Painted Desert (Arizona) Painted Desert (Arizona) The Painted Desert is a United States desert of badlands in the Four Corners area running from near the east end of Grand Canyon National Park and southeast into Petrified Forest National Park. It is most easily accessed in the north portion of Petrified Forest National Park. The Painted Desert is known for its brilliant and varied colors, that not only include the more common red rock, but even shades of lavender. The Painted Desert was named by an expedition under Francisco Vázquez de Coronado on his 1540 quest to find the Seven Cities of Cibola, which
US signals intelligence in the Cold War Desert Shield Desert Storm. COMBAT APPLE aircraft began to gather SIGINT overland, over the Ho Chi Minh trail and Laos. They went without fighter cover, and in the threat envelope of antiaircraft guns and missiles. When the US detected the antiaircraft weapons, it quickly attacked them, and the North Vietnamese quit trying to shoot down the COMBAT APPLEs. Several other ELINT versions of the RC-135 flew out of Kadena for specialized ELINT collection, with some aircraft flying missions of 24 hours and more while still based at Offutt AFB, Nebraska, in the US. Flying from Kadena, the RC-135C model, called