Kingfish and the Oxcart

The CIA has released it's official history of the "OXCART" program. For those non aviation geeks out there, that is the program that eventually resulted in the building of the SR-71.

The Woracle has pictures, links to more stuff and the CIA report.

Area 51 Construction

Maybe Will Smith needed extra space for his Flying Saucer collection?

Personally I think Harry Ried is behind this.

This is from ARES and Bill Sweetman.

The enterprising citizens over at Dreamland Resort just clubbed together and bought a new satellite image of the USAF Flight Test Center's secret annex in Nevada, better known as Area 51 - see page 24 of this for a quick background brief, which is still pretty current.

Dreamland resort webmaster Joerg Arnu has posted the first excerpts from the image. with more to follow. He hasn't been able to determine at press-time whether we can post images ourselves, but we'll keep you posted.

If there's a trend visible, it's construction - including the biggest hangar yet, 360 feet wide, equipped with an earthen berm to conceal activities from the closest public vantage point, and the enlargement of the "scoot and hide" hangar near the runway...

...In coincidence, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has released an analysis of the 2008 classified budget for research, development and acquisition, by Steve Kosiak. The $18.1 billion total in FY2008 (the report explains how this total is legitimately arrived at) is far bigger than the total defense budget of most other countries; and the USAF's share of this money has now surpassed 40 per cent of the service's acquisition spending...

WHOOHOO!

Ares and Bill Sweetman has once again answered my need for high altitude photography of hangers in the Navada desert. In today's edition of "As the Black Jet Purrs" we see that Uncle Sugar has built a new hangar at the airfield that doesn't exist. That's Area 51 to you people who don't get it.

Could it be that our reverse engineered UFO fleet is growing to such a size that we need more hangar space?

Or could it be that we need to house giant UAVs that look suspisiously like a twin engined raven.

Only the Shadow knows! (Oops, I made a UAV reference, 2 in fact...and a pop culture reference, well it was pop culture in the 40's)

Check the story out here