"TR-3" = "TIER 3" = QUARTZ = Lockheed Martin RQ-3.In the case of the “TR-3 Manta” it is easy to speculate what happened. At the time, the military was starting a project known as “Tier-3” (there was also a “Tier-2,” which became the Global Hawk drone). Tier-3 was actually a follow-on project after the cancellation of a CIA airplane program to replace the SR-71 known as Quartz. Quartz was canceled in 1991 before any prototype was developed because it was obscenely expensive (for more, see Jeffrey Richelson’s book The Wizards of Langley, pp. 225-226). Tier-3 was then created to be a much smaller stealthy subsonic drone that could fly inside denied airspace and loiter over a target. That project also got scaled back to become the “Tier-3 Minus,” which ultimately produced some real hardware. Lockheed Martin and Boeing built an aircraft called the DarkStar, flew it once in early 1996, and then crashed it during its second flight. Tier-3 Minus was canceled in favor of less stealthy unmanned aerial vehicles like the Global Hawk and the Predator.
Obviously Scott heard part of this story. He misinterpreted “Tier-3” to be “TR-3,” which seemed credible because the U-2 spyplane had been reborn in the 1970s as the “TR-1” aircraft. But Scott took rumors of a stealthy reconnaissance development project and speculated wildly, arriving at the conclusion that stealthy spyplanes were already in operation, and had even been used over Iraq.