Art of Black Magic

[CJGibson]

Joseph Jones' book "Stealth Technology -the Art of Black Magic" gets a kicking on this forum. 20/20 hindsight methinks.

1) Who was J. Jones?
2) Was it a nom de plume?
3) Did anything in his book turn out to be correct?

KB

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

It made a lot of confident assertions which turned out to be incorrect. In contrast, Bill Sweetman's Stealth book was less confident, and a lot more correct.

 

[flateric]

Otherwise, not a bad information for 1989. For example, chapter of stealth cruise missiles.

 

[Andreas Parsch]

Joseph Jones' book "Stealth Technology -the Art of Black Magic" gets a kicking on this forum. 20/20 hindsight methinks.
1) Who was J. Jones?
2) Was it a nom de plume?
3) Did anything in his book turn out to be correct?

1) Self-proclaimed "insider", who was IMHO a bit too confident about his findings and alleged sources :
2) Yes
3) In all the speculative paragraphs and chapters, I can't say that he got more correct data than anyone else at that time. He has the usual speculations ("Aurora", "THAP"), plus a few which I haven't seen elsewhere (Northrop "TSA" (Tactical Stealth Aircraft), Lockheed "SCM" (Stealth Cruise Missile)). So far, none of these speculations have have been shown to be accurate. On the other hand, the book doesn't include the slightest hint towards the TACIT BLUE, which was secret then but is no longer now.

Apart from that, I had extensive e-mail contact with Jones around 2002/03, and had to find out that he is a bit too fast with his assertions and speculations (he tried to "sell" me some of his "facts" on aircraft designations - bad idea ;D). Also, I know that he had completely wrong ideas about the "Bird of Prey" project (claimed - a few years before its revelation - that it involved a heavily modified F-15).

All said, I don't regard J. Jones as a reliable source at all 8).

Regards
Andreas

 

[Andreas Parsch]

Otherwise, not a bad information for 1989. For example, chapter of stealth cruise missiles.

But the "AGM-129A model" shown is completely off the mark . And I still don't know what the chapter about the Lockheed "Stealth Cruise Missile" is about - if it's a garbled version of some real program, I sure don't recognize it ;D.

Andreas