Message posted by Magoo on February 01, 2001 at 22:01:25 EST:
Just re-reading a book about the SR-71, called 'SR-71 Revealed - The Inside Story', by Col Richard H Graham (Ret). It's an excellent book available through Amazon via Dreamlandresort, but one paragraph in particular about the aircrafts EW or 'DEF' (short for Defensive) suite stood out... 'Each DEF upgrade was assigned an increasing letter of the alphabet. Throughout my time with the program we used DEF A, B, C, E/F, G, A2, C2, H, M and A2C. Depending in what part of the world we flew, the DEF software could also be modified to counter changing electronic threats. Whenever the United States "acquired" the latest Soviet radar technology, we often tested our current and new DEF systems by flying SR-71 sorties against the soviet radar for evaluation purposes. These sorties were flown over the highly classified area north of Las Vegas, Nevada, known popularly as Groom Lake.' This is actually an extraordinary admission of the existance and one of the tasks of our favorite secret location, by a person who was once the commander of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (i.e. all SR-71 and U-2 operations) at Beale AFB, CA. Magoo
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