See The Air Force’s Declassified Plans To Build A Flying Saucer
For years, the US government and military have denied the existence of UFOs—or at least ones claimed to be alien spacecraft buzzing our rural areas—and rightfully so. There has been no concrete evidence that suggests aliens and flying saucers were among us. But back in 2012, the US Air Force declassified a file that suggests the US military was working on a flying saucer of its own.
In 1956, the US Air Force contracted Avro Aircraft Limited, a Canadian company in Ontario, to build a circular vessel (i.e., a flying saucer) that could take off and land vertically.
The Air Force also wanted the flying saucer aircraft to be able to travel at speeds of Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound, about 2880 mph), travel as high as 100,000 feet, with a range of 1,000 nautical miles. The Air Force called this top-secret flying saucer military project “Project 1794,” and its specifications were made known by the National Declassification Center. According to the files:
It is concluded that the stabilization and control of the aircraft in the manner proposed — the propulsive jets are used to control the aircraft — is feasible and the aircraft can be designed to have satisfactory handling through the whole flight range from ground cushion takeoff to supersonic flight at very high altitude.
The construction of Project 1794 flying saucer took place over 18 to 24 months from 1956 to 1957 and cost the US taxpayers $3,168,000, which is about $26.6 million by today’s standards. It is unclear what the Air Force wanted to do with a vehicle like this.
It seems very advanced for combat scenarios in the 1950s. Check out Project 1794’s flying saucer specifications:
The Air Force flying saucer aircraft sounds a lot like the classic idea of a UFO from outer space, and it’s hard to know if this is a case of life imitating art or art imitating life.
The design was saucer-shaped, leveraging the Coandă effect for lift and propulsion, and included some little features like jet turbines for power and small shutters on the disc’s edge for maneuvering. But during the development of the flying saucer, there were definite problems. Namely, it seems the Air Force had real problems controlling the darn thing. Would it have been cool to see one of these zipping through the air scaring everyone and everything in sight? Sure, but it wasn’t to be.
Project 1794 never really got beyond the development stage (that we know about). It ended up dying on the proverbial vine (that we know about).
Could this flying saucer be part of a bigger US government cover-up to hide their knowledge of space aliens and UFOs? Or maybe they just wanted to build one so they could prank the Russians. Either way, this project, at least, wasn’t meant to end up happening.
