Mikoyan MiG-29 Fulcrum

By Jim Lucas
Nation: Poland
Taken on: July 7, 2012

Area 51 Hosted Tests For 'Secretly Acquired' Soviet Jets

The Extraterrestrial Highway, or State Route 375, near the restricted land surrounding Area 51. The CIA in August confirmed the base's existence. Photo: Laura Rauch/AP

The US government “secretly acquired” Soviet aircraft during the Cold War and tested them at Area 51, according to documents released Tuesday that shed light on the once-classified and long speculated base deep in the Nevada desert.

The CIA in August confirmed the existence of Area 51 when it released declassified documents through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The initial documents show that Area 51 was used to test the US government’s aerial programs. 

One of those programs was the government’s investigation of the multiple Soviet MiG fighter planes it “secretly acquired” during the Cold War. The first documented acquisition was the MiG-21, originally obtained by Israel in August 1966. From January 1968 to April 1968, Israel loaned the plane to the US air force, which referred to the aircraft as the YF-110.

The air force examined the plane’s technical characteristics and evaluated its performance to see how the US government’s weapons and aircraft compared tactically under the Have Doughnut program (pdf). Similar evaluations were conducted in 1969 with the MiG-17 under the not-as-delightfully-named Have Drill and Have Ferry campaigns (pdf). Other MiG examinations took place later, but details of those programs have not been declassified.

Screenshot of declassified government document obtained through a FOIA request by George Washington University's National Security Archive.

As part of the air force’s evaluation of Soviet air scheme, the military group would simulate a Soviet-style air defense complex made out of systems with names including Mary, Susan and Kathy.

According to the documents (pdf), officials were concerned about maintaining secrecy of the space early on and it was nearly uncovered by American astronauts taking routine overhead imagery. These images set off an internal discussion about how to prevent exposure of the site.

Robert Singel, National Reconnaissance Office deputy director, said in a 1974 letter (pdf) that releasing the photos to the public “would almost certainly provide strong stimulus for media questioning and the potential near-term revelation of the missions of the installation.” 

US Department of Defense determined that the A-4F Skyhawk (pictured) should not engage with the Soviet MiG-17 aircraft during the HAVE FERRY and HAVE DRILL evaluations. Photograph: Screenshot of declassified document obtained by the National Security Archive

The site was eventually transferred from the CIA to the air force in the late-1970s and became widely known in the mid-1990s.

Area 51 was discovered by government staffers and Lockheed Martin employees who thought it would be a good place to test aircraft while flying over Nevada, according to the first batch of documents.

Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T Richelson was able to review the documents in 2002, but mentions of Area 51 were redacted at the time. He submitted a request for the CIA’s history again in 2005 to continue his research on aerial surveillance programs.

Big Safari: The Air Force’s Top-Secret Spy Agency

The man on the other line didn’t seem happy. “We are a secretive and shadowy organization that has been in existence for over 60 years,” he said.

The man’s name is Col. Edward Topps. He’s the leader of a mysterious Air Force agency known as “Big Safari.” Last month, he called me out of the blue, after I’d written a story about a top-secret spy plane mission. Topps’ unit had paid Sierra Nevada Corporation—a major private defense firm—tens of millions of dollars to gather intel on Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels.

There had been no bidding process for the contract, which is a red flag, given the Pentagon’s history of how it spends taxpayer money. So I decided to take a closer look.

“They are huge,” a source tells me about Topps’ agency. “It’s the good old boy Air Force thing. They’ve got so many ‘black’ projects it’s not even funny.”

MQ9 Reaper drone (USAF)

Known for its spy work, Big Safari is the agency that helped the United States perfect its killer drones. It works with a number of major defense firms, and some 10 percent of its business has gone to Sierra Nevada. Over the past seven years, Topps’ unit has steered $3.5 billion worth of contracts to the Reno-based company without allowing others to compete for the deals, according to a federal contracting database. As one source puts it, Big Safari and Sierra Nevada “are so close they share rubbers.”

To find out more about their relationship, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Topps had seen the FOIA and read my story. He tried to reach out to me on Twitter, and later called me on my cell. I called him back later that day. “We work some of the departments’ most sensitive projects,” he told me, “and they are all along the lines of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.”

I knew much of this from hearsay, but was surprised he was being so blunt. I stopped him before he continued. There was no point, I thought, in the colonel getting in trouble.

