Air Force Going To War Against Nebraska - but its only an exercise.

The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Sep 16, 2008 12:51:58 EDT
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. — Officials say neighbors of Offutt Air Force Base should ignore what sounds like an attack.

The Air Force’s 55th Wing will be conducting training exercise Tuesday and Wednesday.

The base sits south of Omaha, adjacent to the suburb of Bellevue.

Officials say members of the public may hear loud noises from ground-burst simulators and see clouds of smoke from smoke grenades.

Sirens will be heard and the base public address system will be used.

Local authorities have been told about the training.

What We Thought The B-2 Looked Like

Going through some old back issues of Popular Science, I found this gem. it was a 1982 cover story about the B-2 bomber ( then known only as the Advanced Technology Bomber) and what aviation journalists speculated it looked like.

Although some will say the B-2 doesn't look at all like the artist representation here, Pop Science did get it right in some aspects.

The B-2 did turn out to be a flying wing with engine inlets not that all different than you see here. What they got wrong were the twin canted tails and B-1/X-15 looking nose. However, twin canted tails were considered in early versions of the B-2s design.

Its apparent the artist was also influenced by the markings and paint job on an SR-71.

All in all, the artist's rendering is about eighty percent right.

It is also interesting to note that the same image was ripped-off and published in the Soviet military journal Aviatsiya e Kosmonautika as an exclusive rendering of the real thing.


-Steve Douglass

Click to enlarge.

Intercepts Newsletter Archive Created!

With the sudden renewed interest in Black Projects, I have decided to dig up my old Intercepts Newsletters and create an online archive. The Intercepts Newsletter was produced for hard-core military monitors and stealth chasers from mid 1991 to 1995.

Until recently these back issues were located in a cardboard box in a barn in Ben Hur Texas, gathering dust and spider eggs, but with many requests by the original Interceptors to see if they could obtain copies, I decided rather than go through the expense of making copies, I'd turn them into Adobe Acrobat PDFs for free download.

I have to admit, as i was looking at the newsletter. I became a bit nostalgic for the early days and comraderie of the the original Interceptors and how much fun we had. We functioned like a mini-intelligence agency, gathering hard data, delving into Pentagon budget reports, looking for suspicious "line items" monitoring the military airwaves from mountaintops and motel rooms, and generally doing everything we could to try and piece together the amazing history of the development of covert military technology.

While reading the newsletters, keep in mind these were written over a decade ago, way before the Internet came into household vogue and became the repository of the information age.

In future (back) issues you'll discover the first writings of the now famous original Interceptors, including Glenn Campbell ( not the singer) who became the thorn in the side of Area 51 security. It's interesting to see his interests in Area 51 change from observer to activist.

It's easy to look back and see where we got it wong, but just as importantly where we got it right.

A lot of what you will read in these dated Intercepts newsletters concerns projects that never were or will never be declassified.

Some of what we printed turned out to be rumors and intentionally leaked disinformation, while others hinted at projects that are flying today.

I will try and post one newsletter each week on my blog at deepbluehorizon.com. My bandwidth is limited so as new ones go up, old ones will come down so download them while you can.

-Steve Douglass

US officials: Al-Qaida ‘imploding’

By Pamela Hess - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Sep 15, 2008 21:58:15 EDT

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. counterterrorism officials Monday said al-Qaida is “imploding” and that its violent tactics have turned Muslims worldwide against the organization.

“Absolutely it’s imploding. It’s imploding because it’s not a message that resonates with a lot of Muslims,” said Dell Dailey, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

Al-Qaida still remains the most dangerous threat to the United States. But of growing concern are organizations like Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas, which combine social services, local governance, national politics with extremist attacks, said Undersecretary of State James Glassman.

“These are models that have a lot more popular appeal than al-Qaida, that has almost no popular appeal,” he said.

Vastly more Muslims than Westerners are killed by al-Qaida car and suicide bombs, particularly in Iraq, where local tribes have largely turned against al-Qaida in Iraq in the last two years. Extremist violence claimed more than 9,500 civilian victims in Muslim countries in 2007.

U.S. intelligence agencies caution against predicting al-Qaida’s demise too soon, noting its Pakistan safe harbor and the persistent efforts of its affiliates to conduct attacks in North Africa and elsewhere.

U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press in July that al-Qaida leaders learned from Iraq to temper their local activities to ensure continued access and freedom of movement throughout the organization’s safe haven in Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Some hardline religious leaders who once wielded significant influence in al-Qaida have begun to criticize its violence against civilians, said Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, in an August speech. Gistaro said al-Qaida senior leaders have devoted nearly half their airtime this year to defending the group’s legitimacy.

Despite these apparent fissures, al-Qaida is the most potent threat to the United States, according to U.S. intelligence officials and reports. A national intelligence assessment released last year said al-Qaida had regenerated its leadership and ability to conduct attacks in the ungoverned tribal region of western Pakistan.

Afghanistan has grown increasingly violent because of the close ties and collaboration between the Pakistan tribes, the Taliban and the terrorist organization. Al-Qaida continues to attract new fighters to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and radical Internet sites that provide religious justification for attacks and violent anti-Western rhetoric are spreading.

Glassman said he is “skeptical” about claims that al-Qaida is changing its ways, or is even capable of changing its ways.

“The death-cult mentality is part of al-Qaida’s DNA. An al-Qaida that could adapt would be a far more dangerous al-Qaida,” he said.

Vulture UAVs could stay up for years.

Vultures could one day perform satellite jobs
By Jim Hodges - Special to the Times
Posted : Sunday Sep 14, 2008 15:37:30 EDT

When a solar-powered Zephyr unmanned aerial vehicle, made by the British firm QinetiQ, completed a flight over Arizona July 28 that lasted three and a half days, it not only made history but also gave credibility to a quest by a number of companies and agencies to develop ultralong-endurance drones for reconnaissance or communications relay.

No longer does the idea of a UAV flying at altitudes as high as 90,000 feet for five continuous years sound like science fiction. But it’s only recently that such a notion has been taken seriously.

Derek Bye, who designs airplanes for Lockheed Martin, remembers the titter that ran through the audience when the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency held an industry day in Arlington, Va., to announce Vulture, an unmanned plane that would fly for five years carrying a half-ton of payload and drawing just 5 kilowatts of power.

But such a thing wasn’t completely out of the blue. Seven years earlier, a strange-looking, unmanned solar-powered plane called Helios set an altitude record for propeller-driven craft of 96,863 feet. The Helios flying wing eventually broke apart off Hawaii, but U.S. defense officials saw potential in the idea.

So DARPA hatched the Vulture program. In April, the agency awarded $4 million design contracts to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and to the specialty-UAV company Aurora Flight Sciences. They will study competing Vulture designs under an initial 12-month analytical effort.

The winner or winners will advance to a second phase, in which they will attempt to keep a subscale aircraft aloft for three months. A third phase would extend that goal to a year.

A Vulture flying at 60,000 feet could produce a continuous high-resolution image of a battlefield within a 750-mile-diameter viewing footprint, which could take some of the pressure off traditional military UAV.

Read the full story at airforcetimes.com