GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s&# Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

It may even have been manned:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...ws/030606p1.xml

My God, what a story -- if it's even partially true. And, judging from this article, they are absolutely certain they have proof (along with proof that the thing, although it works, has recently been mothballed as not
cost-effective).

It's important to keep in mind, though, that this thing is NOT a workable prototype of the originally planned 2-stage winged Space Shuttle. The second stage -- the spaceplane that actually achieved orbit -- was relatively small and probably very inefficient as a cargo carrier; its advantage lay in allowing the US to get a military reconaissance (or weapons) satellite into orbit surreptitiously, with no advance warning of the launch going to other countries. Even at that, as I say, AW reports that the thing has been recently canned as not worth its (doubtless huge) black-budget expense.

[ljk4-1]

http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/ne...60406_1_n.shtml

The full article is in the April 6, 2006 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly.

US black programmes: funding the void

By Bill Sweetman, IDR Technology & Aerospace Editor, Minneapolis

Black programmes are a subset of what the US calls special access programmes
(SAPs). A programme judged so sensitive that its existence is classified is an
'unacknowledged SAP'. Within this group are waived SAPs which are not briefed to
Congress. In this case, only eight individuals - the chair and ranking minority
member of each of the four defence committees - are notified of the decision.
These waived SAPs are the blackest of black programmes.

Some analysts believe that much of the black budget funds the operations of
intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National
Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office and many new small units that
have sprung up in the aftermath of 9/11. Some of the identifiable items within
the classified world are strongly linked to particular intelligence activities.
The long-standing anomaly in US Air Force (USAF) missile-procurement accounts
funds intelligence-gathering spacecraft; it shrank considerably from FY06 to
FY07, reflecting the restructuring of the troubled Future Imagery Architecture
project for a new generation of radar and electro-optical spy satellites.

Where did the work lead?

Military space systems have been funded in the black world since the 1960s and
still are likely to account for a large proportion of black-world funds, but
whether they include a massive two-stage-to-orbit re-usable space
reconnaissance-strike system remains to be seen. Such a system might be
technically feasible, but even in small numbers it would be hard to conceal and
it would be unlikely that it would be permitted to operate over metropolitan or
suburban areas at low altitudes in daylight, as reports suggested.

The hypothesis, however, that a high-speed system of some kind was developed in
the 1980s is still supported by evidence, although much of it is circumstantial.
Unusual sonic booms over southern California in the early 1990s, and over other
places since, remain unexplained. A leading sonic boom expert who has reviewed
the California boom tracks believes that they were produced by vehicles
following a Shuttle-type landing profile.

Both the booms and the best eyewitness account of what may have been a secret
aircraft over the North Sea in 1989 are consistent with reasonable security
measures. The booms were recorded in detail by a seismograph network that the
USAF had no way of knowing was being used for that purpose and the sighting was
far out over open water, where the risk of a chance encounter with a trained
observer was minimal.

No direct evidence of such a project has emerged since the early 1990s, which
means one of three things; it was cancelled soon after it was reported; or it
has continued to operate on a spacecraft-like schedule, making very few sorties
in response to high-priority national requirements.