From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #129 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 26 January 1994 Volume 04 : Number 129 In this issue: D-21, how many? Re: D-21, how many? Camouflage SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Re: D-21, how many? Lockheed/Boeing A/F-X Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Re: SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod Chandler times (very approximate) Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 hopefully gets into the skunkworks thang See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: cepe@taskon.no Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 11:12:26 -0100 Subject: D-21, how many? Larry wrote: I wrote: >>Could someone enlighten me? >> >>How was the D-21 drone recovered? Or was it a one-shot expendable drone? >>Does anyone know how it was controlled? Inertial nav.? I guess this was >>prior to GPS. Larry responded: >It had an INS+guidance computer that could be programmed, and it had an >autopilot to fly it. Consider the above confirmed. Thanks for good replies. From what I understand it was a one-shot expendable drone. The recce equipment was recovered, although it could be recovered sometimes. Does anyone know how many D-21s were built/flown? - --cepe ------------------------------ From: dadams@netcom.com (Dean Adams) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 05:12:52 -0800 Subject: Re: D-21, how many? >Does anyone know how many D-21s were built/flown? According to the new Skunk Works book there were 38 built. Six were D-21s, and the rest were D-21Bs. 17 were left when the program was canceled... ------------------------------ From: Bill.Ranck@vt.edu Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 08:54:43 +22306256 (EST) Subject: Camouflage russellk@BIX.com said: > The technique of visually masking vehicles (etc) using lights to > make them look like background was demonstrated in the NOVA program > a few years ago on Camouflage and stealth. Highly recommended if > you haven't seen it. (Not to mention the Zig-zag painting of > British ships--you have to see it to believe it!) A minor nit, American ships were also painted with the dazzle camouflage. My daughter's Girl Scout troop visited and stayed aboard the Yorktown at Charleston last Summer. She brought back a souvenir book which had a picture of the Yorktwon painted in that zig-zag pattern (or non-pattern). - -- * Bill Ranck (703) 231-9503 Bill.Ranck@vt.edu * * Computing Center, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ., Blacksburg, Va. * ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 09:12:22 -0800 Subject: SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod The following is from Steve Douglass: Published In: The Cape Cod Times Wednesday January 19, 1994 "Cape, Vineyard Puzzled By Mysterious Rumbling. By Mark Merchant STAFF WRITER It was no earthquake, but officials are still at a loss to explain what caused nearly five seconds of ground shaking on the Upper Cape and Martha's Vineyard yesterday afternoon. "it sounded like someone had hit my house," said Evelyn DeSouza of Falmouth. "People thought it was a transformer blowing up or an earthquake." DeSouza said the shaking-which hit the area at 2;40 p.m. yesterday-was so intense, she thought the picture window of her Oakwood Avenue house would shatter. The rumbling was felt as far away as Barnstable and on Nantucket. Rumblings on the Vineyard were even louder than on falmouth. One resident described the noise as sounding like a "sustained sonic boom; like four planes going supersonic at once." Others called police reporting explosions. After the rumbling stopped,island police departments, the county communications center and the local radio station were flooded with calls from islanders reporting explosions or looking for information. Also inudated with calls, scientists at the Weston Geological observatory in Weston reported no seismic activity in the area yesterday afternoon and said the rumblings was most likely a cold air mass colliding with an outgoing warm air mass. But meteorologists disagreed with the theory. William Simpson of the National Weather Service Meteorological Observatory in Chatham said the weather theory is intresting but totaly false. "I can't even fathom that the weather would cause it," he said. "By the time this noise hit, the warm air mass that was over Cape Cod was sitting off Nova Scotia. The cold air had already been here for quite some time." (Note: Isn't it intresting how the sisemologists had a ready made answer. It was as if they were expecting some calls and had already been told how to respond!) Navy, Air Force and National Guard officials also had no explanations. There were no flights out of Otis AFB, that would have caused a sonic boom, according to an Otis spokesman. (Note: I contacted Air France to see if the Concorde could have caused the booms. They said the Concorde departed almost two hours before the reports.) - -Steve ------------------------------ From: psychospy@aol.com Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 12:35:09 EST Subject: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Just received