One Of Our Aircraft Is ... well we don't really know

Here's a Pub Quiz question for you. What became of the man behind the weaponry that 617 Squadron made famous ?  

Well, for a start, he was so overcome by the fact that 53 of the 133 men who went on that raid did not come home that he vowed never to work on manned aircraft systems ever again. In doing so he probably condemned his work to obscurity but the fact is he pioneered a number of the principles taken aboard the push for "UAV's" or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, the "drones" that currently make the headlines by taking out wedding parties and schools somewhere between Turkey and the Indian Subcontinent while their "pilots" sit in nuke-proof bunkers somewhere in America.

The objects he designed to make use of that remote control technology, however, were quite obviously ahead of their time. I heartily recommend you read this web page dedicated to his ideas. The man was clearly a genius and his ideas were way, way ahead of their time.

And so it was that yet again, Short-Sighted British Government Penny Pinching took us away from the leading (some might say bleeding) edge development and handed it to the yanks, who as usual have done it again. Messed up, that is. 

With British brains ignored, American dollars have funded the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles you hear so much of these days as they are flown remotely on critical missions to bomb and strafe schools and wedding parties from the Turkish border to the Indian Subcontinent by Yank pilots safe in nuclear-proof bunkers on American soil. While in caverns away from prying eyes, the UFO's of tomorrow are assembled and put through their paces in our upper atmosphere where Barnes Wallis predicted and planned supersonic and hypersonic aircraft operation sixty years ago.

And this is the day they got it wrong. Again.

Those nice men in black from the Yank's Defense (they never could spell, see) Advanced Research Projects Agency or D.A.R.P.A. - the same guys that brought you the Internet (although they never meant you to have it, and called it DARPANet) have been funding the roll-out by Lockheed Martin of the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle

And today they launched the second one. It's flight lasted a little longer than the first, which had to be abandoned after only nine minutes, but as far as DARPA knows it's still flying, because guess what, they've lost it. DARPA's twitter site (One you DONT want to follow- unless you fancy a ride in a black helicopter) tweeted “Range assets have lost telemetry with HTV2”

So here's a plea to all those little green men watchers. If you see something go screaming across the sky at Mach-20 don't reach for your Klingon phrasebook, reach for the phone and tell NASA to tell DARPA "you've found it". They'll know what you mean - after all, unless you're wearing a tin foil hat when you make the call, they'll pluck the information - plus your VISA card PIN number and the phone number of whoever you had sex with last night straight out of your brain, right.

As for me, well, I've had this idea. I'm of to call Daniel Craig's agent. Because I have this sneaking suspicion I know who's nicked their aircraft.