Look at how long the F117 was being tested and flown before it was made public. We. Ay not know what’s really going on until something happens that makes telling US about it necessary, or telling US to intimidate our enemies.
Not sure if it's true or not, but when Kelly Johnson (SR-71 designer) died in 1990, people said he told them we would be blown away by the stuff we were working on, back in 1990.
@terrafirma5327 "Blown away", is this bombs and weapons, or enlightenment beyond our current imagination "stuff" is an unusual word for that level of professionalism . Its all too convenient.
Yea probably I mean they are definitely a lot further ahead then what’s common knowledge or even publicly known otherwise every country would know their capabilities and what to focus their efforts are
So, the one piece of evidence that I consider most telling is the KC-135Q tanker aircraft. They were dedicated to carrying JP-7 fuel for the SR-71. When they retired the SR-71, they did not retire the KC-135Q tankers. So, there was still something flying at that time which used JP-7. We don't know what it was, but that fuel is so hard to ignite and contains so much energy when it does ignite, that there's really only one use for it -- high supersonic or ultrasonic flight by aircraft like the SR-71. That's all I've got.
Q variant only had it's payload tanks seperated from it's own fuel supply, they weren't retired, they were fitted with newer engines as the 135T. Seperate tanks does not mean it was only ever carrying JP-7, just that when it did carry other forms of fuel, it would not be able to share that with it's own engines. The JP-7 was developed for the U-2, so the 135Q could also have been refueling those, which are still in service also.
@@PiDsPagePrototypesfair points. I don’t know anything about fuel beyond general knowledge, and definitely don’t know about specialized avionics for fuel delivery and stuff, but I imagine a different fuel requires a different system to safely store. Wouldn’t that mean something “certified” or whatever for JP7 be only able to run JP7 or would that be a sort of “all square are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares” sort of thing?
@@PiDsPagePrototypes U-2s don't have aerial refueling capability, and aside from a short test in the early 1960's, they never have had that capability. They simply don't need it. With a full fuel load, the aircraft can fly for 14 hours, which is the max you would ever want an aircrew trying to fly that jet.
@@D.Ambrose The pumping hardware and tanks are all the same, some of the lining materials can be different for different fuels. But in the case of these tankers, it's more a matter of not feeding the wrong fuel in to it's own engines, whereas if the tanker and the jet getting topped up use the same fuel, it can be pumped between tanks, giving the tanker more range, or letting it pass it's own fuel to the refueling system to fill more fighters on shorter tanker flights.
@@PiDsPagePrototypes Does the U-2 run JP-7? AFAIK (and according to German Wiki) - only the Pratt & Whitney J58 used in SR-71 ran on JP-7. Which makes sense to me as it was famous for leaking fuel like crazy whilst standing on the ground. Therefore, SR-71 wouldn't be possible to built without the invention of JP-7.
Met someone, ex naval int, 15 plus years ago and discussing SR71 I complained about us abounding the, still, fastest aircraft ever. His response, "trust me, "They wouldn't do it without already having something much better. " That always resonated with me.
My dad would say the same thing. He also apparently got to work around them in some capacity when he was in the marine corps. Said watching the radar techs trying to track the thing was hilarious
@@gr8crash Yeah, but there is one thing. UAV and Drones, especially for the intelligence gathering purpose still unable to fly deep into highly defended airspace of adversary countries such as China, Russia or NK without alerting everyone. While spy satellites take time to reach the desirable position. There is still a need a plane that can outrun and outreach any defensive AA systems out there, ready to deploy at moment notice, and can provide more detailed photograph from various angles and heights.
I knew a retired SR71 pilot in the 1990's (now deceased) and he would not give up any information about the Blackbird except what was already known. He did mention that the U.S. government was working on a replacement for decades while the Blackbird was still flying and they are always researching the "next aircraft" to replace the newest ones. eg: when the F22 first went into production, they were already drawing up it's replacement. They think of future generations of aircraft while they are still developing current ones. The 1 thing he did tell me was that ramjet and scramjet technologies are no secret and have been in development for a very long time as well as pulse detonation to conserve fuel once you reach the momentum of hypersonic flight at altitude. I assume he probably meant well over 100,000 feet where the atmosphere is much thinner. You are correct that a spy plane will always be in the U.S. inventory because they can be used in a pinch and being at a lower altitude than a satellite, their photos are a much higher resolution.
F22 replacement will be based on the research from the X36, testing for it was HIGHLY successful and exceeded all expectations and yet no direct production version was ever produced from it (that we know of)
Pulse detonation, the pumpkin seed aircraft that surfs on the shockwave. Donuts on a rope contrail. RIGHT NOW they're showing a university playing with pulse detonation. Terribly loud noise when running. Worse than a sonic boom by about 5 fold.
Ramjets have been round since 1940s. Scramjets have been the holy grail for decades. progress in making either practical an operational seem to be extremely slow going.
@@chunkblaster If you look at some of the NGAD designs, some of them seem to take inspiration from the X36 design. Most likely X36 research was ended because they already had the Raptor being tested.
Also, are we to assume the DoD hasn't even attempted to develop a spy plane since 1966? And they stopped using them entirely in 1998? I guess drones and satellites may make them unnecessary today, but there's a lot of time in between there.
No we're not to assume that. Lockheed Martin started work on the sr-72 about 14 years ago. It was public knowledge for quite a while . Then it went dark. I watched a Sandbox news video about the sr-72 a few weeks ago and it is definitely a real thing @@joeyhoser
State route 93 runs along the eastern edge of the Nevada Test Site. It is also the shortest route between Area 51 and Nellis AFB. A few years ago I was driving north on 93 when a southbound sheriff's car used a loudspeaker to tell the northbound cars to pull off and stop on the shoulder. A second sheriff's car followed shortly commanding us to stay parked on the shoulder. The next vehicle was a huge surprise! It was a large flatbed truck coming down the middle of the road with heavily tarped delta shaped object loaded on the trailer. Even with the tarp, the shape was unmistakable with a point at the front and vertical stabilizers at the rear. Oddly there was the outline of two large nozzles at the rear. I can only speculate where the "convoy" originated and where the destination was. If you live in this area long enough, you hear and see interesting things.
@@Harry._.Thompson Yeah, I can only speculate. I ASSUME it came out of the test range, but it could have been transported from somewhere much further north. To your point, they wouldn't cover a top-secret aircraft with a simple tarp. No idea exactly what it was other than delta shaped and two nozzles. Possibly a scale model of a future craft? That said, I always keep my eyes open when I'm up in that area. It's fun to see "interesting" things. 🙂
Two or three years ago my brother and I saw a kite shaped craft . This took place, of all places in Iowa. It was night, flying west to east. It made no sound and had no lights. It had no trails that I could see. I felt like it was a military craft but have not found anything in that specific shape.
In the late 1980s I was a USAF officer assisting the Saudi Air Force with the development and fielding of a state-of-the-art air defense system for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was called PEACE SHIELD. The lead contractor was Boeing, and Hughes was a primary subcontractor. The program was so massive and technologically advanced that we had quite a few contractors (beltway bandits) acting as advisors to support us. Most of them were former or retired Air Force radar operators and air combat controllers. As was the custom on our many trips to Seattle to visit the Boeing facility in Kent, I was sitting in a hotel bar one evening with five of these former scope dopes I had gotten to know rather well. As the drinks flowed, each one tried to top the last one's story of Soviet bomber intercepts, remote deployments, and so forth. Eventually the topic of Aurora came up. Each man had his opinion regarding whether or not it was real, but one guy in particular told a strange and convincing story. He was manning his air defense console and tracking the usual air traffic. Each aircraft was represented on his screen as short smear lines. The longer the line, the greater the relative speed of the plane. Suddenly a track appeared out of nowhere and it was far longer than any he had ever seen, including the vaunted SR-71. He immediately reported it and waited for confirmation and further instructions. When the reply came back, it was an order to ignore the track. He was told nothing more and never learned anything beyond what he said to us, but he believed it might have been the mysterious Aurora.
My father and I were in his backyard some 30+ years ago and we both witnessed a jet with a doughnut shaped exhaust fly horizon to horizon in under 3 minutes.
As a Navy guy, I can totally believe this story, especially with each person one upping each other 😂 It’s just something all service members do: gotta have them stories told. Plus, I think the point toward the end of the video here helps: sure there probably wasn’t a fleet, but to think there had to be one or two being tested.
Nothing would surprise me. I was a flight test engineer (turbine engines specialization) for 7 years and spent tons of time in Palmdale and Edwards (some time in Victorville as well) but as a civilian contractor for commercial aircraft (Seattle of course). I saw more specialized aircraft at Edwards in 1 day than most are likely to see over several of trying to see these things. I don’t know these plane types by sight but saw a stealth bomber with 4 engines towed by with 2 servicemen pushing carts to catch dripping fuel under each wing, there were 16 or so F16s parked nearby ready to deploy at any time, 3 F 22 taxied by, a F-35 taxied by and 3 B52s flew over us in a straight line one after another at low altitude (having just took off nearby) . All that in 1 day. Saw stuff at the Palmdale hangars that were bizarre but know nothing of them. Everyone in our flight test crews WANT to take a picture but only the stupid do as you’re finished if you do that .. there were some idiots on the crews like 1 guy was going to go camping on the weekend in the mountains and packed all his camping crap in his vehicle and tried to go to work that day at the Palmdale facility .. well he had a machete in his gear and security caught him .. myself and a coworker were headed in town to get some coffee after our plane had left and this guy was handcuffed sitting on a concrete barrier in the sun .. we came back a few hours later and he was still sitting on the concrete barrier hand cuffed in the sun … do stupid things, get stupid prizes like frying in the hot sun handcuffed and it was hot out there lol
I like to think that Aurora really existed (perhaps still exists, hidden away in an underground facility somewhere in the deserts of California or Nevada), and that Clarence "Kelly" Johnson played a part in its early stages of development. If there was anyone who could have made Aurora happen, it was Kelly Johnson, who led the teams that developed the P-80, U-2, F-104, and SR-71. It would have been the perfect final chapter in an illustrious career.
Johnson was also responsible for mentoring basically every senior engineer who came after him company wide. Skunk works is actually a daughter company of lockheed now because of him
I grew up and still live in the area of development. In the 70's or 80's? I studied this propulsion as a little kid with Pop science and mechanical engineering. I JUST WATCHED a con trail of perfect smoke rings, or doughnuts as the sun was lighting the upper atmosphere so high no sonic boom. totally different con trails and it goes away sooner.
Wow glad I found this vid. I've seen this aircraft, sort of. I'll explain. In the early 90s we were in croyd bay in Devon on holiday. We were on the beach taking pics of the sunset when my wife spotted a weird con trail. The con trail was donuts on a rope, it's the only way to describe it. The trail came from the horizon behind us and headed west over the horizon in literally 30 or 40 seconds. What made this stand out more though was that it was really high, so high we couldn't see the aircraft just the trail it left. Donuts on a rope. We both saw it.
In the 90s, I was working as a sparky in New Malden for BAE systems. On the 9th floor, it was divided into sections, Project Aurora Flight systems etc etc. Didn't really pay any attention until one day I was sitting in the Tearoom eating a bacon sarnie and reading the paper. When I came across an article saying 'BAE systems deny all knowledge of project Aurora'
Back in the 90's my then partner was a member of a UFO group in the UK and they knew about the Aurora project. I remember there being talk of a civilian employee at Warton who was tailed by an armed guard whenever he had to carry a briefcase with top secret paperwork. Another person some years earlier in the 1980s had mentioned how his brother had worked on revolutionary aircraft display systems- what we now refer to as Head Up Displays. In the pre Internet days without the ability to google these things and check stuff out it all seemed like science fiction fantasy stuff at the time. I personally observed with some others, including a former Royal Marine Commando, on a camping trip late one night in the North of England a very high altitude aerial vehicle carrying out what looked like impossible maneuvers for a conventional aircraft- 90 degree zig-zag turns at high speeds. It was either an experimental UK aircraft or something more exotic from another country or planet. First and only time to witness such a craft.
