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Exploring the history, technology, and geopolitical impact of aerial reconnaissance. These programs detail how aircraft and drones revolutionized military intelligence and foreign policy....
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00:03In the last half of the 20th century, spy planes soared through the stratosphere at three times the speed of
00:10sound, breaking records that remain to this day.
00:15Others lurked quietly at the very rim of hostile nations.
00:19Listening, photographing, transmitting overheard conversations on secret frequencies halfway around the world.
00:32By century's end, they ranged in size from nearly 300,000 pounds to a mere four ounces.
00:44Covert operatives on the ground were no match for these airborne agents.
00:50Unlike satellites that toddled around the globe in predictable orbits, spy planes photographed enemy sites when and where they were
00:58needed, usually surprising the enemy.
01:03These eyes and ears in the sky came in all shapes and sizes.
01:10Some were operational in the Gulf War.
01:13Others flew spy missions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
01:20Even now, a curious array of spy planes are being developed and tested by a young generation of aeronautical geniuses.
01:30Spy planes small enough to take off from the palm of your hand.
01:40The story of top secret reconnaissance aircraft really begins midway in the 20th century, in the darkest days of the
01:48Cold War.
01:52The big difference between the superpowers at this time was that the US was more or less an open book
01:58and the Soviet Union was a closed book.
02:00The Iron Curtain had descended and in intelligence gathering terms, it was a tough nut to crack.
02:10At the Omaha, Nebraska headquarters of the Strategic Air Command and in Washington DC, the belief was that the Soviets
02:18had far surpassed the US in bomber production.
02:27In fact, this civil defense training film was required viewing for all American school children because of the fear of
02:34a Soviet nuclear attack.
02:38Many Americans believed that it was only a matter of time before a fleet of Russian bison bombers would soar
02:45across the United States, dropping nuclear bombs on every major American city, every military installation, every armament factory.
03:00Then, by 1957, when the Soviets launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, these fears reached a fever pitch.
03:09Now it was believed the Russians could deliver nuclear warheads from outer space.
03:16But in truth, all of these fears were based on very sketchy intelligence.
03:25Even three years before Sputnik was launched, President Eisenhower knew this challenge had to be met.
03:33After a series of secret meetings with his closest advisers, Ike made the difficult decision to build something new.
03:40A spy plane based on revolutionary technology.
03:46It was codenamed Aquitone, and the CIA was put in charge.
03:54Director Alan Dulles chose his assistant, Richard Bissell, to head the project from Washington.
04:01Funding for Aquitone would come from one of the CIA's many secret accounts.
04:08In fact, the CIA only recently allowed this top-secret footage to be declassified.
04:17The work began on December 9th, 1954, in Southern California, in a little-known town called Burbank.
04:27The contractor was Lockheed's advanced development company, nicknamed Skunk Works, after a wartime comic strip.
04:34They were led by an aeronautical engineering genius, Clarence Kelly Johnson.
04:42This spy plane eventually would carry the name U-2, short for Utility 2.
04:48It was given an elaborate cover story, that it was a weather plane designed for scientific experimentation at the highest
04:56altitudes.
05:00The top-secret onboard camera was designed by Edwin Land, the man famous for creating the Polaroid camera.
05:09In late August 1955, just eight months after work began, the U-2 was ready to fly.
05:17It would need to be tested at a secret airfield nearby, but at the time, none existed.
05:25So, the U.S. Air Force Colonel, who had been assigned to liaise between the Pentagon and the CIA, chose
05:34a site not very far north of the Nevada nuclear test range.
05:39He knew that site because he had flown over it during nuclear weapons tests.
05:47It was a vast, dry lake bed known as Groom Lake, an innocuous piece of property that eventually became the
05:56single most secret air base in U.S. history.
06:00Today, it's known by another name, Area 51.
06:05Surprisingly, the entire U-2 project continued to remain a secret, even from Soviet spies.
06:12Considering the number of leaks emanating from the Manhattan Project, it seems incredible that the Soviets never infiltrated the black
06:20world of the U-2.
