CIA Declassifies Cold War-Era Plans for a 'Nuclear Bird Drone' (popularmechanics.com) 64
"During the Cold War, the CIA considered building a bird-sized drone designed to spy on the communist bloc," reports Popular Mechanics.
"The drone would carry 'black box' spy packages into Russia and China, as well as take secret photographs — all while hiding in plain sight disguised as a bird..."
The project envisioned a fleet of 12 bird-shaped drones, powered by nuclear energy, that could stay aloft for up to a month. The drone, which was supposed to act as a robotic spy plane and courier for secret payloads, was never completed... "Aquiline" was a small drone, meant to be kept as close to bird-like size as possible — five feet long, 7.5 feet wide, and a takeoff weight of 83 pounds — under the constraints of the technology of the time. A silent 3.5-horsepower, four-cycle engine would give the drone a speed of 47 to 80 knots and an endurance of 50 hours and 1,200 miles. Aquiline's maximum altitude was estimated at 20,000 feet.
Nuclear power promised to give Aquiline even greater range. The CIA proposed to install a radioisotope propulsion system on the flying drone, one that would convert waste heat from decaying isotopes (like plutonium) into electricity. Such an engine, developed primarily for deep space probes, would boost the drone's endurance to an astonishing 30 days or 36,000 miles.
Aquiline was designed to carry both photographic and intelligence payloads. It could take overhead photographs of sensitive sites while flying much lower than the U-2 spy plane, and would scoop up electronic signals of radios, radar, and other devices for later analysis. Unlike manned planes, Aquiline could fly much closer to its targets, producing high resolution photographs and recording stronger electromagnetic signals. The drone could also secretly drop off payloads of specially developed sensors near sites the CIA wanted to closely monitor...
Radars and human sentries at sensitive sites would mistake Aquiline for a bird and pay little attention to it.
The drone was to have been designed by McDonnell Douglas — and developed Area 51, according to the article.
And since data storage at the time was limited to cumbersome things like punch cards and tapes, the drone would instead beam all of its data to a nearby reconnaissance plane.
Nuclear power promised to give Aquiline even greater range. The CIA proposed to install a radioisotope propulsion system on the flying drone, one that would convert waste heat from decaying isotopes (like plutonium) into electricity. Such an engine, developed primarily for deep space probes, would boost the drone's endurance to an astonishing 30 days or 36,000 miles.
Aquiline was designed to carry both photographic and intelligence payloads. It could take overhead photographs of sensitive sites while flying much lower than the U-2 spy plane, and would scoop up electronic signals of radios, radar, and other devices for later analysis. Unlike manned planes, Aquiline could fly much closer to its targets, producing high resolution photographs and recording stronger electromagnetic signals. The drone could also secretly drop off payloads of specially developed sensors near sites the CIA wanted to closely monitor...
Radars and human sentries at sensitive sites would mistake Aquiline for a bird and pay little attention to it.
The drone was to have been designed by McDonnell Douglas — and developed Area 51, according to the article.
And since data storage at the time was limited to cumbersome things like punch cards and tapes, the drone would instead beam all of its data to a nearby reconnaissance plane.
Bird like size??? (Score:3, Insightful)
meant to be kept as close to bird-like size as possible — five feet long, 7.5 feet wide, and a takeoff weight of 83 pounds
Wow, glad these guys didn't work on ui things like the pc mouse which we'd now know as a small device basically the same size as a side table on casters...
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It's a bird... It's a plane... It's Superman!
Re:Bird like size??? (Score:4, Informative)
The weight is excessive. But there are plenty of birds that grow to that size, or even larger. For sea birds in particular, a 7.5-foot wingspan is on the moderate side; owing towards their need to cross long ocean distances by gliding with minimal energy expenditure. Some species of albatross average in the 10-foot range, with documented examples pushing 12-feet.
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Wow, glad these guys didn't work on ui things like the pc mouse which we'd now know as a small device basically the same size as a side table on casters...
LAN gaming parties would've involved significantly more injuries, for sure.
83 pounds of metal might reflect more radar (Score:2)
> apart from the weight (which you obviously can't tell in flight), this is about perfectly sized for many large birds.
I'm no expert on radar, but it think it measures size bases in the strength of the reflected signal - bigger things will reflect more radio wave back.
I'm thinking 83 pounds of metal would reflect radio waves more than 12 pounds of flesh and feathers would. So yeah it kinda would measure weight.
Of course early stealth tech could reduce that somewhat.
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radar is size/surface area not weight based.
But also material based. A synthetic bird that is mostly made of metal will reflect a lot more radar signal than a biological bird of the same size. Given that the drone would have been on the large size for a biological bird, it would likely have shown up on radar screens as a very noticeable blip that was significantly stronger than what could have been expected of an actual bird.
And even more it is shape based sloped surfaces (look at the picture of the drone in TFA) do not send radar signals back to the emitter/receiver unit.
If only they had known about radar return engineering back in 1971.