The fact that Lockheed was so excited about the SR-72 becoming technically feasible in the early 2000’s makes me think the SR-91 was either a technology demonstrator or something similar.
@@randominternetguyLockheed Martin can blow through 2.3 billions in a lunch break. Not a chance to BUILD a plane with such requirements on that budget.
Nobody believed me as a kid when I said this thing exists, I saw something about it online and went into a rabbit hole of the aurora and pulse detonation engines, and from that point forward as a young ten year old, I was hooked. Military aviation has absolutely fascinated me ever since. Thanks for the great vid!
I was an en route air traffic controller in the southwestern US from 1980 on. I worked the F-117 aircraft in early testing and later training missions for deployment in the Middle East. I worked SR-71s weekly. U-2 aircraft as well. Our radar equipment and associated automated beacon interpreters were capable of accurately determining the speed of beacon tracked aircraft under positive control. I can say the top speed of of SR-71 aircraft I worked was greater than any published speed today. On one shift I noticed an strange untracked primary radar signal (actual radar skin reflection vs. beacon interrogator system typically used by all aircraft including the military. It caught my eye on the radar scope as it had quickly transited the airspace I was controlling, at roughly 2-4x the speed of the SR-71. I thought it was probably an equipment anomaly but noted the course of the target would place it over northern Arizona just south of the Mojave military aircraft testing area the F-117s operated out of with the track projected to continue east near Albuquerque and on to Amarillo, Texas. On break shortly afterwards I was outside the facility when I noticed a strange west-east contrail that had puffy blobs at regular intervals. This was the expected “soap on a rope” contrail of a scramjet engine. I have no doubt what I saw on radar and later, the associated contrail, was a hypersonic test aircraft using scramjet propulsion. Either the aircraft was only a test bed and never fully developed for deployment, or it has been highly successful and remains classified. Probably the former. So many stories about working he F117 before it was declassified and the problems it created for air traffic control due to very unusually performance characteristics as well. And yes, in the USA, all aircraft operating above 18,000msl are under civilian air traffic control.
The research I've read indicates that hypersonic speeds greater the Mach 5 result in a plasma field which is generally really difficult to send or receive RF. Not to mention IRST pods, like AN/AAS-42 IRST would be absolutely useless at those speeds So considering a hypersonic aircraft faster then the SR-71 would be blind, be it in optical l, infrared and Radio frequencies it would seem that it's utility was pretty questionable. Especially when the price of a single aurora (seeing they were $1-2b a piece) would get you a KH-11 with a resolution of less then 20cm. The other problem is if what your saying is true ie a SR-71 was in itself hitting Mach 4 to 5, meaning an Aurora would need to be at least Mach 6-8, that there would be no way for the Russians or Chinese to distinguish an Aurora overflight as either a decapitation strike or reconnaissance flight. Meaning the possibility of nuclear retaliation So with the platform blind, requiring billions to create a way to punch through the plasma (which we still struggle with 30 years later) with there being no weapon that it could possible yield that could give it a benefit that conventional and strategic platforms were already capable of at far lower costs (ie TLAM, Trident, Minutemen III, ATACMs etc it seemed to be a pointless project. The final reason to have a manned hypersonic vehicle evaporated the moment the USSR collapsed negating the need for a SR-71 follow on. Like so many early 90s wonderwaffens, the Comanche, A-12, NASP, the SR-91 was cancelled when it was realised that Russia could barely string a division or two together let alone an entire army group. I mean look at them struggle in a conflict that is comparable to if Canada and Mexico merged and the US lost almost 400,000 men and 3/4 of their entire armed ground forces only to capture less then 10% of the part of Canada you'd want.
I’m sure it exists, I grew up near Edward’s Airforce Base and lived in neighborhoods with all kinds of people who worked at Skunkworks and it was kind of an open secret. We would hear the sonic booms all the time and joke “there goes the plane that doesn’t exist. Did you hear anything? I didn’t hear anything.”
Never mind that they kept crashing into the Sierra Nevadas just north of Edwards, too. “Pay no attention to the Explosion. It is just an Electrical Transformer Exploding in an uninhabited area, where the bears must be stealing Electricity. And in no way is it a secret Stealth Fighter!”
The issue isn’t whether it exists, but that it is powered by a Scramjet. These motors are not yet capable, and will not be for decades, of powering anything but smaller unmanned craft launched by enormous rockets to get them to the Velocity a Scramjet begins operating. Like its ancestor the Ramjet, neither are capable of even being “turned on” to produce thrust until moving at speeds near or beyond sonic/supersonic. The Scramjet cannot even operate until Hypersonic Speeds, because the engine has no “Ignitors,” and even IF it uses Fuel (MOST HAVE NOT, they are built so the Supersonic Compression ignites the air moving through them, itself), it cannot get it to burn until Mach 5+. Not much faster than Mach 5.5 the Fuel is superfluous, which is why they went with the Air-burning Diesel Scramjet concepts. Why carry a huge amount of fuel you don’t need to produce effectively the same thrust. Throttling a Scramjet is thus done by changing the configuration of the combustion chamber, which is why ONLY ONE example of a Scramjet has been cylindrical, and the rest have a Rectangular, flat cross-section and intake/exhaust. This is easier to control the supersonic compression moving through the Scramjet (which is what [S]upersonic [C]impression [Ramjet] means - Ramjets slow the airflow to subsonic speeds, producing the compression that is required to produce the fuel-air burn in a RAM-jet that produces thrust far in excess of a Turbojet/fan). BUT… Ramjets are fuel-hogs. The SR-71 used a PARTIAL Ramjet in its engines with the bypass compression. And it was incapable of even taking off with a full fuel load, which was nearly completely exhausted in the process (of taking off). It required refueling to get to its operations area, where it would be refueled AGAIN before executing its mission penetrating others airspace. Where another tanker refueled it on the other end, and usually again before landing. But even to move from one field to another within the USA required refueling after takeoff. While SCRAM-jets don’t have that problem, they have another problem. The SR-71 is BARELY fast enough to get a Scramjet to ignite (remember… no ignitors/burners/etc in a Scramjet. The speed of the air and sudden compression produces the heat needed to ignite the air moving through them. This… they require something like the Pegasus Rocket to accelerate a TEST VEHICLE the size of a car engine to the required speed. It would take something on the order of a Delta V, with Strap-on Boosters to get something the size of a Predator or Reaper Drone powered by a Scramjet to the ignition velocity. And you would need something like the Shuttle Boosters or a Saturn V booster to get something the size of an SR-71 to speed. ALSO…. The “Soap-on-a-Rope” contrail IS NOT PRODUCED by a Scramjet. It is produced by the Pulse-Detonation Engine (a kind of linear-aerospike make out of the entire aircraft). The Scramjet produces a contrail no different than any other jet that burns continuously… no “Soap-on-a-Rope” pattern.
I'm a recently retired A.E./C.E. with a large American defense contractor. I was hired in '83 at a Georgia Tech job fair. I worked on a number of black programs during my time with the company, including at sites like Orlando, Burbank, Groom Lake, Sunnyvale and Ft. Worth. I still remember the day when, I believe it was Revell, came out with the SR-91 Aurora model airplane in the late 80's/early 90's...we were all very impressed with the design...it gave us a good chuckle. That is all.
@@johnsmith6503 The day of my retirement we had a little ceremony in the office and afterwards my boss said to me: I know the guys are taking you out to lunch and you'll be drinking, just make sure you make it back as I've got about a two foot stack of classified NDA's you have to sign before you turn your badge in and walk out. I take them very seriously and on the occasion I share a personal anecdote, I am always aware not to cross any lines.
I absolutely saw the phenomenon one night while taking a walk on a friend’s ranch near Gorman California. The skies there were free from light pollution and we were already at 5k feet elevation. It was common to take nightly walks and this night I was alone. I was walking North and on my left I noticed a quickly growing trail with what looked like puff balls preceded by a flashing pulse of orange-ish light. It was moving from S to N and I reckon it was very high and must have been flying over the Pacific. Directly West of my location was Ventura, and to the East was the Mojave Desert where Edward’s AFB and the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale. I told my friend when I got back to the ranch house but no one believed me and by that time there was no evidence. I was in HS and still fairly young. Was probably 1994/95. I know what I saw and even though to this day no one believes me, I am convinced it was an experimental aircraft and I’ve never seen anything like it since. Honestly, it was pretty freaking awesome.
Probably just a rocket launch from Vandenberg, judging from your location and the time of day. I live near Kennedy in Florida and observe the same thing here.
@@ChatGPT1111 Rockets don't make light pulses. They make a steady light because their rocket is continuously burning. Many believe the mythic test aircraft used an external pulse detonation engine to travel at those speeds, since at the time, Scramjets were not working yet.
I was driving from Sacramento to Las Vegas in 2008 around Mina, Nevada on US95 about midday. Looking to the east I saw a plane transitioning from north to south making those donuts on a rope contrails and going faster than anything I've ever witnessed. It appeared and was beyond the horizon before I could even step on the brake and begin to slow down to pull over.
Wow. As someone who has studied everything I could get my hands on about the Aurora project, I'd like to say you nailed it. GREAT JOB! One thing I could add was the reports from LAX of aircraft traveling east at incredible speeds into the desert. The military did not inform or confirm which it routinely does for air safety.
In the late 80s/early 90s techno-thriller author Tom Clancy would participate in public roundtable chats on GEnie (an early online service). In one of those chats, a user asked Tom about the cancellation of the SR-71 program. Tom recounted that his sources in the military had told him about “Aurora”, that it operated out of Groom Lake, and that it was Mach 4.5+ capable. Source is me. I asked him the question. Having Tom Clancy answer my question with such a cool answer is of my childhood geek out best memories. I wish there was an archive of the GEnie roundtables.
Hanna-Barbera talked about Flying cars in the 60's The Jetsons, I would still want an engineer's expertise on that topic though. Not a novel-writer. I blame your childhood for maintaining that dream. Don't take it too harsh, i fell for many-a statement, in my youth too.
That’s awesome, you’re very fortunate to have talked with Tom. He had an enormous amount of inside information, god knows how he got it or how he was allowed to let it out.
@@Rohan3CAV Regarding 'letting it out', ideally you want the potential of your capabilities to be known to the enemy, as expressed in Dr. Strangelove, "What's the point of having a Doomsday Device if you didn't tell the world, eh!?". You don't want anyone to know the exact capabilities of your bleeding edge - because then they can potentially counter it - but you Do want their best analysts to be able to speculate that Something must exist in that ballpark: because then the rumour itself is an effective deterrent. For this purpose, I've always believed the Pentagon has relied on pseudo-military sci-fi and hollywood assets like Tom Clancy to imply the bleeding edge of their capabilities. As example, Top Gun 2 (Maverick) was practically an admission that Darkstar is real, especcially accompanied with Lockheed's press conference that refused to deny that it exists, while winking at the camera the whole time. Is it Mach 5, or Mach 10? Who knows. Is it stealth? Air refeulable? Suborbital? A drone shepherd? Nobody knows - but Something exists. And if our enemies are planning to start some shit, the insinuation may be enough to give them pause.
