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ARTICLE #1

OMNI: ANTIMATTER MAY 1993

TYPED BY: The P/\NTHER TRSI-UMF

Martian Mystery: Is the Red Planet host to a third lunar body or UFOs?

When a Soviet probe spun out of control near Phobos, one of two Martian moons, experts called the accident an unavoidable hazard of venturing on high. But to some members of the UFO community, the crash was the evil handiwork of aliens based on Phobos for years. Fueling this otherworldy rumor, it seems, was a statement by none other than Alexander Dunayev, chairman of the Soviet SPace organization responsible for the space probe, named Phobos 2. The doomed craft, Dunayev stated, had photographed the imaged of an odd-shaped object between itself and Mars. The object could have been "debris in the orbit of Phobos," Dunayev suggested, or perhaps the spacecraft's jettisoned "autonomous propulsion subsystem." But his tone of uncertainty-and the fact that the Russians never released the spacecraft's final photographs-left saucer buffs guessing the mysterious object had been a genuine UFO. Their suspicions were heightened just recently when retired Soviet Col. Marina Popovich made a trip to the United States. Speaking at a press conference in Los Angeles, UFO advocate Popovich stated that the object had measured a whopping 25 kilometers, or 15.5 miles, in length. A former test pilot and the wife of a highly decorated cosmonaut, Gen. Pavel Popovich, the visiting colonel said she had received the alarming photo itself from cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, her friend. But if Washing, DC, Astronomer Tom Van Flandern, formerly of the U.S. Naval Observatory and now head of his own group, Meta Research, is correct, the failure of the probe was no mystery at all. The Soviets had long said that the craft had spun out of control because of an erroneous ground command on March 27, Van Flandern discovered, yet the photo of the mystery object had been dated March 25. "it was unlikely," he explains, "that the object in the photo had anything to do with the spacecraft's demise." To determine the identity of the object, however, Van Flandern analyzed the picture. "The first thing that struck me," he explains, "is that the object was similar in brightness to Phobos, and asteroid like body that is carbonaceous and dark." It did not reflect light as a metallic, artificial object would. Van Flandern also examined the timing of the Phobos II camera, set to track the motion of the Martian moon. Anything not matching the moon's relative motion would appear to streak or trail across the photographic page. Thus, the "streak," thought to be 25 kilometers long was, in face, a much smaller object imprinting its motion, not its length, across the image. Only the very end of the enlongated streak hints at the object's true shape: rounded but irregular, with one end narrower than the other. To Van Flandern, the clues suggest the mystery object was a moonlet, or a third, miniature Martian moon. Of course, Van Flandern's conclusion has not pleased everybody. one German researcher says the image is just an artifact produced by the malfunction of the Phobos 2 camera in space. And Popovich contends the object may be an alien craft. To make her point, she has even given a copy of the telling photo to Don Ecker, director of research for UFO Magazine, based in Los Angeles. Ecker, deferring to "the facts as presented by the Russians," favors the notion of a Mars-based UFO. But Van Flandern contends the lack of alien involvement in the image should not detract from its importance: "It is an exciting astronomical discovery," he contends, "and means that instead of just two moons revolving around Mars, we may have three."

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ARTICLE #2

"SPACED OUT"

Starstruck UFO freaks and the company they keep..

(Fringe-Group Profile by Doug Vincent)

Typed in by [MEtONeR]-TRSI

What's the difference between a transplanted alien from Venus and a raving lunatic at a space nut convention? Who knows?

The audience sits spellbound as the elderly gentleman before them tells his story. His name is Alfred Bielek, he says, and he's a survivor of an incredible, secret U.S. military operation called the "Philadelphia Experiment"

According to Bielek, in 1943 the U.S. Navy used Einstein's Unified Field Theory to successfully turn the warship U.S.S. Eldridge entirely invisible. When the ship reappeared, however, some crewmen inexplicably burst into flames. The bodies of others were horribly buried within the metal bulwark of the ship. Those that remained went insane.

Bielek and his brother, deep in the hold of the ship, were somehow spared the terrible fate of their fellow crewmen. Undeterred by the tragic results of the initial test trial, however, the Navy, anxious to employ this spectacular advantage over the Nazis, involved them in a second attempt three weeks later, this time striving only to render the warship invisible to radar-supposedly a simpler, less deadly ambition.

Again, thanks to Einsteinian, top-secret physics break- throughs, the experiment worked. The Eldridge became radar invisible for about a minute-afterwhich, to the Navy's consternation, there was a blue flash, and the ship vanished completely.

The Bieleks-apparently protected by a special energy field in the ship's hold-recognized the now familiar signs of incipient insanity in their defenseless shipmates and jumped overboard. Instead of finding themselves floating in the chilly waters of Philadelphia Harbor, however, they landed on solid ground at Montauk Army Base in Long Island, New York- In 1983-where they were greeted by the project's director, Dr. John Von Neumann, who had waited 40 years for their arrival.

Bielek was sent back in time to 1943. There he was brain- washed by military brass, given a new identity and set free to live his life anew, totally unaware of what had happened to him.

Alfred Bielek's audience at the National New Age and Alien Agenda Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, hangs on every word. After the oldster's disturbing revelation, hundreds jockey for the chance to query him on every sensational aspect of his incredible tale. Many pay an additional fee for his special evening workshop, where Bielek discusses the Philadelphia Experiment and other government cover-ups.

Bielek's proof that his story is true? Nothing but the sudden recollection of his incredible adventure during a visit to Montauk Army Base after having seen the science fiction movie The Philadelphia Experiment.

Lack of hard evidence doesn't deter conference attendees from avidly supporting Bielek's astounding revelation. Most are convinced he is telling the truth.

"Why would he lie?" asks a fiery conference attendee, a gray-haired, grandmotherly woman. "In light of Watergate and Contragate, and all the other -gates, Alfred Bielek's story makes perfect sense. The government will do anything to protect its ass. The cover-up of the Philadelphia Experiment is a prime example. I think poor Mr. Bielek should be compensated for the hell he's been through!"

The woman's female companion, her sweater decorated with a We Are Not Alone! button, agrees. "The reality of time travel makes perfect sense," she declares. "I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the government discovered how to do it with help from extraterrestrial visitors. How can any ordinary person describe the tremendous technological achie- vements scientists have made in just a few years? People like Al Bielek should be congratulated for coming forward with the truth." Following Bielek on the National New Age and Alien Agenda Conference's schedule of amazements, hypnotherapist Calvin Vanness and psychic Jack Stephens directors of the House of the Dawn, a metaphysics center in Phoenix, Arizona, purportedly channel the spirit of Nikola Tesla, the creator of the Tesla electrical coil and the rumored mastermind behind the so called Philadelphia Experiment.

Rambling in an odd, middle-European accent, Stephens/Tesla warns that the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, and that things will get worse unless changes are made, after which dozens of people wave hands in the air, eager to ask the chann- eled spirit of the long-deceased electrical genius more infor- mation on his involvement with the Philadelphia Experiment and the fate of the planet.

* * *

The National New Age and Alien Agenda Conference is one of dozens of such symposiums covering the broad spectrum of UFO research, New Age prophecy and high weirdness held each year around the country.

Judging by the vocal testimony of the audiences these assem- blies attract, the vast majority of Americans who are fasc- inated by UFOs and associated paranormal activity sincerely believe in the existence of alien spacecraft. Many, in fact, are convinced they've had extraterrestrial encounters of some sort.

Quiet, serene New Ager Jerry Wills claims he used to be a UFO alien, no less. According to Wills, his alien self died when his spaceship crashed in the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. His extraterrestrial spirit wandered through the land for five years before finding a home inside the obliging consciousness of a Kentucky infant named Jerry Wills.

Wills claims his first close encounter with a fellow star person came when he was 13 years old. Some time later, he fell ill and believed he was going to die. That night, a group of extraterrestrials took him aboard their craft and administered a healing medication. He recovered quickly, and has been relatively healthy since.

Wills says he observed American prisoners being used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert. These unlucky men and women were promised freedom if they survived, he says, and free medical care if problems arose. Unfortunately, nothing has been heard of them since.

Like Al Bielek, Wills has little to offer as proof of his astounding tale. Nevertheless, he is regularly mobbed at UFO conventions by people anxious to tell him they think they were "walk-ins" (stranded aliens) like him. At the 1992 Inter- national Symposium on UFO Research in Denver, Colorado, a woman known only as Sheila happily proclaimed that she herself might have been an extraterrestrial in another life, an obser- vation apparently corroborated through hypnotic regression-a form of hypnosis regressing its subject to the reaches of earliest memory.

That wasn't all, Sheila ecstatically related. In another regression, she found out that she'd been Moses's sister in Biblical times!

Joining Bielek, Wills and other firsthand UFOologist at the New Age and Alien Agenda Conference is a gospel minister named Dr. Frank Stranges. Stranges claims to have met a kindly visitor from Venus who had taken part in top-level discussions at the Pentagon.

The alien told Stranges his name was Valient Thor (though his friends called him Val), and he purported to be visiting Earth to help the peoples of all nations, though the specific nature of Val's employment at the Pentagon was kept a mystery. Val was obviously an alien, according to Stranges, because he had no finger-prints, could heal people with a single touch and wore an indestructible coat.

Pentagon officials deny any knowledge of the friendly, helpful Venusian, Stranges says, but he feels the infor- mation is too spectacular to keep to himself.

A pretty blonde from Oaklahoma, named Christa Tilton, tells an enthralled crowd at the National New Age and Alien Agenda Conference that she has been repeatedly impregnated by the aliens-and that the extraterrestrials later snatched the fetuses from her womb. Tolton is convinced that the episode was the insidious work of aliens because she became pregnant during a period when she wasn't sexually active.

Tilton claims that in 1987 she was taken into an underground facility beneath the Oaklahoma desert, where she saw human military personnel and extraterrestrials working side by side on extremely mysterious projects.

During that visit, Tilton announces, she was taken into a private room and given a pelvic exam by human and alien doctors. Afterward, she was made to forget the entire visit, and returned to her home in Tucson, Arizona. The episode finally came to light when she underwent hypnotherapy to deal with some disturb- ing dreams.

"That poor girl," laments a tall, lanky man to the woman sitt- ing next to him. "What a horrible, horrible experience. Some of those aliens are real bastards." The woman nods sympathetically.

