Air Force erred in claiming world land speed record

How many times can you say “oops” in six seconds?

Days after Air Force engineers in New Mexico raced to trumpet their success at setting a new world land speed record – saying they had sent a rocket-propelled sled flying about 3 ½ miles in a shade over six seconds – they have now said: Not so fast.

The test, conducted Jan. 31 at the Holloman Air Force Base High Speed Test Track, went off as planned. “However, the desired velocities were not achieved,” said Staff Sergeant David K. Wagstaff, an Air Force spokesman.

Still, all was not a loss. The primary – if less-heralded – goal of the mission was achieved.

The whole purpose of the test was to send a top secret Navy payload to supersonic speeds before its detonation. While the military has refused to offer any substantive details as to its nature, what descriptions there have been suggested that it was some sort of warhead.

In that respect, Wagstaff said, the test was “a technical success” for the Navy and the Sandia National Laboratories, which built the payload.

The rail-mounted sled carrying the payload had been expected to fly from 0 to a top speed of nearly nine times the speed of sound in about 6.1 seconds.

In the hours after the test, officials had said the rocket sled reached a speed of 6,589 mph - 95 mph faster than officials had anticipated before the test and 136 mph quicker than the previous record. Now they say those numbers were not achieved.

Because of that, the record of 6,453 mph, set April 30, 2003, at the same facility, holds.

Blair Ponder, an Air Force spokesman, said Friday that technicians and engineers are still evaluating their data to figure out what went wrong in making earlier calculations that had suggested the test achieved record velocity.

So, record or not, do they know how fast it really went?

“We do not, not yet,” Ponder said, “and we probably will not have (numbers) until next week at the earliest. You can image that with everything that has happened, now they are kind of being tight-lipped about everything.”

Steve Stone, (757) 446-2309, steve.stone@pilotonline.com