I remember a story from a cadet from AFA who spent a summer turn at Edwards AFB. He was assisting a pilot in plotting a mission and the instructor seemingly took them through a restricted airspace. The cadet politely reminded that they were going through a restricted test range. The pilot looked at the cadet and said, "that airspace starts at 60,000 feet, and what lives up there goes very fast and very high and makes the SR-71 look like a biplane." This was in the early 90s and was likely a tall tale, but it was a fun story regardless.
Yes, my Dad and I read Ben Rich's Book when it first came out. His entire attitude when discussing the existence of the 'Aurora', was a kind of 'Winking Mockery'. He spent a lot of time talking about how good the SR-71 was and how, even 30 years later, he all but said it was just so good it couldn't be beat. This also from the Man who said that much of their technology came from UnFunded Opportunities, and how he also claimed that they, 'can now take E.T. home and it won't take a lifetime to get there.'
According to a senior Air Force officer, AURORA is not a plane. Aurora is a PROGRAM and a series of craft. In the early 2000's on Sunday mornings I would see contrails looking like a knotted rope, presumably originating from Edwards or Vandenberg AFB
That is probably it, we have a series of "technology demonstrator" aircraft that have been declassified lately. Some stealth, some near space, some hypersonic.......now combine all that into one plane and add the laser systems they've been developing. And you've got a near low orbit fighter that can get anywhere in the world fast. Could be useful to take out satellites without making a mess and nuclear weapons. Imagine a plane that could fly almost into space, hit a satellite with a laser so it's useless for its purpose but still controllable, and then come down to do whatever else you needed
Contrails are scant evidence but one time travelling in the SW US I saw something hard to explain. One moment I looked up and the sky was clear. The next there was a spot with light clouds spreading out from a central point and a weird contrail exiting the cloud and zipping to the horizon. Way too fast for a normal plane.
Back around 1990 there was talk about 'external combustion' aircraft that would use the supersonic shock cone to contain a fuel explosion behind the aircraft for propulsion. At P&W we worked on lots of 'Black' programs out in the General Shop as small bits and pieces normally wouldn't arouse any suspicions as to where they went or what they did....the only clue was that the work order # always began with an 'X'. I had a bank of small rocket nozzle looking things that needed some work and had just heard about the 'external combustion' theory and mentioned this to the engineer overseeing this piece...and me saying those words made the color drain quickly from his face and I ended up needing to go talk to Security about it. Was basically told to shut up, don't think and quit trying to figure out things....or else. OK!!! I'm dense but got the message. The 'external combustion' deal might very well be what caused the 'donuts on a rope' exhaust trail. And this is just the kind of experimental stuff that they do ALL the time...the 'what would happen if' guys that build and test and even when/if it doesn't turn out to be a feasible concept they get lots of data from it that will be useful elsewhere. We were working on SCRAM engines back in the 1990 time frame too among other neat things. Someday we might find out what was going on once the information is no longer relevant to contemporary machines.
Back in the early 90s, I had a friend who worked at Edwards AFB as well as “that area that shall not be named”. His job involved a certain aspect of flight testing vital for all long range aircraft. While he could share certain non-classified interesting stories about his work, otherwise he was always very tight-lipped. The “Aurora” rumor was quite active at the time and there had been reports of “interesting sightings” around the Antelope Valley, which no one could explain. One day I asked my friend about the rumored Aurora program and those “interesting sightings” - was there any connection? His response was “Well, if one day you just happen to see a flying object moving amazingly fast while changing directions in ways that you think that an airframe cannot, then remember what you just asked me.”
One of my professors in engineering school claimed to have worked on Aurora, and he certainly had the resume complete with an NDA gap. According to him, "Aurora" was a technology demonstrator and testbed for a number of new technologies that were expected to be used in 4th and 5th generation fighters, high altitude hypersonic bombers, and spy planes. And it proved to be a failure. My professor said that they only built and flew 2 Auroras with a partially constructed 3rd prototype sitting in a storage hangar at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio last time he checked in the early 90s. The planes were mostly off-the-shelf parts taken from other high speed high altitude aircraft, including the A-12 and SR-71. The only interesting components were a camera designed for hypersonic recon (which ultimately didn't work) and J-58 engines modified with an additional mode after the ram jet. In this third stage the j-58 engines served as the compressor and fuel mixer for an early pulse detonation engine, which produced the iconic contrails. The pulse detonation stage burned a mix of JP-1 and isoborane ("zip fuel") leftover from the "Boron Boom" and B-71 era of the 1950s. The USAF bought a few hundred thousand gallons of several isoboron fuel mixes before it was discovered that stuff can't be used safely in a turbine engine, so the development contract stipulated that Aurora and a few other black projects used it. If it was successful there were plans to restart isoborane fuel programs in the late 80s. According to my professor the Aurora quickly proved to be an impressive disappointment as while the cobbled together aircraft and the exotic new engines performed incredibly well, it proved that both hypersonic reconnaissance and bombing were impractical to impossible. The behavior of atmospheric gases around a hypersonic aircraft proved to be chaotic, and the technology to compensate for it is still decades away. Hypersonic reconnaissance with photos or electronic equipment didn't work because of the ionization of air around the aircraft. Air becomes superheated, glowing first red than blue, which also releases a storm of high energy electrons around the aircraft. The electrons in term release radio waves as they drop down to a ground state around normal atoms. Those radio waves blind electronic surveillance equipment and gave the Aurora a massive radar signature that "a blind operator could see in the dark". Essentially the same thing that happens when spacecraft reenter the atmosphere ("Blackout"). The camera couldn't see through the glowing gases or compensate for the ground speed. Hypersonic bombing proved to be a failure because of the turbulence experienced by a bomb decelerating from hypersonic velocities. A nuke could be dropped hundreds of miles away from the target with all the momentum to hit, but would do so with less accuracy than WW2 era strategic bombing. ICBMs proved more effective. My professor said that the Auroras did achieve the highest velocities of any manned jet plane ever, but they never actually conducted record setting flights. You have to meet certain mission requirements to set an official speed record (closed course, both directions, multiple agencies corrobating the event), and the secrecy of the program required they avoid attracting attention. The fate of the two Auroras was grim, unfortunately. They both exploded due to problems with the isoborane fuel. The first aircraft exploded over the Pacific Ocean somewhere between Hawaii and California during a "high speed research flight" (just flying the expensive things because they had the money and aircraft just sitting there) in 1989. They never found the wreckage. The second prototype exploded just after takeoff due to a likely fuel leak in 1990. The pilot, who was killed in the explosion along with the copilot/flight engineer, was the son of a "wealthy and well connected United State congressman" (my professor didn't actually know who, and regarded the pilot as what we now call a "nepo-baby"). The destruction of the second prototype also happened while a number of ranking military brass were present at the airfield to witness see the Aurora. After the second disaster the program was canceled. Test flights using smaller versions of the engines on unmanned drones were planned to continue in the mid to late 90s, but my professor left "the company" (presumably Lockheed-Martin) in 1992 and lost his security clearance accordingly. My professor regarded the Aurora project as a waste of time and money, and said he would have preferred to have worked on the F-22.
Indeed interesting post, thanks for sharing! I would left a few questions to it if you don't mind: Were both of the Aurora prototypes the same design or wwre the different in terms of planforms and appearance/design? Were both of them fully manned birds with no autonomous option? I guess so, but it is always better to ask. What was the speed? I consider Mach 5 as a good guess as technology was there to develop it at the time. Were both of them operating out of Groom Lake or some other Nevada fields? Very interesting subject indeed!
This is the most believable post about the subject. The contrails/exhaust shown are pretty obviously produced by some kind of pulsed engine, not a typical ramjet. The sounds described in the reported sightings confirm this. Everything you said about the difficulties of hypersonic reconnaissance and bombing is true, along with the stealth and communications problems. Whatever it was, it was too ahead of its time to be viable in the 90's.
This sound entirely convincing, but just because your professor no long worked for "the company" and no longer had security clearance wouldn't give him carte blanche to talk openly about such a highly classified project. Also if he shared all of this with you then he presumably shared it with other people but it's never come to light before....
This is probably correct. Our company supplied certain types of guidance equipment to a project of this type. We supplied only "handful" of products, so this never went beyond a test platform, but it did go very very high, essentially a vacuum. One rumor was that one of the platforms was "destroyed" due to it having been backed into a power pole, during a night launch, causing major fire damage to parts of the airframe.
My dad was in fuels for the Air Force 1970-1997. He was picked up by the DOD for about another 17 years and became fuels branch manager at NAS Corpus Christi. About 4-5 years ago we were at my parents house for the holidays and I was telling my brother how I saw a contrail that looked like donuts on a rope and my dad pops into the conversation to say “they don’t fly of Texas.” Got an Oh shit look on his face. He legitimately got a job offer for groom lake but choice German instead in the mid 70s.
in 2015-2017 I lived in Aberdeen ,Wa ,,, every tuesday at noon or so I heard the SR-91 take off as it was dropped from WIDBEY ISLAND NAVAL STATION ,,, I was in the military on an airforce base(1969/1971) and have heard every thing we had at that time ,, hearing the SR-91 ignite and take off is quite an experience ,,, you feel it as well as hear it ,,, that power is unmistakable and truly an awesome experience ,,, to hear it and feel it is not like anything else you have ever heard or felt ,,, except maybe a saturn 5 ,,,
If I remember correctly, the USAF retired the SR-71 (rather abruptly) right around the time the Aurora was supposed to have been developed. Then, a few years later, they put it back into service. Connecting those dots suggests that the Aurora was developed and flew but either proved an ultimate design failure or was too expensive, as Simon stated, to build an entire fleet of them.
The mid 90s saw a defense spending drawdown in the US. I suspect why no one ever saw or heard of this project since then is it got the budget axe in a time of competing priorities in the Pentagon. They had just won the cold war, and digital satellite reconnaisance was a thing - who was going to fight for Aurora? The Air force had to fight for the F22, and the CIA didnt have enough leverage with the then-friendly relations with Russia. Who needed a spy plane when they were broke, let you into the country, and you had satellites anyways?
The SR71 was “cancelled” but returned briefly to undertake scheduled SALT style disarmament Treaty confirmation overflights of the USSR. I used to watch it depart, regular as clockwork, from Mildenhall on Thursday afternoons! 😂
My theory is that "the Aurora Project" was a program that had several craft come out of it, the TR-3B being the most advanced. Tangentially related: my freshman science teacher ('92) told us to keep our ears out for something called the Aurora Project in about 20 years (from then). That's all he said about it.
I believe the TR-3B is real and people still claim to see them to this day. Some going as far to say it has some sort of “propulsion system” that illuminates the center of the underbelly. Who knows, but the technology has advanced much further than we realize.
@@ThatSoonerGuy The strange thing is that i read many comments of people saying they've seen the tr3b fly close to ground level. But there isn't a single authentic photo of the aircraft despite it flying so low to the ground?? I still do believe this aircraft exists though..
@@DavidKnowles0 if its a test aircraft it could potentially be using an F117 as a base, and perhaps changed out the bomb bay for the engine that takes the undercarriage with the glow. F117 seems to be a popular guinea pig plane lately, also seen with a new experimental paint recently
I used to be a Postman between 95-02 in the North West of England. One morning at approximately 06:45 I was approaching the start of my round which looked out to the West and saw a streak travelling Northwards. This streak took literally seconds to cover the visual horizon and at the time I assumed was travelling behind streaky clouds as it kind of pulsed. My initial thought was meteor, but there was no descent in its flighpath, but nor was there any sound that I can recall all these years later. Having read some of the other comments here and theorising about its direction of travel (at first I thought Bae Systems in Warton, Lancashire) it could easily have been heading to RAF Machrihanish.. Maybe, just maybe what I saw was the Aurora? I spent 15 years photographing Military Aircraft at Warton and various airshows and deployments around the UK so I'm fairly well versed in what is currently around (or was during this time frame) within the military establishment. It isn't something I've thought of much since witnessing it, but this video has certainly got me wondering what I saw that day..