06:22That's not hard to understand. The U-2 program was fairly small. It was conducted under conditions of extreme secrecy,
06:32and it was developed very quickly.
06:36With test pilot Tony Levere in the cockpit, the aircraft tested well. By July 4th, 1956, it would attempt its
06:45first operational sortie deep into Soviet airspace.
06:51At 6 o'clock in the morning, CIA pilot Harvey Stockman took off from Wiesbaden Air Force Base in West
06:57Germany.
07:00While Americans celebrated their independence day, Stockman carefully guided his aircraft over Poland and into Belorussia.
07:09As he flew in the direction of Leningrad, Stockman caught sight of MiG fighters attempting an intercept below.
07:18In that moment, he chose to trust Kelly Johnson's promise that the U-2 flying at an altitude of 70
07:25,000 feet was too high to be shot down by MiGs or surface-to-air missiles.
07:36Stockman held to the course and made it home safely with clear reconnaissance photographs of the forbidden territory of the
07:43Soviet Union.
07:45But Russian radar had locked onto the U-2 on her maiden spy mission.
07:58He was also worried that if they were detected, the Soviets might misinterpret them as being, for instance, a bomber
08:10coming to attack them.
08:14Even so, the President was pleased.
08:18Within a year, the U-2's CIA pilots overflying and photographing this immense country proved one thing.
08:27That the reports of the Soviets' massive bomber production had been greatly exaggerated.
08:36The United States always maintained the U-2's cover story that these flights were strictly scientific, designed to learn more
08:43about the weather.
08:45To some extent, the U.S. got by with this ruse.
08:50That is, until May 1, 1960.
08:57May Day was one of the most important holidays in the Soviet Union.
09:01It was also the day that CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot out of the sky in his U
09:07-2, his aircraft destroyed.
09:11Powers survived the crash, but on the ground, the Soviet military and the KGB awaited him.
09:19Years of hard-won secrecy for the U.S. intelligence community were wiped out in a moment,
09:24as photographs of Powers' capture eventually were carried by every news organization in the world.
09:33It was not until, literally, the May Day incident that the Americans were aware that it didn't just carry weather
09:40sampling equipment,
09:41it carried cameras.
09:42And its primary mission was not to find out if it's going to be nice and sunny tomorrow,
09:46but if it's going to be nice and sunny over ballistic missile sites inside the Soviet Union.
09:54Powers was convicted of espionage and imprisoned.
09:57An event that permanently slammed the door shut on U-2 spy missions over the Soviet Union.
10:07Then, in late summer 1962, a U-2 captured the first images of the Soviet's military build-up in Cuba.
10:17Experts believed the photos revealed the existence of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles
10:23that placed most major U.S. cities within target range of a nuclear attack.
10:31Within days of the first U-2 overflight, a second U-2 flew a spy mission over Cuba.
10:37It was shot down, and the first American U-2 pilot was killed, flying over enemy territory.
10:49As Soviet ships headed towards Havana Bay with another shipment of armaments,
10:54President John Kennedy called Soviet Premier Khrushchev's bluff.
11:04Good evening, my fellow citizens.
11:07This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance
11:13of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba.
11:18He placed a quarantine around the Cuban island.
11:23Khrushchev backed down.
11:24The ships made a U-turn and headed back to their homeland.
11:31Today, Russian experts say that, indeed, there were atomic weapons in Cuba in 1962.
11:37And the Cubans did not have control over them.
11:43Had the American president sent in ground troops or attempted to bomb suspected missile sites,
11:49the Soviets could have retaliated with nuclear weapons.
11:56Photographs from the U-2 flights helped provide the information President Kennedy needed,
12:01in order to face down the Soviet premier.
12:09This resilient spy plane has literally overflown the entire world.
12:15In fact, there is no land mass the U-2 has not overflown and photographed.
12:24Even so, by the early 60s, a new supersonic spy plane was being tested and refined in the Nevada desert,
12:31codenamed Oxcarp.
12:39Stealthy and sleek, it would become the fastest aircraft on Earth.