* * *

Many UFOologists anticipate the future disclosure of a bizarre working relationship between extraterrestrials and the United States government. According to spacecase symposium rumor, the U.S. government has been in cahoots with alien forces for decades.

*The U.S. military is working hand in hand with ETs to create an alien/human hybrid, which explains why many female abductees report having eggs or fetuses removed from their bodies during examination by extraterrestrials. *Aliens keep track of the humans they abduct by implanting special receiver/transmitters in their ears or noses. *A secret cabal of U.S. military leaders known as Majestic-12 was established in 1947 by an executive order from President Harry Truman, created as a liaison between the U.S. government and extraterrestrial civilizations. *The military has dozens of dead aliens on ice at installations nationwide, and also dozens of downed alien spacecraft, which are routinely test-flown at a secret part of Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base known only as Area 51.

* * *

A great number of those who attend UFO symposiums are simply looking for answers. Some have had experiences that defy ration- al explanation, such as witnessing strange craft in the air or recurring, otherworldly dreams. Alien abduction is, without question, the most commonly discussed topic.

Much of clinical psychologist Dr. Edith Fiore's practice is devoted to the treatment of people who believe themselves to be victims of extraterrestrial abduction. A simple poll conducted during a Fiore alien-abduction workshop reveals that more than half of the audience believes that they have been abducted by extraterrestrials.

Fiore, who typically induces hypnotism in treatment of such cases, claims to have treated many people plagued by the trauma. She has compiled the ten most common signs of alien abduction: 1. Unaccountable periods of missing time. 2. Persistent nightmares or dreams about flying saucers or extraterrestrials. 3. Sleeping disorders. 4. The sudden appearance of unusual marks on the body. 5. Awakening with strange bodily sensations, including tingling or temporary paralysis of the limbs. 6. The feeling of being watched or communicated with. 7. Repeated sightings of UFOs. 8. Vague recollections of an abduction experience. 9. The unexplained healing of ailments or diseases. 10. Reacting with fear or discomfort when looking at pictures of flying saucers or extraterrestrials. ("One woman wet her pants in a bookstore when she saw the cover of Whitley Strieber's book Communion," Fiore notes.)

During her workshop at the International Symposium on UFO research in Denver, Colorado, Fiore stresses that such symp- toms don't necessarily mean one has been abducted by aliens; but anyone with persistent doubts might want to consider a hypnotic regression for a more conclusive answer-and after saying this, she produces her business cards.

Phenomena researcher Linda Moulton Howe, author of An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms, recalls the bizarre case of a Georgia man named David Huggins who was seduced by a beautiful, female alien and used as a walking sperm bank.

According to Howe, Huggins met his alien lover when extra- terrestrials led him aboard their craft. Later, an alien appeared in his apartment and asked him to use his body. Huggins said yes, and pretty soon found himself having sex with the alien woman on a regular basis.

Most times, Huggins would be awakened in the middle of the night to find himself paralyzed in bed, a raging hard-on tenting his sheets. While a strange mantis-like creature watched from a discreet distance, the alien woman appeared, mounted Huggins until he climaxed, after which she usually climbed off and disappeared.

One night, the alien woman appeared to Huggins with a hybrid baby in her arms-the apparent result of having mated with the fertile Georgia man. The woman told Huggins that the baby was dying. Suddenly Huggins found himself aboard her spacecraft. He touched the baby and felt an odd jolt of static electricity.

The baby immediately exhibited signs of reviving. The aliens became very excited about this. They took Huggins to a nursery where hundreds of hybrid babies were being kept in tiny incu- bators. The aliens told Huggins that all of the babies were his, and asked him to give each a life-saving touch.

The next morning, Howe relates, Huggins became angry at being used by the aliens simply as a sperm bank. He masturbated three or four times that day so they wouldn't have anything to take the next time they dropped in. But an understanding was finally reached, and the climactic close encounters continued until reaching at least, a more amenable conclusion.

Huggins who grew emotionally attached to his extraterrestrial lover, is unlike most other abductees in that he didn't need hypnosis to figure out what had happened. Instead, Howe reveals, vivid memories of his erotic experience came flooding back while reading abduction specialist Budd Hopkins's book Intruders-espe- cially the seventh chapter, which deals with another man who reported similar sperm-retrieval methods utilized on his behalf by alien visitors.

* * *

UFO buffs appear to be, by nature, an open-minded lot, but there's one thing they adamantly refuse to tolerate:debunking. Attendees know what they know-or have seen or experienced-and they aren't interested in being told that their particular phenomenon might be something else, no matter how logical alternative explanations may be.

Cynics in any New Age alien conference audience quickly learn that the majority of their fellow attendees are fervent devotees of the latest, hot abduction story or conspiracy theories, regardless of absurdity or lack of proof. A negative observation is almost always met with an equally earnest re- buttal supporting the veracity of the disputed situation, in part or entirely because: *A noted researcher said so. *The person telling the story would have nothing to gain by lying. *A skeptical analysis of the alleged facts would merely contribute to the government's ongoing disinformation campaign to discredit reputable UFO research.

One of the most hated figures in UFOology is Philip Klass, an aviation journalist and author of several books debunking the UFO phenomenon.

Klass's reputation within the UFO community is well deserved- he pulls no punches. In his 1983 book, UFOs: The Public Deceived, for example, he notes: "One possible explanation for the mush- rooming number of abduction cases in recent years is that (the UFOers) are growing bolder.... The alternative explanations that people have discovered how easy it is to fool famous UFOologists with tall tales and to become instant international celebrities via the pages of sensationalist tabloid newspapers."

One would think that the UFO community would embrace people like Klass on the merit that a skeptical eye helps maintain objectivity. Instead, prominent UFOologists spend considerable time, especially before an audience, flogging Klass's research in the zealot's belief that skeptics do more harm than good.

The 1992 International Symposium on UFO Research is no exception. Daniel Drasin, a writer and long-time UFO researcher, offers a somewhat tongue-in-cheek view of the situation in a humorous lecture titled "How To Debunk Just About Anything." In his talk, Drasin outlines in careful detail how the debunkers and skeptics of the world go about the task of downplaying or explaining away every new finding in the UFO field. Not unexpectedly, his vicious tweak of Philip Klass gets one of the biggest laughs of all, as eyes once more turn to the inexplicable to explain all.

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ARTICLE #3

TYPED BY: The P/\NTHER TRSI-UMF

Urgent News:

FBI DIRECTOR LAUNCHES POLICE STATE AGENDA AGAINST LAW-ABIDING GUN OWNERS.

For the first time in its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has marched into politics to attack law-abiding gun owners by recommending radical gun control laws. This attack could spell disaster for civil rights and the Second Amendment rights of all Americans. FBI Director William Sessions has officially recommended that the Justice Department endorse a wide range of gun control proposals, including:

* Mandatory licensing of all handgun owners. * A ban on the manufacture, transport and possession of semiautomatic firearms, with no compensation for current owners. * A ban on high-performance ammunition commonly used for hunting and self-defense. * Taxpayer-funded handgun buy-back programs within an amnesty period. * Passage off the Brady bill "national waiting period." * Reallocation of FBI resources to increase regulation of federally licensed firearm dealers.

It is the position of the National Rifle Association that this unprecedented action is beyond the purview of the FBI, repugnant to American freedoms, and an ominous sign of police state tactics against law-abiding gun owners. Since the FBI was founded in response to government corruption there has been widespread concern that the Bureau might become a potent political police force. Recognizing that danger, the FBI acknowledged it should "remain apart from politics" because engaging in political debate "would destroy the confidence of the Executive Branch, the Congress and the American people." The Above quotation was taken directly from the FBI's June 11, 1993 manifesto outlining the "FBI's Gun Control Policy." The hypocrisy is obvious. On one hand, the FBI claims it must avoid partisan politics to keep the confidence and trust of the American people. But Director Sessions has ignored this critical principle and chosen to thrust the FBI into the fray of one of the hottest political issues of the day. Even more incredibly, the same document recommends that the FBI's Office of Public and Congressional Affairs "develop a media strategy to publicize and develop support for the FBI's position." This directive defies federal law Sec. 1913, Title 18, U.S.C., which prohibits the use of congressionally appropriated funds for the purposes of lobbying. The entire BIll of Rights was born of fear of the federal government infringing on the individual rights of law-abiding citizens. This is precisely the course now being pursued by William Sessions. Unless he is brought under control, Sessions' policies will lead to a government-driven civil and Second Amendment rights disaster. It is an insult to the FBI and its agents that their Director has advanced a political agenda. It is doubly insulting that the justification for his proposals contain no citations of any evidence or any supporting criminological research. Glaringly absent is the massive research conducted on firearms issues funded by the Department of Justice itself-research which clearly proves gun control laws are a failure in reducing crime. Implementing Sessions' New York City-style anti-gun schemes will cost millions of taxpayer dollars, restrict the rights of honest people to defend themselves against violent predators, and could trigger an epidemic of infringement upon civil liberties protected by the U.S. Constitution. This amounts to nothing short of an attack by a federal police force on the rights exercised in half the households in the country. In fact, the June 11 FBI document reveals a wish list that included "a general ban on the possession of handguns" but that "after careful consideration [it was] concluded that a proposed ban would not receive sufficient support." So they settled for mandatory licensing for anyone who wishes to possesses a handgun, and a handgun buy-back program for those who don't wish to submit to government licensing or who are denied a license. Whatever the result of Sessions' recommendations, one thing is certain: Violent criminals will continue to plague American neighborhoods, unaffected by laws which only the law abiding obey. What we need from government isn't more restrictions on honest citizens, but more restrictions on violent criminals. And what members of Congress need is to hear NRA members express their immediate outrage over WIlliam Sessoins' move to politicize the FBI, and insist that Congress and the Clinton Administration reject all such restrictive gun laws. Sessions' vision of the FBI is our Founding Fathers' worst fear: A federal police force disarming the law-abiding populace.

