flight test center

11.21.09

The Top-Secret Warplanes of Area 51

Stealth jets? Hypersonic bombers? What's really being developed at the military's most famous classified base?

By Bill Sweetman Posted 10.01.2006 at 1:00 am 23 Comments

For a closer look at the exotic aircraft the Air Force might be cooking up at Area 51, launch the photo gallery.

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Is this the future of air combat?

A revolution is under way in aerial combat. Tomorrow's fighter pilots may be ceding the skies to robots

Posted 06.02.2005 at 1:00 am 0 Comments

For 65 years, the Mojave Desert has spawned the fastest, highest-flying and most agile airplanes in the world. This vast expanse of scrub and Joshua tree forests encompasses the U.S. Air Force's deadly-secret Area 51 in Nevada, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, and, at Mojave airfield itself, Burt Rutan's sci-fi enclave, Scaled Composites.

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First Look: Bird of Prey

Popular Science presents worldwide debut of Boeing's top-secret Bird of Prey

Posted 10.17.2002 at 3:35 pm 0 Comments

by Bill Sweetman

Posted 12:00 p.m. EST, October 18, 2002

This morning, October 18, 2002, the Air Force and Boeing unveiled to a small group of selected journalists the Bird of Prey, a previously "black" or ultra-secret airplane prototype that was built and tested in the mid-1990s. The unveiling took place at Boeing's Phantom Works facility in St. Louis.