notice from BLM that there WILL be a hearing in Las Vegas on the Groom Lake land grab. It will take place Weds., Mar. 2, 5-8 pm, at the Cashman Field Center, Rooms 203-204. Further details will be published in the Groom Lake Desert Rat #2, due out after Feb. 1. (Email psychospy@aol.com for a free subscription.) Hey, guys, this might be a good excuse to hold a BLACK BUDGET AIRCRAFT CONFERENCE in Las Vegas at the same time. We could have it in a conference room at one of the big hotels and maybe the Esteemed Aviation Experts could be roped in to give talks. This is just a dream at present. Any support? Ideas? The Las Vegas hearing is in addition to the Caliente hearing already planned, which will take place next Monday, Jan. 31, at 7pm in the VFW Hall. (Opponents will be gathering informally for dinner at the Knotty Pine restaurant at about 5-6pm.) Call me if planning to attend: 702-729-2648. BTW: We have just stumbled upon a NEW AURORA WITNESS. In Dec. 92, he was fishing on a lake near the Nevada/Utah border when he HEARD the sound, SAW the distinctive contrail and SAW THE CRAFT ITSELF. The witness is a private pilot who apparently had no exposure to the Aurora stories prior to his sighting. Alas, no photos, but if it continues to hold up, this testimonial appears to be the calibre of the North Sea sighting that started this madness. The witness is anonymous at present, but you could be hearing more from him. psychospy ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 09:46:20 -0800 Subject: Re: D-21, how many? cepe writes: >>.... From what I understand it [the D-21] was a one-shot expendable drone. >>The recce equipment was recovered, although it could be recovered sometimes. The recce equipment AND the INS + computer + autopilot and anything else that was attached to the inside of the Q-bay hatch (known as the 'pallet') was recovered by C-130 CAPTAIN HOOK flights (the same people that were snagging satellite packages). Also the US NAVY was involved in picking up pallets. Allow me to say that the performance of these recovery people appears to have been marginal. They should have been able to do a much better job. The CAPTAIN HOOK guys did a great job in practice, and as I said, they were successfully snagging satellite packages all over the place. As we all know the NAVY successfully keel-hauled a D-21 pallet. So there was obviously some kind of 'problem' here. Regarding the D-21 being a one-shot expendable, that was true. However, in the 50th Anniv. book they wrote that a practicable recovery technique for the drone was worked out. I asked about that at the MD-21 unveiling. The answer I got is that a bigger parachute(s) was planned to recover the D itself. I guess this makes sense, but I don't know anything about parachute loads. >>Does anyone know how many D-21s were built/flown? Dean Adams responds: >According to the new Skunk Works book there were 38 built. >Six were D-21s, and the rest were D-21Bs. 17 were left >when the program was canceled... The prevailing opinion is that there are no 'A's left because they were all converted to B's. Indeed, I believe there is a picture in the 50th Anniv. Book of the very first D-21 #501 hanging from the left pylon of one of the B-52Hs that served as D-21B launchers. By the way, I asked on the whereabouts of the B-52H launchers. According to the USAF LCO's I met, the 2 B-52H's were de-modded after TAGBOARD was terminated. Someone was going to check Maxwell AFB for the histories of those two B-52H tail nos. Has that been done yet? As soon as I get some time I'll publish an MD-21 unveiling party report. Larry ------------------------------ From: urf@ki.icl.se (Urban Fredriksson) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 18:52:38 MET Subject: Lockheed/Boeing A/F-X The Lockheed/Boeing A/F-X proposal has been revealed. It looks a lot like an A-12 and F-14 inspired F-22. From the side, the nose looks like an A-12, from the front it's clearly F-22-derived and the planform is much like an F-14. Internally, it is even clearer that it's mostly a F-22 derivative. Fuselage size was determined the need to carry weapons internally: The length of and AGM-84E and the width of GBU-24 was the limiting factors. It's the size of an F-14 and slightly heavier than an F-22. Attack weapons are carried in the bomb bay, self defense missiles in F-22 style side bays. The air force variant a 2135 kg conformal dorsal fuel tank to increase range. 