12:55While the U-2 was still being tested in the Nevada desert in 1955,
13:00Richard Bissell of the CIA and Kelly Johnson predicted it would fly undetected for a mere two years.
13:07They believed that, by then, the Soviets would have the technology to bring down any U-2 in flight over
13:13their borders.
13:14But, in fact, it took the Soviets five years.
13:17Even so, it was this concern that prompted President Eisenhower and the CIA to order the engineers at Lockheed Skunk
13:25Works
13:26to begin work on the next generation of spy plane.
13:30Codenamed Oxcarp, the A-12 eventually would be known as the Blackbird.
13:37Even before the U-2 was shot down, President Eisenhower had authorized its replacement with the A-12
13:44and ultimately the Air Force's successor to the A-12, the SR-71.
13:48It would fly about 10,000 feet higher than the U-2, but most importantly, it would fly three times
13:55the speed of sound.
13:56And the missile that shot down the U-2 could never catch the SR-71.
14:02In the summer of 1959, President Eisenhower approved initial funding for the top-secret aircraft.
14:12The money would come from the CIA, a black budget of $4.5 million.
14:21Because the U-2 was so easily visible to Soviet radar, Kelly Johnson designed the A-12 with a reduced
14:28radar signature.
14:31Its shape and configuration, as well as the materials from which it was created, all served to defeat radar detectability.
14:44You could say this aircraft was the first stealth spy plane.
14:50It was also the last plane developed with a slide rule instead of a computer.
14:57This stealthy aircraft inhabited the black world of the CIA, the Strategic Air Command and the Air Force for years.
15:10The Lockheed Skunk Works engineers who developed and built this unique spy plane never put the Lockheed name on any
15:17document, never stamped the drawings with the Skunk Works logo.
15:24There was no cover story.
15:26There was no cover story because nobody would believe it would be anything other than what it was.
15:31Nobody was going to believe it was a weather plane or anything else.
15:35As with most intelligence collection systems, the SR-71 was born secret and stayed that way for a very long
15:42time.
15:42Even though thousands of people were working on it, they all had to have special access clearances to learn about
15:49the program.
15:50And if you did not need to know about it, you didn't know about it.
15:54By 1960, the CIA tasked Lockheed with finding the pilots to fly the A-12.
16:01Names of potential candidates were drawn from Air Force files.
16:06The CIA was responsible for the intensive security background checks.
16:11Like the U-2 pilots before them, the men who finally were chosen were sheep dipped, meaning they left the
16:17Air Force.
16:19Their military status was suspended.
16:23Then they became civilian employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
16:29Maintaining secrecy within the government was basically through this compartmented system where anybody who was going to be told about
16:38Oxcart had to be approved, had to go through security screening, had to sign a special agreement.
16:48In mid-February 1962, the A-12 was ready to fly.
16:53There was one problem.
16:55In its time, the A-12 looked like an aircraft straight out of a science fiction film.
17:02No one had ever seen anything like it, anywhere.
17:06The moment it was airborne, the A-12's secret existence would be revealed to the public.
17:14So, designer Kelly Johnson and his CIA counterparts decided that the aircraft would have to be dissembled in the Skunk
17:21Works plant in Burbank, California, and then hauled to the Nevada desert in a specially built trailer, under cover of
17:28darkness.
17:30And with secrecy assured, on February 26th, 1962, the Oxcart convoy arrived at the secret test site at one o
17:40'clock in the afternoon.
17:46The CIA worked out a plan with the Federal Aviation Administration.
17:49Together, they enlarged the restricted airspace around Groom Lake.
17:57A few civilian air traffic controllers received clearance for Oxcart operations.
18:05Nearby military facilities were also briefed and ordered not to report radar sightings of any unusual aircraft.
18:16The first flight revealed that even in the hands of Lockheed's most experienced test pilot, the A-12 was temperamental
18:23and difficult to fly.
18:28By the second flight in May, the problems were minimal and the A-12 went supersonic.
18:37The plane was officially announced in the summer of 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson, seven months after he assumed office.
18:47The system will be used during periods of military hostilities and in other situations in which the United States military
18:54forces may be confronting foreign military forces.
