Message posted by truckertom on February 22, 2006 at 21:18:46 PST:
It's to far-fetched of a story for a "secret" aircraft to just be casually shooting touch and go's at a base that affords excellent views from 8 miles away as you say and employs hundreds of civilians who hold no security clearance. The other eye witness claimed the aircraft was high alt. FL 420ish. Far from pattern work. As for the radio call (can you provide freq?) reported by Adrian, any agencies at Fairchild would not be communicating with an a/c at that altitude. That would be the job of the ARTCC sector responsible for that area. Since Fairchild is home to all slow, heavy KC-135 tankers that beat the pattern up all day, it would make sense that a tower controller would refer to the rare fighter type as a "Fast Mover". This radio call emphasizes to the tanker pilot that a faster than usual aircraft is sharing the pattern. All in the interest of safety. Nothing secret here. This is the same argument critics of the original Fast Mover intercept have made. Simply A friendly controller alerting a slower aircraft(Janet) that a relatively faster aircraft is sharing the airspace. I think many people jumped the gun and automatically thought: Hypersonic !! Could have been. Could have easily been a MIG or F-16 aswell. This Fast Mover thing certainly has become an enigma of its own huh ?
Not all test aircraft are secret! Boeing Field in Seattle houses several "test" aircraft that could have odd paint schemes. However, they prefer to stay in the local area close to their support infrastructure.
In Reply to: Re: FastMover!!!!! posted by James on February 22, 2006 at 19:47:43 PST:
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