DARKSTAR PROBE SUCCESSFUL IN SECOND TEST.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

The unmanned DarkStar spy plane completed a second successful test flight, bolstering its builders' claims the program is back on track and worthy of continued funding.

DarkStar took off from Edwards Air Force Base at 6:36 a.m. Sunday and made a 45-minute flight - fully automated from takeoff to landing - achieving its target altitude of 5,000 feet and completed all preplanned flight maneuvers, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works officials said Monday.

The flight gives supporters of the program some welcomed news as debate over funding continues. Negotiators from the House of Representatives and the Senate are ironing out differences between their two defense bills. The House included $40.5 million for DarkStar, while the Senate rejected funding the program.

The aircraft, the second DarkStar plane produced by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, made its first flight June 29, restarting a flight test program that had been on hold for more than two years.

The first DarkStar aircraft made a successful first flight March 19, 1996, but was destroyed on takeoff during its second flight April 22, 1996.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing have spent $30 million to improve the aircraft, including redesigning the flight control and landing gear systems.

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and its partners in the project, Boeing and Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, are building two more DarkStar aircraft under a $58.4 million contract with the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, the same organization that initiated the F-117 stealth fighter program in the 1970s.

In a letter to Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., chairman of the House National Security Committee, the makers of DarkStar asked for help in getting the program funded in the 1999 defense budget.

The letter was signed by Jack Gordon, president of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, and Jim Evatt, president of Boeing's Information and Communications Systems unit.

``Now, with success in our grasp, is not the time to pull out of this program,'' Gordon and Evatt wrote. ``Vehicles 3 and 4 are paid for and are well along in their fabrication. We respectfully recommend that they should be flown and allowed to demonstrate their worth. The FY (fiscal year) 1999 request provides the funds necessary to assure that would happen.''

Wide, flat and tailless, with a 69-foot wingspan and a blunt fuselage only 15 feet long and 5 feet in diameter, the 8,600-pound aircraft is powered by an engine similar to the one used in the Cessna Citation business jet.

Capable of altitudes above 45,000 feet, DarkStar is intended to be the ``eye in the sky'' for battlefield commanders, transmitting video and radar information to ground forces.

The stealthy, high-altitude aircraft is designed to be able to linger over a battlefield for more than eight.