An A-12 Oxcart Spyplane Crashed Near Area 51 In 1967. This Is How One Explorer Found It.
Some people hunt for buried gold, a small number of others hunt for bits of titanium laced with aerospace history.
Tag: A-12
Elon Musk And His Partner Grimes Name Their Newborn After The A-12 Spy Plane
The kid’s full name is “X Æ A-12,” the latter part being a tribute to Lockheed Skunk Works’ Mach 3-capable jet it built for the CIA in the 1960s.
CIA’s Predecessor To The SR-71 Blackbird Tested Electron Guns To Hide From Radars
Concerns about advanced Soviet radars prompted the CIA to pursue the development of powerful electron guns that the A-12 Oxcart would carry inside its wings to generate invisible radar-absorbing fields around the aircraft.
Area 51 Veteran And CIA Electronic Warfare Pioneer Weigh In On Navy UFO Encounters
T.D. Barnes and S. Eugene Poteat worked on highly classified electronic warfare and aircraft programs at Area 51 and elsewhere. To them, all this talk of UFO sounds very familiar.
Behold The SR-71 Blackbird’s Raw Power In This Crazy Low-Light Afterburner Photo (Updated)
The SR-71’s Blackbird’s J58 engine was one of the biggest triumphs in aerospace history and it put on one hell of a light show at dusk.
This Image Of A Naval Strike Missile Launch Shows A Key Tenet Of Stealth Design
The Navy’s newest ship-killing missile features critical stealth technology that dates back to the SR-71 Blackbird and its predecessor.
The SR-71 Blackbird’s Predecessor Created “Plasma Stealth” By Burning Cesium-Laced Fuel
The A-12 – the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force’s iconic SR-71 Blackbird – was extremely high- and fast-flying, but also incorporated then-state-of-the-art features to reduce its radar cross-section. These included a combination of a stealthy overall shape and radar-evading structures, as well as the use of composites in its construction and the application of radar absorbing materials to its skin. A far less known, but still a key component of the Skunk Works plan to make the A-12 harder to spot on radar involved a cesium-laced fuel additive to cut the radar signature of the plane’s massive engine exhausts and afterburner plumes by creating an ionizing cloud behind the aircraft to help conceal its entire rear aspect from radar waves.
Are Some Of The UFOs Navy Pilots Are Encountering Actually Airborne Radar Reflectors?
Submarine-launched, radar reflector-toting balloons used to stimulate enemy air defenses can be traced back to a Cold War era Skunk Works program.
Air Force Wanted To Turn Skunk Works’ Mach 3 Capable Recon Drone Into A Nuclear Bomber
The concept would have given the service a penetrating high-speed strike asset, something it is still interested in to this day.
CIA And Skunk Works Secretly Planned To Turn The A-12 Spy Plane Into A Space Launch Mothership
The proposal to turn the SR-71 Blackbird’s progenitor into a space launch system sheds more light on decades of secretive U.S. work to realize air-launched space access capabilities.