18:58Further information on this major advanced aircraft system will be released from time to time at the appropriate military secret
19:05classification levels.
19:09Some believe his intention was to use the existence of the A-12 to refute charges that he was soft
19:15on defense.
19:18To this day, there's controversy over how the A-12 was used.
19:28According to some experts, in August of 1964, the CIA needed several operational aircraft to overfly Cuba by November 5th.
19:39They reportedly had discovered that immediately after the U.S. presidential election, the Soviets planned to use guided missiles to
19:48shoot down every U-2 flying over Cuba.
19:51Without the U-2's reconnaissance photographs, the U.S. intelligence community would never know if the Soviet Union redeployed their
19:58missiles to Cuban soil.
20:02They believed that the A-12 was the answer.
20:06The problem was that by November 5th, there was no CIA pilot qualified to fly the extremely temperamental A-12.
20:16Kelly Johnson volunteered Lockheed test pilots for the highly sensitive flights over Cuba.
20:22The CIA record seems to dispute this story.
20:27In his book Skunk Works, author Jay Miller revealed that Kelly Johnson kept his own logs,
20:32logs which suggest the CIA accepted his offer, and on November 10th, the A-12's first operational sortie over denied
20:41airspace was accomplished by a civilian commercial employee.
20:46There's no evidence that it was detected by Soviet-made radar in Cuba.
20:51Besides, nothing in the Soviet arsenal could have shot it down.
20:55In fact, during its operational lifetime, more than a hundred missiles were fired at the A-12, by then also
21:01known as Blackbird.
21:03But none of these aircraft was ever shot down.
21:07One of the most interesting episodes was during the Middle East war in 1973, when the US found it needed
21:14more photo intelligence than the satellites could apparently provide.
21:19The Blackbird was assigned the job, but European NATO allies refused to grant it basing rights.
21:28So, long missions were flown out of bases on the US East Coast, and the Blackbird flew across the Atlantic,
21:37through the Mediterranean, over Egypt, Israel, Syria and Jordan, and back out the way it came.
21:49For the Blackbird, flying faster than Mach 3, these missions from the East Coast of the United States to the
21:56Middle East and back were a mere ten hours long.
22:00But the supersonic speed also called for as many as five to six aerial refuelings.
22:08Blackbird flew this difficult mission at least nine times in just a few months.
22:18In fact, during its lifetime, Blackbird was used for aerial spy missions over Vietnam, Central America, Libya, the Middle East
22:28and North Korea.
22:31But time, politics and changing economic priorities began to affect this enigmatic spy plane's operational life.
22:41Spy satellites had become more sophisticated, and the CIA was out of the manned aerial reconnaissance business.
22:49As a result, the tremendously high cost of maintaining this supersonic aircraft fell largely to the US Air Force,
22:58which eventually decided the price tag was just too steep.
23:08In November 1989, the fastest aircraft on Earth was retired from operational military service.
23:20Today, remnants of this powerful fleet of spy planes are being housed in aircraft museums around the country.
23:29No manned jet aircraft ever flew faster than Blackbird.
23:33But the changing times demanded more than speed.
23:38Quite simply, the Pentagon decision makers were interested in a spy plane that didn't attract as much attention and had
23:45a lower price tag.
23:53After the U-2 incident, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union,
23:58no American president would approve a manned spy flight deep into Soviet airspace.
24:05The threat of a nuclear response was too great, and so the American intelligence community found itself between a rock
24:14and a very hard place.
24:18The US needed to know what the Soviets were up to, what kind of missiles they were testing, what sorts
24:24of nuclear warheads they could deliver, and where.
24:30The U-2 was out. Soviet sands could shoot it down.
24:35And the A-12 wasn't operational.
24:40Spy satellites did offer clear and detailed photographs.
24:45Their presence didn't constitute an act of aggression.
24:48But they had their own very serious drawbacks.
24:53They were visible and predictable.
24:56All an enemy nation needed to do was to camouflage its assets when the satellite passed overhead.