“You don’t want me to quote everything you are saying, I assume?”

He brushed me off. “I don’t have a problem,” he said, and kept talking.

*

Sierra Nevada is owned by Fatih Ozmen and his wife, Eren. They were born in Turkey and have been praised for their self-made success. Fatih Ozmen, I’ve heard, is a generous man. Once, in a celebratory mood, he apparently bought the entire house drinks at Siné, a popular bar in Pentagon City.

(Eren Ozman/Facebook)

The Ozmens have friends in high places. One of the largest recipients of their largess is Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader. On Eren Ozmen’s Facebook page, there’s also a photo of her with an arm around Barbara Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat and member of the powerful Senate Intelligence committee. And like many of its competitors, Sierra Nevada hires plenty of former high-ranking military officials, including some who have previously worked for the Air Force.

SCANDAL IN NEVADA

About 10 years ago, the Ozmens had a brush with scandal after Sierra Nevada hired the wife of Republican congressman Jim Gibbons as a consultant. Gibbons eventually went on to become the governor of Nevada. But while on Capitol Hill, he reportedly pushed to award Sierra Nevada contracts without disclosing his wife's connection to the firm.

Over the past seven years, the company’s business with the federal government has grown rapidly—from $100 million in 2005 to $1 billion in 2012, according to a federal contracting database. That’s a 1,000 percent increase, which coincided with Sierra Nevada’s growing lobbying efforts. Since 1997, the couple has donated about $424,000 to both parties in Washington, and they’ve steadily upped their annual donations, according to Federal Election Commission records. The company’s political action committee has given another $700,000 since 2002.

(Eren Ozman/Facebook)

I called Sierra Nevada several times and the firm declined to comment.

*

Though it recently branched out into aerospace, Sierra Nevada is primarily known for its intelligence work. The company’s spy plane ops go well beyond Mexico. Big Safari hired the firm to run a similar mission in Africa. Sources say the project, known as Atlas, involved sending manned, private spy planes over the Sahara desert in Mali. Like most of Sierra Nevada’s contracts with Big Safari, these surveillance projects were offered without competitive bidding.

CAMERAS AND DRONES

Sierra Nevada has integrated cameras on killer drones. One drone-based camera can monitor an area roughly the size of an entire city.

Sole source contracts have a long and shady history in Washington. That’s why in 1984, Congress passed a law mandating competitive bidding, except in rare cases, for government agencies looking to spend taxpayer money. “The reason for competition,” says Charles Tiefer, a contracting expert at Baltimore University School of Law, “is that it lowers price, it provides equal opportunity, and it combats corruption.”

Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spaceship (NASA/Sierra Nevada)

Efforts to skirt the law have led to a number of high profile scandals. During the second Iraq War, for instance, Halliburton, the oilfield services firm once headed by Dick Cheney, rang up $1.4 billion in questionable charges, according to Congress.

The incident led to considerable backlash on Capitol Hill. But Big Safari’s habit of offering no bid contracts to major defense firms has largely gone unnoticed. Since 2005, the organization Topps works for has handed out $31 billion to a handful of companies; 96 percent of the money was awarded without competition. (Big Safari won’t comment on these numbers because of “operational security.”)

The locations of Sierra Nevada's offices in the US. (Sierra Nevada)

During our brief phone conversation in September, Topps confirmed that his office shuns competitive bidding. “We have used the same contracting procedures for the past 61 years,” he added.

But everything Big Safari does, according to Topps, is within the confines of the law. There are legal exemptions, he told me, “that allow us to do things quick and secretively so that we can make sure that our enemies [don’t find out about it].”

For years, Tiefer, the Baltimore law professor, has worked on contracting issues with Congress. But when I told him about my conversation with the colonel, he was surprised. Big Safari, he says, “sounds like a rogue agency. They think none of the laws apply to them.”

There is no group in government, Tiefer says, that has blanket exemptions from the law. They just have to engage in a bidding process in a secretive way. The exemptions, he says, even for national security reasons, are supposed to be made case-by-case. “The head of this agency is a one-man wrecking crew,” he says, “for the federal system of competitive contracting.”

*

Wreckage of the plane crash in Colombia (Noticias RCN)

As we continued talking on the phone, Topps was pleasant. But he made sure to stress that he wasn’t going to make it easy for me learn more about Sierra Nevada or its contracts. “Don’t be angry or upset when your FOIA request is turned down,” he said. “That’s just the way we do business here at Big Safari.”

