WB-57 over Nellis range

Here is a photo of the WB-57 at Nellis. (11/17/2011) The location is the DOE ramp near the Remote Sensing Lab.



You can see the tracks here:
flightaware.com...

Information and/or the cover story behind this plane can be found here:
pubs.usgs.gov...

reply to post by gariac


I was stationed at Nellis from Jan 1999 to June 2009 (minus nearly 4 years worth of deployments to warzones).

My afsc was 3e7x1.

From mid 2004 on I was mostly assigned as Station Captain at the Fire Department. I was also lead on keeping up to date the A.F.T.O.'s for shutdown and extrication official proceedures for rescue-ARFF.

I'd say the OP's thread looks legit.

This is based on the first RAF service jet bomber the Canberra, (English electric) from 1951, and only retired in 2006 as latterly reconaissance aircraft. There was a recent docu on the aircraft nearing retirement. In reconaissance work one man had to work in a tiny compartment, and no heating. Those Canberra's had a ceiling up to 70,000 feet. The aircraft here have much bigger wings.

I have now found some more info here,

intelros.ru... This clearly indicates that 'Operation falcon' was multi faceted, including strategic use, so not a covert operation.

www.usgs.gov...

Drifting slightly off topic (but not entering Dulce-land), we already knew the minerals were there. There was no need to do this survey. The big problem with mining Afghanistan is the lack of roads, and given the terrain, that probably won't change much.

It seems likely to me the survey had some other motive.

From what I have read, the sensors on the WB-57 can "see" into the structure of the terrain. I'm sure the survey detected lots of minerals, but I'm guessing it also identified the locations of every cave that might be used as a Taliban hideout.

It's interesting that the airplane was stripped of its NASA markings, and the registration number was reduced to a mere three inches high.

The NTS is probably a calibration or test site for the sensors given that it has well documented deep tunnels. For every instrument, you need a calibration reference. They probably fly over mines as well to test the gear.

The NTS and TTR have gravity surveys on file done from a much lower altitude. They could be a reference as well.

reply to post by gariac


A plausible explanation for this doesn't take much more thinking than reading the newspaper.

Let's see.

High-altitude research craft which has previously done multispectral imaging R&D, in open literature.

Nellis AFB near DOE facilities. What else is in that general vicinity and related to DOE? Nevada Test Site.
What did they Test at Test Site? Let's call them boobies.

What's in the newspaper? Persians might be getting really interested in big boobies.

WB-57 is testing boobie-detectors over places where they know they have our boobies to see if its boobie-detectors will work when they go looking for Persian booby.

The boobie detectors will go on a different colored plane when they get used for real.

I would rate sniffing tunnels in Iran to be a likely scenario. But I don't know if the US would violate Iranian airspace. It could be shot down. Flying at 50kft over Afghanistan (somewhat friendly territory) is quite different than flying over Iran (hostile territory). However, the WB-57 could be testing the sensor package, which could then be installed in a Global Hawk. Iran has seen plenty of UFOs in the last few years. (Heh heh) I just don't see manned flight over Iran to be likely, but a UAV? Hey, it's only money. About $50 million for the GH, but the intel could be priceless.

Now let's entertain another scenario for the WB-57. In the past, it has served as BACN during JEFX. Eventually another plane took over this function, but I think proof of concept was done with the WB-57. Now Nellis just did a "Cyber Flag". Maybe the WB-57 was flown for that event.

cyber flag

Here is a bit of the article.

Posted on Wednesday Nov 30th at 4:30pm

The military command in charge of U.S. cyber-warfare activities has successfully completed its first major exercise in its mission to protect the Department of Defense (DOD) from cyber attacks. The U.S. Cyber Command performed the exercise, called Cyber Flag, over a week's time at the Air Force Red Flag Facility at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and through a virtual environment pulled in participants from other locations, according to a press statement.

Of course, the WB-57 is still flying, so that makes it less likely that it was part of the exercise.

I downloaded some audio of the WB-57 callsign NASA 6 from liveatc.com. It runs about two minutes.
www.lazygranch.com...

You can see the route it flew here:
flightaware.com...

reply to post by gariac


Global Hawk price is now about $119m per airframe. There is a Third WB-57 being modified and will be hopefully in sevice October 2012.

What i see from the flight tracks of the live flight tracker is training flights with a lot of touch and go training.

This does not look like training for using any sensors on the plane as they likely would use a grid track similar to search and rescue flights.

reply to post by ANNED


Certainly not touch and go. You can check the altitude in the track log.
flightaware.com/live/flight/NASA6/history/20111221/1745Z/KLSV/KLAS/tracklog

www.skywise711.com...

This link has some interesting photos of the WB-57 taken from the ground. In 2006, it was being used under contract for some unspecified communications equipment.

www.defenseindustrydaily.com...

So perhaps the WB-57 flights over Nellis are to test gear to go into the Global Hawk version of BACN.