From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #607 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: Skunk Works Digest Friday, 26 January 1996 Volume 05 : Number 607 In this issue: RE:skunky CIA report Re: Pictures of Aurora.? :)= Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #605 Re: KH-11 resolution Friday WINGS - it's a Bear! Re: "Aurora" over the UK? F-111/KC-135/Triangle pic Re: KH-11 resolution "Aurora" over the UK - A reply KH (11-14) coverage Auroura pics Re: KH-11 resolution Re: KH (11-14) coverage Re: "Aurora" over the UK - and B-2 trivia re: Area 51 revisited -- Re: SR-71 fuel question 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: Mr.Echevarria@tube3.com Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 11:33:14 -0800 Subject: RE:skunky CIA report > and A-12 (SR-71). They expect to release it in about 6 months. It will > be similar to their great report on the CORONA program (KH-1 to KH-4 spy > satellites That book had a lot of declassified pictures and documents > in it and was the basis for the articles in the current issues of "Popular > Science" and "Popular Mechanics" magazines. If anyone is interested, I > can provide information on how to order the CIA's CORONA report from > the government. The declassified CORONA pictures are available online at "www.odci.gov/cia/" under the 'Other Intelligence Community Links' option. Also for those interested, the December 11, 1995 issue of Business Week has an article on the burgeoning business of selling satellite reconnaissance photos, both from other countries as well as new business ventures. One of the projects mentioned is a joint effort by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon's E-Systems and Mitsubishi to launch a 1-meter-resolution camera in 1997, costing over $500 million. ------------------------------ From: David Windle Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 20:30:03 Subject: Re: Pictures of Aurora.? :)= Rob wrote: > > >In this months 'Encounters' ( UK paranormal magazine ) there is a >photo of two F1-11 jets, a KC 135 Stato tanker and a triangular >shaped craft which looks like it is attatched to the KC 135 >re-fueling...... >I wondered if anyone else had seen the photo ( or any other of the >possible Aurora ) and had any opinions on it. If I can find a >scanner I'll scan the picture and FTP it somewhere. There's more than a touch of deja-vu to this...it's reminiscent of Chris Gibson's sighting over the North Sea a few years back, though Chris sadly didn't have a camera with him at the time...either the same thing's happened again or someone's trying out their photo-software..I know what I think !...Point really is that Chris saw what this 'photo' represents and he's a _very_ credible witness. He didn't mention Aurora to me..he just wanted to know what the hell it was he saw. All I'm saying is, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Best D ------------------------------ From: Andrew Hutchings Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 19:17:06 +0000 Subject: Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #605 > Subject: Pictures of Aurora.? :)= > > In this months 'Encounters' ( UK paranormal magazine ) there is a > photo of two F1-11 jets, a KC 135 Stato tanker and a triangular > shaped craft which looks like it is attatched to the KC 135 > re-fueling. The photo was taken on Wednesday 27th September, 1995 > at 6:45pm in Sandymouth, Bude (I don't know where that is and I > live in England :) by a guy who was on vacation. The photo was > taken to RAF Cosford where the F1-11's were identified but the > triangular craft could not be recognised, they did say it was not a > stealth bomber ( which when you look at the photo is _very_ > obvious. This thing is a proper triangle with no pointy bits > sticking out, other than the three corners of course :) > > I wondered if anyone else had seen the photo ( or any other of the > possible Aurora ) and had any opinions on it. If I can find a > scanner I'll scan the picture and FTP it somewhere. I'll post the picture to alt.binaries.pictures.vehicles just as soon as I can get connected to my news-server !!!! Andy - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Andrew Hutchings Newcastle, UK _|___|_ | | | E-mail: andy@airnorth.demon.co.uk \ ATC / o | | WorldWideWeb: http://metro.turnpike.net/ \___/ \___-( )-___/ | | A/airnorth/index.html | | o o | - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: fmarkus@pipeline.com (Frank Markus) Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 17:10:21 -0500 Subject: Re: KH-11 resolution On Jan 25, 1996 14:39:28, '"J. Pharabod" ' wrote: >I don't know if this is really on charter, but since a number of PC subscribers >[ :-) ] discussed about the KH-11 resolution, here are a few questions besides >resolution: >1) Can these spy satellites photograph fast moving planes (Aurora) ? 2) Do they >see something during night (besides infra-red) ? How about >full moon vs. moonless night ? >3) How about clouds ? >4) What fraction of the Earth is seen by the whole fleet at a given >time: 100% ? 10% ? 