A small stealthy unmanned vehicle. How silly of them! Why if such a thing were possible we would have reconnaissance UAVs flying missions all over the world right now! (/s)
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And even more it is shape based sloped surfaces (look at the picture of the drone in TFA) do not send radar signals back to the emitter/receiver unit.
I did and it has plenty of curved surfaces which would make for a nice radar return. A lot of it depends on the frequency of the radar, but by the cold war they were using everything except mm wave. The trick isn't making this invisible to radar (I don't think that can be done). The trick is making its radar profile look like a birds and that shouldn't be hard at all. The difference between flesh/blood and metal isn't really that big to a radar.
Radio waves go through you. One way stealth works (Score:2)
Radar is based on reflected radio waves. Not directly size or weight.
Radio waves go through flesh and feathers. They don't go through steel. They bounce back off of steel.
That's one reason stealth planes can exist - because aome materials don't relfedr radar like steel does.
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I've really gotta tap my scruz geek friends to see if anyone has photos of the mainframe mouse they used to have at TGV, which was bought out by Cisco and turned into a cable modem lab...
Speculative fiction (Score:3)
The fact is the the RTG on the voyager spacecraft was 83 pounds, the entire budgeted weight of this drone, and put out a whopping 2400 wats, or a whopping 150 phone batteries, which would weight about 10 pounds
The benefit of nuclear power for spacecraft is that the deliver a steady stream of power for a relatively long time. Voyagers 10 pounds of plutonium has been delivering, now diminishing, power for over 40 years.
Re:Speculative fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
1960's nuclear power = 2020's artificial intelligence
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That's why ... (Score:2)
You have to invent the time machine first.
THEN you come back with a "Mr. Fusion".
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You could make a pretty sweet drone with that much power, and it could stay aloft for ages. Also, if they were projecting a 30 day lifetime they were planning to use something with a shorter half life, and therefore higher density power output, than Voyager.
Re:Speculative fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
Polonium 210 has a power/weight of 140 W/g (the plutonium used in Voyager only produces .54 W/g). Even with the inefficiency of an RTG, you only need maybe a hundred grams to produce the 3.5 horsepower proposed in the design. And you don't need shielding, since it's an alpha emitter, and with a half-life of only a few months you don't need to worry about contaminating the environment (it decays into a stable element). The entire RTG would be maybe a few kilograms. Highly unsuitable for a space mission, but perfect for a relatively long-lived aerial drone. And it can theoretically be mass produced (already is produced in a few grams per month). It would be expensive to produce, but absolutely possible even with the technology available in the 60s.
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Unfortunately the half life of Plutonium is 40,000 years. So it is not "decaying and going away quickly".
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He suggested polonium 210, with a half-life of 136 days. Of course this means having a steady stream of polonium being synthesised on-the-fly, since you cannot keep it on the shelf. On top of that, Po-210 is one of the most toxic isotopes known; even ignoring hazards in normal operation, a drone crashing into a water reservoir could kill off a city's population (one gram is enough to kill for 50 million
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Oh, I overlooked that Pu vs. Po point.
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So you have a “bird” emitting 11kW of heat. Hope the soviets don’t have IR cameras.
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Let's not forget that the Voyager RTG was also cooling itself solely by radiation. The cold side of an RTG can be much, much smaller and lighter when it's dissipating heat by conduction with 40-50mph air. Combine that with reduced armoring (Voyager's RTG was supposed to be able to fall to earth intact in case of a failed launch) and a shorter lived isotope for power, and you're getting there.
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They could actually do this now (Score:2)
We have the technology
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Re: They could actually do this now (Score:2)
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You're older than your id suggests :)
reruns probably..
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a show intro. barely alive.
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I was young enough to like it.
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They could have actually did that then. That's why they were considering it.
So think, if something they "could do now" was something they might even have built then... what do they have NOW in testing?
"A bird-sized drone" (Score:4, Funny)
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Wrong suspiction (Score:2)
flying in a circle around the site for 36 hours continuously...
Actually *that* wouldn't have been the most suspicious part (some large birds can fly for very extended times).
BUT.
- This bird would be giving the radar signature of a small metalic motorbike, definitely not being almost-transparent to radar like a normal bird made out of flesh and bones and feathers.
- This bird would be beaming a hell of radio frequencies while beaming back the information to the mothership.
- This birds' RTG would be giving a hell of a heat signature visible even on the primitive IR tech a
In Soviet Russia (Score:3)
In Soviet Russia, birds watch YOU!
Would the bird poop... (Score:3)
be considered "hot droppings"?