25:05As early as 1948, both the British and the American intelligence agencies used retrofitted bomber airframes,
25:13like the B-29, B-47, and B-50, to scout along the borders of the Soviet Union.
25:24But it was difficult for a MiG pilot to tell if the B-47 was a bomber or a reconnaissance
25:29airplane, particularly for an inexperienced Soviet pilot.
25:34This made spying on the Soviet Union with reconditioned bombers far too provocative.
25:43The Air Force needed a nondescript airframe it could fill with a cargo of listening devices, electronic sensors, and analysts.
25:53By the early 60s they found the answer in Boeing s KC-135 jet tanker, a cousin of Boeing s
26:00707 commercial jetliner.
26:03It was given the name RC-135.
26:11This aircraft could fly at high altitudes.
26:14It was large enough to carry all the necessary equipment and operators.
26:19And with its onboard sensors, if atmospheric conditions were almost perfect, it could see within a 230-mile radius, and
26:29here around the world.
26:32Best of all, the RC-135 looked like an airborne tanker, or even a commercial jetliner.
26:41The Air Force and Boeing could hide their new spy plane where no enemy would think to look, in plain
26:47sight.
26:49Since on the exterior of the airplane it looked like a typical C-135, very few people paid attention to
26:55it.
26:56It was what mattered inside that proved the airplane's capability.
27:02Inside were extremely sensitive, top-secret sensors.
27:06So powerful, in fact, they could lock onto an enemy's radar or radio frequencies,
27:11and literally eavesdrop on enemy conversations taking place on the ground.
27:43It was quite awesome.owo
27:46very comfortable using all the planes' radar. So
27:46again, the three last foot in the airplane was the decisive coming in,
28:08The U.S. had to find out if Khrushchev was bluffing.
28:16A highly classified program called Speedlite began immediately.
28:26The RC-135s flew in very close proximity to what was purported to be a test of this 100 megaton
28:34bomb.
28:36On board were extremely high speed cameras, sensors, spectrometers.
28:40They photographed and recorded detailed information, not only about the blast, but about the after effects.
28:52When I talked to the crew members, they said they looked at the side of the airplane that faced the
28:56atomic detonation and the paint had been burned off.
29:00Had the detonation, which was not 100 megatons, had in fact been 100 megatons, the fireball would have been an
29:07area the size of Maryland and the airplane would have been vaporized.
29:12While few declassified details are available, experts do know this, that the crew survived to bring back information on the
29:20Soviets' nuclear capability that no other aircraft could have managed.
29:26As in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Premier was bluffing.
29:32Thanks to the inspiring display of courage on the part of the crew and to the intelligence gathering abilities of
29:38the RC-135, the staff at the Pentagon was aware of the bluff.
29:48Sometimes the high demand for secrecy actually inhibits the intelligence gathering process.
29:55Whether it's a spy plane, a spy satellite or an operative on the ground, the information must pass through several
30:02hands, from the spy to the analyst and finally to the person who needs it.
30:07Some of the RC-135's missions under the operational name Rivet Joint were so highly classified that even on board
30:15the aircraft, the flight crew was segregated from the electronics intelligence crew working at the back of the airplane.
30:24The flight crew itself did not have the appropriate security clearance.
30:30In one of the airplanes, the Rivet Amber, the latrine was in the back of the airplane, and for a
30:35pilot who had to go to the bathroom, literally the crew in the back sort of had to stop what
30:39they were doing and put hoods over their equipment or whistle or something like that, so that the man with
30:47the lower security clearance could go to the latrine.
30:53During the Gulf War in 1991, this kind of secrecy became a severe liability to theater commanders.
31:01It frustrated the RC-135 Rivet Joint crews and onboard observers who risked their lives to get this vital intelligence
31:09to the men and women on an already chaotic battlefield.
31:14General Schwarzkopf and his battlefield commanders in particular would say, what is the Rivet Joint telling us?
31:20What are the satellite photos telling us? What are the U-2 photos telling us?
31:23And in a post-Cold War mentality, the people who had those photos in their hands were still locked into
31:30this belief that, I'm sorry, you don't have a clearance. You don't have a need to know.