IF YOU ARE A U.S. Citizen CALL YOU CONGRESSMAN NOW!!! 1 + 202 + 224 + 3121

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ARTICLE #4

Talking with Rosie: Home Robot Interfaces

The Average person on the street could not care less about the turing test, but if you mention a robot that could help around the house, the level of interest skyrockets. The next questions are where to buy it and how much it costs. The general public has long been tantalized with Hollywood images such as Rosie Jetson, R2D2, and Short Circuit and is now waiting for consumer service robotics to appear in the household section of the local department store along side vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. Getting"Rosie" into the American home is not only a mechanical challenge but also a major litmus test for AI technology. "We are living in a pre-Wright-Brothers era where home robots don't fly," says Brad Smallridge, director of the San Francisco-based Robotics Society of America. "Who will be the one to put the right combination of mechanical and electronic devices together? It may be a big company, but I suspect it may also be a garage-type inventor, possible working in conjunction with a local robot organization." Are technology pieces still missing? Six hundred and fifty thousand first-generation, industrial robots have already proven the ability to outperform humans in many repetitive tasks requiring advanced skills with high precision in difficult factory environments. Simulation to alleviate programming, extended mobility, and augmented reality capabilities are a few of the reasons why advanced computing will continue to improve first-generation robots for new manufacturing requirements. On the other hand, the unstructured nature of the home puts higher demands on robots to interact with humans and raises the specter of intelligent robotics. The general principle of "intelligent robotics" was developed by G. Saridis more than a decade ago in a quest to increase intelligence with decreased precision. If robots are to assist the handicapped and elderly, befriend the young, cook, clean, patrol, and perform other tasks, a primary target must be the development of simple interfaces to intelligent machines. Maybe the real feasibility of household robots requires something further: machine intelligence that involves situational awareness and human empathy. We may just need a fourth law to supplement Asimov's three laws of robotics: * One: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being come to harm. * Two: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the first law. * Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws. * Four: A robot must understand the dynamic environment and offer a helping hand to improve the environment for the human being (except when in conflict with the three laws). Development of the previously outlined intelligence capability is probably beyond our time. However, there is a huge market that would be content with a low-cost, metallic servant that can hear, understand, effectively perform a limited set of "dirty work" household chores, and doesn't require social security tax payments!

MAKING ROOM FOR ROSIE A recent roundtable session at the 1993 Robots & Vision Automation Conference in Detroit, Mich., was devoted to the topic of household robots. Joseph Engelberger opened the debate with a video presentation, prepared by Transitions Research Corp. (TRC) of Danbury, Conn., showing simulations of bathroom cleaning, car washing, and drink serving. Other robotic tasks shown were window washing, dishwasher loading, and hospital courier service. The key concepts included: * Accurate sensory suites are available today * The broad range of preprogrammed tasks must not require absolute locations * Tactile feedback must be able to adjust to the right amount of force. * Interchangeable end-effectors must be able to match the right tool to the job. * Dynamic scene analysis must accompany appropriate task nesting. * As long as the robot is ready for the next assignment, time is a noncritical issue. * They keyboard form of human-machine interface is not acceptable. * Voice recognition technology is now adequate for many tasks. * A potentially profitable market exists for household robots.

The Detroit roundtable debate discussed the national implications of a program to develop the household robot. Brian Carlisle, president of the Robotic Industries Association, stated that a business plan was needed to get this program off the ground. He suggested that direct research funds, such as those in the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), were needed. Carlisle pointed to the fact that in Japan 3% of the workforce is robots, compared with United States, where they only constitute .017% of the workforce. To overcome such inertia, Carlsile suggested that the United States would need a multibillion dollar robotics program, which would be analogous in program commitment to sending someone to the moon. The debate quickly turned to costs. Engelberger reminded everybody that the first VCR was very costly and that initial global positioning systems (GPS) cost $25,000, while today a GPS unit costs less than $25. Engelberger speculated that the first household robots would probably cost about $50,000 and could be included in the mortgage. Engelberger stated that the current cost of the technology behind "smart houses," which are essentially data collection networks of the microchips attached to everything, is approximately $30,000-$60,000. In promoting home robotics, Engelberger said that, rather than merely pushing data around, the household robot would also be capable of pushing things around. James Albus, chief of the Robot Systems Division at NIST, posed that replacing the neighborhood kid who cuts the grass for $20, the local drive-through, or $6 car wash is not practical. However, Albus declared that home robotics could help reduce the cost of health care. Albus stated that a leading cause for the elderly giving up the comfort of their own homes for a nursing home, at an annual cost of approximately $25,000 per person, is hip injury from falling on the way to the bathroom. If, for example, a home robot could provide physical assistance for the elderly, and postpone relocation to a nursing home by merely two years, the robot cost could be covered. Larry Leifer, director at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University in Palo ALto, Calif., pointed to the home robot as a solution to reduce the $84 billion the United States spends annually to care for 80,000 severely physically or mentally impaired persons: Robots would be able to provide immediate benefit in such circumstances. William Harwin, director of Rehabilitation Robotics at the A.I. duPont INstitute in Wilmington, Del, suggested that people with disabilities are "techno-friendly" and could readily make the transition to using home robots. James Hwang, project manager of Automation and Robotics at Johnson NASA, suggested that development of the house robot could leverage the advanced work in dexterous and mobile robots and teleoperations at government robotics laboratories. For example, Hwang suggested that the ability to control robotic tasks from a desktop has already been developed at NASA. He pointed to the advanced robotics at numerous universities, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, MIT, and Texas. The roundtable session concluded with different viewpoints regarding whether home robots should be developed as multipurpose machines or as basic, single-task units with optional, add-on modules to perform specialized tasks. It was argued that the economics of providing optional $3,000 modules (to wash dishes, clean windows, and so on) would entice more customers to invest in the basic model. Others argued that while the basic "stripped-down" model may be cheaper to build initially, only the multipurpose robot could integrate tasks intelligently and provide the necessary flexibility the consumer market will eventually demand.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU Robotics will continue to benefit from the exploding developments in sensor technology: smart sensors, adaptive architectures, microlens imaging, and embedded fiber-optic sensors. Intelligence processing is slowly migrating to the distributed sensors. For example, the aerospace industry has long been interested in smart structures for applications in structural dynamics, active vibration control, and aircraft health monitoring. Likewise, the utility industries are interested in solutions requiring remote operation and tolerance for harsh environments including radiation. Surely if robots can clean up Chernobyl, they should be able to clean most homes. An important principle for home robotic flexibility is force-feedback. A simple device that demonstrates this principal was recently developed at Stanford. An operator commands the cutting action of a remote set of scissor blades ("slave") through the use of a standard scissors-type pair of handles ("master"). The intermediate electronics ("control logic") take the positional input from the master and direct the slave to move accordingly while reading the force interaction data from the slave and furnishing the master with the movements to reproduce the same response: This gives the operator the sensation of actually cutting an object, even though no direct physical connection exists. Applications of teleoperation principles to robotic devices have been successful at A.I. duPont and are improving manipulator control for people with severe disabilities. Individuals with spinal cord and other paralyzing injuries may have complete loss of motor and sensory functions that can impair their abilities to interact with the environment and perform tasks such as feeding themselves or turning the pages of a book. To enable these individuals, voice input and visual feedback provide an electronic interface that approaches the integrity of a physical linkage. Such research proves that systems that provide proprioceptive feedback can offer superior control. T. Rahman and W. Harwin suggest that persons with physical disabilities could use teleoperative methods remotely to operate robotics devices for tasks such as vacuum cleaning. However, for people who are seldom at home and want a robot that can automatically vacuum the house at a convenient time, other issues are involved. The robot must monitor itself and be able to return to base to recharge batteries or dispose of trash. The robot must be able to distinguish between a lost earning and household dirt and recognize task completion. The robot must be designed so that it does not fall down the stairs, leave the house to vacuum the lawn, or attempt to vacuum the cat. In recent years, considerable discussion has surfaced in robotics literature about the automatic acquisition of skills, while avoiding the high computational costs associated with sensory processing, planning, and control. For example, J. Gefland discusses a hybrid architecture of vision and neural nets for teaching a robot to dribble a basketball. This skill requires the robot to learn to interact dynamically with an external object at the correct force levels. The robotic arm dribbles the basketball, and the position of the ball, arm, and obstacles are sensed. A neural net learns the proper response through kinesthetic information from the joint angle sensors, and the acquired control laws compensate for errors in joint locations and velocities. The ball-dribbling skill cannot be preprogrammed. Replacing human manipulation with electromechanical analogues also introduces another significant challenge-the issue of safety and the Asimov laws. Consider the recent successful application of robotics to the orthopedic procedure of total hip replacement by the ROBODOC surgical assistant, from Integrated Surgical Systems INc. of Sacramento, Calif. With a human surgeon present, ROBODOC machines a cavity in the patient's femur bone before the prosthetic implant is inserted. This procedure requires a person-machine interface that is powerful and easy to use by individuals who are not roboticists. In industry, gates, pressure-sensitive mats, flashing lights, cages, and other devices keep people out of the robot workspace. Since the surgical staff and the patient must be inside the ROBODOC work envelope, a safety subsystem must ensure that people are not harmed in the event of a robotic malfunction. ROBODOC has an independent safety hardware processor with a direct interface to a second set of position encoders, force sensors, and motion monitors for detection of potential collisions, task failures, or other inconsistencies. Resolution of safety concerns is critical. The household robot is envisioned as a general factor: part butler, cook, maid, bodyguard, and grounds keeper. This list of roles demonstrates that the heavy-handed approach in industry of isolating the robot is not acceptable in home application. Electronic auras around robots could be used to prevent robot movement whenever a human enters a robot's territory or vice versa. Meanwhile, household robotics must continue to meet Asimov's criteria. SAY IT AGAIN, SAM Humans should not have to agonize over making their wants known. The robot must be able to recognize and understand the spoken word, and, using voice synthesis, it must respond as situations demand. This interface requirement is within current voice recognition and speech synthesis capabilities. Consider the speech-activated manipulator (SAM), the research tool developed over the last decade at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. SAM has been used in the study of robotics in which executing complex tasks without requiring detailed programming instruction is necessary. SAM is a 450-pound, six-axis arm equipped with advanced sensory capabilities and can interact with a human via spoken language-thus simulating a certain level of intelligence. According to M. Brown, speech recognition has been augmented in SAM with semantic evaluation to form a natural language understanding system that makes it easy to use, without requiring that the user know about robots, computers, or programming. SAM is connected to a knowledge base, which makes it more resistant to user errors. SAM uses minimal descriptions thus, the user is spared the tedium of listening to protracted descriptions every time SAM references an object. SAM obtains information interactively from the user while attempting to complete a command task. For example, a human may request that the robot move an object that has been given an ambiguous object description, prompting SAM to ask questions to resolve ambiguity. In other situations SAM can resolve knowledge or task inconsistencies by initiating dialogue. One escape is always provided for the user-the choice to stop SAM's line of questioning at any time by telling it to "ignore." Since semantic knowledge is obtained by SAM through dialogue and direct teaching, much depends on correct responses from the user. Brown suggests that this may be the weakest part of the system; that is, if the user misleads SAM about the meaning of words, SAM has no way of knowing or correcting the error. Future access to commonsense reasoning, via access to the CYC-type, large knowledge bases, could provide more robust interface solutions. SPEECH REVUE In the earliest speech recognition developments, systems recognized isolated words (words typically separated by about 1/4 second) from a small vocabulary (less than 100 words) uttered by a specific speaker ("speaker dependent"). Such systems worked by storing normalized templates of known words, which had been spoken by each speaker. The incoming speech signals were split easily into word segments because silence delimited the word segments. The word segments then were normalized and matched against word templates, using dynamic time-warping methods. This technique worked well for the well constrained problem. However, once any of the constraints were relaxed, this technique ran into serious problems. Such systems had to store and search not only the word templates, but all potential combinations of word templates. This process was necessary because of coarticulation, where two speech sounds occurring together could combine to produce a different sound (such as did you = didja or some milk = somilk). Even for a 50 word, continuous-speech system, this approach required storing and searching several thousand templates for each word. This technique proved to be unscalable. The next generation of speech recognition systems attempted to work with continuous speech. Word templates were scrapped, and an attempt was made to understand the whole by understanding the parts. Word segments were broken into word syllables, or atomic speech units, called phonemes. For example, the word "Rosie" would be represented as "r ow jh iy." In this process, speech units were identified, and dictionaries of words were build from these basic units. This approach constrained the search over a finite and relatively small number of phonemes, since coarticulation effects between phonemes could be accounted for by phonological rules. While systems using this technique cleared the scalability hurdle, other problems were created * Segmentation: Deciding where a segment starts and where it ends is very difficult because there is no clear, well-established delimiter between phonemes. Most systems resolve this problem by using heuristic rules. * Labeling: Assigning a phoneme name to a segment is questionable because phonemes come in various sizes and shapes, and distinguishing them in nonrivial. Multiple labels with corresponding matching scores are often assigned to a segment. Some systems, such as Dragon, use a segment-level word-dictionary instead of labels. * Word Matching: The sets of labels and matching scores from the incoming stream must be quickly mapped to words, while retaining the ability to backtrack and pick the next-best candidate word if the first choice is found incorrect. A majority of speech recognition systems now use the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) network- a probabilistic finite-state automation method for mapping label sets to words. These problems and others, including noise, unexpected starts or stops, corrections, and grammatically incorrect utterances have restricted speech technology from recognizing real-life, natural speech utterances from multiple speakers in real time with high accuracy. The interface requirement to recognize every word of speech rather than sentence recognition may need to be relaxed to understand essential robotic commands. High-speed computing advances and parallel processing will contribute significantly toward improving recognition accuracy. Hybrid approaches (using neural networks as a first stage classifer and distance computation unit for local frames, dynamic time warping to compute normalized distances over frame-sequences, and then to select the best match) hold great promise. For example, neural nets were applied at duPont to characterize nonvocabulary utterances in disordered speech. The disordered speech that results from timing problems associated with dysarthria (cerebral palsy) is difficult to recognize because it often involves periods of extraneous silence or non-speech sounds, as well as abnormally timed or misplaced speech gestures. S. Peters used a neural net to detect the presence of inappropriate or nonspeech sounds, and a conjugate gradient algorithm was used to train the system to recognize breaths and silence in a single dysarthic speaker. Further research is necessary to achieve robust systems that can provide adequate voice recognition performance in the presence of speech variability and noise. This includes the problem of speakers under stress or with altered voices, such as those induced by a cold. Another research area is prosodics, the features in human speech involving emotion, intention, or emphasis. Prosodic information can be detected from changes in intonation, tonality, vowel duration, pitch, and volume. Applications that could benefit from such research include airborne pilot assistance, airline baggage handling and railway ticketing systems, voice-activated assembly, stock market transactions, and, of course, household intelligent robotics.

