Edgar Fouché and the TR-3B

Edgar Fouché and the TR-3B

Person	Edgar Albert "Ed" Fouché (1948–2017), retired USAF master sergeant
Service	USAF, 12 May 1967 – 31 August 1987 (record released under FOIA)
First disclosure	1998, at MUFON and International UFO Congress events, including Laughlin, Nevada
Book	Alien Rapture – The Chosen (1998), with Brad Steiger
Claim	A secret triangular craft, the TR-3B, using a reverse-engineered "Magnetic Field Disrupter" to cut its weight by 89%
Background legend	The TR-3A "Black Manta", reported by Aviation Week in 1991
Status	No evidence for the TR-3A or TR-3B; critics call the story invention
Date	1998
Topics	Military encounters (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic)
People	Edgar Fouché
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 132
Year	1998 in UFO history
Timeline	1998 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

Edgar Fouché said he had worked for many years on classified U.S. Air Force programs, including at Area 51.^[6][7] In a talk at the 1998 International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, he described a secret triangular aircraft called the TR-3B, said to be propelled with the help of reverse-engineered alien technology.^[2][3][6] The idea became a staple of online UFO culture and a popular explanation for sightings of "black triangles".^[1][2] His Air Force service is documented, but no evidence for the TR-3B has surfaced, and critics regard the story as invention.^[3][7]

Fouché

According to the researcher Andrew Johnson, who befriended him and recorded long interviews with him in 2014, Fouché was born in 1948 in Americus, Georgia. He joined the Air Force in 1967, during the Vietnam War.^[7] His career, in Johnson's account:^[7]

• Training. He trained for pararescue but, after an injury, retrained in electronics and cryptographic equipment, gaining a top-secret "crypto" clearance.
• Postings. He served on special projects at Kadena in Okinawa and at bases in Thailand and Vietnam. He worked on the F-15 and F-117 at Edwards Air Force Base.
• Area 51. In August 1979 he was sent for ten days of temporary duty to a place "which had no name". He was bussed there before dawn with blacked-out windows and armed guards, and made to wear welders' goggles. He was covering for a technician on bereavement leave.
• Retirement. He retired in 1987 with health problems and then worked about eight years as a defence-contractor manager.

A National Archives summary of his record, released under the Freedom of Information Act, confirms his service as a master sergeant from 12 May 1967 to 31 August 1987.^[7] Its listed assignments include:^[7]

• Kelly AFB and Plattsburgh AFB
• Kadena Air Base
• the 57th Component Repair and Maintenance Squadrons at Nellis AFB
• the 6515th Test (Support) Squadron at Edwards AFB
• Mountain Home AFB

Johnson notes that the records show re-assignments for the Area 51 periods but not their location.^[7] Fouché said he held 900 documents proving his career and released about 200 of them in 1998.^[7] A PDF of his military documents on the checktheevidence.com website is listed as a source, but the link now returns "not found".^[8] He died on 11 May 2017.^[3][7]

Fouché's claims

Fouché first spoke publicly in 1998, at MUFON and International UFO Congress events.^[7] That year he published Alien Rapture – The Chosen with Brad Steiger. It was presented as a novel on legal advice, but Johnson says only its "alien agenda" was fiction.^[7] He made clear that he had not worked on the TR-3B himself and had his information from contacts he would not name.^[7] His description of the craft:^[5][7]

• The disrupter. At its heart was a "Magnetic Field Disrupter" (MFD), developed from reverse-engineered technology at Sandia and Livermore laboratories. A mercury-based plasma, pressurized to 250,000 atmospheres, cooled to 150 kelvin and spun at 50,000 rpm, produced a "magnetic vortex field" that reduced the effective mass of everything inside the circular accelerator by 89 per cent.
• Not antigravity. He insisted, "This is not antigravity". The disrupter made the craft light, while three "multimode" nuclear-thermal and hydrogen-oxygen rocket engines, one at each corner, provided thrust.
• Speed. He called it "a sub-Mach 9 vehicle until it reaches altitudes above 120,000 feet".
• Size and power. In a later question-and-answer document he said the prototypes were about 250 feet across, with an operational model planned at 600 feet. It was powered by two nuclear reactors and cost about $1 billion each in 1990 dollars.
• Operators. It was flown by Air Force and Navy test pilots for the NRO, NSA and CIA, for "logistics support and transportation for the secret space command".
• Belgium and Illinois. He believed the triangles seen over Belgium in 1989 and southern Illinois in 2000 were prototypes.