31:34And in fact, those were people sitting in their cubicles at Fort Meade, Maryland or elsewhere, who were thousands of
31:40miles distant from the battlefield.
31:44Desert Storm and Desert Shield drew two other Boeing 707 reconnaissance aircraft into battle.
31:51The AWAS, an airborne warning and control system developed in the 70s, and the newest spy plane named Joint Stars.
32:03The AWAS was developed in the open. It wasn't a black program like the U-2 or the Blackbird or
32:10the stealth fighter or stealth bomber.
32:14However, it does have its secrets in the radar processing, and indeed, four of the radar's ten modes of operations
32:22are still classified.
32:25While Rivet Joint eavesdropped on the enemy's conversations and listened in on their plans, and AWAS watched the airspace, Joint
32:34Stars flew above and kept its eye in the sky on enemy troop and weapons movements.
32:41Working together, these spy planes dogged the Iraqis from one end of the desert to the other.
32:49One particular J-Star's success was in providing warning of Saddam Hussein's only real offensive move with his armor at
33:01Kafji in the middle of the conflict.
33:04During the battle for the town of Kafji, Joint Stars detected a force of 80 Iraqi vehicles headed directly for
33:12the Allies' position.
33:15This urgent information was relayed to the Marine battle commander.
33:20A tactical airstrike was called in on the advancing Iraqis.
33:26This early warning prevented a surprise attack and helped to assure a coalition victory.
33:33Rivet Joint, AWAS, and Joint Stars provided this same kind of protective intelligence in 1994 in Bosnia and in Kosovo
33:42in 1999.
33:46Theater commanders continued to thirst for instantaneous battlefield reconnaissance.
33:53The American public, the politicians, and the military demand increased safety for soldiers in the field.
34:00To satisfy everyone, in the last decade of the 20th century, unmanned, remotely piloted spy planes made their debut in
34:09war, in all shapes and sizes.
34:20As American military forces deployed to the Middle East for the Gulf War in 1991, another kind of eye in
34:28the sky joined the U-2 Rivet Joint and Joint Stars.
34:34It was an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, and it gave theater commanders an entirely new ability to see action
34:42on the battlefield, almost as it occurred.
34:49Quite simply, a UAV is an aircraft that flies without a human pilot on board.
34:56The American army began testing them in the 80s.
35:02Most military experts say that UAVs were designed for missions that were either too dangerous, too dull, or too dirty.
35:11In this case, too dirty meant politically sensitive.
35:17Over 30 years had passed since Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 spy plane over Soviet
35:23airspace.
35:25But the fear of another such event still lingered in the corridors of Washington, D.C.
35:32During the 90s, this concern and a low price tag pushed UAV developments under stage.
35:38They are still being tested.
35:42In the mid-90s, Lockheed Skunk Works and Boeing created this intriguing UAV called Dark Star.
35:52Dark Star set up for Dark Spot.
35:55It was recently cancelled.
36:00Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, a pioneer in the helicopter industry, designed this unique unmanned spy plane, called Seifer.
36:12And there are many others.
36:15But during the Gulf War in 1991, and several years later in Bosnia,
36:20a UAV called Pioneer flew successful reconnaissance missions for the American Army, the Navy, and the Marines.
36:31The Air Force flew a UAV named Predator.
36:36The political environment of the Bosnia theater did not necessarily allow an armed, manned aircraft to overfly parts of the
36:44country,
36:44whereas an unarmed surveillance type asset such as the Predator were more easily employed.
36:52Predator is actually flown by Air Force rated pilots from a ground station that includes a virtual cockpit.
37:00The pilot has a stick, a rudder, and all the aircraft instruments that a normal pilot would use to fly
37:06an airplane.
37:10Predator carries an airborne video camera whose battlefield imagery is available to ground commanders in almost real time.
37:22Predator was used in the Balkan theater of operations almost continually off and on since late 1995-96
37:29to monitor convoy and troop movements amongst the roads, to search out marshaling areas,
37:36to find hidden arsenals such as tanks, anti-aircraft artillery, even airplanes.
37:45In 1999, after the final hostilities had ceased and both the US and NATO forces had moved in
37:52to maintain peace between Serbian forces and NATO in Kosovo,
37:55the Soviets took over the Pristina airfield.
37:59This imagery was provided by Predator.
38:03Russian MiGs are seen on the ramp.
38:05Trucks are loaded with Russian air crews and maintenance workers.
38:10The NATO theater commander tasked with securing this airfield got the information about the Russian presence from Predator
38:18quickly at a very politically sensitive time.
38:21This imagery was also made available via satellite to NATO headquarters in Belgium and to the Pentagon,
38:28thousands of miles away in Washington.
38:32The detailed surveillance that Predator provided may have helped to avoid a conflict with the Russians
38:38by revealing the true extent of their assets.
38:44No reconnaissance pilot's life was ever at risk.
39:00In February 1998, as Predator operated in the Balkans,
39:04another UAV was being tested at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, the Global Hawk.
39:15You're talking about a vehicle that can stay aloft over 35 hours and be self-deployable.
39:20We could fly from Edwards Air Force Base where we are right now and up to the state of Illinois,
39:27we could image the whole state of Illinois over 40,000 square nautical miles
39:32and then fly back to Edwards all in one mission.
39:38While Predator is flown by a virtual pilot from a ground station,
39:42Global Hawk's flight path is pre-programmed by computer and can be mostly autonomous.
39:49In the typical scenario, you're going to have three Global Hawks that are on station.
39:53So, 24 hours a day, you're going to have one airborne imagery in the battlefield.
40:01Global Hawk has an incredible array of high-resolution sensors on board
40:06that can see through clouds and fog day or night, all from an altitude of up to 65,000 feet.
40:13You're clear to command a link switch to UHHooker.com and conduct echotap.
40:17Like Predator, it offers almost instantaneous battlefield imagery to theater commanders.
40:24Experts believe it will be operational by the year 2003.
40:28Roger.
40:30Global Hawk's onboard equipment is commercial off the shelf, so it is unclassified.
40:38In fact, most UAVs do not live in the world of black budgets and secret airfields,
40:43even though their missions may be top secret.
40:51Aeronautical engineering firms across the country continue to create, test, and refine even newer unmanned aerial vehicles.
41:01They are now for range.
41:05Meanwhile, an entirely new class of miniaturized, almost undetectable spy planes are being created
41:12to patrol cities and suburbs.
41:26With the threat of urban terrorism increasing, tomorrow's battleground may include a city's skyscrapers or its water supply.
41:35The enemy's weapons might contain chemical and biological agents that poison the air and water.
41:44What kind of spy plane can warn of an enemy's movements in a federal office building?
41:49A mall?
41:50On a city street?
41:52Or near a reservoir?
41:58And can this same aerial spy technology be used in the more traditional warfighting scenarios?
42:07It would seem so, as spy planes with no more than a six-inch wingspan are being developed and tested.
42:18They are called micro aerial vehicles, MAVs.
42:24And are the brainchild of a little known arm of the Department of Defense known as DARPA,
42:29the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
42:38DARPA has operated at the very edge of public awareness for years.
42:42It funded the research and development for some of the most unique and far-sighted defense technologies
42:48that in later years were used in the F-117 Stealth, the B-2 Bomber, and even the Internet.
42:59The micro-air vehicle clearly falls in that category.
43:02It's not clear today that the micro-air vehicle is going to find operational utility any time soon,
43:07but it does show lots of promise and it's worth the small investment that's being made.
43:13DARPA defined a micro-aerial vehicle as an aircraft with dimensions no larger than six inches in any direction.
43:21And it had to perform a military mission.
43:24These restrictions forced the creators to think outside the box
43:28in order to invent an entirely new carrier in a soldier's backpack.
43:34The MAV is potentially an ideal source of information,
43:38visual information and maybe even acoustic information,
43:41letting the foot soldier know where his opposition is and in what numbers.
43:48During the Vietnam War, both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces
43:53camouflaged themselves in the foliage of the surrounding jungle.