ROBOTS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS Effective robot interaction demands two-way communication, as we saw with SAM. Speech synthesis capability has been available for many years and is much less complex in implementation than voice recognition. Common metrics for speech synthesis are intelligibility (the degree to which a listener can correctly understand the output) and naturalness (the degree to which speech sounds human, not like a machine). Current speech synthesis systems provide a "faceless" voice-a generic voice rather than a personalized voice. For Rosie to be acceptable in many households, it would be desirable to have a distinct, personalized voice complete with localized accents and colloquialisms. Most speech systems combine phonemes to produce speech. Such systems can effectively produce unlimited speech, but the quality of speech is very poor because most do not account for the coarticulation. Speech systems that combine large units of words can produce excellent-quality speech, but there are severe limitations in storage and retrieval. An intermediate approach-combining intermediate size units such as diphones-to produce fair-quality speech with a substantial vocabulary would probably be acceptable for robots. The number of commercial products for speech recognition and synthesis is increasing. Apple Computer developed the Casper voice-activated interface, IBM introduced numerous voice technology products this year, and Northern Telecom has developed a Flexible Vocabulary Recognition system to recognize thousands of words over noise phone lines. New "command-and-control" products are appearing on the market for improved VCR programming, automated teller machine security, and speech translation. If such capability is entering the living room with the TV and the phone, how long will it be before the same technology can be integrated into a household robot? A "home robot standard" would help define the voice interface. This might include restricted domain models and language vocabularies, defined noise thresholds, and limitations on continuous speech and speaker independence. Easy integration of standardized voice interface components will let household robotics integrators concentrate again on the intelligent tasking requirements.

A FEW GOOD ROBOTS Some service robots are already hard at work. For example, HelpMate, TRC's mobile robotic courier product, designed to perform material transport tasks, is employed in a dozen hospitals across the country. The robots work around the clock, delivering meals, pharmaceuticals, medical records, and lab results to nursing units. By assuming the time-consuming "go-fer" tasks, the HelpMates free up hospital staff for more important, direct patient-care duties. The health care industry is not alone in successfully applying mobile-robot technology. Other service industry applications include security and patrol, commercial floor care, hazardous waste handling, bomb disposal, nuclear plant clean-up, janitorial services, rehabilitation programs, and the military. A clearinghouse for information on service robotics is the National Service Robot Association of Ann Arbor, Mich. Let's look at some of the household robot design requirements (remembering that the robot must function in an environment designed primarily for human comfort and convenience). The household robot must: * Be able to navigate throughout the house. Humans can be made very comfortable in surroundings amenable to the wheeled locomotion necessary for robots; that is, homes that are modified for wheelchairs. *Be able to locate in designated work zones. The robot memory will contain a map of all regions to be visited, and sensory perception will continuously analyze to the current location: This is analogous to the maps posted strategically in theme parks and museums that tell visitors, "You are here." The robot's memory tells it not only where it is but also where everything else is, of should be, located. * Be robust, with smooth joint servos and load-bearing capabilities appropriate for the job. End-effectors will be equipped with quick disconnect wrists so that general purpose hands can be selectively replaced by special purpose tools. Tactile sensing will be of two types: With its finger tips, it will recognize shapes and grasping postures, and with its wrists, it will recognize what is in hand and optimized interaction forces and torques. *Have few speed requirements. Most industrial robots are bound to the assembly line where production rates are directly proportional to robot arm point-to-point speed. Meanwhile, the built-in servant has 24 hours a day and seven days a week to get the job done. Some work is scheduled, such as meal preparation, but much can be done at night or a time when humans are not at home. Expensive global optimization computer calculations would rarely have to be run for performance improvement. * Have vision and other sensory perception, to see, recognize, and understand. The robot needs vision for navigation and modest scene analysis and object location capabilities. Because the environment will be intimately known, the vision requirements do not need to exceed the current state-of-the-art. Enhancements in the next decade will reduce the cost of vision components.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME Each household has a peculiar set of requirements. Domestic robots will have a unique definition of setup and run-time parameters, corresponding to the particular home. This requires a unique information interface that stat with global task descriptions, develop into the robot programs, and are tested in simulation. Simulation has shown significant savings in cost and schedule for industrial robotic applications such as welding, painting, and assembly. Simulation lets developers quickly and easily model robot environments to optimize robot kinematics off-line before running them on the shop floor. Robots can then be calibrated to the tasks, routines sequenced, collisions detected, and exception handling defined. This can reduce programmer requirements and disruptions due to error. The architecture for such simulation is described by R. Bernhardt for a system called ROSI (Robot Simulation). A similar approach could be used before bringing Rosie into a home. They layout of the particular home environment and task expectations would be available through databases and knowledge bases. Simulation then could be used to define tasks, tine-tune parameters, and identify potential problems. Eventually, simulation capability should be automatically available to Rosie and transparent to the human user. The "Rosie the Maid" character, created in the early 1960's for the Jetsons cartoon series, was definitely fictional. However, with today's advanced computing technologies and new research in robotics, sensors, interfaces, and so on, the "intelligent" home robot will become a reality. This venture seems like a reasonable challenge for AI technologies; however, we should probably not say that too loudly, or the general public will start beating down our doors.

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ARTICLE #5

From:Popular Mechanics/July.93!

TYPED BY CoB/\LT! America's Invisible Ship. If on a certain night the moon were full off the California coast, and you could somehow infiltrate the encircling picket line of military vessels to get within a few hundred yards of the right spot,you might see with your naked eye what you could see no other way. Disgorged from a hulking, barge-like mothership, a thin, prismatic shadow glides silently out onto the shining water like a splinter of obsidian. It is a ship of some kind, but there is something baffling about its shape. As it slowly turns to head for open water, its faceted surface presents the silou- ette of a different object with every few degrees of rotation. One moment, it is long, sloping trapezoid, then it foreshortens into a jumbled gemstone, then it resolves into a truncated letter A standing upright on the water. If you happened to have with you a battery of sonar, radar and infrared sensors, they would have told you that what you were seeing wasn't there at all. Out of the black.. Until Friday, April 9, of this year, the U.S. Navy would have told you the same thing. The vessel is the Sea Shadow, Americas only known attempt to dis- appear as effectively on water as the F-117 Stealth fighter can disappear in air. Construction took place in total secrecy nearly a decade ago at the lock- heed Missiles and Space Co.'s closely guarded Redwood city, California, facility. As one of the Defense Department's "black" programs, the whole $200-million und- ertaking officially did not exist. That changed this Spring with a terse, page-long memorandum issued from the Pentagon. The need to conduct testing during daylight, it said, had forced dis- closure to the program. Beyond that, the Navy kept a lid on the details. Except for a single "Media availability" at 8am on Easter morning, reporters' questions met with brief answers from a script that public affairs officers were forbidden to stray from. Among the sparse facts made available were these: length-160 ft.,width-70 ft., draft-14 ft., displacement-500 tons. The ships purpose according to the memo, was "to explore the application of a variety advanced technologies to surface ships. These technologies involve ship control, structures, automation, seakeeping and signature control." Signature control is just another way of saying Stealth. One look at the ship confirms that escaping detection was the dominant design concern. It has been shaped according to the same principles that led to the F-117, another Lockheed product. "If you put wings on it and cut off the pont- oons, you could probably fly it." joked Stan Zimmerman, a veteran Pentagon wat- cher and editor of the newsletter Navy News & Undersea Technology. So why did the Navy decide to build a stealth ship? How did they do it? And what will they do with the capabilities thus gained?