Spying is good (Score:3)
The cold war has a long history of 'missile gaps': the information the US had about the Russians was limited and motivated by various reasons (supremacy, fear, interests, political benefits) the russian threat was hugely inflated : at the time of the cuban crisis Russia had 4 ICBMs and an airforce which was not capable to penetrate US defenses(they could destroy europe though). Yet the dominant perception which was cultivated in the US was that they were lagging behind Russia and urgently needed to speed up. The dilemma on the side of Russia was interesting: they could be more open about how weak they were but would the extra information be beneficial or just the opposite? To some extent the same has happened in Iraq. In fact enough was known about Iraq that it was fundamentally disarmed, but Iraq had to ask the same question: will more openness put the other parties at ease or will they simply prey more?
It is not clearcut. Openness will be abused and it is also always possible to keep claiming that somewhere deeply hidden a vast and devious project is going on. The claim may not convince everyone but it's hard to prove it wrong.
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part of the problem was by the *level* at which the USSR was lying to itself.
When the house of cards collapsed, the surprise to our intelligence was *when*, so much sooner then they expected, rather than the fact that it did.
We knew they were lying to themselves, but we grossly overestimated by how much.
My favorite variant is when our intelligence thought that Saddam had a nuclear program. They thought this because they had someone so high-up that they had Saddam's own information--which was the problem.
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It's true that in totalitarian systems the boss has a very hard time knowing what is going on. You're neglecting something though. In our democratic type system the lies are everywhere. Saddam never thought that he had a nuke, that is just a fairytale our intelligence made up. Our intelligence knew Saddam was defenseless. That is one reason Wolfowitz could claim (when he was not claiming massive mortal danger) that he could take Iraq with a few ten thousand soldiers.
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I've never even *heard* someone claim he had a nuke.
He thought he had a *program*, and *did* spend on it.
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not after 91. Neither did he spend on CW after 91.
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And South Carolina didn't spend on slavery enforcement after 1865 . . .
(and I won't get into CW from any direction due to concerns about the privacy of some folks I know with direct knowledge)
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I've encountered a lot of stories of activity after the war. It's not that I don't know about them. Or knew about them. It's been a while. Saddam was effectively disarmed in 91. It's too hard to make it impossible for someone to ever start over so I'm disregarding that.
How certain we could be at each moment of the extent of disarmamant is more complicated but in 2002 I really wanted to know and I was certain from what Scott Ritter told that there was nothing militarily significant left. One could never be s
Wow, a really stupid idea. (Score:2)
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It does not look like a realistic project. These drones would not be autonomous. They would send their data to a nearby surveillance plane would would not stay around for a month. So it looks more like 'alright we have an engine, now we only need to figure out how to navigate this thing for a month on end.' Details.
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If you want to keep a plane in the air it needs to be refueled or another plane has to take over. If it has to control the drones it has to remain in the area. Signals are going to the drones and back. This is not a low profile operation. 'oh look, a bird. Well nevermind'.
The drones would be detected the first time you use them.
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If you want to keep a plane in the air it needs to be refueled or another plane has to take over. If it has to control the drones it has to remain in the area. Signals are going to the drones and back. This is not a low profile operation. 'oh look, a bird. Well nevermind'. The drones would be detected the first time you use them.
Yes, of course. One plane passes off to another plane. That's not hard. And it doesn't have to remain in the area. This drone/plane receiver system could only work if the drone were over a base close to the coast or border of a friendly country so that the plane could stand off in safety. Today the drone could easily have a satellite link, doing away with the need for a plane to receive its signals.
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I am not thinking in today's terms but in a time when drones have no autonomous capability. Now a drone can operate autonomously for long periods and you can choose when to transfer data.
But in the sixties/seventies you needed to control them remotely. You can imagine simple navigation systems allowing the drone to navigate say on compass for a brief time but it will drift and there is a good chance you won't be able to pick up contact again when you return. So you don't want to leave the drones alone.
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Could be anyones bird. That said the dump wouldn't scatter all over like a dirty bomb or something. It would just be one relatively warm and indescructable box you could safely cook your eggs on.
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Re-use (Score:2)
And since everything fails eventually, (Gary Powers) the CIA should have expected to dump a load of plutonium on Russia eventually due to a mechanical failure, storm, hunter, or military action. I doubt the Soviets would have reacted well to that.
The Soviet? They would have probably thaugh "Cool, free parts!"
They would probably have officially pretended not to be aware of any spying (never let the enemy know that you know), they would have probably stripped the spy bird down to components and re-used them for their own space exploration program. it's not as if they haven't done that before [fstoppers.com].
A superlative suggestion sir.... (Score:1)
1. We don't have any bird shaped drones powered by nuclear reactors
and
2. We don't have any birds shaped drones powered by nuclear reactors
I know that, technically, that's only one drawback, but it was such a big one I thought I'd mention it twice
So, it could exist now? (Score:1)
Anyone else think (Score:2)
It looks like the Peacemaker UAV from the 1983 classic "Deal of the Century"?
Wow, Tom Swift Jr. (Score:2)
One of the first juvenile scifi books I owned was Tom Swift and his Giant Robot, and in that the bad guys had jet propelled mechanical crows that caused a bunch of trouble. Good to know our government uses all available sources for their ideas.