

Those robo-dragonflies may not be the only creatures keeping an eye on you. For many years now intelligence agencies have been looking at drones disguised as birds. These days flapping-wing ‘ornithopters’ are not easy to tell apart from birds – take a look at this video of a robo-peregrine and some seagulls and see how long it takes you to spot the impostor.

But even back in the 1970’s you could build something that did a pretty good impression of a soaring bird seen from a distance. This was the CIA’s 1970 Project Aquiline, one of those top-secret program carried out at Area 51. That’s the only known model of it in the photo.

The plane’s mission was to intercept signals from deep inside enemy territory, hence the need for the bird camouflage. The project was headed by Lt Col John H. "Hank" Meierdierck, who tells the story in his online autobiography. The relationship with contractors McDonnell Douglas was the problem:

The vehicle was a six foot long plane that had a small pusher prop and actually looked like an eagle or buzzard when it was in the air. It was designed to fly at very low levels along communications lines and intercept their messages. It also had a small television in the nose as an aid to navigation and to photograph targets of opportunity. There were several successful flights and some crashes [reason unknown] and some lousy landings. This small vehicle was launched from inclined rails and was recovered in a large net strung between two poles. Progress was passable, but then came budget time. The contractor predicts the amount of money needed since I did not have the intimate knowledge of the development expenses. I had

$11 million for the following year and I advised McDonnell of this fact and asked for the next years operating budget. They came back to me with a $110 million forecast. Ridiculous! I returned to HDQ and discussed it with the bosses and they suggested that I give them two weeks to adjust the amount and then to come to DC with the result and have Macdonald Douglas present their budget. I did just that. They decided to back into the $110 million number rather than actually justify the true amounts needed. A grave error. I was forced to interrupt them many times during the presentation to point out errors and outright lies. Upon the completion, I was asked for my comments. I

explained that we really needed only $11 million and could not possibly spend the larger amount. I also pointed out their exaggerations, padded costs for items and the brazen lies that they tried to force on the group. My big boss asked me what I thought we ought to do. I

stated, in no uncertain terms that since this group tried to charge 110

Million for a 11 Million job, that I couldn’t trust them and that “WE

SHOULD CANCEL THE PROGRAM." He said "I think that you are correct. Program canceled”.

That was the end of Aquline. A typical story of Area 51: no aliens or weird science, but a bold attempt to pump up the budget of a black program outside of government oversight. Hank Meierdierck was a brave man – by terminating the project he put himself out of a job. Few people have the honesty to make that sort of stand.

Meanwhile, where is the successor to Aquiline? I’ve no idea, but perhaps some of those vultures circling above Afghanistan may not be real vultures.

(Aquiline is not to be confused with Aquila, a small US army drone from the same era which also ended in expensive failure.)

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