Early Firebees tested at Holloman

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  • By Michael Shinabery
New Mexico Museum of Space History --  Tests of the Firebee war jet were so successful at Holloman Air Development Center that the Air Force announced "production of an undisclosed quantity of Firebees" would soon begin, the Alamogordo News reported on June 29, 1954.

The Firebee was developed after the Air Force's Pilotless Aircraft Branch, in 1948, "issued a requirement for a jet-powered aerial target with a high subsonic speed, for use in ground-to-air and air-to-air gunnery," according to the Web site designation-systems.net. Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego, Calif., won the design competition in August of that year.

The Air Force, Army and Navy then jointly developed the Firebee BQM-34 project in 1950, the Alamogordo News said. "Jane's Pocket Book of Remotely Piloted Vehicles: Aircraft Today" (Collier Books) documented that the first flight, called the XQ-2 ("X" for experimental), took place in the summer of 1951.

"It was used to train pilots who would intercept enemy aircraft," said Wayne Mattson, a former BQM operator, Air Force officer, and now an archivist at the New Mexico Museum of Space History. "It was strictly a target."

As a test target, pilots did not have to hit the Firebee to produce data.

"They actually wanted a near miss," said Michael Smith, NMMSH registrar. "They didn't want to hit the (Firebee) and destroy it. They were fairly expensive."

During his career inside Range Control at White Sands Missile Range, Smith actually reduced data, frame-by-frame, from film taken of Firebee missions.

The early testing at Holloman utilized both air-to-air and ground-to-air launches, the Alamogordo News reported. According to Smith, IR, or infrared pods on the starboard wingtip attracted the missiles fired toward it.

"That's what they shot at. That's what the heat seeking missiles went after," said Smith, who said flares that burned for 15 minutes were also ignited. "Most of them were used for targets against the AIM-4, -7s and -9s (Air Intercept Missiles), sometimes other missiles. Air to air, mainly."

The craft was the "leading U.S. high-performance jet-powered target," said "Above and Beyond: The Encyclopedia of Aviation and Space Sciences" (New Horizon Publishers/1969). Its purpose was to "evaluate weapons systems and new missiles as they progressed through development and operational testing," Radar tracked the flight, and telemetry informed "the ground operator of its speed, altitude, and direction."

At 50,000 feet altitude, the drone's jet engine propelled the aircraft to 635 knots per hour. It could rise above 60,000 feet, and even "skimmed as low as 50 feet," the encyclopedia said.

A document classified Oct. 4, 1955 described the aircraft as a "pilotless, high subsonic, remotely controlled drone whose principal mission is to serve as a target for fighter, bomber, and attack types of aircraft at altitudes from sea level to 40,000 feet." The document was declassified Oct. 3, 1988.

During Project William Tell, an event at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. that Mattson called a "shoot-em-up for Air Defense Command," aircraft such as B-26s launched the Firebee. The 4756th Drone Squadron from Tyndall oversaw launches. The annual event, first staged in 1958, was similar to the Red Flag war games in Nevada. Ryan Firebee at Project William Tell explains PWT was "the first weapons meet in which the U.S. Air Defense pilots and planes scramble, seek and strive to destroy realistic targets which are flying at the speeds, altitudes and evasive patterns of enemy jet aircraft." Ryan Aeronautical published the booklet.

"WHOOSH! In a stream of fire and smoke a deadly missile or rocket is unleashed at the evasive Firebee," the booklet said. "As the ball of fire bores in, the drone picks up the missile range and transmits a running record of its fast-closing distance to the ground score station."

The Firebee evolved for many other purposes. Drones flew photographic reconnaissance over Vietnam. Tests in the early 1970s were undertaken to see if the craft could deliver ordnance, including launching heat-seeking missiles, which led to technology now used in Afghanistan.

A California newspaper article dated Feb. 10, 1971, reported on an "advanced version of the Firebee," and stated the "Air Force accepted ... its first production version of a new pilotless jet warplane able to launch guided 'smart' bombs at enemy targets." The paper described that particular version as the "first attack version turned out under the Defense Department's new Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) program."

In addition, "Above and Beyond" stated Firebees were sent to the Royal Canadian Air Force "for support of Arctic cold-weather missile evaluation exercises."

Michael Shinabery is an education specialist at the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Reach him at michael.shinabery@state.nm.us. Michael Smith and Wayne Mattson contributed to this article.