The Drive currently has an article about this. It looks to be unmanned, though the article describes it as optionally manned.

In 1979 Air Force special operations AC-130 gunships were scheduled for deactivation or moving to reserve status. They were not funded beyond that budget year. Deep penetration helicopters were non existent outside of search and rescue units. Within the DoD, SOF was a low priority. A career dead end.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained 53 Americans.

This was a seismic turning point for American military special operations in the modern age.

On April 24 1980 the US government launched a rescue attempt named Operation Eagle Claw. Eight RH‑53D helicopters flew from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to a remote road serving as an airstrip in the Desert of Eastern Iran.

The rescue was aborted after severe dust storms disabled two of the helicopters. Then while refueling, one of the helicopters ran into a C‑130 tanker aircraft and exploded, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring several more.

Preparations for a second rescue attempt were called operation "credible sport". This work resulted in a modified rocket powered MC-130H Combat Talon II, capable of landing and taking off in a 100-yard distance.

This craft was destroyed on October 29 1980 during a rocket assisted landing test. Kaboom.

In August, 1980 the highly classified Holloway report was issued with an assessment of the rescue attempt and recommendations in the wake of the failure. CENTCOM came out of this. SOCOM came out of this. I think the so called "stealth blimp" came out of this as well.

Since 1982 Congress had included funding for the new MC-130H Combat Talon II system in the annual budget, but each year the Air Force redirected the funds to other, more important conventional priorities. In 1984 the Air Force developed its own plan to fix special operations, which included divesting itself of all rotary-wing SOF assets. Known as Initiative 17, the agreement between the chiefs of staff of the US Air Force and US Army called for transfer of the SOF rotary-wing mission to the US Army. The Air Force wasn't just walking away from SOF, it was running.

Which brings us to the point of all this. I think I was wrong. I don't think the craft over Hudson Valley, which I am now going to refer to as the "ZR-7/Hades" was a sub hunting craft. (ZR is Navy designation for airships, and Hades is the god of the underworld) I think it is a specialized exfiltration craft built in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis. How did I come to this conclusion?

Starting in 1983 witnesses constantly said it looked like airplane landing lights at first. Which I never had a good answer for, until it occurred to me that you would WANT it to look like a low flying plane. This is probably why it had an array of lights on the front, so it could mimic any variety of different lights. And most witnesses would have actually dismissed it as a plane if it had not stopped over their house for 10 minutes.

The other thing I could never account for, why would it operate over populated areas? That is until I realized if its operations were modeled after the Tehran situation, then that is exactly where you would want to practice operations for exfiltration. We have seen SOCOM and other forces train in downtown Los Angeles and other cities. Additionally, the witnesses who saw it shining red lights into the water and lowering probes may have been them practicing Navy Seal exfiltrations. It is a Navy craft after all!

As for the "Big Black Delta" sightings, I think that one belongs to the Air Force. But that is a story for another day.

Lifted from r/UFOs.

The tic-tac is described as being in the area of a high-interest REDACTED ship, associated with C2 functions, and potentially being an end-view of a REDACTED Air Force plane.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240321195157/https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/103122/F-2021-00154_C05136331.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20240604164351/https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/103122/F-2021-00154_C05136334.pdf

Edit: These are from Black Vault originally. I'd forgotten about this release.

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/highly-classified-nro-system-captures-possible-tic-tac-object-in-2021/

While you were sleeping, ok ok while I was sleeping, France developed a CCA (technically UCAV) and a hypersonic nuke.

https://theaviationist.com/2024/10/10/development-of-rafale-f5-with-new-ucav-and-nuclear-missile/

“This UAV will be complementary to the Rafale and suited to collaborative combat”, said a release from Dassault Aviation. “It will incorporate stealth technologies, autonomous control (with man-in-the-loop), internal payload capacity, and more. It will be highly versatile and designed to evolve in line with future threats.”

One of the ideas regarding NGAD was not to build it at all and just greet China with drones controled with the B-21. There is no appetite for a $300 million NGAD or a highly inferior $100 million NGAD done on the cheap.

The Rafale is routinely upgraded every five years.

https://sam.gov/opp/552b8a42dfb445aea627c8fce7e301c9/view

These Industry Day meetings show up on Sam dot gov from time to time. You need to hold a secret clearance to attend which isn't all that rare these days if you need to get one. (A number of dubious White House staffers from both parties have managed to get one.) About three million people could attend, so you do need access though for the meeting it isn't special. In fact the notice indicates nothing classified will be presented, but one assuming the next phase would require clearance, hence filter out those who can't participate now.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/classified-information-what-matters/index.html

This is the unit background:

https://www.505ccw.acc.af.mil/About-Us/Units/

Basically there are looking for battlefield AI though the don't explicitly state it. (Buzzword "automated") TTP is "tactics techniques procedures."

The "pacing challenge" loosely is the country you are trying to stay one step ahead of, which of late is China. China has 5th generation kit, hence the US needs 6th generation, etc.

This is the meat of the request:

In order to experiment with solutions aimed at increasing battle management decision speed and quality to win the pacing fight, existing fielded systems and new prototypes require integration for data sharing, decision automation, and timeline compression. The focus areas for the 505 CCW Open House to Industry Day at ShOC-N 12 Dec 2024 is dynamic targeting and kill chain automation with specific interest in solutions in automated decision tools and distribution for intelligence, Command and Control, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, and battle management fielded systems and new prototypes. In addition, automated experimentation data collection and analytics remains a challenge and available for industry’s awareness and/or inputs. The end result is successful integration of new capabilities in order to build new TTPs for decision advantage against a pacing challenge.

One of the comments asked where I was on the program and while I won’t give a direct answer, I will tell you that this was a gift from the customer so you won’t see too many of these out in the wild!

I have more stuff I would like to share but that would bring me out of the shadows and that’s no fun

• Quin Jet Engineer

It was posted here a few years ago, it was a letter where a general / higher up was reprimanding another defence personnel about him speaking on subjects such as space fighting and outer space warfare. Basically telling him to shut his mouth. Any luck?