His biggest concern: In my Mexico story, I had included the names of contractors. That, he said, was already making it hard to do business. Mentioning the Ozmens, he indicated, was also a bad move. “When you put out individual names of people it immediately puts their lives at risk, whether you are talking at terrorists in the Middle East or drug lords in Mexico.”

I pointed out that the company is a major defense firm, and that part of my job was letting people know how government money is spent. Besides, the names of the contractors aren’t classified.

Despite his irritation, Topps offered me a unique opportunity. He invited me to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, to meet him for a longer, on-the-record interview. He was willing to take his secretive agency out of the shadows, but he wanted the chance to persuade me to be sensitive to his security needs.

It never happened. I was all set to go when two weeks later, a Sierra Nevada spy plane crashed in Colombia, killing three Americans and one Panamanian. The mission, I quickly learned, was another Big Safari op. The agency had hired Sierra Nevada to spy on Colombian drug boats.

When I wrote the story in early October, I once again named names. No matter how much I wanted access, it was more important to let readers know what that plane was doing and how taxpayer money was being spent.

Topps apparently didn’t agree. After reading my story, he cancelled the trip. “It seems to me you are trying to smear individual leaders,” he wrote in an email. “I won’t be a part of your stories any longer.”

Air Force Wants Hypersonic Missiles For Stealth Jets

An X-51 Waverider hypersonic missile attached to the wing of a B-52 bomber. The Air Force seeks to build a smaller variant for its stealth fighters. Photo: Boeing


By Robert Beckhusen
June 7, 2012 | 6:00 pm
Courtesy Of "Wired"


For decades, the military has tried — with little success — to build missiles capable of traveling at breakneck, hypersonic speeds. Missile tests, however, have been uneven, with repeated failures punctuated by the occasional stunning success. Now the Air Force is taking a bigger role by seeking to build another hypersonic missile, this time for its stealth fighter jets.

The Air Force’s desired “High Speed Strike Weapon” would travel at five times the speed of sound or faster, theoretically launching from a stealthy F-22 Raptor jet or a future F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and traveling so fast and at such long distances as to render an enemy’s anti-aircraft systems defunct. The Air Force’s Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate is gathering possible design partners later this month at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida before any solicitation. According to an Air Force notice, whatever prototype gets built will ultimately need to strike “time-critical” targets — on the move, possibly — from “tactically relevant standoff distances.”

If it can be done, the weapon will “be representative of an air-breathing hypersonic missile system” that can tough it out in “the most stringent environments presented to us in the next decade,” said Steven Walker, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for science, technology and engineering, in written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in February.

That’s the hope, at least. The U.S. military has a mixed record with hypersonics. Last August, the Pentagon’s pizza-shaped Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 failed for a second (and likely final) time, crashing into the Pacific during a test flight. But the Army’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon did much better during a test in November. Two years ago, the Air Force successfully flew its X-51 WaveRider scramjet missile at speeds of Mach 5 for 200 seconds after launching it off a B-52 bomber. A later test, though, ended with engine failure.

Unlike those weapons, though, the High Speed Strike Weapon isn’t a so-called “Global Strike” weapon. Those weapons are supposed to hit anywhere on Planet Earth at any time. The former Falcon missile, for instance, was designed to launch with a rocket into space, before screaming back down to Earth and obliterating its target. But those weapons are indistinguishable from a nuclear weapon when seen on radar — which could inadvertently trigger nuclear Armageddon once a surprised nuclear power like Russia sees one in the air.

A fighter-launched missile resembles any other smaller, non-nuclear missile. It’s just traveling super-fast. Armageddon averted.

There are other technical challenges in launching a scramjet missile from a fighter jet instead of a sub-orbital rocket or a B-52, though. It’ll still need to have air-breathing engines that compresses the air around the missile into a supersonic mixture of oxygen and fuel — absent a turbine. But it will also need to be small enough to be carried by a jet fighter while carrying the necessary advanced navigation controls, precision guidance tools and sophisticated sensors, plus the warhead. The service will also still have to find the right mixture of composite materials like titanium and tungsten (among others) to hold up under the enormous heat generated by Mach 5, Mach 6 and even faster flight.

