Joint U.S.-Canadian Aviation Projects and UFO Sighting Reports, 1954-1955

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is not seen to present any specific difficulty. Guns or rockets may be mounted in the nose, or to fire out of the intake. Similarly, radar may be installed in a nose pod or if scan is considered adequate, inside the intakes, where the drag penalty will be less. New types of side look antennas may work very well on this type of configuration. Guided Missiles may be carried externally. A larger bomber version of the aircraft is visualized as having more available payload space in the central well. The aircraft under study has an ample margin of thrust/weight to lift additional military load from the ground. Performance penalty will therefore only be felt at a somewhat reduced range and ceiling. Top speed is unlikely to be affected, since the drag due to lift is extremely small for this condition. Larger aircraft may be expected to have a longer range, but no detail figures are yet available. However, intercontinental ranges do not appear to be impossible.

When such an aircraft has been proven by tests, it will no doubt have a great effect on the design and requirements for many other types of military equipment. Let us for a minute review some of the changes that might be apparent.

RADAR - Due to the speeds involved, it is possible that the present type of airborne radar will be entirely inadequate. And, due to the possible speeds and altitudes, our presently designed ground radar equipment might be useless for most purposes.

ANTIAIRCRAFT ARTILLERY - It is very doubtful that such weapons as now available in this field would be very useful.

SURFACE-TO-AIR GUIDED MISSILES - The presently known G/M designs would hardly be adequate for use against bombers with speeds up to Mach. 3.5 flying at 80,000 ft. Especially if those bombers had a good capability for maneuvering.

As one of the principal requirements for SAM appears to be to overcome the time delay in getting interceptor A/C into the air and to the target, it is possible that the job could be done better with an interceptor model of the gyroplane.

AIR-TO-AIR GUIDED MISSILES - There is some doubt present designs would be very useful against such bombers.

SUB LAUNCH G/M - What would be better - a manned gyroplane flying from a sub from 500 n.m. out, or a guided missile launched from 200 to 300 n.m. with the inherent errors of such a system?

From an intelligence aspect this type of aircraft should be watched very closely. Mr. Frost has stated that the idea is not entirely his own. All of the basic information on the first model has been available to other nations for many years, especially those nations in Central Europe. Mr. Frost believes that other engineers could very easily have duplicated his effort.

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