US Air Force’s 1950s supersonic flying saucer declassified

A saucer wing has a very low aspect ratio, which has very low aerodynamic efficiency in cruise. The high-aspect trapezoidal wing we commonly see today is used because it produces much less drag while providing sufficient wing area to lift the aircraft. This has been understood since the 1930s, if not earlier.

I can't see why a saucer airframe would be desirable unless it spent a lot of time in backwards and sideways horizontal flight, where it might have better stability than a traditional wing. The complexity of the controls and thrust arrangement wouldn't seem outweighed by this though.

Actual test performance of Avro's saucers never exceeded altitudes of a few feet and speeds of a few mph.

However, the other handling qualities of these designs make them difficult to fly. Stability can be a real problem. I would guess that air handling problems were the issues that cancelled the saucer program. Perhaps the modern fly-by-wire computer control systems used today might make it easier to fly a saucer.

From TFA: One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of "between Mach 3 and Mach 4," (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km). [...] According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).

VTOL, Mach 3++, 100,000ft - the only thing it was missing for it to be the perfect military aircraft is a Romulan cloaking device.

If the "flying saucer" could meet those specifications, it would still be classified. Q.E.D. it didn't work.

Except they don't. They just overrule scrolling and cut off content and bombard you with ads. There is a lengthly bashing of them here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2699610.

"OnSwipe has become a perfect tool for preventing me from viewing content I'd otherwise happily read."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163

The upshot is that when a classified document is created, it comes with a declassification date. They can be 10 to 25 years in the future. There are also specific exemptions that come with 50 or even 75 year timers. After that it's automatically declassified unless a review determines that it's still sensitive.

So you can generally expect to see declassified documents on a 50-, 25-, and 10-year delay.

If you're worried about information being classified to prevent embarrassment, though, that's illegal:

    Sec 1.7

        (a)    In no case shall information be classified, 
        continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to
        be declassified in order to:

           (1)    conceal violations of law, inefficiency, 
           or administrative error;

           (2)    prevent embarrassment to a person, 
           organization, or agency;

           (3)    restrain competition; or

           (4)    prevent or delay the release of 
           information that does not require protection in 
           the interest of the national security.

The US didn't steal the designs from the Nazis. They offered the Nazi researchers that were involved with these programs asylum if they'd help us further that research. One such program is Project Paperclip. Later, many of these scientists went on to work at Lockheed and other defense contractors. They had expertise in rocketry, turbines, and airframes that we simply didn't have at the time.

We still see their efforts in current generation aircraft (like the B-2, which I worked on). They were respected. There are memorial photos of them in the halls of places you will never see.

FYI: Those of us that worked on "fun stuff" used to get a kick out of the tin foil crowd. Do not rely on them for any remotely reliable information. Instead, pay attention to Janes and other defense aviation journalists (the DEW Line being one good example).

Edited for clarity,

Why would a saucer or other shape make more sense than proven fixed-wing aircraft designs?

The link wasn't to a 'green' energy site, 'over unity' is a perpetual motion machine web site. I believe simple ways to get into orbit are not funded for the same reason that perpetual motion machines aren't funded, because if they actually work there is a simple path to riches with zero dollars, thus there is no need for funding of working concepts.

The same is true for 'straightforward to the edge of space'. If you can combine free energy with easy access to high altitude you can put a cell phone repeater at 100,000' and sell phones with solid coverage in an 36 mile diameter circle for tons of money. Just putting a passive antenna up there that you could bounce UHF digital TV signals off of would get you tons of cash to fund even more 'unsexy' projects!

9/11 was an event witnessed by the public on a massive scale. This was a private development only witnessed by those who needed to know.

You didn't have the internet in 1950s, so even if somebody did know about it and told their friend or grandchild, would that person have found it interesting enough to tell more people.

Lastly, is the attempt to make a UFO really a conspiracy?? It didn't work, so there is very little to report.

With something like this, it's likely that everybody involved saw their participation as a good thing, and saw no reason to break secrecy.

It's strange how usefulness is sometimes defined as the end-result usefulness ... something they had no way of measuring until it was done, especially with something new.

But there are also long period comets that come in from the oort cloud. We may never have the technology to fully catalog all those objects (out to thousands of AU up to a light-year distant from the Sun). Which means that even our very much more technologically advanced future selves will almost certainly still be faced with the potential problem of having to intercept and divert an Earth-impacting oort cloud comet that has wandered into the inner Solar System. And to do so not with a century of lead time but with only a few years. And, worse yet, to have to trudge out to the outer Solar System in the first place just to have a chance to divert the thing in time.

This calls for a vehicle with a stupendous amount of thrust and delta-V capability. Precisely what nuclear pulse propulsion excels at. More so, the "pulse units" can do double duty by being used to divert the comet (using thrust generated by ablation from stand-off explosions).

So ultimately research into nuclear pulse propulsion is likely to be key to preventing the destruction of human civilization on Earth.