1% ? less ? > >J. Pharabod [1] I believe that all reconaissance aircraft that move relative to their targets, i.e. airplanes and satellites, have a mechanism that compensates for the motion of the camera over its (stationary) target. As I recall, it involves moving the film past the lens while the photograph is being taken. I have to assume that this compensation system would tend aggravate the problems of imaging a moving target such as an aircraft that is moving above the ground. Presumably, a very fast moving object such as Aurora which would be moving in a renadom direction relative to the path of the satellite over the ground would be very difficult to image. [2] Clouds are one of the reasons for radar observation. The photos of images taken by side-looking radar and synthetic aperature radar that have been printed in Aviation Week have been very impressive. [3] Even if the fleet can see the entire earth's surface -- which I believe that it cannot -- the cameras have to be turned on and aimed. In order to get any sort of useful detail, the cameras have to be aimed very precisely. The better the detail, the narrower that angle of coverage. The the fact that an object is potentially in view of a satellite (or aircraft) borne camera does not mean that it will be imaged by that camera. Indeed, the greater the resolution of the picture, the less likely that an object will be included in the image (unless it is pecifically and carefully targeted) ------------------------------ From: BaDge Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 18:07:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: Friday WINGS - it's a Bear! DISCOV. CHAN 1800 EST - The Soviet Intercontinental Bomber, Tupelov TU-20 - ---------- Hmmm, both the PopSCI and PopMech issues* this month are about Corona Sat. Photos. The PopSci had several photos on the cover, including a circa 1973 shot. *Don't these guys ever call each other? ;-) regards, ________ BaDge ------------------------------ From: "Earl Needham, KD5XB, in Clovis, NM" Date: Thu, 25 Jan 96 19:52 PST Subject: Re: "Aurora" over the UK? >Don`t forget the A10. It has a really distinctive sound. >Any of those flying around there? >Chuck Actually, I had thought about the sound of the A-6 in the landing pattern. Loudest durn bottle band there EVER was! --You mean you've jumped...ROUNDS??!! (Overheard at the Clovis, NM DZ) (Of course, silly! Hasn't everyone?) Member Bonus Days Club since 1980 NeedhamE@3lefties.com ------------------------------ From: "Earl Needham, KD5XB, in Clovis, NM" Date: Thu, 25 Jan 96 19:52 PST Subject: F-111/KC-135/Triangle pic Kerry Ferrand said: >Last I read, the picture of the refuelling triangular craft was a hoax. >I think it originally appeared in a photography magazine as an example >of making a fake composite image. Somebody copied it and sent it to the >now-embarassed UFO magazine complete with a BS story about when & where >he took the photo. >Its not very convincing anyway - the F-111s look out of scale with the >KC-135, the tanker itself has the old style engine nacelles-I thought they >all were up to KC-135R standard by now. No, I saw an A just a few weeks ago, here at Cannon. --You mean you've jumped...ROUNDS??!! (Overheard at the Clovis, NM DZ) (Of course, silly! Hasn't everyone?) Member Bonus Days Club since 1980 NeedhamE@3lefties.com ------------------------------ From: dadams@netcom.com (Dean Adams) Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 01:31:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: KH-11 resolution > Even if the fleet can see the entire earth's surface -- which I > believe that it cannot -- the cameras have to be turned on and aimed. The only "fleet" that comes anywhere close to seeing the entire Earth's surface are the DSP early warning satellites. They use a scanning infrared telescope to monitor for missile launches. The fleet of photo reconnaissance satellites (Advanced KH-11s), typicaly numbers no more than 2 or 3 on orbit at a time. When you consider the name "Keyhole", you can imagine that they are only looking at a tiny fraction of the Earth's surface at any given time. They are placed in polar orbits with a ground track that repeats typically once every four days. ------------------------------ From: BROWN A <92913938@mmu.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 11:50:36 GMT Subject: "Aurora" over the UK - A reply Thanks to everyone who put forward their theories as to what it was my mum heard go over, but unfortunately most of them can be discounted. Art, We haven't had a Phantom over for years, as the RAF squadrons 'round here who used to fly them have changed over to the Tornado, and we've NEVER had any German ones over. Even if we did, I can't see why they'd be using the BLC. When they come over here, its low and fast, as the nearest military base able to handle fast jets is about 50 miles away. They certainly wouldn't be on approach for anywhere (the direction of flight was wrong for landing at EMA), and my mum knows exactly what an F-4 sounds like under ALL flight conditions, as she's seen them many times at airshows. Greg, As for an S-3, we're over 50 miles from the sea, so why would an anti-submarine aircraft be flying over. OK, we do get the occasional Nimrod over on