Message posted by Vahe David Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on April 28, 2022 at 20:19:52 PST:
It has been 16 years since the page "Secret U.S. Aircraft Projects at Groom Lake" was last updated, but there are a few aspects of the page that need to be tweaked or updating: 1. Regarding the Lockheed HGV program, the drawing in the page about the Lockheed HGV at Designation-Systems.net is actually of the ground-launched Lockheed BOSS (Ballistic Offensive Suppression System), not the HGV (https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lockheed-axe.3721/). There is a photo of a model of the Lockheed HGV on page 133 of the book "Secret Projects: Military Space Technology".
2. With respect to the entry "A-11 Astra", the name ASTRA has been discussed elsewhere in this forum (https://www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects/aircraft.htm), and the description given for the A-11 Astra entry in all probability pertains to a purported stealthy swing-wing fighter bomber dubbed A-17 by a January 1995 issue of Popular Science (https://books.google.com/books?id=GNaLDPK9MT8C&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=a-17+swing+wing+popular+science&source=bl&ots=_pbPpED8b8&sig=ACfU3U2yVRaxjlS7F05l1KQ3_K7OLU4PQQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjC_cDYpbj3AhU4DkQIHbUwAAgQ6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=a-17%20swing%20wing%20popular%20science&f=false) (NOTE: A-17 was an invention by the writers of the article "Swing Wing Stealth Attack Plane" [which discusses the putative stealth fighter bomber] in the Popular Science magazine because the writers were unaware that the label A-16 for an unbuilt close air support F-16 variant was never officially assigned, and also made up the unsubstantiated claim that A-14 and A-15 were used for the losing contenders for the ATA competition won by the A-12 Avenger II, which was canceled during the construction phase due to cost overruns and technical difficulties). It's possible that A-11 was reserved by the DoD for the Piper PA-48 Enforcer in the event that this aircraft entered production, so the label "A-11" in "A-11 Astra" was included by mistake.
3. The F-121 Sentinel entry states that the North Sea sighting could have been of the F-121 Sentinel, but the book Dark Eagles by the late aviation historian Curtis Peebles argued that the triangular aircraft seen by Chris Gibson over the North Sea and considered by Bill Sweetman to be a classified hypersonic spyplane was actually an F-111 with its wings swept back (to be honest, the infrastructure that would be ideal to fuel a Mach 6 spyplane with methane or other hydrogen-based fuels was non-existent in the 1980s, and scramjet technology was in its infancy).
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