Shelley Kovco Calls For Inquiry Finding Overturn

After the flood of emotions I"ve been through since receiving a post purporting to be from Shelley Kovco, I'm having trouble believing that it was from the same person appearing in the reports coming out this morning. On the strength of the report commissioned by the NSW Homicide squad, Shelley has called for the military finding of death by skylarking to be overturned. Kovco's mother is calling for an inquest.

The Homicide squad's report says that ""insufficient evidence [is] available ... to determine whether the trigger was pulled deliberately or accidentally".

Here's the current version from The Age.

What do I make of the missive from "Shelley" now? Shelley Kovco has said today that all she wants is for the word "skylarking" taken out, so that the verdict is simply that Kovco died of a gunshot wound to the head. Fair enough. What I still would like to know it that if, as claimed in the post, there is footage of Kovco being worked on, why hasn't it been mentioned till now?

One thing I know for sure is that I've only had a very minor taste of how Shelley Kovco might feel. I feel so sad for her. However, if there is going to be an inquest then I will be following it closely.

New US Military Spaceflight Tests For Woomera

This September l the US Air Force, with NASA providing back up, plans to begin testing their new HiFire jets at Woomera. Described as the "jewel in the crown" of scramjet technology, (HiFire is an acronym for Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation) their anticipated short-term application is much faster cruise missiles.

It will be pretty cool if Woomera has the capability to detect targets (as the Narrungar base did with Scud launchers in Gulf War !) and knock them off with missiles flying at eight times the speed of sound.

In the long term the project is hoped, according to its director, " to enable operationally responsive space access." The USAF says that "Hypersonic capability is of interest to the Air Force for its ability to enable "game changing" operations that exploit speed and responsiveness in both near- and far-term applications."

The $US 51 million contract between the USAF and the Weapons Division of DSTO (singed off in Canber on November 10 last year) is, according to our DoD's chief scientist "one of the largest aerospace collaborations ever between the two countries. "

Sources USAF Media Release 15th November 2006, Aviation Week, March 18 2007