transit from Scotland to BAe at Filton or Boscombe Down, but why would a carrier based ASW 'plane come over? Chuck, The "Warthog" can be discounted as well, as we used to have them over regularly (at least once a week) before they re-deployed back to the States, so their sound is very familiar, and my mum would have known them straight away. Also, "Warthogs" don't fly at night, or at least we never had them over after dark. Mary, I suppose it could have been a B-2, as we've never had one over before, and we didn't get to go to Paris to see it there, but from my mums account, it was probably flying a bit too fast. (plus I think we'd all know if one had deployed to Europe, right?) As for a KC-135R, what would one of those be doing below normal cruising altitude miles away from a military field? Also, we were at Fairford a couple of years ago for the RAF 75th aniversary celebration, and the theme that year was -135s/707s, so we saw and heard plenty of them with all kinds of engines (we got some great shots of an RC-135U and the "Bear" which someone had considerately parked next to the B-52!) I guess the favourite "white" contender at the moment is the B-2, so has anyone heard anything about one coming this side of the pond? If anyone has any other theories as to what it was, I'd love to hear them, as its got us all puzzled here. Adrian Brown (92913938@mmu.ac.uk) ------------------------------ From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 05:43:25 PST Subject: KH (11-14) coverage Dean as usual, used his noggin` instead of Popular Science. Think about this. If you want 1 foot pixels you would need a whole lot of bandwidth to cover the world @ 8 bits per!!!!! Really , what happened was about mid 1980`s the "brass" found out how myopic these "birds" can be. The overwhelming problem is that you just can`t have one where you want it when you need it. Add to that the problem of oblique viewing angles. If you miss what you want on a pass, you may wait a long time for another shot. Also- satellites are the most "unstealthy" aircraft in the arsenal. They don`t fly low, they have BIG RCS`s, they emit EM out the kazoo. They are visible to the naked eye, and anyone with a PC on the WWW can get a plot of where they are, and are going to be. Its nice to know exactly when the people you`re hiding from will be looking at you. Along with other problems, the reason to re-initiate TR- oops- U2 production was in direct reaction to the failed expectations of the spy birds. Remember, most generals and congressmen, (and presidents for that matter) aren`t engineers or scientists. They tend to get all excited by people telling them they can do this or that. Ronald Reagan was convinced the SDI technology existed and was doable! Remember the "desk sized energy weapons" claim!!! No greater failing of the eye in the sky policy exists than Dessert Storm. The truth be known, the coalition air-forces had very little success in "Scud hunts". The actual effect was, in fact, negligable as far as number of Scuds destroyed. The Air Force now admits that the reports they gave during the conflict were in fact, propaganda aimed at the Iraqis. They hoped by convincing them that any Scud mobile launcher that stopped would be instantly destroyed. BTW- this policiy apparently was effective! The threat was more effective than the act. The problem was very simple. There was no way of knowing where the Scuds were. Add to this that by day 2 the coalition owned the skies and could roam them at will. Even so, 60 foot plus launch vehicles in area with relatively little cover (compared to say, Eastern Europe) were hiding from the "most technologically advanced army" in history. These sattlites are actually pretty neat. They have some technical merit, but in my opinion, they are overstated by the public. The sattelites that are of far more value are the earth-sciences (ES) type. Chuck ------------------------------ From: "S.D.Silver" Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 15:21:00 GMT0BST Subject: Auroura pics Hi people , The picture has already been put on the net. Check out alt.alien.visitors. ======================================================================================== you can't believe every thing you see and hear now, CAN YOU!!! j.hendrix S.D.Silver@ncl.ac.uk ======================================================================================== ------------------------------ From: "J. Pharabod" Date: Fri, 26 Jan 96 16:33:18 MET Subject: Re: KH-11 resolution >The fleet of photo reconnaissance satellites (Advanced KH-11s), typicaly >numbers no more than 2 or 3 on orbit at a time. When you consider the >name "Keyhole", you can imagine that they are only looking at a tiny >fraction of the Earth's surface at any given time. They are placed in >polar orbits with a ground track that repeats typically once every four >days. >Dean Adams (Fri, 26 Jan 1996 01:31:31 -0800 (PST)) I made a few calculations from that. Assume each satellite describes a "great circle" around the Earth, with the segment North Pole - South Pole on the diameter. It crosses the Equator twice each revolution, therefore 32 times each day (assuming 90 minutes/revolution), 