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SUBJECT: MACH 8 AIRCRAFT                                     FILE: UFO53

PART 1

From Wall Street Journal...
Magazine Suggests Aircraft Has Flown Mach 8 for Years

     New evidence suggests that the U.S. is operating secret spy
planes, possibly cruising as fast as eight times the speed of
sound, and that such aircraft may have been flying for over
three years.

        An article prepared for Jane's Defence Weekly, a British
military-affairs journal, suggest strongly that a $1 billion
plane capable of far greater speed than the current world
record-holding SR-71 spy plane is indeed in service globally.
The speculation is based in part on a trained aircraft
observer's recently reported 1989 sighting of a mysterious
wedge-shaped aircraft, flying over the north sea in a formation
with the U.S. built F-111 bombers and a KC-135 tanker.

        The description of the plane given by British
oil-drilling engineer and trained aircraft spotter Chris Gibson
is sketchy-little more, in fact, than an unfamiliar aircraft
shape he says he watched from his remote North Sea oil rig for
about 90 seconds one hazy August day three years ago.

        But in an intriguing analysis for Jane's, made available
the Wall Street Journal in advance of next week's scheduled
publication, the stealth technology expert who wrote the article
uses the sighting as the missing link in a chain of events he
believes may explain a number of U.S. military mysteries.

        Citing other experts in so-called hypersonic aviation,
author Bill Sweetman paints a picture of the hush-hush
reconnaissance plane that he believes replaced the Lockheed
Corp.'s SR-71 Blackbird when the U.S. took it out of service in
early 1990. That jet, which holds the official speed record of
2,193 mph, about Mach 3.3, would be a slow-poke compared to the
Mach 8 aircraft (5,280 mph) that Mr. Sweetman suggests flew over
Mr. Gibson that day in the North Sea.

The Pieces Fall Into Place

        His article proposes that the new plane - rumored for
years to be called Aurora because that name mysteriously popped
up as an unexplained defence budget line item in 1984 next to
the SR-71 - is also build by Lockheed, with engines by Rockwell
International Corp.'s Rocketdyne division. The Jane's report
suggests: The planes cost about $1 billion each; they first flew
in about 1985; and they have been the source of a series of
strange earth-quake-like rumbles still occurring in Southern
California and other areas of the world.

        With "this last piece" of information, Mr. Sweetman says
in an interview, "there are so many things that fall into
place." The most important, he says, may be the mystery of why
the U.S. retired its last SR-71 spy plane in 1990 with the
explanation that it would rely instead on satellites to meet the
reconnaissance needs once satisfied by the aircraft, believed
capable of operations well above 100,000 feet.

        The Jane's article, echoing others suggestions that the
statement about satellites was intended as a cover for
development of a new spy plane, notes that aircraft have a
certain reconnaissance usefulness that orbiting cameras can't
match.

        "The satellite system is believed to be capable of
producing imagery within 24 hours of a request: at Mach 8,
however, the flight time to any point on Earth is under three
hours," the article says. "Unlike a satellite, the aircraft can
be scheduled to pass over a target at any desired time of day,"
and flies closer to the target.

The 'Skunk Works' Legacy

        Lockheed won't comment on any secret programs it has
going, and refers questions about reconnaissance to the Air
Force. But Lockheed Advanced Development Co., the unit popularly
known as the "Skunk Works," long has been considered the shop
likely to be producing any future spy planes because it
developed the last two generations of U-2 and SR-71 planes in
the 1950s and 1960s. Both planes flew spy missions in total
secrecy for years before being acknowledged - in the U-2's case
only after pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in one in
1960. The California Skunk Works also produced the F-117 Stealth
Fighter, which also flew secretly before its existence was
acknowledged.

        The explanation of what he'd seen didn't become clear to
Mr. Gibson, a veteran of the now-disbanded Royal Observer Corps
of volunteer aircraft spotters, until he recently saw a drawing
in an aircraft magazine  of a putative hypersonic aircraft
design that matched the perfect triangle shape with its
75-degree nose.
Continued in part 2


     
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