community, there are a number of principles one should keep in mind and these principles are a large part of the appeal. The first thing to realize is that contrary to what you are told, the intelligence community in this country is not evil, but it is very much a bureaucracy that can occasionally transcend its organizational limitations and achieve excellence, and when it does, from time to time, when it is all over, they are happy to talk about it to give credit to those who have accomplished something so that history can know about their work and so their work can act as an inspiration for the future.

It is also the case that these stories are usually also interesting because they involve national purpose in a time of crisis or conflict, and when they are allowed to move forward, also involve great cleverness and often are provided with excellent resources and often very specialized technologies that are the best that we can provide under the circumstances, whatever those may be.

But, this being the intelligence community, which by definition must keep secrets to be effective, these stories are not told until long after the fact, and usually only in part.

For those of you who know what the “black helicopter” conspiracy meme is about and how “black” projects work, you may skip to the last part of this post which describes the entertaining report from the CIA about a quiet helicopter that they built during the Cold War for some as-yet-unidentified mission. For those of you who are blessedly ignorance of the conspiracy theories of the 1990 militia movement in this country, I will try to be brief.

In the 1990s, a part of the radical right-wing fringe of this country formed what has been called the “militia movement” which involved a bunch of armed lunatics who were convinced that our military was planning a coup in conjunction with various elements of our government to end democracy in this country and bring us into a global government which would be known as the “New World Order”. I am not too sure about many of the details of this movement or its personalities and doctrines. I could not tell you for sure whether this was part of the conspiracies of the Rockefellers, the Illuminati or the Catholic Church but one of their particular and idiosyncratic fantasies was the concept of the “black helicopters”. The black helicopters were unmarked, black of course, completely silent helicopters that were run by a secret organization which was planning the aforementioned coup. They would hover above military bases and spy on the militia movement in an effort to destroy them. 

If you want to know more, just go to your favorite search engine and type in “black helicopter” and you will immediately get a bunch of references to them.

Now to any student of intelligence or the military what is funny about this is that, in the absence of any hard information, it is not so improbable that something that one might call a “black helicopter” might exist in the world.

There are several reasons for this hypothetical possibility and here are a few of them. First, “black” is a term of art in the intelligence and military to refer to a project or technology which is being kept especially secret and not acknowledged. These technologies are usually a part of projects which are directed by the security apparatus of this country, such as the National Security Council. The U2 and the SR-71 are two very famous “black airplanes” in this category and both were developed out of a requirement by the President and the NSC to get better intelligence about the USSR's ability to wage nuclear war. Second, one could imagine that there might be projects out there that would require a helicopter that had special capabilities that were held back, kept secret, to be used only under special circumstances. Third, anyone who has ever been around a helicopter knows how noisy they are, but you may not be aware that from the earliest days of helicopters, people have been doing research into how to make them quieter, and they have come up with a number of techniques to do so. Proven techniques. (1) So why dont they use them then, you might wonder. The answer is always a variation of the old adage that “nothing in this world is free”. A technology that makes a helicopter quieter might greatly increase its cost, or limit its speed and range, or reduce its reliability.

Finally, we had hard evidence that at least one stealth helicopter had been built, or two of them, because SEAL Team Six had crashed one of them on their raid on Bin Laden.

Which leads us to this interesting report.

Once upon a time, about 1970, the CIA had the need to be able to sneak into a foreign country, unnoticed, and either bring in, or bring out, someone or something. The place it would be going would be suitable for a helicopter, in other words, it could be an empty parking lot or someone's back yard. But it had to be totally silent, invisible to radar, fly in the dark, be able to go a long distance, pick something up (or drop something off) and then make the return trip.

The problems they had to solve included increasing the range of the helicopter, reducing the noise signature of the helicopter so that it could fly very close to people and not be noticed, and because it would be flying very close to the ground to avoid radar, it needed some sort of navigation aid that would let the pilot avoid obstacles and still not be visible to the naked eye.

In a remarkably short period of time, and with the help of a variety of defense contractors and individuals working on their own time, they were able to do so, and in doing so, they proved a number of technologies which were of immense value moving forward in the non-secret world, including a much better version of FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared).

The report can be found on the www.cryptome.org site and can be located here:

http://cryptome.org/2014/09/cia-quiet-helo.pdf

So now, about 40 years later, they tell us about the helicopter. But they are still not telling us a damn thing about where they used it and for what purpose. What glorious episode from the Cold War does this conceal?  A flight to freedom of one of our agents?  We will know one day.

Of course this report will not satisfy those noble seekers-of-truth who are working to prevent the government take over to create the New World Order.  But at least it does reveal that some of this technology does exist.  We must all be vigilant to see that these proud covert creators of anti-freedom helicopters are not permitted to implement socialized health care.

Its up to us.

________________________________________________________

Notes

1. An example of a “proven technique” to make a helicopter quieter is simply to move the rotors more slowly as much of the noise that a helicopter generates in flight comes from the movement of their rotors in the air. But obviously this technique has an impact on the performance of the helicopter.

2014 Speculation about Mysterious Aircraft

As readers of this blog know, I am a student of the affairs of the intelligence community, in particular that part of the community that builds incredibly expensive, secret, limited edition devices of one sort or another. Previous posts have discussed whether the “mysterious booms” were evidence of a production vehicle flying and the conclusion of those posts was “maybe, but it isn't proven”. At least not from the evidence at hand.

That is where things have stood for a long time now. It was time for something new to happen and it has. There have been sightings of an unusual aircraft flying over Texas in recent months. The aircraft is an unknown flying wing, perhaps, and its a complicated story of just who saw what, who denied what, and then what was seen in the same flight path. But rather than go over old ground, I am just going to point you to a well-written, and very long, overly long, discussion of the evidence and possible theories.

The theory that I find the most appealing and possibly even plausible is that there was a secret plane built and used in production for 20 years and we kept it secret all that time. The reason we are starting to see it now is well, sort of a mystery.  It might be because they are using it so much what with all the crisis these days.  Or it might be that it is nearing the end of its life so there is less reason to keep it secret  (keeping an operational aircraft secret and yet using it is hideously expensive).  Or maybe it is being leaked now as a warning to those who do bad things that we have this capability.  Or maybe it is just coincidence.

This plane, so the theory goes, was the followon to various technologies being tested in the 1980s that were suddenly cancelled. When something like that happens it is a natural speculation that perhaps they were continued as a black program. One theory is that the plane was a manned, long duration, stealth, tactical reconnaissance vehicle that could penetrate enemy airspace and do a variety of things possibly in conjunction with the F117. Among other things it could loiter in enemy airspace and (for example) direct special forces missions happening below it, perhaps acting as eyes and ears for those missions.

Read the article at the link below.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/so-what-were-those-secret-flying-wing-aircraft-spotted-1555124270

My posts on mysterious booms can be found here:

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