He said he had seen triangles himself in the 1970s. Around 1975, from a hangar roof at Edwards with a colleague, he saw three lights in a perfect triangle descend, blot out stars, hover and then vanish north "in, like, one second".^[5][7] He also said he had overheard talk at Area 51 in 1979 about "quasicrystals" as an enabling technology.^[7] Asked about ridicule of his figures, he wrote, "I don't know the physics of the MFD, but I stand by what I was told."^[5]

The TR-3A origins

The TR-3B claim built on an earlier legend.^[1] What was reported in 1991:^[1]

• The reports. Aviation Week and Popular Mechanics described a stealthy black triangular aircraft called the TR-3A "Black Manta".
• Its origin. Northrop had supposedly designed it in 1976 as a "Tactical High Altitude Penetrator", won a contract in 1978, flown it at Area 51 in 1981 and gone into production in 1982.
• Its size. Aviation Week gave it a length of about 42 feet and a wingspan of 60–65 feet, far smaller than the later TR-3B.
• Gulf War. It was said to have flown with F-117s over Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War to laser-designate targets.

Those reports relied heavily on the journalist William Scott and unnamed sources.^[1] The space historian Dwayne Day described Scott's method as taking "a small bit of real information" and padding it out with speculation, never quoting anyone by name with a direct connection to the alleged program. Scott had also reported in 1990 on a secret hypersonic bomber that never materialized.^[1] Many now believe the "TR-3" name came from a misheard reference to "Tier 3", a planned unmanned successor to the SR-71. That program led to the Tier 3 Minus DarkStar reconnaissance drone, built by Lockheed and Boeing in 1996.^[1]

Real secret aircraft did fly in the period, which helped keep such stories alive.^[1] Two examples:^[1]

• The F-117 flew for years before it was acknowledged.
• Boeing's Bird of Prey demonstrator made 40 secret test flights over Nevada between 1996 and 1999 and was revealed only in 2002.

Area 51 itself, at Groom Lake, was set up by the CIA in 1955 for the U-2 and was publicly acknowledged only in 2013.^[4]

Black triangles

The TR-3B is often invoked to explain sightings of large, silent black triangles.^[2] Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science studied the triangles in a report released in August 2004.^[2] Its main points:^[2]

• The trigger. The study began with a police officer's report of a large, silent object in western Illinois on 5 January 2000.
• The data. It mapped more than 700 sightings from its own hotline, MUFON and Larry Hatch's database, and found a sharp rise from 1997.
• The pattern. The sightings clustered over populated areas, unlike the remote test flights of the F-117 or B-2. This led the institute to doubt that they were secret military aircraft.

The French researcher Patrick Gross, cataloguing one such report from Alsace in 2016, noted how social-media posts linking triangles to the "famous secret craft called the TR-3B" lack any date, place or follow-up.^[3]

Related facts

Supporters point to two real facts:^[7][9][10]

• ARPA. The Advanced Research Projects Agency did fund exotic aerospace work. A 1975 history of the agency describes projects from "super-acceleration rockets" to "laser and charged particle weapons".
• Quasicrystals. These materials were once dismissed as impossible, including by Linus Pauling. In 2011 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Dan Shechtman for discovering them. Johnson notes that Fouché mentioned them in 1998.

Neither fact supports Fouché's specific claims.^[9][10] Johnson dates the discovery to 1982, three years after Fouché's Area 51 duty.^[7]

Assessment

No evidence for the TR-3A, the TR-3B or Fouché's specific assignments has surfaced.^[1][3] Patrick Gross calls the TR-3B "pure invention", "totally inspired" by what witnesses had already described. He lists errors that he says betray Fouché:^[3]

• the belief that radar detects the composition of UFOs
• writing "E lent" for "Elint"
• a "fake so-called 'KGB passport'"
• confusing the Have Blue prototype with the F-117
• a false claim about who commanded the Air Force Flight Test Center

The defence journalist who wrote Sandboxx's series on the black triangles notes a practical objection. If the Air Force had anti-gravity drives, it would hardly spend billions on advanced jet engines.^[2] Johnson, by contrast, treats Fouché as a credible whistleblower. Fouché himself wrote that he had consulted military lawyers beforehand and had published nothing that could be made or duplicated.^[5][7]

People and topics

• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Area 51 — The secret Nevada test site where spy planes and stealth aircraft were developed.
• Edgar Fouché — Man who claimed to have worked on the TR-3B and other secret aircraft.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Black triangle — A large, dark, triangular craft often reported since the 1980s.

On the Timeline

• Nick Cook's Skunk Works chart (Late 1990s) — Author Nick Cook claims he glimpsed a chart of secret Skunk Works projects.
• Collins Elite (11 March 1998) — Nick Redfern's source says a group of officials believed UAP were demonic.

See every 1998 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Area 51”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.