Project Butterfly

From Spearfish Lake Tales Wiki

Project Butterfly was a project at Lambdatron for US Navy. The name didn't mean anything, it was just randomly assigned by a computer in the Pentagon. The idea was to use a powerful and narrow radio beam to disable enemy aircraft or missiles.

After a couple of years with little success, the Navy canceled the project. As a result, both the Navy and Lambdatron ended up losing money with no results; but even more, the company was losing some reputation as a result of the failure.

In May 1999 Stan Warshawski assigned Tanisha Chladek and Jon Chladek to work on it, as a last ditch effort to salvage the effort and the firm's reputation.

The young couple figured out a way to make it work.^AT13

Since the Navy officially canceled the project by that point, and the new approach was radically different from Butterfly, the resulting design was named Monarch; and the first prototype was called Swallowtail (both names of butterflies). The new system was acquired by the US Air Force.^MC28