The test flights were conducted over the US Southwest. The project was highly secret, but on 4 August 1969 one of the prototypes failed and parachuted to ground inside the Los Alamos nuclear research complex during lunch hour. Unfortunately, it didn't land in a restricted area, and local newspeople were able to take and publish photographs of the aircraft. The Air Force released a statement that the aircraft was a "high altitude target", but though such a statement might have been believed in 1959, it wasn't in 1969.