I remember the article they had in Popular Mechanics about this, for a time I was utterly fascinated by this alleged hypersonic SR-71 replacement and it's distinctive "Donut on a rope" contrails.
Given Skunk Works' nature, it's more likely to have existed than not, at least as a prototype. Tech from it was probably adopted into other newer planes, if so.
About 10 years ago before I quit smoking I was outside puffing down a cigarette when I saw a passenger plane fly over. It left a normal contrail and in a minute or so the wind blew its contrail into the perfect, prototypical "donuts on a rope" contrail. I wish I had taken a picture of it and far be it for someone to believe a random stranger on the internet but I can 100% promise that those contrails can be made by normal passenger jet aircraft.
@@cactuspete1973 Was way back in the '90s, wanna say 1998 or so. There was one with a whole slew of odd rumored black project aircraft, including a fucking dirigible. Sticks out in my memory 'cos my mother remembers actually seeing it. I was autismally chattering about the article the one day and after she voiced recognition, I of course had to find the issue again to show her.
I think it was Ben Rich that I met at the mall in Torrance, California. The man I spoke at length with was in charge of the F117 project. He talked a lot about how they kept the F117 secret for so long, and the failure modes of the wings. Having talked with him, I have a feeling that keeping an Aurora project secret was well within their means. As an aeronautical engineering student it was like meeting Einstein!
In 1996, i was working nights in Mississippi at the time. I was walking back out to get some tank gauges at about 0300 (3 am) and I glanced up and saw a plane approaching from my left. I watched as it got closer and I saw that it wasn't 1 plane but 4 planes. As it got closer still I saw that they weren't planes at all. There were 4 triangle shaped objects flying in a 1,2,1 formation. They weren't lit on the 3 point's of the triangle rather they glowed an amber color as if lit from the inside. It's how I was able to see them in such detail. They weren't perfect triangles as the sides were slightly longer than the rear section was across and the rear section was slightly concave. They were traveling at about the same speed and at same altitude as a twin engine plane but they were completely silent. When they were directly overhead they did something i can only describe as impossible. They did a tumbling, rolling, flipping, over, under and around each other then instantly froze into the original formation and continued on. No known aircraft could do such a maneuver within earths gravity without ripping the airframe apart let alone anyone inside surviving. If there was anyone inside. It was as if gravity had no affect on them. I did 6 years in the US Navy as a cryptologist and I never heard a rumor of anything like this existing. That was the first time i saw them and I haven't seen them since. Decades ago, Paul Helyer, former defense minister of Canada, saud the US military has weapons to fight an extraterrestrial invasion and has discovered a new form of energy. I have no idea if these were the weapons. Whatever they are, I hope theyre friendly because seeing what these things did, we couldn't touch them with a missile. But, one thing is certain--we are either FAR more advanced than we're being told or ET really does exist--or maybe both.
The F-15 has an advertised ceiling of 65,000 feet. I was in an F-15 squadron based at Nellis AFB back in the early eighties that occasionally tried to do intercepts of SR-71's. "Tried" being the key word here. As the flighline dispatcher for a year or so it was my job to pick pilots up after missions and transport them back to ops. I got to be in on some interesting conversations. Several of these involved SR-71 intercepts. A couple of things that have always stayed with me was that the Blackbird was MUCH faster than advertised and that our aircraft were conducting these missions at 80,000 feet. So, it's untrue to say that only the U2 could fly at those altitudes.
The English Electric Lightning interceptor could also fly above 80,000 and was used to intercept U2 planes spying on the UK at a certain time - which apparently shook up the U2 pilots. It was also the only interceptor that was able to catch and overtake Concorde in level flight - there were concerns that a skyjacked Concorde might be used by terrorists
"Large number of aircraft..." That, i think, is the key phrase. Even the Blackbird never numbered much more than a couple dozen. I remember some of the rumors that were going around when i was in the Air Force and I am reasonably certain that Aurora is very real. Satellites might be more efficient in a lot of ways, but it can take several days to maneuver a Keyhole to look at a given spot. The Blackbirds and Arcangels were the only way to fill in immediate gaps and I can't believe they would put Habu out to pasture without something better to replace it.
You failed to mention: the SR71 was officially announced to exist at the same time as it's retirement being announced. The whole program stayed secret for almost 30 years.
Sorry but NO. I sat in the cockpit (albeit with lots or missing gear and no ejection sat) on a recruiting trip into Beale AFB in 1978. In 1981 the Japanese stood in droves outside the perimeter fence at the end of the runway at Kadena AFB Okinawa with massive telephoto lens’. So no, it was NOT secrete until after retirement.
@@sigfried45 yep. And in the early 80’s in Okinawa the locals would be lined up at the end of the runway with massive zoom lenses taking pics as the SR-71 (known as the Habu) took off and landed. We knew some of those people were intelligence officers for foreign countries but they let them all take the pics as the only interest that the pics could provide was what time the bird took off or landed. The Habu would break ground, accelerate for a short time and then pull up and head for the nearest cloud as the gear continues to retract and it accelerated. Sometimes almost vertical. It’s existence was well known. Hell I sat in one on a high school recruiting trip (with massive holes where black boxes had been removed and a Jerry rigged “seat” as the ejection seat was removed. I graduated high school in 1979 and the public was well aware of it.
It probably did not work out after testing until the current mystery of the SR-72. The single engine technical demonstrator was seen near Palmdale around 2017. Then in Jan 2018, Lockheed announced that modern 3D printing technology allow them to build an engine that will allow an aircraft to fly 2-3 times faster than the SR71. Then all reference to the SR72 was removed from Lockheed's official webpage in Mar 2018 which include the phrase "Global Strike" .
DARPA has been bank rolling hypersonic test engines for 15 or 20 years now. I have worked on a few iterations. The additive manufacturing components have become unbelievable in their size, detail, and complexity. The printing technology is the big change that's going to make these engines feasible. The combustion is driven by the old school TEA/TEB injection just like the SR-71. They also use other non-organic compounds to keep the party going.
It exists, my father worked on the radar system for the plane. He was a senior electronic engineer for Raytheon in Goleta CA in the electronic warfare division. They were never told exactly what the plane was, just that it was a hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft that was to utilize pulse jets and that the program name was project Aurora. They were given a physical mock up of the cockpit/nose cone of the plane so they could fit the system. He told me about the project after he retired before his untimely death. He worked on many top secret classfied projects and was a senior engineer on the development of the SLQ-32 missile defense system that protected our aircraft carriers. He was a true American hero and i miss him dearly.
@CakePrincessCelestia there's no USAF aircraft listed with thst designation. The "SR" designation also ended when SAC was dissolved. Also IF this aircraft were operational since the SR71 retirement? Where is it? How has it never been seen in decades? Common sense tells you that's impossible based on the logistics alone not to mention there wouldn't even be a need to keep it secret, especially that long.
@@gr8crash Why should it even be listed with a designation if it's so secret. I just have the theory that it does (or did) exist, but the program ultimately ended the same way the SR-71 ended. Was too expensive to run a recon aircraft of that capabilities program when you have satellites all around the globe.
@CakePrincessCelestia why should it be? Because that's how it works in the military. Especially once an aircraft becomes operational its given a designation identifying what type of aircraft it is. What ended the SR71 wasn't costs, or satellites it was purely politics. Satellites even today, are less capable than reconnaissance aircraft. Also forgot to mention that even if it was built it would have been a reconnaissance aircraft and wouldn't have carried a radar system.
No, they gave us the F-22, and F-35 The latter is still in development,(sorry, meant to say "adding capabilities") technically. And the F-22 will reenter development, To become "MegaRaptor II", with better avionics, radar, stealth, and more room for payload/Drone remote control.
DARKSTAR (or Dork-star as we like to call it) is the FTU E3 squadron callsign for the controllers in the back. E3s are based out of Tinker in OKC and a training sortie last several hours all over that area. Fighters were at Cannon in that timeframe and likely worked with the E3s frequently. Also, when I was flying Vipers, we used the DARKSTAR callsign when flying as Red Air to replicate GCI.
@@suspiciousstew1169 It’s not what he’s doing to him; it’s what he’s not telling you and anyone else. That he never actually observed anything whatsoever.
Two planes going through Mach create 2 sonic booms. 4 planes going through Mach create 4 sonic booms. But a plane going through Mach 2 doesn't create another boom. Go figure.
I read another testimony claiming that you can feel the Aurora's engine rumble in your chest. Did you feel it, and was it much louder than any publicly known military aircraft today?
In 1985 I was working at Lockheed on the D5 SLBM project. We had a monthly corporate magazine. I had also been at Beale AFB one time. One issue of the magazine had a cover depiction of what was called the Aurora. The plane was said to be the successor to the SR-71. It had a stretched triangular shape, although an angular shape, similar to the F117.
I highly doubt a classified "black" project plane would literally be on the _cover_ of a company-wide magazine, *and* that it would so plainly and openly link itself to the SR-71like that. Besides, if it was sent to the whole company then there would be hundreds or thousands of copies that I presume employees could have taken home, or even just cut the cover off of, and yet somehow none of those copies (or even photos of them) made it onto the internet, despite the fact that employees would have undoubtedly known how desperate people were for any info verifying the plane's existence and purpose.
My uncle used to work for Lockheed doing graphic design and print layout for that magazine! But he never told me any information about Aurora because he wasn’t privy to anything. It could have been a concept drawing for a cancelled proposal?
I recall hearing about the Aurora when I was working as a USAF mechanic on SR-71s in 1969. So the word gets around, secrets or not. I also recall that a few pilots came back terrified. Of what I don't know. Maybe just scuttlebutt. But the Aurora wasn't.
also RAF Mildenhall never left UK MOD ownership. we just leased it from you for special recon plane parking purposes. its where we stashed the blackbirds that did USSR overflights.
mildenhall is currenty the primary US tanker, transport and heavy recon base in the uk. KC-135's come in and out of there all day. RN if you wanna see the super cool stuff hang out at the fence of RAF fairford.
Yes,I worked as a contractor (civils and building,nothing exciting)at menworth hill and,as I understand it there’s legal reasons to do with security and being able to prosecute intruders(problems in court with protesters)that means the MOD have to own the base and lease it to the US.Its just a case of being practical to jump through a couple of hoops and all parties just pretending its not the US calling the shots with everything important that happens.
When I was a child in Okinawa in the early 1970's we clung the the chain link fence outside of the Kadena AFB runway and watched SR 71's land. We also watched B52's land with holes as large as cars through their fuselages landing.
Exchange between me and my brother (who worked for General Dynamics for 25+ years): Me: "What's that? (pointing to tiny model of SR-91 on his desk)" Him: "It's a plane. SR-91, Aurora". Me: "Oh cool." Eyes narrow. "Is that a real plane?" Him: "Yes." Me: "Have you seen it before?" Him: "Yes". Me: "Where did you see it?" Him: "I can't tell you."