128 times within 4 days. Three satellites would cross the Equator 384 times within 4 days. In order to see the whole Equator, with equally spaced satellites, the radius of the circle seen by each satellite should be 40000 / (2 * 384) = 52 km = 32 miles. With this value, at a given time, this "fleet" of 3 satellites would cover only 0.005% of the Earth at a given time. Plenty of room to do nasty things... During 1 revolution, 1 satellite would cover 0.8% of the Earth, but since the areas covered become more and more the same when they go towards the Poles, the 3 satellites would cover less than 3 * 0.8% within 1 revolution - probably something around 1.5%, and only around 0.75% during day time. Now, if the resolution is only a few inches, a circle with radius 32 miles would make a lot of info bits... If the real radius is ten times less, the above percentages must be divided by 100. (Hoping somebody will correct the big error I surely made somewhere...) J. Pharabod ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 11:25:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: KH (11-14) coverage On Fri, 26 Jan 1996 Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com wrote: > No greater failing of the eye in the sky policy exists than Dessert Storm. Is this the war that we used laser-guided apple pies in? I'm sorry, that was irresistable. Chuck is entirely right about the gullability of Congress and other politicians. They're all lawyers, and think that the laws of physics can be amended with a voice vote. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... ------------------------------ From: Greg Fieser Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 09:40:32 -0600 Subject: Re: "Aurora" over the UK - and B-2 trivia > Adrian Brown (92913938@mmu.ac.uk) "writes": > > Greg, > As for an S-3, we're over 50 miles from the sea, so why would an > anti-submarine aircraft be flying over. OK, we do get the occasional > Nimrod over on transit from Scotland to BAe at Filton or Boscombe > Down, but why would a carrier based ASW 'plane come over? > I live in Texas, about ~300+ miles from the gulf coast (hardly a hotbed for submarines) and we see S-3s here all the time. S-3s (and other USN aircraft) are only carrier-based when deployed aboard a carrier. In fact, the US-3As (COD birds) are always land-based, I believe. Not that this means you really heard an S-3, but sightings of ASW aircraft far from carriers is not that uncommon. > > I guess the favourite "white" contender at the moment is the B-2, > so has anyone heard anything about one coming this side of the pond? > Last night I attended a briefing by Bob Pandis, Customer Requirements representative for Northrop-Grumman's B-2 division in Pico Rivera, CA. While a lot of the presentation was your standard "why we need 100 more B-2s", there were several interesting points brought up. One relative to this topic is that the B-2s have in fact been overseas several times on "Power Projection" missions. The Paris airshow was one of these. The A/C departed Whiteman AFB and flew non-stop to Paris, did a few touch-n-gos and fly-bys, then returned to Whiteman (via the UK, I think). Other missions have been to other countries/continents, including the UK. Again, this doesn't mean you heard a B-2, but it definitely is possible. Another interesting (unclassified) part of the briefing was on total signature control. Something I had not heard before is that, despite all of the photos you've seen, when a B-2 goes into "cloaking" mode (no kidding, that's what he called it), control surface movements are minimized and, when made, are very small and rapid. Control surface rates are on the order of 100 deg/sec. The neat part was that, when in "cloaking" mode, the aircraft doesn't use the split- rudder-drag-flaps (or whatever they're called), the aircraft performs flat turns using asymmetrically applied thrust. This maintains the stealthiest platform by (a) keeping the aircraft flat (i.e. not banked) and (b) not using control surfaces (which increase RCS when moved/deployed), and is all done by computer control. The crew enters "cloak mode" and stick inputs are converted by the FCS into differential thrust settings for yaw control. Pretty neat. Another (probably more well known) fact was that the B-2 typically flies with reflector panels to artificially increase RCS and prevent anyone from determining the true stealthiness of the aircraft. (F-117s do this all the time...) So all those claims about French ATC (and others) picking up the B-2 on their radar systems is intentional (according to Mr. Pandis). Hope everyone enjoys my sharing this info... Greg Fieser "since I'm self-employed, the above views do respresent those of my employer..." ------------------------------ From: albert.dobyns@mwbbs.com (ALBERT DOBYNS) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 96 00:37:00 -0500 Subject: re: Area 51 revisited -- RU> From: russellk@BIX.com > Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 14:49:03 -0500 (EST) > Subject: Area 51 revisited -- in firmware RU> I came across this on our company's discussion forum. I don't know whether > it's true or not (though I'd bet it