The Air Force is requesting a whopping 150 percent increase in funding for the program, from $6.2 million now to $15.4 million in 2013 in one “thrust” of weapons development, according to subscription-required InsideDefense. That’s a lot of money for a missile that may not work.

Inside Israel’s Secret Plan for Its Future Air Force

An Israel Air Force flight simulator. Photo: IAF


Nano Drones, Ethical Algorithms

By Amir Mizroch
May 11, 2012 | 2:00 pm
Courtesy Of "Wired Magazine"


TEL AVIV, Israel — Nano drones that an infantryman can pull out of his pocket; helicopters piloted by robots who extract wounded soldiers from the battlefield; micro satellites on demand; large spy balloons in the upper reaches of the stratosphere; virtual training with a helmet from your office; algorithms that resolve pilots’ ethical dilemmas (so they won’t have to deal with those pesky war crimes tribunals); and farming out code to a network of high school kids.

Since mid-2009, some 300 Israel Air Force officers have been brainstorming about the next steps for one of the world’s most advanced air forces, and the main pillar of Israel’s strategic power. This “IAF 2030″ project has just come to an end. Besides a standard press release issued by the military, little has been disclosed about it. Exclusive details are reported here for the first time.

The task of preparing the project was given to Major Nimrod Segev, head of the IAF’s long-term planning department. Segev divided his 300 officers into nine teams: Advanced Information Technology, Vast Data, Space, Cyber, Environment, Intelligence, Human Factor, Organizational Behavior, and a ‘Red Team,’ to challenge the other eight’s assumptions.

The participants were asked to think ahead — far ahead — something that doesn’t come easy in the military culture here, where long-term planning is almost unheard of. What changes would it have to make in weapons systems, platforms, technology, manpower, and organizational behavior to meet potential new threats? What new planes, guidance systems, and technology would they want? Let loose, the officers were told. Don’t worry about the how and the how much; just let your imaginations go. The air force even brought in Israel’s number one dreamer — President Shimon Peres — to fire their imaginations with a pep talk.

The vast majority of the “IAF 2030″ document is classified. The interview with Segev at the IAF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv — nicknamed the “Canary” — was conducted with a security officer present. No questions about the Red Team were answered.

Robots will fly helicopters and extract wounded from the battlefield, if the vision of the "IAF 2030" 

project materializes. Photo: IAF

Segev did open about one of the more controversial ideas that came up, however: the notion of “mathematical formulas that solve even the difficult ethical dilemmas in place of human pilots.” The air force has been developing technologies for quite some time now that can divert missiles in midair if all of a sudden a civilian pops up near the target, but often this kind of thing happens too quickly even for the most skilled operators. It’s part of an uneven, decade-long IAF effort to try to bring down collateral damage — a necessity, since the air force fights asymmetric enemies in densely populated areas. But this is something the IAF is keen to develop even more.

The concept of a computer taking over almost all the functions of this kind of thing is very tricky, though; you can’t very well say at a war crimes tribunal that you’re not responsible for unintended deaths, or tell the judge it was all the algorithm’s fault.

Some machines may vanish, too. In the meantime, some machines may vanish. Many in the IAF 2030 group thought that the future didn’t lie in large, expensive simulators at air force bases, but rather portable simulators you can use almost anywhere. “Virtual training from your office. Strap on a helmet and you’re in the air,” Segev said.

While the last aerial dogfight between Israeli and Arab warplanes took place somewhere in the early ’80s, Segev said that aerial combat was now, and would continue to be, a staple of IAF pilot training. “While we didn’t get to the point of making the human pilot obsolete, we do see that the job of a pilot is vastly different from what it was. These days the air-to-air missile is the ‘dogfight’ – the missile can be launched from a vast distance at an enemy plane. The point is to see the enemy way before he sees you, and for that you need datafighters, not dogfighters,” Segev says.

Segev also told Danger Room that the Space and Intelligence teams found the 100,000 feet layer of the stratosphere “very interesting.” These days, the best warplanes can only fly to somewhere around 50,000 feet, and the best satellites in low orbit can get down to 500,000 feet. That leaves a whole ‘middle layer’ where “you can get really creative,” he adds.

Another off-the-wall idea: farming out complex coding and other technical tasks to a network of six technical high schools run by the IAF across the country. These technical schools already exist. But by 2030 — when today’s infants will be enrolled — these teenagers could be at the core of a revamped Israel Air Force.