I was camping on BLM land at Simpson Springs, UT- directly in-line, above, and about 14 miles from (11,000') runway 12 at Dugway Proving Grounds around 2008. Sitting around the campfire about 2 hours after sunset I heard an aircraft approach from the SE, nearly overhead, making a "waa-waa-waa" sound. The nav lights were turned off. The runway lights came on, and from the sound of the aircraft it landed, likely back-taxied and took off again. As it accelerated down the runway the unique sound of the aircraft grew in pitch and frequency "WAA-WAA-WA-WA-WA..." until it faded over the salt flats to the NE. Unforgettable.
I saw over Cornwall long ago ( late 90's - 2000 or around that ) a very high very fast contrail that had puffs just like that, small, but clear. Didn't hear any sound with it. I was used to seeing Concorde leaving the area with a soft boom as it went supersonic over the Atlantic and this was very different, much more like seeing the ISS go over in speed terms and for as long so not a meteorite. Funny enough as a follow up to the Blackbird was rumored at the time I wasn't really surprised or confused as to what I was seeing, more like, "hur, so that's one."
The Aurora absolutely did exist. As an airborne security surveillance pilot under contract for the USAF many years ago, we eyeballed it one night on the ground from the air whilst on a security detail for the government and watched it briefly after it took-off. The back-seater took screendump photos of it through the FLIR system. There’s more to this story than I will ever publicly write about, but I can assure you, exist it certainly did. I’m just amazed it has never been made public knowledge even now, all these years later.
If it hasn't been made public it's because there's info that may be dangerous if it ever falls on the wrong hands. What info? We may never know. Whose hands? It could be a superpower, or even a small cell of bad actors. There's plenty of information about how to fabricate nukes online, because not everybody has an uranium enrichment facility just lying around, or a rocket testing facility... Also nukes don't work for deterrence if they are kept a secret... But with the Aurora? The information is just too advantageous or too dangerous to even publicly disclose its existence... Or it may not even be real... I mean, anything's possible! It could be a smoke screen just like alien spaceships were back in the day...
The first time I heard of this aircraft was during a 1993 publication of How to Make War by James F Dunnigan. I believe that 12 Aurora aircraft were listed if I am not mistaken. They are unlisted in the 2003 version I recently ordered.
I remember when I found out about “Aurora” in the early ‘00s and I’ve always been intrigued by it, and I believe that it’s possible that it was a real aircraft but highly unlikely because we would’ve heard something by now. Or Simon is right and there was only like 3 which makes secrecy easier, also it being a test bed for other aircraft would make sense. Real or not the idea is awesome.
The US military would have been remiss if it hadn't been working on something like this. The thing is, hypersonic engines are still a work in progress, so I doubt that if a prototype was built (which is likely) it was anything more than test airframe with nothing like the hypersonic capabilities of the intended article.
From the underside, an F-117 looks similar to what was drawn. And it was observed that F-117s operated out of Machrahanish. But that doesn't explain the recordings taken from seismic recorders up the west coast of the UK which tracked a disturbance travelling at around mach 5.
Having grown up near Mildenhall / Bentwaters I saw triangular aircraft like that more than once. But as a kid looking at the underside of a classified aircraft, I couldn’t have said for sure if it was Aurora rather than an F-117A or anything else.
Remember the Brit who posted pics of Air Force One flying overhead when The White House hadn’t announced an overseas trip - then-President Trump on his way to visit troops in Iraq?
When I was stationed at Edwards, there was a radio report about the USGS getting repeated reports of earthquakes in California. They were checking their equipment, and found nothing. One tech found the sheer number of the false reports intriguing, and decided to plot the report calls on a map. The calls ran in a straight line from Area 51, across Edwards, out near Catalina island, and back to Area 51. I forget what day of the week it was, but it was the same day of the week I want to say Thursday, every week, at the exact same time. Theory was, something was making the flight from Area 51, over Edwards, to Catalina and back, generating some form of shockwave, that people were detecting and calling in.
Interesting comment. Thank you for sharing. Do you remember what spacies were between a flight it was coming up to Catalina Island and back? I mean whether data suggested it was one flight or they were divided? Regards
I live in Northern Utah (about 30 min from Hill AFB) my daughters and I saw two aircraft that fit the Aurora’s description one night 2 years ago. Flying relatively low, completely silent, we only knew they were there by their silhouettes against the stars of the night sky. They said thought they were UFOs, I wasn’t sure for awhile till I started seeing stuff about the Aurora, now I’m pretty sure this is what we experienced.
So I'm not crazy! I JUST posted a similar encounter my father and I had near Livingston, Montana. The fact that it was silent, or nearly silent, is what impressed me most! So it's definitely real. It's definitely stealth, and delta shaped, and it's NOT a B2, and it's not aliens (it had regular aircraft lights if I remember correctly)....what the heck is it?
I grew up near Westover AFB and I can recall atleast three occasions that I'd seen those weird contrails in the air, right around the time that we launched the War on Terror. None of my military buddies ever had an answer as to what produced them, but I've since come to learn theyre a product of Scramjet engines like you pointed out, which raises my eyebrows a bit
Saw one of these once in the summer of 1998 off the west coast of Scotland. Sailing with a friend, who worked in `future projects` at Aerospace, when it appeared at an altitude of about 7 to 8000 feet from a westerly direction escorted with an F15 on each wing. I was an aircraft systems instructor on Tornado and Typhoon aircraft amongst others so was good at identification but hadn`t seen one of these before `in the flesh`. The Aurora then throttled up and left the F15s standing and the pulsing jet noise was very noticeable as it rapidly climbed and disappeared to the east. My friend said with a wry grin `you didn`t see that` and confirmed what we had just seen. we guessed it must have come out of Machrihanish to be where it was and it was late afternoon so not far from darkness
Indeed interesting sighting, thanks for sharing! Comparing to the fighters that escorted it, how big was the 'Aurora'? F15 is a large fighter, no question about it, would you estimate it being half or so of the 'Aurora' length and width?
I just want to point out, that the US has a helicopter that we only know about, because it crashed in the Bin Laden raid. This was in 2011, and we still don't know how it fully looks. Let that sink in.
That's one of those "variations on a theme story". There was a helicopter that crashed during the bin Laden raid, but it was a fairly typical Blackhawk, not something more exotic. There was a different raid, under different circumstances, where a "project" asset was destroyed. I think this is the raid that the story is referring to, but it's since been conflated with the bin Laden raid since that one has greater notoriety.
@@Niven42During the Bin Laden Raid, they used a version of the Blackhawk that went through the entire Pakistani airspace undetected, they officially said "modified for stealth" but that's it. One of these helicopters crash landed in the bin laden compound. When they were leaving, they filled the helicopter with c4 explosives and blew it to bits for classification reasons. Then they bombed the place with f16s just for good measure. It was all rubble when the Pakistanis went in.
"Travelling at supersonic speeds on its attack runs, the Aurora Bomber is invulnerable to enemy AA fire. After ordnance is released, the jet slows and regresses to base at subsonic speeds. On its return flight or in large groups, the Aurora can be hit by ground fire." -- Command and Conquer Generals manual
@Jayjay-qe6um "Supersonic Attack Runs". How fast do you think bullets and Sidewiners go.? Don't answere, I will not be replying. Russians have a plane that can shoot itself down. (*Super sonic attack runs*) You have brightened my day. 👍
@@snakezdewiggle6084 One American F-11 actually did shoot itself down by testing its cannon while in a supersonic dive. The bullets slowed down but the plane didn't, and when the pilot pulled out of the dive the plane took three of its own rounds. The plane crashed but the pilot ejected and survived with severe injuries. That was 1956. An F-14 Tomcat managed to shoot itself down with a Sidewinder missile, and more recently an F-16 was damaged by its own fire but the pilot was able to maintain control enough to land the plane. If the Russians only have "a" plane that can shoot itself down, they're 70 years behind American technology.
I believe it at least *did* exist. A friend of mine in the early 2000s saw one while backpacking in Zion in Utah. He said there were 4 planes, and suddenly, one of them (that was a triangle arrowhead shape) just suddenly shot off going two to three times faster than the other ones. This was a few years before any of us had ever heard of the Arora project.
Interesting report. Thanks for sharing. Did he mention any details of the size or dimensions of the unknown aircraft in question, comparing to the fighters that flew with it? Also, what was time of a day - noon, afternoon or just during daylight hours or at night (in the dark)?
@RallyRacingVideo if I remember correctly (it's been awhile), it was late evening, almost dark, and the lead craft was the one that popped off. It was just a dark wedge shape, with the other ones being more "airplane like."
This issue with relying on satellites alone is that their flight paths are known. You simply cover up whatever you want hidden prior to the overflight by the satellite. You may remember multiple Soviet mistaken civilian airliner overflights of sensitive areas in the US in the 70's-80's and our allies comercial airliner overflights of Soviet bases or sentsitive areas. Memories of the Korean airliner incident in the '80s comes to mind. Airplanes can overfly an area at an unscheduled time catching whatever the target wants to keep hidden.
Thank you for this. There may be 4-6 YT channels I trust to do the work to tell a story properly, accurately, and without clear bias- this one and Alex Hollings' Airpower. I recommend you both frequently. A long time subscriber.
I used to know someone who used to work at Knolls Atomic Laboratory in Schenectady, NY. They used to work for G. E. at that site. They told me almost 20 years ago about "The Aurora Project." They said that G.E. was developing an engine that could fly in the upper reaches of the atmosphere at more than 6 times the speed of sound. If that was 20 years ago,I can't imagine what they're working on now.
Aurora was built by Lockheed Skunkworks before Martin merged with them. Built in the mid - late 80's. Hypersonic, mach 7+. Stealthy. Used a hybrid fuel through pulse detonation scram jet engines.
I've assumed that this "SR-91" was just early test versions of the SR-72 Darkstar, which Lockheed confirmed the existence of a couple years ago. Such an advanced aircraft could take decades to develop and perfect, it makes sense to me.
Yeah, like it was super bleeding edge tech that cost too much back in the day, but now we are from the future and its become more cost effective to design fly and maintain an airframe with those capabilities.
More likely, they were just test beds for the propulsion system used in the 72. DARPA has recently given a peak at some of the newer engine technologies, and 30 years seems to be the timeframe for them to reveal things to the public.
When President Reagan did his first press conference as President he spoke of a prototype plane being built he called the Tokyo Express. He said two prototypes are being constructed and would go from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo in 45 minutes. Twenty four years later, I believe that there have been a hypersonic vehicle for years now as mentioned by the California Earthquake Seismic Center. They would get those booms on Thursday mornings with the MACH 4 sonic booms.
In 1992, at a White House briefing by a Lockheed engineer, he referred to “an engine that’s been flight tested in an aircraft that doesn’t exist”. He wouldn’t answer anything I asked about Aurora, though.
The SR 71 was a tiny glimpse into what was already being worked on on paper and developed. They kept it in service as a testing vehicle for the durability of the material materials and flight surfaces of high speed, but the design was quite old, but they learned so much by keeping that vehicle flying.
@tahwseodtiYeah, but apart from a little ion-thruster, that is not much more than an orbital glider. Yes it does multiple machs at reentry. But it's main thrust comes from the Launch rocket. It can't take off from a runway.
I remember an Aurora bomber was an option in the PC game Command & Conquer Generals for the Allies. It would fly to the enemy base at hypersonic speed which meant AA couldn't shoot it down but after it delivered its payload it flew back to base at normal speed which made if vulnerable.