Exocet's impact

Part of the Navy's motivation can be read in the grisly headlines that have followed the sea skirmishes of the past decade. The radar-guided sea scimming missile, most notoriously the French Exocet, has shown itself to be a deadly eq- ualizer, giving the small Navies of the world a way to draw blood from much larger, better equipped forces. Launched from a small patrol boat, helicopter, or attack plane, theses missiles close in on a target at near supersonic speeds, while presenting a radar cross section the size of a sea bird. They fly so low that they're less than a minute from impact by the time they pop over the horizon and into view of even the most powerful radars. Under these circumstances, currently available countermeasures--chaff decoys, and defense gun and missile systems-- are far from fullproof. Moreover, with a few hundred pounds of high explosive aboard, seaskimming missiles pack a tremendous bang for their relatively few bucks. Although, as was the case with the U.S. frigate Stark, heroic damage-control measures may prevent a ship from actually sinking--that's about the best that can be hoped for. "If a ship gets hit by a cruise missile, I think it's fair to say that their fighting for the day is over," says U.S. Navy Capt. John Mc Gillvray, who recently resea- rched stealthship technology at the Naval War College. He estimates that there are more than 15,000 sea-skimming missiles of one type or another in the hands of more than 50 Navies in the world. Little wonder, then, that there are times when a ships commander would like nothing better than simply to disappear.

Mystery Barge

On Nov. 4, 1982, an astute reader of the San Francisco papers might have been puzzled by a brief item on the impending departure of a tremendous floating dry- dock from thr Todd Shipyard there. Known as the Hughes Mining Barge, the 4700- ton vessel was originally built for a secret CIA project in the early 70's, and had been in mothballs for years. The CIA project, it has since come out, was an attempt to recover a Soviet nuclear sub that sank off the coast of Hawaii in 1968. This time, about all a Navy spokesman would say was, "I can assure you it is not going to be used to go after a submarine. Inside the Barge is a 180-ft.-long, 70-ft.-high enclosure covered by an ar- ched roof, where work can be conducted out of sight. by flooding ballast tanks, operators can sink the interior floor beneath the level of the surrounding sea- water and float vessels in and out. The Barge left Todd in the summer of 1983 and arrived at Lockheed Missiles & Space in Redwood City shortly afterward. Har- dly anyone knew why until this spring. According to the sketchy history released by the Navy, construction of the Sea Shadow took place inside the Barge, apparently between 1983 and '85. Night test were conducted in 1985 and '86, with the Barge keeping the ship under co- ver for repairs and replenishment during daylight. The tests were suspended in 1986 and not resumed until this spring, when the ship was unveiled.

Shaping a shadow..

Although few specifics have been given on the reasoning behind the Sea Sh- adow's design, its stealthy shape and unusual twin-hull configuration give clues to the intentions and past experiences of those who built it. Creating useful shapes with very small radar cross sections is still a black art, but such shapes do have recognizable trademarks. Sea Shadow appe- ars to be a product of first-generation stealth technology, which would ex- plain its resemblance to the F-117. The shapes of both bear the imprint of a computer program called ECHO 1. Developed by Lockheed in the mid-1970's, this program was key to the company's success in winning the F-117 contract. ECHO 1 was a breakthrough because it permitted designers to predict the radar cross section of a shape before building it. The program limited opt- ions, however, because it could only analyze shapes made up of a finite num- ber of 2-dimensional panels. This accounts for the faceted appearance of ea- rly stealth designs. Since then, more powerful computers and software have made it possible to create more complex stealth designs like the B-2 Stealth Bomber. But stealth ships have intended to stick with the older approach. According to the naval architect Harold Armstrong of Dowty Signature Management, an English maker of radar absorbing materials, it's mostly a matter of cost. "Welding toge- ther flat plates is much easier than anything which is curved," he points out.

Stealth on stilts..

Of course, stealth at sea requires much more than just reducing a ship's radar cross section. Sonar and infrared sensors can be equally threatening. And even if the ship itself could be made completely undetectable, its wake might still give it away. Modern radars can spot the waves kicked up by small boats, and the Navy has worried that Russia might be working on satellite- borne wake sensors that could watch vast expanses of ocean.

INVISIBLE WARSHIP..

The Sea Shadow addresses all of these concerns with a single neat design stroke. The two thin struts that support its main hull stand on a pair of submerged, torpedo-like pontoons in what's known as a small water plane twin hull(SWATH) configuration. SWATH designs have long been known for exceptional stability in heavy seas, but in the case of the Sea Shadow,ther are important additional advantages. First, with only the knife-like struts slicing the waters surface, the wake is reduced to almost nothing. Secondly, the noisier of the propulsion system can be placed high above the water, where their difficult to hear with passive sonar. The Navy says Sea Shadow's propulsion is diesel electric, so the probable layout is one electric motor in each pontoon, powered by one or more diesel generators up above. Photos show exhaust venting between the SWATH hull's struts, where the heat would be masked from infrared sensors. Swath also appears to help in evading radar because it provides a wide base of support, from which the ship's sides can slope inward. Normally, a ship's sides are nearly vertical, meeting the water at close to 90 degrees. This pro- duces a bright radar echo called a broadside flash, which is easy to home in on. Unfortunately, all those capability has a price. A look at the Navy's TAGOS-19 SWATH surveillance ships, which are said to incorporate lessons from the Sea Shadow, illustrates the tradeoffs. Built to tow sub-hunting sonar arrays at high latitudes, where punishing seas damage equipment and wear out crews aboard con- ventional ships, the 3397-long-ton TAGOS-19s are the largest U.S. made SWATH vessels. According to Joseph McMahon, a naval architect at McDermont Internat- ional where the vessels are built, the SWATH configuration is well suited to the TAGOS-19 mission, but suffers weight carrying and calm-water speed limitations that would be a problem in other roles. Looking at pictures of the Sea Shadow, McMahon commented on the inward slant, or dihedral, of the hull struts. This would damp out heaving motions in heavy seas by creating vertical drag. It also requires a nightmarishly complex stru- cture. "It's outstanding hydrodynamically. It's awful for the builder," says McMahon.

What is it for?..

So in the Sea Shadow the navy has a ship that's stealthy, but difficult to build, capable of only 13 knots, and unable to carry a heavy weapons load. It's fair to ask, then what do they want with it> At the very least, they want information. According to what's been released, Sea Shadow is strictly a one-off research tool. It's credited, for instance, with insights that helped reduce the radar cross section of the Arleigh Burke- class destroyers. But, like several other new warship designs under construction around the world, the Arleigh Burke is better described as low observable than as completely stealthy. Arleigh Burke's builders made the ship hard enough to track that its other countermeasures are more effective, but couldn't make the performance compromises needed to make it disappear from radar. That brings us to the question of whether there is a role for a ship that, like Sea Shadow or the F-117, puts stealth almost above everything else. Maybe there is. Although critics of the idea point out that with nuclear submarines the Navy can can already operate undetected at sea, a stealthy ship would have at least two key advantages.One, it could be used for air defense of convoys, which subs presently cannot. Two, it could operate in a number of areas--some of them strategically important--where the water is to shallow for the subs to get close to shore. The bottom line is that, given how little we knew of the Sea Shadow until the moment of its unveiling, there's no telling what other "invisible ships" the Navy may have lurking at sea.

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ARTICLE #6

It's time someone told you the truth about the AIDS cover up! TYPED BY CoB/\LT!

Whats your fear about Aids? I'll tell you what mine is. It's the fact that i'm being deceived by the very health authorities that are supposed to be protecting me. And my fears are entirely justified. There is a coverup; the authorities are running scared; and there's only one way to fight it; with the truth!

Dear friend, The person i'm about to introduce to you has literally lived thr- ough hell to get vital truths about Aids to the people who are most in danger. Yet, he has been scorned, ignored, betrayed, and viciously slan- dered by the press, politicians, his own trusted colleagues -- not to men- tion various special interest groups -- for his heroic stand against this silent killer. Dr. Strecker submitted paper after paper on his findings to all the prestigious medical journals in America and in Europe. They were refused. Later , newspapers turned down paid advertising for The Strecker Memorandum. Few T.V. or radio stations would allow him to be interviewed. He also suff- ered the loss of two close associates, including his own brother, under very questionable and mysterious circumstances -- after repeated threats of vio- lence. This fine physician is even-handed and fair in his treatment of the fa- cts. But he is ruthless in the sense that he will tell all the whole truth... even if it offends some special interests. And often it has. Dr. Strecker has sworn, to get the truth out no matter what the cost... and he has paid dearly for it. The fact that you're able to get this material at all is a miracle. Now, take a look at The Strecker Memorandum. I can al- most guarantee that, like me, you'll be hopping mad before you're threw rea- ding.

We'd better move fast, or there will be no tomorrow!!

Are you scared? Good! Because it's time someone told the truth about Aids. And it's time we started demanding our elected officials to do some- thing about it. Over a 100,000 Americans have died because they didn't know the truth about Aids. That's more people than we lost in the entire Vietnam war! I can't tell you how angry all of this makes me. Millions and millions are going to die because of the complacency of the very people we've appoi- nted and elected to protect us from this dread disease. There is no time to waste; we have no more time. The number of Aids- infected people is doubling every 12 months -- in some areas even sooner. We must do something to protect our children and ourselves ... or there will be no more tomorrow. Urgently,

William Campbell Douglas, MD

Did someone finally go too far fooling around with Mother Nature?