The Mighty Russian Sukhoi

Posted by "Sayf Maslul"


Song: "Ultra Numb" (instrumental)
Artist: "Blue Stahli"

Eject! Eject! Eject!

Posted by guest blogger "Sayf Maslul"


With only a split second before his plane hit the ground in giant ball of flame, this air force pilot miraculously managed to eject to safety.

As Captain Brian Bews, 36, of the Royal Canadian Air Force performed a daring low pass of an airfield yesterday, his CF-18 fighter jet suddenly stalled.

But his quick reactions and his rocket-powered ejector seat saved his life as he was catapulted out of the stricken £30million aircraft.

The extraordinary crash was captured on camera during an afternoon practice session for an air show at the Lethbridge County Airport, in Alberta, Canada.  












Source: "The Daily Mail"

Nuclear War Is Moral and Righteous?

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos,
August 04, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

So what could really go wrong with an Air Force class that says nuclear war is moral and righteous — because the bible tells us so?

Well for 20 years no one had said a peep. But after a number of complaints by Air Force officers and a Truthout article last week by Jason Leopold revealed that the Air Force was using the bible and even the invocation of a former Nazi scientist to justify the use of nuclear warfare, the long-standing course was shut down:

The course [The Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare training ] was led by Air Force chaplains and took place during a missile officer’s first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Officers who train to be missileers were required to attend the ethics course, which included a PowerPoint presentation on St. Augustine’s “Christian Just War Theory” as well as numerous examples of characters from the New and Old Testament the training materials asserted engaged in warfighting in a “righteous way.”

St. Augustine’s “Qualifications for Just War,” according to the way the Air Force characterized it in slides used in the ethics training, are: “to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order (just cause)” and “to restore moral order; not expand power, not for pride or revenge (just intent).”

One of the PowerPoint slides also contained a passage from the Book of Revelation that claims Jesus Christ, as the “mighty warrior,” believed some wars to be just.

In his original story, Leopold talks about the most outrageous of the power point slides, the “moral” justification invoked by Wernher Von Braun, who was captured, recruited and brought to the U.S by American forces in 1945:

One of the most disturbing slides quotes Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program, is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he’s specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.

“We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else,” Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.” [emphasis in document]

Von Braun was part of a top-secret military program known as “Operation Paperclip,” which recruited Nazi scientists after World War II who “were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for [Adolf] Hitler’s Third Reich, [Nazi Party] and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats also disqualified them from officially obtaining visas,” according to the Operation Paperclip web site.

In comments to the press, Air Force spokesman David Smith said the main purpose of the class was to help missile launch officers understand that “what they are embarking on is very difficult and you have to have a certain amount of ethics about what you are doing to do that job.” But the course was nonetheless suspended indefinitely this week.

“In an effort to serve all faiths, we try to introduce none in our briefings and our lectures,” Smith told Fox News Radio. “Once we heard there were concerns, we looked at the course and said we could do better.”

You bet, says ferocious Constitutional watchdog Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. In recent comments he said if the Air Force didn’t pull the plug on the Jesus 4 Nukes course, he would have sued them. And it wouldn’t have been the first time.  “This isn’t about attacking someone’s faith,” he said. “What it’s about is remembering that in this country … we separate church and state. They don’t do that in other countries. We do that here.”

Inside Area 51

Exclusive: The Secret Birthplace Of The U2 Spy Plane

Published May 17, 2011
Courtesy Of "FOX News"

In her new book "AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base," which goes on sale May 17, Annie Jacobsen offers for the first time an inside look at the history of America's top secret military base. It is the first book based on interviews with the scientist, pilots, and engineers -- 74 in total -- who for the first time reveal what really went on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear reactions to building super-secret supersonic jets to pursuing the war on terror.

Jacobsen, a contributing editor and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, interviewed the former Area 51 employees in 2008 and 2009, shortly after the CIA declassified much of the work they had done, including countless pages of redacted memos and declassified reports. Area 51 is still officially a military secret, unmentioned by name, Jacobsen notes. 

In this exclusive excerpt, Jacobsen reveals some of the wild research that went on in the 1970s at Area 51 -- where the military built the U-2 spy plane, rather than harboring crashed UFOs.

Chapter 20: From Camera Bays To Weapons Bays

By 1974, the Central Intelligence Agency had ceded control of Area 51. Some insiders say the transition occurred in 1979, but since Area 51 does not officially exist, the Air Force won’t officially say when this handover occurred.

