Subject:  C.2.  Does the USAF have a hypersonic spyplane called 'Aurora'?

Maybe.  Here's the evidence.

In 1985, a censor's error let an item labelled "Aurora", with no further
explanation, appear in that year's Pentagon budget request, with a reference
to "production funding" for 1987.  It was located next to the operating
budgets for the SR-71 and U-2.  The Pentagon refused to comment on the item,
and it has never been mentioned since.

In 1986, the US government sealed off large areas of land around the top
secret Groom Lake base in Nevada.  Many new buildings have been built at Groom
Lake during the 1980s, and intense activity continues.  The government is
currently (mid 1994) in the process of taking over more large areas of land
around the base, in order to make it impossible to observe the base from
publicly accessible land.  The extensive security measures imply that some
very important and very secret activity is going on there. Officially, the
USAF won't even admit that the base exists.

In February 1988, the _New York Times_ reported that the USAF was working on a
stealthy reconnaissance aircraft capable of Mach 6.  The story was attributed
to "Pentagon sources".

In August 1989, Chris Gibson, an oil exploration engineer and former member of
the Royal Observer Corps, was working on an oil rig in the North Sea when he
saw an unusual formation of aircraft pass overhead.  It consisted of a KC-135
tanker, two F-111s, and a fourth aircraft of a type that Gibson (an expert on
aircraft recognition) had never seen before.  Seen from below, it appeared to
be a perfect triangle, slightly larger than the escorting F-111s, with a
leading edge sweep angle of about 75 degrees.  It was completely black, with
no visible details (unlike the F-111s), and appeared to be taking on fuel from
the KC-135.

In early 1990 the USAF retired its fleet of SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft; the
official reason given was that satellites could now perform all strategic
reconnaissance missions required by the Pentagon.  Many observers consider
this explanation to be suspicious, for several reasons.  First, satellites
exist in limited numbers and fixed, predictable orbits; surely there will
always be a requirement for high-speed reconnaissance missions at short
notice, which could only be performed by an aircraft like the SR-71.  Second,
the cost of running the SR-71 fleet was only about 7 per cent of what the
Pentagon spends on satellites; it would still be a good investment even if
only as an emergency backup.  Third, the USAF never raised the slightest
objection to the plan to replace manned aircraft with unmanned satellites,
which is highly unusual behaviour for an organisation composed almost entirely
of pilots.

At about the same time, _Aviation Week_ carried reports from witnesses who had
heard an incredibly loud aircraft taking off from Edwards Air Force Base in
California late at night.  Some of them referred to a pulsing sound with a
period of about one second.

On several occasions from June 1991 to June 1992, sonic booms were heard over
southern California.  They were not produced by any officially acknowledged
military flight (which are always careful to remain subsonic over urban
areas). The booms were powerful enough to show up on the seismographs operated
by the US Geological Service, and the times of arrival of the sound at various
points allowed fairly accurate calculation of the course and speed of the
aircraft responsible; the USGS had already demonstrated this by tracking
incoming space shuttles.  The aircraft were headed northeast, over Los Angeles
and the Mojave Desert, towards either the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada or
the nearby Groom Lake base.  The speeds involved ranged from Mach 3 to Mach
4.

In February 1992, _The Scotsman_ reported that an RAF air traffic controller,
in November 1991, had seen a radar blip emerge from the base at Machrihanish,
Scotland, and quickly accelerate to Mach 3.  When he called Machrihanish to
ask what had happened, he was told to forget it.

In May 1992, a photographer snapped some strange contrails over Amarillo,
Texas; the trails appeared to have been produced by a high-speed aircraft, and
resembled "doughnuts on a rope".  A few days later, similar trails were
reported over Machrihanish.

All this appears to add up to a hypersonic aircraft, with a cruising speed
around Mach 6, being operated by the USAF from Groom Lake, Nevada, Edwards
AFB, California, and Machrihanish, Scotland, since about 1988 (Machrihanish,
by the way, is due to be closed in 1995).  The aircraft described by Chris
Gibson matches several design studies of hypersonic aircraft in the 1970s and
80s, which came up with a triangular planform with a sweep angle of 75
degrees.  The engines appear to be rocket based combined cycle (RBCC) engines,
an advanced hybrid of turbojet, ramjet, and rocket.  Unclassified studies from
the US, Japan, and Russia have investigated RBCC engines for hypersonic
propulsion; such engines would be extremely loud on take-off, would produce a
pulsing sound with a frequency on the order of one second, would leave
contrails resembling "doughnuts on a rope", and should theoretically have a
maximum speed not far above Mach 6. The most likely fuel for an RBCC engine
would be methane; given the assumptions of methane-fuelled RBCC engines, Mach
6 cruising speed, and intercontinental range, the resulting aircraft would
indeed be about the size of an F-111.

Does this aircraft exist?  We don't know for certain, but the circumstantial
evidence is certainly persuasive.

Incidentally, the aircraft (if it exists) is almost certainly not called
Aurora. Even if the mystery item in the 1985 budget did refer to this project,
the name would probably have been changed after the security leak. But Aurora
is the only name anyone has, so we continue to use it as a convenient label.

Recently (mid 1994) there are moves afoot in the US Senate to reactivate three
SR-71 aircraft (possibly in connection with the Korean situation). It was
reported (from what sources is unclear) that the Blackbird successor programme
had collapsed "after consuming several hundred million dollars". This has been
interpreted by some to suggest that the "Aurora" was a failure.

Ben Rich, who replaced Kelly Johnson as the head of Lockheed's "Skunk Works"
and was responsible for the F-117) recently wrote a book (sorry, I don't have
the title or publisher) in which he stated that "Aurora" was the codename for
Lockheed's entry in the ATB contest, lost to Northrop's B-2 (see section
B.11). I'm told that the book is careful to make no mention of any SR-71
successor, either to support or refute the idea.

The best we can say at the moment is that the mystery remains open...

[Most of this information comes from Bill Sweetman's book _Aurora_]

Please E-Mail me at johansson@ctrl-c.liu.se