"I will show you how the Aids virus was actually predicted, requested, created, produced, and developed-- and now threatens the very existence of mankind--be- cause it works." --Robert Strecker, MD, PhD

Would scientists design and create a deadly virus on purpose? Could it really be done? Were two horribly fatal animal viruses somehow combined to create the worlds most deadly plague to hit mankind--one that may well deci- mate the population within our lifetimes? Then answer, unfortunately, is yes. Who did this? Who ordered the creation of a virus that could potentially destroy mankind? And worse--how did it ever get into humans? That's just one of the tough questions that Dr. Robert Strecker faces head-on in the incredible video, The Strecker Memorandum. Was it intentional? Dr. Strecker says it's entirely possible that the Aids virus was deliberately introduced into the human population. The international infections of human groups for scientific study has been well-documented.

Or was it an accidental? The frightening thought of a scientist foo- ling around with the building blocks of nature is all to real a possi- bility. Dr Strecker takes you inside the halls of science to reveal just how possible this is.

That's not even the tip of the iceberg as far as the Aids deception is concerned.

Dr. Robert Strecker spent five exhausting years studying the Aids virus, it's origins, methods of transmission, and the devastating effects it has on the human body. He did not like what he saw. And now he's telling you.

You get a quick, easy lesson in what Aids really is--not what "they" want you to think it is. And at the end while your still reeling from all the information, Dr. Strecker holds a riveting Q&A session with several skeptical colleagues. You will not believe your eyes...but you'd better!

Here's just a sample of what you'll learn in the Strecker Memorandum:

* What Aids really is * How the virus could have been created * How it replicates * How long it really takes to show up * How it kills * How it transmits between people * Four reasons it wasn't a green monkey * Why the govt. doesn't want you to know where and why the virus ori- ginated * How many viruses there really are--and worse, how many more there will be * Why a vaccine is literally impossible * Why the cure is much more likely--and whats standing in the way * Why condoms don't work to stop infection

And there's much more you'll learn in The Strecker Memorandum. After you watch The Strecker Memorandum, you'll know more about Aids than 99% of the doctors in America!

Even if Science wasn't your favorite subject in school, you'll find this video, not only eye opening--but easy to follow as well.

Dr. Strecker doesn't pull any punches. I've never seen a medical problem explained in such a clear-cut,easy to understand way. He is a professional in every sense of the word- and he has no agenda to serve except to explain and disseminate the truth.

There is so much that we aren't told--intentionally or otherwise- about what the virus really is, what it does and how it kills. Now, you can know the scientific truth about this silent killer. And it's vital that you do understand it. Because ignorance today could have devastating consequences for you and your loved ones tomorrow.

If you think you are safe because you are not gay or promiscuous, or even sexually active, then you must watch The Strecker Memorandum very carefully... over and over again if necessary.

Dr. Robert Strecker practices internal medicine and gastroenterology in Los Angeles. He is a trained pathologist and holds a Ph.D pharmacology. Dr. Strecker and his brother, Ted, an attorney, were preparing a proposal for a health main- tenance organization (HMO), and needed to know the long-term financial effects of insuring the treating of Aids patients. The information they covered from the beginning was so startling, so hard to believe, that it would dramatically alter both their lives and lead them on a five-year quest culminating in the creation of The Strecker Memorandum..

You can reach Dr. Strecker at 213-344-8039

Another informative news file made possible by CoB/\LT...

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ARTICLE #7 From:Omni/May.93

GATEWAY TO A CASHLESS SOCIETY Fund/Barter exchanges TYPED BY CoB/\LT!

The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles was the first modern Olympiad to ac- tually turn a tidy profit for the host city--thanks to some shrewd maneuvering by olympic officials who relied on barter to trade licensing rights for $116 million worth of goods and services from 30 major corporations. Today, more than 240,000 businesses, ranging from doctors, lawyers, cate- rers, dentists, restaurants, accountants, hotels,and building contractors to household names like Xerox, Pan Am, Ramada Inns, MCDonnel Douglas, Mattel, and Hilton, conducted $5.9 billion of barter transactions in 1991, according to the International Reciprocal Trade Association, up from 90,000 firms doing $2.2 bi- llion worth if swaps a decade earlier. The sluggish economy is fueling this phenomenal growth because barter can preserve cash and swell business 10 to 15 percent by using excess services and inventory. For Fortune 500 corporations,the concept of barter used to be a dirty little secret because it reeked of unloading unsalable inventories at distress sale prices. No longer. The cataclysmic shifts in the geopolitical have changed that, too. Former Eastern Bloc nations simply don't have hard currency. So companies like Pepsi, eager to capitalize on these untapped markets, have been unashamedly swapping soft syrup for vodka. Plus the recent development of a trading network that harnesses the speed of supercomputers may be the gateway to a cashless so- ciety in the twenty-first century. Barter, once relegated to the back door of the economic underground, has gone legit. "Barter wont save a failing business. But it can give ones that are surviving a real competitive edge, because it allows them to buy retail with their own wh- olesale cost," says Stephen Friedland, president of Los Angeles-based BXI Inter- national, which has more than 12,500 members and 75 branches. Founded in 1960, BXI was the first modern barter exchange and is still the largest of the nati- on's estimated 400 trading networks. Typically, exchanges handle record keeping, expedite the flow of trades, and promote clients through directories and newsletters. In return, they take a 10- to 15- percent slice off the top of each trade. All transactions are now repo- rted to the IRS, so bartering is no longer a convenient tax dodge. People offer goods and services for "credits" or "dollars" that can be traded on barter exchanges. And those "trade dollars" can add up. For example, a gra- phic designer used barter credits for a $20,000 down payment on a house, and a music teacher went on a photo safari in Kenya-courtesy of her local barter exch- ange. Last year, New York's Lexington Hotel acquired a $150,000 computer system in exchange for $300,000 worth of room credits. Since the Lexington always has vacant rooms , it's only real expense was paying housekeepers to tidy rooms. If you think your business could benefit from barter, check out the track record of a trade exchange before you join. Fond out how long the exchange has been around. Does the network have a directory of its members? Does it offer products and services you can genuinely? Can you trade leftover inventory or services for items you would otherwise pay for in cash? A new state-of-the-art software system, UltraTrade, designed for superco- mputers may ultimately even transform the way we do business. About 400 midsi- zed companies in Southern California are already online with UltraTrade. If all major U.S. companies used this trading system, experts estimate it would generate additional annual sales of $1.5 trillion. "We're on the edge of som- ething unbelievable," says Bob Meyer, editor of BarterNews. "The day you can get anything you want on this exchange-which would require a critical mass of about 4,000 major companies-this will take off exponentially." and probably make the green stuff obsolete.

Another informative news letter from CoB/\LT..

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ARTICLE #8

Popular Science - Science Newsfront Section Vol 242. No. 3 March 1993

TYPED BY: The P/\NTHER TRSI-UMF

MACH 25 TRANSPORTER

About the size of a Mercury capsule, Lightcraft is powered by a laser beams relayed down from satellites orbiting Earth. Mirrors bounce the lasers to a pulse-jet engine.

Sometime early in 2010, a passenger might take off from Albany, ride a one person craft into space, and touch down 45 minutes later in Australia-all without burning an ounce of fossil fuel. Lightcraft, a concept vehicle designed by engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y., will be powered by lasers of microwaves beamed to it from satellites orbiting Earth. Leik Myrabo, head of the RPI design team working on Lightcraft, says the vehicle will fill a niche: "Lightcraft will be a cheap, reliable way to send individuals around the globe or into orbit. Many of the components of the system were first developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and we are testing models of the craft and is engine right now." Myrabo envisions a Lightcraft perched on its slender tripod landing gear, waiting for a satellite-based solar power station to come into position. When it does, it will relay laser or microwave beams under the vehicle, heating the air within a small area to 30,000 degrees K. At this temperature, molecules of gases in the air explode, creating a series of blast waves that propels the craft up through the atmosphere. When the craft reaches Mach 11 (8,000 mph) and 90,000 feet, it will switch to magnetohydrodynamic propulsion. In the upper atmosphere, the air is too rarefied to detonate, but there will still be enough propulsive force to creative a shock wave as the craft zooms upward. Two rings of superconductive magnets and a laser-to-electric-power converter will accelerate the glowing air plasma behind the shock wave, blowing it backward to boost the craft to its orbital velocity of Mach 25. The converter uses a small amount of liquid hydrogen-the only fuel LIghtcraft carries. The RPI team has already tested the liftoff pulse-jet laser-powered engine at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The result: performance equal to the jet engines of 1942. "We need to bring out thrust-to-power ratios much higher," admits Myrabo, "but for the very first test of a new design, we think this shows great promise." An unmanned demonstrator could be tested within five years.

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ARTICLE #9

Popular Science: March 1993 Vol 242. No. 3

TYPED BY: The P/\NTHER TRSI-UMF

OUT OF THE BLACK: SECRET MACH 6 SPY PLANE

Does the U.S. Air Force-or perhaps one of America's intelligence agencies-have a new secret spy lane in action? A growing body of evidence suggests that the answer is yes. A startling disclosure came recently when Chris Gibson, a British oil engineer and highly trained aircraft-spotter, produced a sketch that captured the shape and size of an unusual aircraft he saw during daylight hours in August 1989, flying over his drilling rig in the North Sea. The expert eyewitness' drawing is the keystone that, with other evidence, provides an understanding of a secret hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft that is widely rumored to exist, but routinely denied by U.S. officials. Its nickname Aurora.

Gibson-a former member of the disbanded Royal Observer Corps, a group of volunteer aircraft spotters was able to estimate the strange airplane's length and width by comparing it with the known dimensions of the K-135 refueling tanker and two F-111 bombers flying alongside. But it wasn't until last year, when he came across a magazine illustration of a hypersonic (faster than Mach 5) aircraft design, that Gibson suddenly made sense of the sharp triangular silhouette he saw.

Analysts believe that Aurora is an operational spy plane that replaces the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Like its predecessor, Aurora costs several million dollars per flight and is send out only on missions where the plane's sensors can gather vital information unobtainable by satellite reconnaissance or other means.