Certainly this had to have happened by the time the stealth bomber program was up and running; the F-117 program was the holy grail of Pentagon black projects — and, during that time period, the Air Force dominated Area 51.

Having no business in bombs, the CIA maintained a much smaller presence there than historically it had before. During the 1970s, the Agency’s work concentrated largely on pilotless aircraft, or drones. Hank Meierdierck, the man who wrote the manual for the U‑2 at Area 51, was in charge of one such CIA drone project, which began in late 1969.

Code-named Aquiline, the six-foot-long pilotless aircraft was disguised to look like an eagle or buzzard in flight. It carried a small television camera in its nose and photo equipment and air-sampling sensors under its wings. Some insiders say it had been designed to test for radiation in the air as well as to gather electronic intelligence, or ELINT. But Gene Poteat, the first CIA officer ever assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office, offers a different version of events. 

“Spy satellites flying over the Caspian Sea delivered us images of an oddly shaped, giant, multi-engine watercraft moving around down there on the surface. No one had any idea what this thing was for, but you can be sure the Agency wanted to find out."

"That is what the original purpose of Aquiline was for,” Poteat reveals. “To take close‑up pictures of the vehicle so we could discern what it was and what the Soviets might be thinking of using it for. Since we had no idea what it was, we made up a name for it."

"We called it the Caspian Sea Monster,” Poteat explains. Project Aquiline remains a classified project, but in September of 2008, BBC News magazine produced a story about a Cold War Soviet hydrofoil named Ekranopian, which is exactly what the CIA’s Aquiline drone was designed to spy on.

At Area 51, Hank Meierdierck selected his former hunting partner Jim Freedman to assist him on the Aquiline drone program. “It flew low and was meant to follow along communication lines in foreign countries and intercept messages,” Freedman says. “I believe the plan was to launch it from a submarine while it was waiting in port.” The Aquiline team consisted of three pilots trained to remotely control the bird, with Freedman offering operational support.

“Hank got the thing to fly,” Freedman recalls. Progress was slow and “it crash-landed a lot.” The program ended when the defense contractor, McDonnell Douglas, gave a bid for the job that Meierdierck felt was ninety-nine million dollars over budget. McDonnell Douglas would not budge on its bid, so Hank recommended that the CIA cancel Project Aquiline, which he said they did.

After the program was over, Hank Meierdierck managed to take a mock‑up of the Aquiline drone home with him from the area. “He had it sitting on his bar at his house down in Las Vegas,” Freedman recalls.

Project Aquiline was not the CIA’s first attempt to gather intelligence using cover from the animal kingdom. Project Ornithopter involved a birdlike drone designed to blend in with nature by flapping its wings. And a third, even smaller drone was designed to look like a crow and land on windowsills in order to photograph what was going on inside CIA-targeted rooms.

The tiniest drone program, orchestrated in the early 1970s, was Project Insectothopter, an insect-size aerial vehicle that looked like a dragonfly in flight. Insectothopter had an emerald green minifuselage and, like Ornithopter, flapped its wings, which were powered by a miniature engine that ran on a tiny amount of gas. Through its Office of Research and Development, or ORD, the CIA had also tried turning live birds and cats into spies.

In one such program, CIA-trained pigeons flew around Washington, DC, with bird-size cameras strapped to their necks. The project failed after the extra weight tired out the pigeons and they hobbled back to headquarters on foot instead of in flight. Another CIA endeavor, Acoustic Kitty, involved putting electronic listening devices in house cats.

But that project also backfired after too many cats strayed from their missions in search of food. One acoustic kitty got run over by a car. The Agency’s pilotless-vehicle projects were forever growing in ambition and in size. One robotic drone from the early 1970s, a project financed with DARPA, was disguised to look like an elephant —ready to do battle in the jungles of Vietnam.

Reprinted from the book AREA 51 by Annie Jacobsen. Copyright © 2011 by Annie Jacobsen. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ANNIE JACOBSEN is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine and an investigative reporter whose work has also appeared in the National Review and the Dallas Morning News. Her two-part series “The Road to Area 51” in the Los Angeles Times Magazine broke online reader records and remained the “most popular/most emailed” story for ten consecutive days. 

Learn more at the Area 51 website.