Is THIS America's newest top-secret spy plane? Clearest picture yet of mystery aircraft spotted flying over Kansas just weeks after being seen in Texas

• A new image shows a mysterious aircraft flying over Kansas
• The jet appears to be the same one that was spotted over Texas last month
• Photographer Jeff Templin says it may have been as high as passenger jets
• A retired Marine previously said the mysterious plane is the SR-72
• The SR-72 is designed to cross entire continents in less than an hour
• Developers at Lockheed Martin say the plane could be operational by 2030

By Jonathan O'Callaghan and Mark Prigg and Ashley Collman

Published: 11:11 EST, 18 April 2014 | Updated: 07:22 EST, 19 April 2014

comments

A new photo of a mysterious flying object over Kansas has been revealed.
It appears to be the same aircraft as one that was snapped soaring over Texas last month.
The exact identify of the aircraft remains a mystery, but rumours abound that it could be a secret jet.

A mysterious flying object was snapped flying over Wichita, Kansas by Jeff Templin. It resembles a similar unidentified aircraft streaking across the skies of Texas last month

'The photo is grainy because it was taken with a hand-held maxed-out 400mm telephoto lens through a cloud layer and then it was severely cropped to bring it up even close,' says Jeff Templin, who took the photo on 16 April.
'There is no way to know the altitude and no way to judge its size as there is no point of reference.
'My sense of it with the naked eye was that it was quite high, at least the altitude passenger jets cruise over but if it were smaller like a "drone" it could conceivably have been lower and smaller.'

The Aviationist speculates that the plane could be a RQ-180 stealth drone or a prototype of America's next generation long range strike bomber (LSRB).
They, too, are unsure if it is the same plane as the one spotted previously
A retired Marine with nearly two decades of aviation experience stepped forward with a compelling theory about the mysterious plane that was spotted flying over Texas last month. 
On March 10, photographers Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett took pictures of three puzzling aircraft flying over Amarillo, and posted them online in hopes of identifying the planes.
Retired-Marine James Vineyard submitted one of the more interesting explanations, telling the Houston Chronicle he believed they were SR-72 Blackbirds - a spy plane that can cross the U.S. in less than an hour, unmanned.

 

Mystery solved? A retired Marine says the plane pictured in Amarillo last month is the SR-72 Blackbird - a plane designed to cross the country in less than an hour

The mystery aircraft seen over Amarillo on March 10. Three of the craft were spotted flying by

Vineyard spent 17 years as a Marine and also worked with a jet squadron in Arizona.

THE FIRST STEALTH JET

In 1956, British magazines started getting eyewitness accounts and grainy photos of the Lockheed U-2, then operating out of RAF Lakenheath on its first flights over the Soviet Union - marking the first sight of a spy plane that government's had hoped to keep secret from prying eyes.

It provided day and night, very high-altitude (70,000 feet / 21,000 m), all-weather intelligence gathering.

He says the Pentagon may have dispatched the planes to the Indian Ocean to aide in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370.
But Douglass, who saw the planes himself, doesn't agree.
'The SR-72 is still in development,' he said Tuesday. 'Plus it's a high-speed, high-Mach plane. These were going airliner speed. They were not in a hurry to get anywhere.'
The SR-72 is currently being developed by Lockheed Martin in California, and according to the company's website they say the plane could be operational as early as 2030.
It is the predecessor of the SR-71 which broke speed records when it flew from New York to Lonton in less than two hours in 1976.
Lockheed Martin's Hypersonics program manager Brad Leland wrote that the plane is designed to 'strike at nearly any location across a continent in less than an hour.'
'Speed is the next aviation advancement to counter emerging threats in the next several decades. The technology would be a game-changer in theater, similar to how stealth is changing the battlespace today,' Leland said.

Another source told the Chronicle that the plane was a B-2, but the two photographers discovered that no B-2s were flying in the country that day

The SR-72 is a successor to the SR-71 which broke speed records when it flew from New York to London in less than two hours in 1976

Another reader, who wished not to be identified, told the Chronicle with confidence that 'It's a B-2 stealth bomber flying out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.'
That's what the photographers thought when they first saw the group of aircraft, but they say they checked with the base and no B-2s were flying anywhere in the U.S. that day.
Instead, Douglass believes that the planes are a no type of spy plane - a stealth transport plane that could sneak troops into a another country unseen.

Read more:

• B-2 Spirit or new Mysterious Stealth Plane? New image of triangular shaped plane emerges