It's plausible that Aurora was used to photograph Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in an attempt to provide tactical intelligence to ground-based military commanders. Aurora's unique capabilities also equip it for surveillance of nuclear proliferation. The list of nations of varying political complexions that covertly possess or are pursuing nuclear arms capabilities includes India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and South Africa. Surprise visits by a reconnaissance aircraft can give intelligence analysts clues-such as the presence of military trucks at an ostensibly civilian plant-which wouldn't be left out in the open when a spy satellite is scheduled to make its pass overhead.

Aurora overflights of Russia have probably not occurred. Such missions would violate an agreement in place since a Lockheed U-2 spy plane was show down over the Soviet Union in 1960. It is likely, however, that Aurora monitors the submarine-building programs of Russia, China, and other nations from well outside their airspace using side-looking sensors.

Gibson's North Sea sighting completes a puzzle that has obsessed military-aircraft analysts for several years. Consider the following pieces of evidence hinting at the existence of something unacknowledged that flies high and fast:

* In February 1990, the Air Force retired its SR-71 spy planes. The official reason was saving the $200 million to $300 million a year it cost to operate the fleet of Blackbirds. Reporters were told that the SR-71's role had been taken over by advanced spy satellites.

* The money saved was less than 7 percent of the approximately $4 billion the Air Force spends yearly on satellite reconnaissance-mere chicken feed by Pentagon standards. Keeping the SR-71s in reserve would have provided cheap insurance against an unlucky string of satellite and rocket failures, such as the ones that occurred in 1985-86'.

* The Air Force actually discouraged congressional attempts to reverse this termination of its most glamorous aircraft mission. Never in its history had the flying service walked away from a manned mission without a fight.

* The pace of activity at the Air Force's top-secret Groom Lake test site in the Nevada desert has increased dramatically in recent years, suggesting the presence there of one or more secret aircraft programs. By comparing recent photos of the base with ones taken in the late 1970s, it's apparent that several large new buildings were added during the 1980s. Always visible in the recent pictures are a number of charted Boing 737 airliners that ferry workers in from other defense-industry towns such as Palmdale, Burbank, or Edwards in Southern California, or from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

* Since mid-1991, unexplained sonic booms have periodically rattled Southern California Officials at the United States Geological Survey, the agency that monitors earthquake activity, no doubt irked the military with their public statements that a very fast, high-flying aircraft was causing the "airquakes" registering on their array of seismographs.

* The Federation of American Scientist, a private Washington, D.C.-based policy group, issued a report late last year on the likelihood that unacknowledged military aircraft might exist. The cautious review of unclassified literature on the subject concluded that several new types of aircraft may indeed be covertly flying around.

Gibson's sighting now makes it possible to reconstruct the Aurora program's history. The spy plane was operational, or nearly so, by August 1989, just before the Air Force parked its SR-71s for the last time. Aurora would have made its first flight by 1986 at the latest, following a development effort that was launched in 1981.

This analysis elicited denials by high officials involved in defense and intelligence matters. Ohio Democratic Sen. John Glenn asserted that his sources in the intelligence community told him there was no such aircraft. "I think they're telling the truth," he said.

Pete Williams, chief spokesman for the Bush administration's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, gave a standard answer to a query about Aurora. "If there were such a program, we wouldn't discuss it." Williams explained that Pentagon policy says the same answer "must always be given" to queries about secret programs-whether or not they actually exist-to avoid revealing the truth. Donald B. Rice, Bush's Secretary of the Air Force, stated: "There's no program in the AIr Force, none anywhere else that I know of. It simply doesn't exist." To some observers the stridency of Rice's response was puzzling. Why didn't he simply utter the usual Pentagon disclaimer?

Black is the adjective most often applied to the hidden world in which such engineering activities unfold. In a 1985 Pentagon budget document requesting production funds for 1987, a censor's slip let the line item "Aurora" appear, grouped with the SR-71 and U-2 programs. Even if Aurora actually was the project's name at the time, it almost certainly would have been changed after being thus compromised; "Senior Citizen" is one new label that has been reported. Rated by the Pentagon as an "unacknowledged special-access program," the plane's existence and real name are secret, and therefore deniable.

Unconfirmed reports of Aurora's existence first surfaced in 1986, and Popular Science conjectured about the airplane's likely design in the November 1988 issue. Now, fresh reports from secret-airplane hunters like James Goodall, who heard and felt bone-shaking sounds coming from the Groom Lake facility late in December, continue to flesh out the picture of Aurora and the technology that makes it work. Armed with patience and braced for the occasional confrontation with no-nonsense security patrols, resolute observers like Goodall trek through the harsh Nevada desert to a mountainside overlooking desiccated Groom Lake. From several miles away-as close as they can get without entering off-limits government land-the watchers can see the large air base with its motley collection of hangars. Some of the buildings are vast. Yet, like a mirage, the isolated facility with its six-mile runway doesn't exist-officially, that is. And its non-existence is longstanding. A 1992 Lockheed Corp. paper on the early days of the U-2 program refers to flight-testing at Groom Lake 35 years ago as having occurred merely at "a remote location." For some, monitoring events on the dry lake bed provides the excitement of pursuing a mystery. Author and photographer Goodall, who has been chasing classified programs for almost 30 years, is motivated by enthusiasm for aircraft and a conviction that he's entitled to know how his taxes are being spent. His earwitness account indicated that the airplane's propulsion system is unconventional, to say the least. "We heard Aurora from 18 miles away. The sound is so intense that you feel it. It was quite something else-a pulsing noise that you'll never forget."

Aurora was almost certainly built by Lockheed's fabled Skunk Works, now called the Lockheed Advanced Development Co. Of all known design organizations, only the Skunk Works has the proven ability to manage large programs incorporating breakthrough technology in total secrecy. Analysis of Lockheed's financial statements makes it possible to estimate Aurora's price tag at abut $1 billion per aircraft. At most, 10 to 20 of the new spy planes have been built.

A hypersonic prototype paved the way for Aurora. In 1975, Lockheed proposed a small hypersonic research aircraft that would be launched from the back of an early version of the SR-71. And a definitive survey of Lockheed aircraft, published in 1982, stated that the company had already flown a Mach 6 experimental craft. By the late 1970s the U.S. government probably had two main reasons for going ahead with Aurora. The first: improved Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems posed an increasing threat to the SR-71, which flies at Mach 3.2 (2,100 mph) and reaches altitudes above 80,000 feet. By 1980, two potent new Soviet antiaircraft weapons, the SA-10 Grumble and the SA-12 Gladiator/Giant, were under development, Both have a maximum altitude of about 100,000 feet and feature advanced tracking and guidance systems.

The second reason for building Aurora was that satellites alone are not the best solution to reconnaissance requirements. While they take superb pictures, satellites also have inherent limitations. They follow fixed, predictable orbits, which make their appearance no surprised to a shrewd adversary. Although earthbound controllers can command satellites to fire thrusters to adjust their orbits, this ability is strictly limited by a finite on-board fuel supply. In addition, because it is difficult to supply the amount of power needed to operate an all-weather radar, most satellites carry only daylight or low-light cameras.

Although they cost several hundred million dollars apiece, spy satellites last, on average, only five years before they are dumped into the atmosphere and replaced. And it is difficult to increase surveillance quickly in a crisis unless a stockpile of reserve satellites and launchers is kept ready-as the former Soviet Union once did. Aircraft are much more flexible. They can be dispatched exactly where and when they are needed, and they can be fitted with day, night, or bad-weather sensors, depending on conditions in the target area.

An analysis of Aurora's three-dimensional shape can be extrapolated from its 75-degree swept triangular outline. The aircraft corresponds almost exactly in form and size to hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft studied in the 1970s and 1980s by McDonnel Douglas, according to Paul Czysz, now a professor of aerospace engineering at St. Louis University. Czysz worked on hypersonics while at McDonnel Douglas, including the company's proposal for the National Aerospace Plane program, and is an acknowledged expert in the field. Efficient hypersonic planes "are basically air-breathing propulsion systems," he says.

Like the SR-71, Aurora has a crew of two. Flying it is quite unlike piloting a conventional aircraft. There is little if any outside view, because a normally angled windshield causes too much drag and gets too hot. For these reasons, Aurora may have a retractable windshield used only for takeoffs and landings; at other times, the windshield would be covered by a heat shield. Aurora's pilot is really a mission manager, monitoring the aircraft and its systems and following the course of the flight on large-format video displays. his or her most important function is to cope with the unexpected: shifts in upper-atmospheric temperature, weather developments over the target area or refueling zone, or problems with the plane's mechanical or electronic systems. The RSO supervises a battery of sensors. The most important is a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), a side-looking instrument that takes a sequence of snapshots of the target as the aircraft moves and complies them into a single radar image that is as sharp as if it had been acquired using an antenna hundreds of feet wide. The best SAR images are classified, but have been described as "near-photographic," allowing different types of land vehicles to be easily distinguished from more than 100 miles away, regardless of clouds or smoke. In clear weather, Aurora uses daylight and infrared cameras for ultra-detailed work. And unlike a satellite, the craft can be scheduled to make its reconnaissance passes at the golden hour for covert imaging: early morning, when the low sun provides even illumination and long shadows that highlight features on the ground, before heat-induced haze forms. A phased-array antenna built into Aurora's upper surface-near the tail end, where aerodynamic heating is minimal-allows the airplane to transmit real-time or near-real-time imagery to the Pentagon's satellite network.

Aurora uses ramjet engines, because no other type can work as efficiently at the speeds the plane travels. in its simplest form, a ramjet is a pinched tube that slows, compresses, and heats the incoming supersonic airstream before adding fuel to it, producing enormous thrust from the hot gas expanding out the exhaust nozzle. However, the compression process also generates tremendous drag. The ramjet designer's challenge is to keep the level of drag from canceling out the slim margin of thrust that propels the aircraft.

One way to make a ramjet engine efficient is to stretch it along the entire length of the vehicle. In a hypersonic ramjet aircraft, the underside of the forward body is a ramp that initially compresses the air before it enters the inlet ducts, and the curved underside of the afterbody guides the expansion of the exhaust gas.

IT'S A LIFTING BODY

The compressed air underneath the body serves a second purpose: It holds the airplane up. At Mach 6, conventional wings would be superfluous appendages creating horrendous drag. Accordingly, the tips of Aurora's delta platform are mainly there to provide stability and control. The basic problem with ramjets is that they don't work at all unless the aircraft is moving quite fast, and they are not very efficient at speeds less than Mach 2.5. Therefore, Aurora needs some other system to reach this speed.