When I saw saw the title and the thumbnail for this video it triggered a memory I had from the mid 80s. I was thinking the story back then was about a model company who had gotten wind of a top secret aircraft and made a plastic model kit out of it. Seeing the name "Aurora," I thought maybe this video was about that story, since I remember Aurora model kits from the 1970s. I was very much disappointed that it wasn't, and then began to wonder if I was remembering something that hadn't even happened. Of course I had to do some looking up on the Interwebs. There was a story of model company releasing a model of a plane that wasn't, the Testor F-19 Stealth Fighter in 1986. I was happy to see that I did remember a delta wing stealth aircraft that some thought was, but wasn't from back in the mid-1980s, even if I got a bunch of the actual details wrong.
@@samuelgarrod8327 I disagree. The SR-71 took pictures, no guns were fitted. Even if it did have guns on it or places to hang bombs, it doesn't stop the thing from looking absolutely awe inspiring. Furthermore, we are talking about a model kit of the SR-71.
There were ships carrying exotic aviation fuel to the base at RAF Machrihanish and pipelines going from the port there to the airbase at the time you suggest Aurora was flying. The exact type of fuel needed for the types of engines such a high speed aircraft would need.
My Grandfather worked at The Skunk Works, he never told any of us what he worked on and that he couldn’t share, but admitted to SR-71, F117 and B2 once they were in the public and he retired. He said he changed his clothes in a hanger and into a jumpsuit, everyone dressed in the same jumpsuit, then got on a 737 with no windows and flew for an hour and half, landed in a hanger that looked the same, went into another locker room and changed again into a new jumpsuit to work in. They flew to work everyday from Lancaster, CA to unknown location, turned out to be Burbank, CA. He told me in 2000 I can’t tell you what I did but if I worked on the stealth stuff in the ‘70s, imagine what I was doing in the 90’s! He said there are no UFOs, everything is US made and we had things that flew so fast you could be in two places in an instant. He said anti-gravity and that was the most he ever shared.
Living in SoCal in the 1990's and early 2000's there were periodic radar trackings (not so many sightings) and sounds of an aircraft with outrageous speeds which sometimes left funky "doughnut" tracks of a supposed pulse engine. The aircraft appeared to be moving to and from the inland desert and Pacific and often caused USGS seismic recordings. There was, I believe, at least one potentially viable photograph which was unverifiable. The radar and USGS signatures were confirmed and verified many times; however, there were never good explanations... and over time the public was conditioned to ignore the signatures.
the seismic recordings were what sold me on the idea long ago. that there was a collection of them that could be referenced to specific phenomena that something traveling like an aircraft at hypersonic speeds - this is a thing that I dont see a way to fake easily. In conjunction with the contrails, and the sporadic sightings, the evidence was enough to convince me.
If you look at the location of RAF Macrihanish it's ideal for going undetected from civilian radar stations for a very long time/way, no matter starting or landing. Also that AFB got a new runway in the 1990s that was long enough to support whatever exotic plane you can imagine AND it is said to have an elaborate bunker system below ground to hide whatever you wanted including planes or JP-7 tanks to fuel them.
I’m a massage therapist. One of my clients was an Air Force General. When I commented about how amazing the SR71 was. He commented. You would not believe what they have now. He told me about the SR 91. I asked him , “isn’t this something you should not be telling me.” He said,” It doesn’t matter. No one is going to believe you anyway.” He told me that they have several flying around the planet each carrying a single MIRVED nuclear missile. And that the USA has the ability to strike anywhere on the planet within just a few minutes. Is it true? I don’t know? But he said no one would believe me. And that was 14 years ago.
the aurora was the best air superiority fighter in the RTS game "Command & Conquer: Generals" in the US roster. IIRC the name came from basically a NGAD project name long before NGAAD was a thing.
Recently I went to the Santa Rosa Air museum (in Northern California)where I saw a Drone that was used on the SR 71 I was shocked because I knew there were only a few of those actually made and it was all in one piece!
I live in north central Texas. A state crammed full of huge military bases and contractors. Over the past 2 decades I have often seen ultra high contrails indicative of ram/pulse jet use (long thin lines with hanging “puffs”). I remember one time while floating in my sister’s swimming pool and seeing an extremely high altitude craft traversing the entire sky in a matter of mere seconds. That was almost 20 years ago. You don’t easily forget something moving that fast on a clear summer day.
Personally, I think it’s real. And I’m a firm believer that this plane has advanced technologies. The kind we’ve never seen before. The “aerial phenomenon” that’s been reported on recently I think directly relates to this aircraft. Also, Machrinharish was widely known to house the F117 from time to time. It’s been documented on several occasions. It was a remote air base.
I believe there to be enough documentation and witnesses of an aircraft that looked and behaved like aurora to call it real. Will we ever hear the full story? Who knows. Many take it at face value that it was just a budget item for the B-2 that accidentally made it in. That may even be true. But that doesnt mean that there was no such aircraft as aurora is purported to be, and its not like the skunkworks is the only secretive aircraft division that exists in the US. Declassified documentation shows many things that were worked on by companies not named lockheed that were kept from public awareness for years or decades. My take? Either it crashed or something else embarrassing and is being covered up, or it hasnt been declassified because the technology of the program is still considered very relevant, likely including its shape. If it was a technological dead end or just a test program for something we think adversaries already have figured out on their own, it likely would have been exposed at some point. Lets not forget the example of the Greenbriar Hotel (and its successor we dont know about) that successfully hid a fortified nuclear bunker for congress for 40 years and no one talked about it until an investigative journalist uncovered the thing.
I remember back in the early 90's when Revell used to sell a model on what they understood was the prototype of the Aurora plane. So the idea for this plane has been around for at least 30 years. What's crazy is how its existence hasn't been leaked more during that time.
@@frequentlycynical642 No, the F-117 was already known to the public at the time. In addition, the Aurora prototype model was not similar to the 3d models used in this video. Oh well, no biggie :)
And the DoD tried to block Marvel from selling the model. Marvel sued and won by default, as the Pentagon would not put up evidence that the model jeapordized national security. 😅
I recommend "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich who worked for Kelly Johnson and took over running that part of Lockheed when Kelly retired. It covers the development of the U-2, the SR-71 and the F117 Nighthawk. It's also available as an audiobook.
A neighbor, civillian DOD worker on A-51 for many years, over beer on the back porch in Pahrump. stated that if one thought of all the aircraft musuems in the world, would not equal the underground hanger space tunneled within the A-51. He related that every plane ever made around the world had residence within the underground hangar. Much like the F-117, there are planes and other type of craft, air and space capable, that are used to aquaint the engineers from the free world as to what had been created, how it worked, and what was expected in the future.
I watched a massive super high flying triangular craft with 3 white lights on each corner, flying higher than any commercial traffic I have ever seen, do a pass over the UK from south to north at about 3am in the morning once. I watched it do a straight line pass, no funny maneuvers etc. It had no hazard lights and I watched it go from horizon to horizon, it took about 15 to 20 minutes.
British cheese manufacturers have convinced the UK population of the significance of the triangle shape. Being seared into the British perception the population of Britain projects this triangle shape through psychological obturation. Thus the mundane viewing of a bird or distant star is transformed into a sinister American spy craft.
I've seen a black triangle over london twice in the last couple of years, I don't think its aurora, but maybe some successor, it can hover and take off at high speed and it turns in a strange way, its like spin the bottle, it just spins until it locks on and goes in that direction which makes me think its unmanned and trying to lock on to a GPS signal or something spinning to get its berrings.
My wife and I made a visit to a friend in New Mexico in 1988. Our buddy's place was about 80 miles from White Sands Missile Test Range. It was a beautiful clear night, and we were just hanging out admiring the night sky when something came into view. The 'Something' was at extremely high altitude, so there was no sound. The vehicle was being followed by a green-to-orange glowing plasma tail -- like we just saw in the reentering SpaceX starship test -- consistent with an superheated titanium airframe -- and went horizon to horizon in only a matter of a few seconds. All of us looked at each other in shock and confirmed that we'd all seen the same phenomenon. I was a recently graduated Physics student, so I did the math, and came up with a speed number that made absolutely no sense. I started doing research to find out what the thing could be, and found a Jane's Defense paper on Aurora, whose details lined up perfectly with what we'd seen. So yeah. It may not have made series production, but there was definitely an 'X Plane' that did research into scramjet propulsion.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works gave a design to the Top Gun Maverick movie which was called DarkStar in the plot. What if this is the Aurora, and Lockheed Martin are trolling us? That would be funny. I suspect Aurora never got past the prototype stage but did fly a few times.
When climbing to altitude at night what would the 'exhaust' pattern look like for these pulse engines? Would they produce bright "puffs" with each "pulse in its wake?
Pretty funny, i just finished watching the recent updates of "Iiiiiii'm Alex Hollings, and this is.. Airpower!" Playing some Candy Crush while listening to this video, hearing his name made me look up a bit confused as i had not expected him to be quoted here, unexpected overlap, despite the topic.
While flying as a Flight Engineer on the C-5, in the mid to late 90’s, I was flying over the Atlantic and heard the following conversation between Gander air traffic control and an unknown aircraft: Aircraft: Gander control, Dark Flight (some number) altitude request Gander: Go ahead Dark Flight Aircraft: Gander, Dark Flight, requesting flight level 60 (60, 000 feet) Gander after a pause: Dark Flight, Gander, repeat request. Aircraft: Gander, Dark Flight, requesting flight level 60. Gander: Dark Flight, if you can get up to flight level 60, it’s all yours Aircraft: Roger Gander, DESCENDING to flight level 600
Hehe, your story looks amazingly similar to account of Brian Schul about LA Speed check with SR71... SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul reported one exchange. His SR-71 was screaming across Southern California, 13 miles high and its crew were monitoring cockpit chatter as they entered Los Angeles airspace. Though they didn't really control the SR-71, LA monitored its movement across their scope. The SR-71 crew heard a Cessna ask for a readout of groundspeed. "90 knots" Center replied. Moments later, a Twin Beech required the same. "120 knots," Center answered. An F-18 smugly transmitted, "Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout." Center (after a slight pause): "525 knots on the ground, Dusty". The SR-71 realised how ripe a situation this was for one-upmanship: "Center, Aspen 20, you got a groundspeed readout for us?" Center (after a longer than normal pause): "Aspen, I show 1,742 knots" No further groundspeed inquiries were heard on that frequency. In similar vein (airport not stated), an SR-71 crew were listening in on a similar "match this" contest. A Cessna asked to clear to 4000 ft, a corporate jet requested clearance to 12,000, an airliner to 18,000, etc. Finally the SR-71 called ATC. SR-71: "Request clearance to 80,000 ft" Tower: "Just how in hell do you plan to get up there?" SR-71: "Uh Tower, I'm descending to 80,000 ...(borrowed from Marc) Is it what made your story or your own separate and different experience and case?
I remember as a kid that loved GI JOE, they came out with an Aurora type jet in the late 80's in the toy line and the comics....it was before any of the stealth jets came out during Desert Storm so I thought having an "invisible" aircraft wasn't possible...if I only knew😂
Some people really don't understand how hard it is to quietly build a single prototype jet let alone 6 of them and then fly them all over the world without anyone knowing. Especially back then, it'd be insane.
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Gibson - was CIA , his job was to MISINFORM . plain & simple.
Look at how long the F117 was being tested and flown before it was made public. We. Ay not know what’s really going on until something happens that makes telling US about it necessary, or telling US to intimidate our enemies.
@@kennethcohagen3539 - people thought the F117 was a ufo.
Not sure if it's true or not, but when Kelly Johnson (SR-71 designer) died in 1990, people said he told them we would be blown away by the stuff we were working on, back in 1990.
@25jessieg
"stuff"......
@@snakezdewiggle6084"blown away" ......
Literally, I imagine.
