UFO over China - secret aircraft?

A photo taken by a resident in Hangzhou shows an unidentified flying object hovering over Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, late Wednesday, July 7, 2010. (Photo: Metro Express)


ABC NEWS:

An unidentified flying object (UFO) forced Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, China to cease operations on July 7. A flight crew preparing for descent first detected the object around 8:40 p.m. and notified

A UFO in China's skies forced Xiaoshan Airport to cease operations for one hour.

Eighteen flights were affected. Though normal operations resumed an hour later, the incident captured the attention of the Chinese media and sparked a firestorm of speculation on the UFO's identity.

UPDATE: Aviation experts are expected to complete late Friday their investigation into an unidentified flying object that disrupted air traffic over east China for an hour on Wednesday.

An investigation team, comprising police and aviation officials, are still trying to identify the UFO that was located over Zhejiang Province.

"No conclusion has yet been drawn," said Wang Jian, head of air traffic control with Zhejiang branch of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told Xinhua Friday.

Media have reported speculation that the UFO might have been a private aircraft, based on the increasing number of privately-owned aircraft in the province.

But an industry insider who declined to be named Friday ruled out the speculation as "too unprofessional" without giving further explanation.

Wang Jian said the private plane was "just a guess."

Xiaoshan Airport in the provincial capital of Hangzhou was closed after a UFO was detected at around 9 p.m. Wednesday, and some flights were rerouted to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi cities.

C-5 at Sunrise ...

Discovered this amazing looking well-worn C-5 Galaxy that flew into Amarillo some time during the wee-hours last night. I think it was here to pick up (or deliver) V-22 Osprey fuselage (or parts) to the Bell/Boeing plant here in Amarillo.

I hope you like this shot - because I literally went through hell to get it. I was attacked my a squadron of blood-sucking mosquitos (lying in wait in the open airport field) that ambushed my bare legs.

I think I lost a pint or two trying to get this shot just right!

LINK

(C) Steve Douglass

Tali- bananas?

Taliban terrorists have a secret weapon to destroy the infidel American enemy — monkey marksmen.
According to The People’s Daily in China, the Taliban in Afghanistan is “training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops.

The newspaper’s bizarre story says the Islamic insurgents have drafted macaques and baboons to be all that they can be, arming them with AK-47 rifles, machine guns and trench mortars in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The monkeys, being rewarded with bananas and peanuts, are being turned into snipers at a secret Taliban training base.

The newspaper says “photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.”

One of those sites is the Pakistan Defense Forum, which has pictures of gun-toting monkeys, and makes the wild claim that a monkey-soldier program was first launched by the CIA in Vietnam.
“Today, the Taliban forces have given the American troops some of their own medicine,” The People’s Daily said.

Have you flown a FORD lately?

US aerospace mammoth Boeing yesterday rolled out its "Phantom Eye" unmanned strato-plane, able to cruise high above the airlanes for up to four days - powered by two ordinary Ford car engines running on hydrogen.

"The program is moving quickly, and it’s exciting to be part of such a unique aircraft," said Drew Mallow, Phantom Eye program manager, in a statement issued yesterday. "The hydrogen propulsion system will be the key to Phantom Eye's success. It is very efficient and offers great fuel economy, and its only byproduct is water, so it's also a 'green' aircraft."

To be specific, the Phantom Eye uses 2.3 litre four-cylinder engines of a type normally found in some models of petrol-burning Ford Fusion, turbocharged and tweaked so as to run on hydrogen at 65,000 feet.

Four days would suggest pretty good fuel economy, right enough. However "green" is a bit of a stretch as hydrogen at the moment is normally made by reforming natural gas. This releases copious amounts of carbon into the atmosphere - usually more than one would generate by running an ordinary fossil-fuelled car engine - so it is hardly green*.

One might also quibble with the "moving quickly" description of Phantom Eye. True, Boeing announced that it would start work on the Eye only in March, which would suggest impressive speed by the Phantom Works engineers.

In fact, however, the company has been touting Ford-powered high altitude drones for several years now. Indeed, back in 2007 it managed to get some military development cash for the previous "Orion" single-engined version, which could also stay up for four days. At that time, Boeing considered that a twin-engined job along Phantom Eye lines would be good for 10 days, not four - though the firm seems to have walked back on that somewhat.

Phantom Eye, then, hasn't appeared with lightning swiftness: though one might excuse the Phantom Works engineers for that. The event which actually got the ball rolling again on the Phantom Eye was Boeing's decision to provide development cash itself, having failed to get any from government customers. Lately, companies such as General Atomics have won a lot of government UAV business by offering finished products rather than insisting on taxpayers furnishing development money up front.

The next move for Phantom Eye is shipment to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It's expected to make its first flight next year.

Hearts & Minds - turn against Taliban?

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Villagers in eastern Afghanistan repelled an insurgent attack Tuesday, an incident that left an Afghan civilian and "numerous" Taliban dead, the NATO-led command said.
The incident took place in Ghazni province, where Taliban fighters tried to attack the village of Aalai Shahea. After unsuccessful attempts to overpower the village, they were "met with effective resistance" by its residents and quickly left the scene, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

The event is one in a series of examples of villagers withstanding and repelling insurgent attacks, including the successful defense of a village in the Gizab district in southeast Afghanistan in April that resulted in several insurgent deaths and four arrests, the statement said.

The insurgents traveled from neighboring Uruzgan province to conduct Tuesday's attack on the village, which is largely populated by Afghan security forces and their families, ISAF said.
"Attacking local people in their houses and villages demonstrates how desperate the Taliban have become in their failing operations to terrorize the Afghan people, and today the villagers fought back and won," said Maj. Paul Oliver, a military spokesman.