February 2003

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NOVA "Battle of the X-Planes" Web extra

The "X-File"
Every Tuesday night on WHYY TV12, NOVA takes its viewers on a new adventure. Whether it's to the bottom of the ocean, or to the top of Mount Everest, NOVA producers tell the human story behind the science headlines.

In doing so, what happens off-camera can be as adventurous as what happens on-camera. NOVA producer Michael Jorgensen recently shared one of the many covert operations he experienced while filming "Battle of the X-Planes," airing Tuesday, February 4 at 8 p.m., the first-ever inside look at a top-secret Department of Defense weapons competition.

Somewhere in the American Southwest
At 2 a.m. one morning, I climb into a van whose driver is known only as Denny. The two of us spend the next two hours winding our way through the desert. At the end of a long dirt road, we come to an empty guard post. Denny stops at the gate and shuts off the engine. Instantly I hear a voice through the static of a nearby intercom demanding identification. We comply, and the gate rolls open.

Miles from the gate we approach several windowless buildings. Outside are models of some strange-looking aircraft I've never seen before. We meet our guides, who lead us to another location farther out in the desert. "Here we are," says my escort. Here we are where? I think to myself. There is nothing here but sand. We get out of the vehicle and start walking. It's now 5 a.m. but still dark.

In the distance I can see a huge man-made crater. We soon come to the lip of the "hole." Fifty feet below is what looks like a missile silo -- a concrete bunker about half the size of a football field with a pair of massive doors on top. As I set up my camera, my escort radios some orders over his walkie-talkie. The doors suddenly slide open and brilliant red light streams out. I feel like I'm on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Out of the ground rises a full-scale model of the X-35 -- Lockheed Martin's X-Plane. The model is mounted on a 200-foot pole, which rises slowly out of the hole in the desert and towers high over our heads. My jaw is still on the ground when my escort begins giving me the history of the facility.

"This is the place where we first tested the signature of the F-117 Stealth Fighter," he says. "Now we're conducting the same sets of tests on the X-35." As I watch, the aircraft is rotated and tilted while engineers direct radar beams at it. After the test is finished, the fighter disappears back into its hole in the ground, and the doors slide shut. My escort then asks me the most loaded rhetorical question I've ever received. "Do you wanna go inside and shoot?" He practically has to run to catch up with me.

Read more of NOVA producer Michael Jorgensen's "X-File" on NOVA's Web site at www.pbs.org/nova/xplanes.