From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #14 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 17 February 1994 Volume 05 : Number 014 In this issue: Summary: March '94 PS Article on Groom Lake Land Grab 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: Paul Michael Keller Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 19:56:56 +0000 Subject: Summary: March '94 PS Article on Groom Lake Land Grab Payed a visit to a local bookstore yesterday to see if they had the above. They did. Here's a summary: Including pictures it's nearly a ten page article. It opens with a neat-looking time exposure of what they say is the base at around midnight last spring with the lakebed flooded. The base is lit up like a small city. PS says they wrote to AF Secretary Sheila Widnall requesting permission to visit the base, proposing to "give the public a reasonable overview of the defense research the government conducts there, without jeopardizing the security of sensitive technologies." They were turned down. The article includes two aerial photos of the base, one a U. S. Geological survey photo taken in 1968, and a Russian satellite photo taken in 1988. Considerable additional development is visible, including a lengthening of the paved main runway to 18,000 ft. The article says that the current paved length is 27,000 ft. The article does not specify whether this includes the length extending onto the dry lake bed, which is visible in both satellite photos. Included is an interesting sketch of the Groom Lake basin and surrounding hills, with the areas the AF wishes to seize high- lighted. It's all of the hilltops overlooking the base. One item noted in the text is that the 4,000 acre proposed seizure is just under the 5,000 acre limit beyond which a congressional hearing would be required. Most of the text of the article is devoted to the stories of people, including Jim Goodal and Testor Corp. designer John Andrews, who have attempted to observe the base from the adjacent publicly accessible BLM land. One of these is a story of how Goodall and a local activist were very nearly sat on by an HH-60G Blackhawk while they were hiding under a bush. The helicopter very nearly reduced the bush to half its original height. Goodal filed complaints, but to no avail. The article reports that the watchers have typically been observing 10-12 roundtrip "Janet" flights each weekday. The "Janet" flights are 737s named for their callsign of janet ferrying workers into Groom from Palmdale and Las Vegas. From these flights it is estimated that 1500-2500 workers are employed at Groom. From this I have to make my own observation that this sort of monitoring of the comings and goings to and from the base is exactly the sort of thing that a guy (or gal) sitting atop of one of the hill summits overlooking the base can learn which can't be learned from satellite photos. 'Nuff editorial remarks. Two interesting tidbits which are new to me: 1. Amongst the new base facilities is a cryogenic storage facility (ie, maybe liquid methane or hydrogen storage). Its location is pointed out in the 1988 satellite photo, but I would presume that it was actually identified as a cryogenic facility by a hilltop watcher with a high powered telescope. 2. An unnamed arms-control analyst claims to have examined a classified late-1991 Landsat image of Groom Lake which shows three large white triangles about the size of 747s whose shape reminded the analyst of the XB-70. Now I have a question for the list about the credibility of number 2 above. A 747 is about 200 feet long and has a wing of about 180 feet. Does anyone know what the resolution of the landsat images is? This report seems to me to be just a bit too similar to the August 24, 1992 Avleak report to be completely credible, given what I understand is the poor resolution of the landsat satellites. Cheers, Paul Keller pkeller@engin.umich.edu ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #14 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.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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