800 000 lines of air-to-air code were to be taken from F-22, with 400 000 lines of air-to-ground code added. (Useful, now that F-22 is to have a ground attack role.) Wing sweep is 16 deg for take off and landing; 21 deg for cruise; 45 deg for manoeuvring; 71 deg for ingress and egress; 77 deg for parking on board a carrier. It was meant to have a perfect 71 deg wedge planform, but for stability reasons there's a notch of 55 deg above the air intakes. A Navalised F-22 would not have met the range requirement, nor the signature requirement, as the F-22 is optimised to be stealthy against high-frequency airborne radars. A ground attack aircraft will meet ground radars of many frequencies. As all attacks on F-117s during Operation Desert Storm were tail shots by missiles fired after it had passed overhead, IR signature is also very important. To begin with, all vertical surfaces were pop-out and only used for take off and landing, requiring thrust vectoring in both pitch and yaw. The signature requirement was relaxed, resulting in two back-swept fins far to the rear of the aircraft. Thrust vectoring was retained to control pitch and roll, as in the most stealthy mode control surfaces aren't to be moved. Compared with the A-12, less stealth from the side was acceptable as it could be traded for speed. Engines are PW7000s, a lighter, more fuel efficient engine using F119 technology, with an afterburning thrust of 113kN (156kN for F119). Among new avionics is a FLIR and IRST at the windshield base and a chin mounted FLIR/laser designator that also can look back. [Flight International 26 Jan-1 Feb 1994] BTW: The A/F-X programme was cancelled last year. - -- Urban Fredriksson urf@icl.se ------------------------------ From: freeman@MasPar.COM (Jay R. Freeman) Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 10:32:13 -0800 Subject: Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 > ... hold a BLACK BUDGET AIRCRAFT CONFERENCE in Las Vegas at the same time ... Be sure to invite the press ... :-) -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ From: Bertil Jonell Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 20:09:18 +0100 (MET) Subject: Re: SKYQUAKE in Cape Cod > "Cape, Vineyard Puzzled By Mysterious Rumbling. > (Note: Isn't it intresting how the sisemologists had a ready made answer. It > was as if they were expecting some calls and had already been told how to > respond!) I have heard that there is a history of odd unexplained rumblings up along the coast of Maine going back a very long time, 100 years or so, and that the most popular explanation for these is just 'hot and cold airmasses'. Might there be a connection? On the other hand, an area somewhat close to a place with a history of odd rumblings is the perfect place to testfly something supersonic. It is like hiding a tree in the woods:) - -bertil- - -- "It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file." ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 14:33:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: Chandler times (very approximate) We take off oa about 1135 PST and should be by at about 1200 and 1215 or so. I'm on the telephone to Motorola during the flights and heard that the weather there is pretty wet. Apparently it was pouring for the first flight. Mary` Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 14:48:16 -0800 Subject: Re: Groom Las Vegas Hearing Will be Mar. 2 Glenn writes: >BTW: We have just stumbled upon a NEW AURORA WITNESS. In Dec. 92, he was >fishing on a lake near the Nevada/Utah border when he HEARD the sound, SAW >the distinctive contrail and SAW THE CRAFT ITSELF. The witness is a private >pilot who apparently had no exposure to the Aurora stories prior to his >sighting. Alas, no photos, but if it continues to hold up, this testimonial >appears to be the calibre of the North Sea sighting that started this >madness. Actually, the North Sea sighting in Aug of 1989 was not the first. Don't let Sweetman tell you it was. And as far as when it actually was reported, which is the most important in terms of the impact, it was definitely late, namely in Dec. 1992, long after AURORA was firmly established in the press by other published stories. Many of these stories from the NY Times and even Popular Science, even predates the Gibson sighting in Aug. 1989. I think you would be surprised to find out where the first hint of all this appeared. It appeared even BEFORE the Feb. 4, 1985 DOD Fiscal Year Budget that mentioned AURORA was published! Larry ------------------------------ From: Quagga Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 01:53:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: hopefully gets into the skunkworks thang Your mention of the Nova show about camouflage stuff reminds me that they did this thing called "dazzle camo" in the first and maybe second world war. Evidently they gave the sailors of these ships a lot of crap about how doofy their ships looked when they reached port, but I read that not one of these ships was sunk by a U-Boat. I guess the principle was that it was so very bold, it broke up the horizontal and vertical lines of the ship and superstructure, making it difficult to target. Does anybody know of a published discussion of these techniques? I get the impression that the dazzle camouflage was a sort of haphazard thing rather than a genuine science. I visited the very interesting maritime museum in Halifax Nova Scotia once and they were unable to enlighten me. I have an artistic interest in the whole scheme. Email me! => equus quagga. quagga@trystero.com "But you can call me Cheryl.." \o/ "Ich habe festgestellt, das es N I C H T S gibt, was Deine (( Aufmerksamkeit schneller und vollstaendiger fesselt, als ein \\ sich nicht oeffender Fallschirm!" -moi. =) ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #129 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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