KJ HAD to have been an alien.😂
@terrafirma5327
"Blown away", is this bombs and weapons, or enlightenment beyond our current imagination
"stuff" is an unusual word for that level of professionalism .
Its all too convenient.
Yea probably I mean they are definitely a lot further ahead then what’s common knowledge or even publicly known otherwise every country would know their capabilities and what to focus their efforts are
So, the one piece of evidence that I consider most telling is the KC-135Q tanker aircraft. They were dedicated to carrying JP-7 fuel for the SR-71. When they retired the SR-71, they did not retire the KC-135Q tankers. So, there was still something flying at that time which used JP-7. We don't know what it was, but that fuel is so hard to ignite and contains so much energy when it does ignite, that there's really only one use for it -- high supersonic or ultrasonic flight by aircraft like the SR-71.
That's all I've got.
Q variant only had it's payload tanks seperated from it's own fuel supply, they weren't retired, they were fitted with newer engines as the 135T. Seperate tanks does not mean it was only ever carrying JP-7, just that when it did carry other forms of fuel, it would not be able to share that with it's own engines. The JP-7 was developed for the U-2, so the 135Q could also have been refueling those, which are still in service also.
@@PiDsPagePrototypesfair points.
I don’t know anything about fuel beyond general knowledge, and definitely don’t know about specialized avionics for fuel delivery and stuff, but I imagine a different fuel requires a different system to safely store.
Wouldn’t that mean something “certified” or whatever for JP7 be only able to run JP7 or would that be a sort of “all square are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares” sort of thing?
@@PiDsPagePrototypes U-2s don't have aerial refueling capability, and aside from a short test in the early 1960's, they never have had that capability. They simply don't need it. With a full fuel load, the aircraft can fly for 14 hours, which is the max you would ever want an aircrew trying to fly that jet.
@@D.Ambrose The pumping hardware and tanks are all the same, some of the lining materials can be different for different fuels. But in the case of these tankers, it's more a matter of not feeding the wrong fuel in to it's own engines, whereas if the tanker and the jet getting topped up use the same fuel, it can be pumped between tanks, giving the tanker more range, or letting it pass it's own fuel to the refueling system to fill more fighters on shorter tanker flights.
@@PiDsPagePrototypes Does the U-2 run JP-7?
AFAIK (and according to German Wiki) - only the Pratt & Whitney J58 used in SR-71 ran on JP-7. Which makes sense to me as it was famous for leaking fuel like crazy whilst standing on the ground.
Therefore, SR-71 wouldn't be possible to built without the invention of JP-7.
Met someone, ex naval int, 15 plus years ago and discussing SR71 I complained about us abounding the, still, fastest aircraft ever. His response, "trust me, "They wouldn't do it without already having something much better. " That always resonated with me.
For the mission at hand they had better. UAVs and Drones, and satellites got better
Same thing I said about my HS girlfriend...
My dad would say the same thing. He also apparently got to work around them in some capacity when he was in the marine corps. Said watching the radar techs trying to track the thing was hilarious
@One-EyedCorvus well yea the B2 is quite stealthy. Not sure what a Marine would be doing around that though with radars. Maybe part of an exercise.
@@gr8crash Yeah, but there is one thing. UAV and Drones, especially for the intelligence gathering purpose still unable to fly deep into highly defended airspace of adversary countries such as China, Russia or NK without alerting everyone. While spy satellites take time to reach the desirable position. There is still a need a plane that can outrun and outreach any defensive AA systems out there, ready to deploy at moment notice, and can provide more detailed photograph from various angles and heights.
I knew a retired SR71 pilot in the 1990's (now deceased) and he would not give up any information about the Blackbird except what was already known. He did mention that the U.S. government was working on a replacement for decades while the Blackbird was still flying and they are always researching the "next aircraft" to replace the newest ones. eg: when the F22 first went into production, they were already drawing up it's replacement. They think of future generations of aircraft while they are still developing current ones. The 1 thing he did tell me was that ramjet and scramjet technologies are no secret and have been in development for a very long time as well as pulse detonation to conserve fuel once you reach the momentum of hypersonic flight at altitude. I assume he probably meant well over 100,000 feet where the atmosphere is much thinner. You are correct that a spy plane will always be in the U.S. inventory because they can be used in a pinch and being at a lower altitude than a satellite, their photos are a much higher resolution.
F22 replacement will be based on the research from the X36, testing for it was HIGHLY successful and exceeded all expectations and yet no direct production version was ever produced from it (that we know of)
F22: You're already replacing me!? With no meat in my diet!? I hate it here!
Pulse detonation, the pumpkin seed aircraft that surfs on the shockwave. Donuts on a rope contrail. RIGHT NOW they're showing a university playing with pulse detonation. Terribly loud noise when running. Worse than a sonic boom by about 5 fold.
Ramjets have been round since 1940s. Scramjets have been the holy grail for decades. progress in making either practical an operational seem to be extremely slow going.
@@chunkblaster If you look at some of the NGAD designs, some of them seem to take inspiration from the X36 design.
Most likely X36 research was ended because they already had the Raptor being tested.
The fact that the SR-71 flew for years in secret makes me believe this SR-91 exists in some shape or form
That, and the first F-117 flew circa 1977, but we didn't officially know about them until one crashed years later.
The aviation press think it's the plane in the Tom cruise film. That way they can claim you saw the movie prop! The have done similar things before.
@@womble321china knows something to send a spy satellite 😂
Also, are we to assume the DoD hasn't even attempted to develop a spy plane since 1966? And they stopped using them entirely in 1998? I guess drones and satellites may make them unnecessary today, but there's a lot of time in between there.
No we're not to assume that. Lockheed Martin started work on the sr-72 about 14 years ago. It was public knowledge for quite a while . Then it went dark. I watched a Sandbox news video about the sr-72 a few weeks ago and it is definitely a real thing @@joeyhoser
State route 93 runs along the eastern edge of the Nevada Test Site. It is also the shortest route between Area 51 and Nellis AFB. A few years ago I was driving north on 93 when a southbound sheriff's car used a loudspeaker to tell the northbound cars to pull off and stop on the shoulder. A second sheriff's car followed shortly commanding us to stay parked on the shoulder. The next vehicle was a huge surprise! It was a large flatbed truck coming down the middle of the road with heavily tarped delta shaped object loaded on the trailer. Even with the tarp, the shape was unmistakable with a point at the front and vertical stabilizers at the rear. Oddly there was the outline of two large nozzles at the rear. I can only speculate where the "convoy" originated and where the destination was. If you live in this area long enough, you hear and see interesting things.
not that u didn't see that, but surely they wouldn't go to all that effort to hide it, to only cover it with tarp? When transporting it.
@@Harry._.Thompson Yeah, I can only speculate. I ASSUME it came out of the test range, but it could have been transported from somewhere much further north. To your point, they wouldn't cover a top-secret aircraft with a simple tarp. No idea exactly what it was other than delta shaped and two nozzles. Possibly a scale model of a future craft? That said, I always keep my eyes open when I'm up in that area. It's fun to see "interesting" things. 🙂
@@joannehart9624 yea! Must be awesome to be around that kinda area.
Two or three years ago my brother and I saw a kite shaped craft . This took place, of all places in Iowa. It was night, flying west to east. It made no sound and had no lights. It had no trails that I could see. I felt like it was a military craft but have not found anything in that specific shape.
Say more
In the late 1980s I was a USAF officer assisting the Saudi Air Force with the development and fielding of a state-of-the-art air defense system for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was called PEACE SHIELD. The lead contractor was Boeing, and Hughes was a primary subcontractor. The program was so massive and technologically advanced that we had quite a few contractors (beltway bandits) acting as advisors to support us. Most of them were former or retired Air Force radar operators and air combat controllers. As was the custom on our many trips to Seattle to visit the Boeing facility in Kent, I was sitting in a hotel bar one evening with five of these former scope dopes I had gotten to know rather well. As the drinks flowed, each one tried to top the last one's story of Soviet bomber intercepts, remote deployments, and so forth. Eventually the topic of Aurora came up. Each man had his opinion regarding whether or not it was real, but one guy in particular told a strange and convincing story. He was manning his air defense console and tracking the usual air traffic. Each aircraft was represented on his screen as short smear lines. The longer the line, the greater the relative speed of the plane. Suddenly a track appeared out of nowhere and it was far longer than any he had ever seen, including the vaunted SR-71. He immediately reported it and waited for confirmation and further instructions. When the reply came back, it was an order to ignore the track. He was told nothing more and never learned anything beyond what he said to us, but he believed it might have been the mysterious Aurora.
My father and I were in his backyard some 30+ years ago and we both witnessed a jet with a doughnut shaped exhaust fly horizon to horizon in under 3 minutes.
@@DavidEdwards9801 What state were you in?
As a Navy guy, I can totally believe this story, especially with each person one upping each other 😂 It’s just something all service members do: gotta have them stories told.
Plus, I think the point toward the end of the video here helps: sure there probably wasn’t a fleet, but to think there had to be one or two being tested.
Nothing would surprise me. I was a flight test engineer (turbine engines specialization) for 7 years and spent tons of time in Palmdale and Edwards (some time in Victorville as well) but as a civilian contractor for commercial aircraft (Seattle of course). I saw more specialized aircraft at Edwards in 1 day than most are likely to see over several of trying to see these things. I don’t know these plane types by sight but saw a stealth bomber with 4 engines towed by with 2 servicemen pushing carts to catch dripping fuel under each wing, there were 16 or so F16s parked nearby ready to deploy at any time, 3 F 22 taxied by, a F-35 taxied by and 3 B52s flew over us in a straight line one after another at low altitude (having just took off nearby) .
All that in 1 day. Saw stuff at the Palmdale hangars that were bizarre but know nothing of them.
Everyone in our flight test crews WANT to take a picture but only the stupid do as you’re finished if you do that .. there were some idiots on the crews like 1 guy was going to go camping on the weekend in the mountains and packed all his camping crap in his vehicle and tried to go to work that day at the Palmdale facility .. well he had a machete in his gear and security caught him .. myself and a coworker were headed in town to get some coffee after our plane had left and this guy was handcuffed sitting on a concrete barrier in the sun .. we came back a few hours later and he was still sitting on the concrete barrier hand cuffed in the sun … do stupid things, get stupid prizes like frying in the hot sun handcuffed and it was hot out there lol
Or a uap ?
I like to think that Aurora really existed (perhaps still exists, hidden away in an underground facility somewhere in the deserts of California or Nevada), and that Clarence "Kelly" Johnson played a part in its early stages of development. If there was anyone who could have made Aurora happen, it was Kelly Johnson, who led the teams that developed the P-80, U-2, F-104, and SR-71. It would have been the perfect final chapter in an illustrious career.
Don’t forget the P38.
Johnson was also responsible for mentoring basically every senior engineer who came after him company wide. Skunk works is actually a daughter company of lockheed now because of him
They were developing something.
I grew up and still live in the area of development. In the 70's or 80's? I studied this propulsion as a little kid with Pop science and mechanical engineering. I JUST WATCHED a con trail of perfect smoke rings, or doughnuts as the sun was lighting the upper atmosphere so high no sonic boom. totally different con trails and it goes away sooner.
Its likely no aliens at all exist in Area 51, but the place is kept under such secrecy because its home to planes like this.
Wow glad I found this vid. I've seen this aircraft, sort of.
