Tu-160 Blackjack Bomber The Voron Mach 3 Drone, and the Lockheed D-21 Drone?

In doing some digging for the Area 51 project one of the research areas I looked at was the D-21 Mach 3 drone that the Skunk Works developed in the 60's. The drones were launched by a B-52 and several were sent over China with no results. In the Ben Rich book "Skunk Works" reports that in 1986 he recieved a piece of one of the drones from the CIA, and the agent had identified it as comming from Siberia. The conclution was that the drone had had a malfunction and instead of turning had wandered into Russia. The implication at the time was that the drone had been destroyed. However, doing a little digging, it seems the Russians discovered the drone intact.

In one of my aviation books on the TU-160, I came across an interesting variant the TU-160 VORON Strategic Recce Drone Carrier Project. Upon finding the drone, The Military Commission issued Ruling Number 57 on March 19th, 1971 to duplicate the D-21 drone. This drone was named Voron (Raven). It was basicaly similar in apperance down to the pitot tubes on either side of the shock cone. The wing was slightly different more a pure delta shape than the D-21. It was powered by a supersonic ramjet. It was accellerated by a strap on booster that provided 104,720 lbs of thrust to accelerate the drone to the high speeds necessary to ignight the ram jet. The Tu-160 was to be the carrier for the drone system. Evidence points to it never having been launched by one but who knows.

I was unable to find a picture of the drone, but supposedly the D-21 remains in storage at Zhuchovsky.

"M-21. It was not planned overflight, and several tons of highly-secret stuff went down right to the hands of our designers right from the sky in the ca. 69. M-21 Drone that was launched from one of B-52 motherships on its rocket booster and flew though all China to SU territory due to the malfunction of self-destruction mechanism as well as navigation tools. It burned all the fuel, and calmly soared to Kazakhstan sands, was found by local cowboy, and then delivered to TzAGI for detailed inspection. It was even shown then to French delegation from Dassault, who only can tell: "Woila! Where did you get this???" Tupolev KB was ordered to make copy-cat of it in 1971, referred as Theme Voron Mothership could be Tu-95 or Tu-160, but there's also considered ground launch via busters [he means boosters]. After several years project was canceled. M-21 stays in storage in Zhukovsky.
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[edit on 19-8-2004 by FredT]

[edit on 19-8-2004 by FredT]

I remember reading about this Ben Rich's book Skunk Works. The CIA got a hold of some of the peices from the drone from a secret source in the USSR. One of their tech guys took the recovered peices back to the Skunk Works in the Late '70's. They reported the Soviets thought that it was the same material they were building the F-117 from.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance