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

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.

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.