There are two clues to the way Aurora's designers solved the low-speed propulsion problem. The team for the X-30/National Aerospace Plane (NASP), though tight-lipped about the "accelerator" portion of the NASP engine design, has indicated that it functions as a ducted rocket in parts of its operating cycle. The second clue is that Aurora has been associated with two unusual noises: very-low-frequency pulsing sounds and an extremely loud roar on takeoff.

ROCKET-ASSISTED RAMJETS

The surging or pulsing sound is associated with a class of standstill-to-hypersonic "combined-cycle" propulsion systems invented in the late 1950s and shrouded since then by obscurity rather than security (see The Combined-Cycle Ramjet Engine). Czysz, who studied combined-cycle engines for hypersonic aircraft while at McDonnell Douglas, say that their performance is remarkable. "they go like scalded rabbits," he says. According to Dr. Fred Billig at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, who experimented with the combined-cycle engine in the 1960s, one of the attractive features of this engine is that it delivers high thrust per unit of frontal area, a drag-reducing characteristic helpful in pushing efficiently past the sound barrier. Most important, the combined-cycle engine can recover energy that most engines throw away. by using cold fuel to cool the airplane's structure and engines, for example, the system converts heat into mechanical energy used to supercharge the ramjet and generate additional thrust.

SUPER-COLD FUEL

Even though Aurora is 80 to 90 feet long, which is about 20 feet shorter than the SR-71, it could weigh more-as much as 170,000 pounds when fully loaded. A clear two-thirds of its total mass would be fuel. Choosing the right fuel was crucial to Aurora's design. Because various sections of the craft will reach cruising-speed temperatures ranging form 1,000 degrees F to more than 1,400 degrees F, its fuel must both provide energy for the engines and extract destructive heat from the airplane's structures. This is done on the SR-71, but at hypersonic speeds even an exotic kerosene, such as the special high-flashpoint JP-7 fuel used by the Blackbird, cannot absorb enough heat. The solution for Aurora is a cryogenic fuel-a cold liquefied gas.

The best candidates identified so far are methane and hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen provides more than twice as much energy and absorbs six times more hear per pound than any other fuel. The snag is its low density, which means bigger fuel tanks, a larger airframe, and more drag. While liquid hydrogen is the fuel of choice for a spacelaunch vehicle that accelerates quickly out of the atmosphere, studies have shown that liquid methane is better for an aircraft cruising at Mach 5 to Mach 7.

Methane (natural gas) is widely available, provides more energy than jet fuels, and can absorb five times as much heat as kerosene. Compared with liquid hydrogen, it is three times denser and easier to handle-inflight refueling has been studied and poses no problems. Aurora can fly at subsonic speeds because its entire body, which has a great deal of area, is a lifting surface. Also, its sharply swept leading edge-like the Concorde's wing-generates a powerful vortex at nose-high flight angels, which clings to the leading edge and boost the body's lift. Unencumbered by aerodynamic freeloaders such as a conventional fuselage, Aurora's shape is structurally efficient. It packs a lot of fuel and useful equipment into a relative small volume that saves weight and minimizes friction drag.

The spy plane's airframe may incorporate some stealth technology, but it hardly needs it. Hypersonic aircraft are actually much harder to shoot down than a ballistic missile. Although a hypersonic plane isn't very maneuverable in the traditional sense, its velocity is such that, within tens of seconds, even a gentle turns puts it miles away from a SAM's projected interception point. So why bother with stealth?

FLYING IN THE GOVERNMENT'S BLACK WORLD

The Pentagon's "black world" isn't a mirror-military running parallel to the familiar one. Rather, it is a submerged network of covert activities distributed throughout the armed services and other agencies. It size can be gauged from unclassified Pentagon budget documents, which include accurate total figures but conceal individual black programs by labeling them with code names or burying them within other categories.

This hidden ocean of funds for research, development, and production of secret equipment amounts to $16 billion of the Pentagon's $254 billion 1993 budget. When operations costs are included, the black budget's estimated annual total comes to a staggering $35 billion.

New construction at the Air Force's secret Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, and the number or workers being flown to and from there in recent years, suggests that a decent chunk of this invisible money is being directed toward several unacknowledged, large-scale aircraft or missile projects under way at the remote site.

The Air Force has hidden major aircraft programs before on two occasions. A giant Lockheed airplane called the CL-400 was the U-2 spy plane's intended replacement Code-named Suntan, the Mach 2.5 aircraft was to be powered by radical hydrogen fueled engines.

Lockheed had virtually completed the first four aircraft before Suntan was canceled in 1958 due to technical snags. The project cost $250 million in fat 1950's dollars. Not one word leaked out about Suntan until 20 years later, when Lockheed started talking about liquid hydrogen as a future aircraft fuel.

Suntan was replaced by a CIA project for a Mach 3 spy plane called Oxcart. After Lockheed was selected to build the plane, it was renamed the A-12. It first flew in April 196 from Groom Lake, which was made into a fully equipped base supporting A-12 flight testing and the CIA's dozen operational planes.

The Air Force subsequently ordered 30 SR-71 reconnaissance-strike aircraft derived from the A-12 prototype. The existence of the SR-71 was disclosed in a 1964 statement by President Lyndon Johnson. But the CIA's A-12s flew secretly until mid-1968, and they were not revealed to the public until 1982. Through a combination of tight security and disinformation, the A-12 program was concealed for 23 years. Now ask yourself: Would your government lie to you?

In "Mystery Aircraft" a report released last year, the Washington, D.C. based Federation of American Scientists (FAS) concluded that two or more types of secret airplanes are likely to exist. Bases on an extensive analysis of unclassified Pentagon and corporate financial documents, technical papers, and a range or news reports, the study favors the view that some of the reported aircraft are prototypes, while at least one may be in regular service.

"It is probable that at least one high-speed, high-altitude experimental air vehicle is currently undergoing flight tests," or may possibly have achieved operational statue, the report states. The craft could manned or unmanned, it notes, fitting either the general description of a Mach-4 to Mach-6 Aurora or a faster Mach-8 "exotic propulsion aircraft" using pulse-detonation or external-combustion technology to reach hypersonic cruise speed.

The "doughnuts on a rope" exhaust contrail photographed last year in Texas might be the product of a pulse-detonation type of engine, which combusts its fuel in intermittent bursts. An aircraft using external combustion at high speeds would fit the description of a vehicle dubbed "The Pumpkin Seed". According to the FAS study, "there is also the possibility that the possibility that SR-71 follows is hidden in plain" within the National Aerospace Plane (NASP-also known as the X-30) project, which is aimed at developing an air-breathing hypersonic craft that can climb into low-Earth orbit from a runway in a single stage. Knowledge about propulsion and high-temperature structures gained in the NASP program may have proven applicable to a Mach 6 to Mach 8 aircraft now flying.

As many as a few dozen examples of a subsonic stealthy reconnaissance aircraft called the TR-3A or "Black Manta," probably built by Lockheed, may currently be in production or operational, the FAS analysts say.

Finally, it is highly probable that some one-or two-of-a-kind stealth aircraft prototypes exist, the study concludes. Such aircraft would be built to test concepts intended the B-2 bomber, the TR-3A, the Navy's canceled A-12 stealth attack plane (no relation to the SR-71's predecessor), or other aircraft. These planes could account for the number of different mysterious aircraft described in sighting reports.

Putting aside the romance sifting clues about secret airplanes possessing wondrous characteristics, the authors of the FAS report raise a broader fundamental question: With the Cold War behind us, what's the effect of continuing to support such vast and costly secret defense activities?

The hard-nosed answer is provocative: "Secrecy tends to obstruct technological development by inhibiting communication of useful information, increasing costs, generating public mistrust, and all too often promoting fraud and abuse," the study says. "It is being used to protect controversial programs from public awareness, more than from hostile intelligence services."

Recent major examples of secrecy masking incompetence include the B-2 Stealth bomber program, which has been shot through with cost overruns and performance shortcomings, and the disgraced Navy A-12 program, which was killed after billions of dollars of misguided expenditures.

The sentiment expressed by FAS is gathering broad support in Congress and elsewhere. Its message to the Pentagon is this: Unjustified secrecy is anti-democratic.

PUMPKIN SEED

Reports of a brightly glowing aircraft moving rapidly across the night desert sky at high altitudes may be attributed to the use of external combustion. The exotic hypersonic propulsion method involves igniting fuel released from ports girdling the plane's flattened, diamond-shaped body. Exhaust expands in the conical area defined by its shock wave to produce thrust. Turbojets provide propulsion at low speeds. Here, an exotic propulsion demonstrator is seen as it transitions from a turbojet-type accelerator to external-burning powers. In theory, control at high speeds could be provided by modulating the fuel flow to the propelling nozzles. This aircraft may be unpiloted.

MOTHERSHIP

Observers in California's Mojave Desert have reported sighting a large aircraft resembling both the SR-71 and the XB-70, a 1960s Mach 3 bomber prototype. A flat area atop the plane's aft fuselage appears to server as a mounting point for an unknown object-hence its nickname, "The Mother Ship." Piggyback payloads could include an air-launched satellite delivery vehicle, an antisatellite weapon, or a high-speed aircraft lacking a low-speed propulsion system. A vehicle of this kind could operate discreetly from inland sites, and fly to overwater areas before accelerating to maximum speed and launching its upper stages into orbit or ultra-high-altitude flight. Engineers familiar with aircraft structure aerodynamics, and stealth design assisted in developing the drawing.

TR-3A BLACK MANTA Somewhat bigger and much quieter than the F-117A stealth attack plane, a stealthy reconnaissance aircraft identified as the TR-3A may already be in service, according to a report by the Federation of American Scientists. The subsonic, unarmed Black Manta's likely role would be to loiter unobserved as far as 100 miles from its target, taking pictures and conducting electronic eavesdropping. Its mission is similar to that of the U2-R, a version of the veteran spy plane still in use, but the Black Manta's likely role would be to loiter unobserved as far as 100 miles from its target, taking pictures and conducting electronic eavesdropping. Its mission is similar to that of the U-2R, a version of the veteran spy plane still in use, but the Black Manta's likely role would be to loiter unobserved as far as 100 miles from its target, taking pictures and conducting electronic eavesdropping. Its mission is similar to that that of the U-2R, a version of the veteran spy plane still in use, but the Black Manta's targets would probably be unaware of its presence. A small fleet of Mantas (perhaps 20 to 30) may have been produced by Lockheed or Northrop.

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