43:58The only way for the American soldier to detect them was to be close enough to see motion or to
44:04hear some small movement.
44:08In a jungle setting armed with an MAV, the foot soldier would have instant reconnaissance.
44:15He would know exactly where the opposition was,
44:20how many were there, and what sort of weapons they carried.
44:27A micro vehicle is really a revolution in soldier sensing.
44:33The idea of being able to have something that you can project in the air,
44:37that can fly where you want it, when you want it there,
44:40to be able to take pictures and transmit those pictures back to you in real time
44:44as a capability that is not in the current military structure, but one that's truly needed.
44:51Combat in desert terrain will prove to be one of the greater challenges for the micro air vehicle.
44:58It relies on its ability to blend against the backdrop of trees or buildings.
45:04The flat, endless, monochromatic desert landscape offers no camouflage, no place to hide.
45:12But the chance to use these amazing spy planes in this desert environment does exist.
45:21In the Gulf War, it's not out of the question, for example, that we might have taken MAVs,
45:25dropped them in numbers from a larger aircraft,
45:28and allowed them to settle in on areas where we suspected illegal activity.
45:35Three, two, one, launch.
45:40Experts say the micro air vehicle will have to earn its way into the soldiers' bag of tricks.
45:49Once DARPA proves they can fly and carry the necessary payloads,
45:53the defense contractors who build MAVs will have to soldier-proof them.
46:02How can I make a shell that is durable enough that I could hand it to a soldier?
46:07They can run it through a river as they're doing a river crossing.
46:11They can bang it around just like they bang around all of the rest of their things,
46:15which is a normal thing to do when you're in the field,
46:17and still be able to survive and be able to, when I need it, accomplish the mission that I need
46:24it for.
46:26Experts believe it will take another 20 years before MAVs are operational.
46:33In the meantime, DARPA has found no need to cloak micro air vehicles in a veil of secrecy.
46:41There are no closed doors hiding this new technology.
46:50Yet black programs have always been at the core of spy plane development.
46:57As far back as the late 80s, when the SR-71 Blackbird was mothballed,
47:02there was speculation about its successor.
47:08Today, even trained observers in the US and Europe report seeing lights in the sky,
47:14unusual aircraft moving at max speeds, then suddenly changing directions.
47:21Much of this activity is reported near the legendary secret airfield at Groom Lake, Nevada, known as Area 51.
47:31How much of this is myth, how much of it is reality is something that we simply don't know.
47:36It's entirely possible that one or more unacknowledged aircraft were built,
47:41flown and put into storage in the late 80s and early 1990s.
47:47There's an intriguing story about one so-called mystery spy plane.
47:52It is known by the name Aurora.
47:58Just as Blackbird was built to succeed the U-2,
48:02some experts believe that this was the aircraft created to succeed Blackbird.
48:06That Aurora inhabited the secret world of the CIA and Air Force black budgets for years.
48:14It was said to fly eight to ten times the speed of sound,
48:18reportedly soaring at an altitude of well over a hundred thousand feet.
48:27Aurora was supposed to be able to take off from the United States,
48:30fly a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union and return without landing.
48:35That's very ambitious.
48:36Maybe we're looking at Aurora today when we look at the Lockheed Martin X-33.
48:43A lot of people have wondered where some of that advanced technology came from.
48:49Proof that these mystery spy crafts did or did not exist may lie hidden for generations to come.
48:58There's a very large black budget still.
49:00There's a very secret test site at Groom Lake still.
49:04But on balance, I don't believe that there's anything flying and going operational out there that we don't know about.
49:16All the facts about these spy planes may never be known.
49:23But who's to say?
49:26Fifty years ago, no one believed that a lightweight single-engine glider would become the grandfather of modern aerial espionage.
49:38It may be impossible to predict what forms spy planes of the future will take.
49:44But whatever aircraft this new generation of designers creates, one thing is certain.
49:52Soldiers and generals will always rely upon them.
49:55To patrol the skies of potential adversaries.
50:00To photograph.
50:02To listen.
50:04And to transmit back their vital intelligence.