is), but if it isn't it certainly ought > to be. This is just barely on-topic, but I couldn't resist posting it here. > ____________________________________________________________ RU> There's an easter egg in the 2.0 Newton (MessagePad 120) which was > "censored" by, yes, the CIA. [snip] RU> We figured it'd be funny to put a reference to Area 51 in the Newton -- > especially given the substantial overlap between conspiracy buffs and > computer nerds. So, in the "Time Zones" application, contains a world > map, we put an entry for Area 51 in its correct location. Later, we > added a twist -- if the user picks Area 51 from the map, the icons in > the datebook application take on an alien theme. Normally, meetings are > represented by an icon of two people face-to-face, events are > represented by a flag, etc., etc. But when Area 51 has been chosen, the > icon for a meeting is a person facing an alien, the icon for an event > is a flying saucer, a to-do task is represented by a robot, an so on. [more good stuff snipped] Russell, I got a big kick out of your post!! It's not because I believe "Area 51" is the testing ground for alien technology..in fact I think that is one of the most ridiculous urban myths of the 20th century. I just think it's really funny to incorporate something like that as a way of injecting a little humor into a program. I guess the CIA or DoD or NSA have no sense of humor about such things. On a tangent, I bought a 1996 Rand McNally road atlas to replace my 1992 edition. While perusing the two editions' map of Nevada, I noticed two obvious changes. 1) 1996 edition shows Rachel on the map. The older edition didn't. I assume Rachel was added because of the publicity it has had in the last year or so. And the atlas producers probably want to put towns on the map no matter what makes them a prominent spot for campers, tourists, whatever. 2) The boundary for the Nellis Range or DOE or whoever is the agency responsible for restricted area used to run almost on top of the location of Groom Lake. The new edition has the boundary drawn with a lot of room between it and Groom Lake. I assume this is a direct result of the additional land near G.L. that the Air Force has acquired recently. The US Air Force has already or finally, depending on your point of view, admitted that a facility does exist in the general vacinity of Groom Lake. I believe the Nellis AFB commander wrote the announce- ment. All they say is that it is used for training exercises and some other ordinary, sensible function that I cannot remember at the moment. So officially there is a facility of some sort at Groom Lake. Perhaps the users of the facility don't call it Area 51, but the public now has an official statement about Groom Lake. I am not sure why so many people have such strong beliefs that the area is used for various projects that include the use of UFOs of the extraterrestrial kind, not to mention the conspiracies they believe in. I think of it as a place located in an area that most people can't get close enough to find out what really goes on there. Several Skunk Works aircraft have used the facility in that area for test flights. In some cases, the first flight of a classified aircraft were flown from there. Other aircraft made there first flights elsewhere and then flew othere test flights from(to) the facility there. Well, I'm beginning to ramble on so I'll close this note with a thank you for posting something that gave me something to laugh about. Sometimes I wonder if the Air Force would have saved some of the time they spent saying it doesn't exist by announcing its existence earlier. Announcing the existence of the facility does not mean they will tell you about anything significant that goes on there. If getting a laugh out of your note seems strange, maybe I have a strange sense of humor! :) - -Al- - --- þ SLMR 2.1a þ This tagline is umop apisdn ------------------------------ From: albert.dobyns@mwbbs.com (ALBERT DOBYNS) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 96 00:37:00 -0500 Subject: Re: SR-71 fuel question Hello Mary! Somewhere along the line I've become confused about the different jet fuels. It seems like JP-8 is or already has become the fuel used for most jets, but can the SR-71's burn JP-8? I feel like someon's note implied that it could, but I want to find out from a person who is currently involved with the Blackbirds. I don't know much about JP-8's characteristics but I would think that if the Blackbirds can use it and they use a chemical ignition system, then wouldn't all jets that burn JP-8 have to have their fuel ignition systems changed. Sometimes it's very late at night when I go through my email and so maybe part of my brain went to sleep while I was reading many posts. I am inclined to believe that JP-7 is the only fuel that the Blackbirds can use, but I've been wrong before (quite a few times!) Thanks in advance for sorting it out for me. - -Al- - --- þ SLMR 2.1a þ Unknown Error on Unknown Device for Unexplainable Reason. ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #607 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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