Project AQUILINE
Project AQUILINE was a secret 1960s CIA program to develop an unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle. History In the early 1960s, there were many problems surveilling hostile territory. The Lockheed U-2 was too vulnerable to Soviet surface-to-air missiles, and the OXCART was still under development (it was expected that it might prove vulnerable to Soviet radars and missiles anyway). While safe from interception, new photosatellites could not be quickly directed to provide coverage of a specific target. Since targets like Cuba and the Soviet radar installation at Tallinn, Estonia were not too deep in hostile territory, and with recent advances in electronics miniaturization, the CIA considered the use of small, unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles to fill the need. The aircraft would need to have a very-low radar cross-section and small visual and acoustical signatures, allowing it to reconnoiter an area of interest without the target's knowledge. In mid-1965 the CIA's Central ...
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McDonnell Douglas Aquiline (8-22-2022)
Project AQUILINE was a secret 1960s CIA program to develop an unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle. History In the early 1960s, there were many problems surveilling hostile territory. The Lockheed U-2 was too vulnerable to Soviet surface-to-air missiles, and the OXCART was still under development (it was expected that it might prove vulnerable to Soviet radars and missiles anyway). While safe from interception, new photosatellites could not be quickly directed to provide coverage of a specific target. Since targets like Cuba and the Soviet radar installation at Tallinn, Estonia were not too deep in hostile territory, and with recent advances in electronics miniaturization, the CIA considered the use of small, unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles to fill the need. The aircraft would need to have a very-low radar cross-section and small visual and acoustical signatures, allowing it to reconnoiter an area of interest without the target's knowledge. In mid-1965 the CIA's Central ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]