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Russian Flying Saucers Coming to USA
Flying Saucers from Russia are coming to our skies - and the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command invited them.
(From Russian Flying Saucers to Grace American Skyies via HowStuffWorks.com)
An agreement has been signed with Russian EKIP Aviation concern to make use of the flying-saucer shaped aircraft. The acronym EKIP stands for "Ekologiya i Progress" - Ecology and Progress. They were developed in Russia with the intent of using them for oil pipeline monitoring. Prototypes failed to get funding from the Russian government in 1992; both the US and China are interested in them now.
The planes could also be used as unpiloted drones, a popular option at the Pentagon these days.
(More pics here.)
"This is a radically new craft,” Alexey Konovalov, EKIP’s executive director, explains. It doesn’t require a long runway and can land on sand, but most importantly, the shape of the aircraft is a brilliant solution for getting rid of vibration, a long-time problem in aircraft design. Read more .
The plan is to test the craft in 2007.
SF fans of course remember the flying saucers from Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters.
Read more about the Technical concepts of the EKIP Project. Here's the Russian take on the deal:
"Parasitism of Russian scientific and technological advances in armed forces has already become a distinctive characteristic of American military-industrial complex."
(From USA to "devour" unique Russian "UFOs".)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/8/2004)
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