I'll explain. In the early 90s we were in croyd bay in Devon on holiday. We were on the beach taking pics of the sunset when my wife spotted a weird con trail. The con trail was donuts on a rope, it's the only way to describe it. The trail came from the horizon behind us and headed west over the horizon in literally 30 or 40 seconds. What made this stand out more though was that it was really high, so high we couldn't see the aircraft just the trail it left. Donuts on a rope. We both saw it.
In the 90s, I was working as a sparky in New Malden for BAE systems. On the 9th floor, it was divided into sections, Project Aurora Flight systems etc etc. Didn't really pay any attention until one day I was sitting in the Tearoom eating a bacon sarnie and reading the paper. When I came across an article saying 'BAE systems deny all knowledge of project Aurora'
To be fair, they'd probably just lost the paperwork like normal.
Back in the 90's my then partner was a member of a UFO group in the UK and they knew about the Aurora project. I remember there being talk of a civilian employee at Warton who was tailed by an armed guard whenever he had to carry a briefcase with top secret paperwork. Another person some years earlier in the 1980s had mentioned how his brother had worked on revolutionary aircraft display systems- what we now refer to as Head Up Displays. In the pre Internet days without the ability to google these things and check stuff out it all seemed like science fiction fantasy stuff at the time. I personally observed with some others, including a former Royal Marine Commando, on a camping trip late one night in the North of England a very high altitude aerial vehicle carrying out what looked like impossible maneuvers for a conventional aircraft- 90 degree zig-zag turns at high speeds. It was either an experimental UK aircraft or something more exotic from another country or planet. First and only time to witness such a craft.
BAE SYSTEMS NORTH AMERICA
Land & Armaments employee
Just wondering if you’re still alive 🤔😂😂
Lol just casually releasing secret information.
I’m sure it happened.
The fact that Lockheed was so excited about the SR-72 becoming technically feasible in the early 2000’s makes me think the SR-91 was either a technology demonstrator or something similar.
It was
@@randominternetguyLockheed Martin can blow through 2.3 billions in a lunch break. Not a chance to BUILD a plane with such requirements on that budget.
@@Gunni1972 You can't build a fleet on 2.3 billion but sure you can build a technology demonstrator
Of course they can with new hyper fluid dynamic 3D modeling it’s cheaper and faster to develop aircraft now!
Yep. Not a fully realized and deployed asset but rather a test bed/technology demonstrator for the eventual future hypersonic aircraft.
Nobody believed me as a kid when I said this thing exists, I saw something about it online and went into a rabbit hole of the aurora and pulse detonation engines, and from that point forward as a young ten year old, I was hooked. Military aviation has absolutely fascinated me ever since. Thanks for the great vid!
I was an en route air traffic controller in the southwestern US from 1980 on. I worked the F-117 aircraft in early testing and later training missions for deployment in the Middle East. I worked SR-71s weekly. U-2 aircraft as well. Our radar equipment and associated automated beacon interpreters were capable of accurately determining the speed of beacon tracked aircraft under positive control. I can say the top speed of of SR-71 aircraft I worked was greater than any published speed today. On one shift I noticed an strange untracked primary radar signal (actual radar skin reflection vs. beacon interrogator system typically used by all aircraft including the military. It caught my eye on the radar scope as it had quickly transited the airspace I was controlling, at roughly 2-4x the speed of the SR-71. I thought it was probably an equipment anomaly but noted the course of the target would place it over northern Arizona just south of the Mojave military aircraft testing area the F-117s operated out of with the track projected to continue east near Albuquerque and on to Amarillo, Texas. On break shortly afterwards I was outside the facility when I noticed a strange west-east contrail that had puffy blobs at regular intervals. This was the expected “soap on a rope” contrail of a scramjet engine. I have no doubt what I saw on radar and later, the associated contrail, was a hypersonic test aircraft using scramjet propulsion. Either the aircraft was only a test bed and never fully developed for deployment, or it has been highly successful and remains classified. Probably the former. So many stories about working he F117 before it was declassified and the problems it created for air traffic control due to very unusually performance characteristics as well. And yes, in the USA, all aircraft operating above 18,000msl are under civilian air traffic control.
No one carea
Pulse Detonation Wave Engine?
The research I've read indicates that hypersonic speeds greater the Mach 5 result in a plasma field which is generally really difficult to send or receive RF.
Not to mention IRST pods, like AN/AAS-42 IRST would be absolutely useless at those speeds
So considering a hypersonic aircraft faster then the SR-71 would be blind, be it in optical l, infrared and Radio frequencies it would seem that it's utility was pretty questionable. Especially when the price of a single aurora (seeing they were $1-2b a piece) would get you a KH-11 with a resolution of less then 20cm.
The other problem is if what your saying is true ie a SR-71 was in itself hitting Mach 4 to 5, meaning an Aurora would need to be at least Mach 6-8, that there would be no way for the Russians or Chinese to distinguish an Aurora overflight as either a decapitation strike or reconnaissance flight. Meaning the possibility of nuclear retaliation
So with the platform blind, requiring billions to create a way to punch through the plasma (which we still struggle with 30 years later) with there being no weapon that it could possible yield that could give it a benefit that conventional and strategic platforms were already capable of at far lower costs (ie TLAM, Trident, Minutemen III, ATACMs etc it seemed to be a pointless project.
The final reason to have a manned hypersonic vehicle evaporated the moment the USSR collapsed negating the need for a SR-71 follow on. Like so many early 90s wonderwaffens, the Comanche, A-12, NASP, the SR-91 was cancelled when it was realised that Russia could barely string a division or two together let alone an entire army group.
I mean look at them struggle in a conflict that is comparable to if Canada and Mexico merged and the US lost almost 400,000 men and 3/4 of their entire armed ground forces only to capture less then 10% of the part of Canada you'd want.
Perhaps an X-15
They literally designed it to not be detected if it does exist there is zero chance anything is picking it up
I’m sure it exists, I grew up near Edward’s Airforce Base and lived in neighborhoods with all kinds of people who worked at Skunkworks and it was kind of an open secret. We would hear the sonic booms all the time and joke “there goes the plane that doesn’t exist. Did you hear anything? I didn’t hear anything.”
That's crazy
Never mind that they kept crashing into the Sierra Nevadas just north of Edwards, too.
“Pay no attention to the Explosion. It is just an Electrical Transformer Exploding in an uninhabited area, where the bears must be stealing Electricity. And in no way is it a secret Stealth Fighter!”
Worlds Loudest Stealth Plane
The issue isn’t whether it exists, but that it is powered by a Scramjet.
These motors are not yet capable, and will not be for decades, of powering anything but smaller unmanned craft launched by enormous rockets to get them to the Velocity a Scramjet begins operating.
Like its ancestor the Ramjet, neither are capable of even being “turned on” to produce thrust until moving at speeds near or beyond sonic/supersonic.
The Scramjet cannot even operate until Hypersonic Speeds, because the engine has no “Ignitors,” and even IF it uses Fuel (MOST HAVE NOT, they are built so the Supersonic Compression ignites the air moving through them, itself), it cannot get it to burn until Mach 5+.
Not much faster than Mach 5.5 the Fuel is superfluous, which is why they went with the Air-burning Diesel Scramjet concepts. Why carry a huge amount of fuel you don’t need to produce effectively the same thrust.
Throttling a Scramjet is thus done by changing the configuration of the combustion chamber, which is why ONLY ONE example of a Scramjet has been cylindrical, and the rest have a Rectangular, flat cross-section and intake/exhaust. This is easier to control the supersonic compression moving through the Scramjet (which is what [S]upersonic [C]impression [Ramjet] means - Ramjets slow the airflow to subsonic speeds, producing the compression that is required to produce the fuel-air burn in a RAM-jet that produces thrust far in excess of a Turbojet/fan).
BUT… Ramjets are fuel-hogs. The SR-71 used a PARTIAL Ramjet in its engines with the bypass compression. And it was incapable of even taking off with a full fuel load, which was nearly completely exhausted in the process (of taking off).
It required refueling to get to its operations area, where it would be refueled AGAIN before executing its mission penetrating others airspace.
Where another tanker refueled it on the other end, and usually again before landing.
But even to move from one field to another within the USA required refueling after takeoff.
While SCRAM-jets don’t have that problem, they have another problem.
The SR-71 is BARELY fast enough to get a Scramjet to ignite (remember… no ignitors/burners/etc in a Scramjet. The speed of the air and sudden compression produces the heat needed to ignite the air moving through them.
This… they require something like the Pegasus Rocket to accelerate a TEST VEHICLE the size of a car engine to the required speed.
It would take something on the order of a Delta V, with Strap-on Boosters to get something the size of a Predator or Reaper Drone powered by a Scramjet to the ignition velocity.
And you would need something like the Shuttle Boosters or a Saturn V booster to get something the size of an SR-71 to speed.
ALSO….
The “Soap-on-a-Rope” contrail IS NOT PRODUCED by a Scramjet. It is produced by the Pulse-Detonation Engine (a kind of linear-aerospike make out of the entire aircraft).
The Scramjet produces a contrail no different than any other jet that burns continuously… no “Soap-on-a-Rope” pattern.
@@MatthewBaileyBeAfraid very thorough explanation, thank you
I'm a recently retired A.E./C.E. with a large American defense contractor. I was hired in '83 at a Georgia Tech job fair. I worked on a number of black programs during my time with the company, including at sites like Orlando, Burbank, Groom Lake, Sunnyvale and Ft. Worth. I still remember the day when, I believe it was Revell, came out with the SR-91 Aurora model airplane in the late 80's/early 90's...we were all very impressed with the design...it gave us a good chuckle. That is all.
Did you ever work on any high altitude super/hypersonic programs that you would be able to disclose?
Bro is toying with his NDA’s like it’s nothing 😂😂😂
@@noahshupenko no comment.
@@johnsmith6503 The day of my retirement we had a little ceremony in the office and afterwards my boss said to me: I know the guys are taking you out to lunch and you'll be drinking, just make sure you make it back as I've got about a two foot stack of classified NDA's you have to sign before you turn your badge in and walk out. I take them very seriously and on the occasion I share a personal anecdote, I am always aware not to cross any lines.
Cool story. Just casually mentioning you worked on USAPs
I absolutely saw the phenomenon one night while taking a walk on a friend’s ranch near Gorman California. The skies there were free from light pollution and we were already at 5k feet elevation. It was common to take nightly walks and this night I was alone. I was walking North and on my left I noticed a quickly growing trail with what looked like puff balls preceded by a flashing pulse of orange-ish light. It was moving from S to N and I reckon it was very high and must have been flying over the Pacific. Directly West of my location was Ventura, and to the East was the Mojave Desert where Edward’s AFB and the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale.
I told my friend when I got back to the ranch house but no one believed me and by that time there was no evidence.
I was in HS and still fairly young. Was probably 1994/95. I know what I saw and even though to this day no one believes me, I am convinced it was an experimental aircraft and I’ve never seen anything like it since.
Honestly, it was pretty freaking awesome.
Probably just a rocket launch from Vandenberg, judging from your location and the time of day. I live near Kennedy in Florida and observe the same thing here.
Sorry to be mundane and boring but it was probably just a UFO from Area 51.
I choose to believe you.
@@ChatGPT1111 Rockets don't make light pulses. They make a steady light because their rocket is continuously burning.
Many believe the mythic test aircraft used an external pulse detonation engine to travel at those speeds, since at the time, Scramjets were not working yet.
I was driving from Sacramento to Las Vegas in 2008 around Mina, Nevada on US95 about midday. Looking to the east I saw a plane transitioning from north to south making those donuts on a rope contrails and going faster than anything I've ever witnessed. It appeared and was beyond the horizon before I could even step on the brake and begin to slow down to pull over.
Wow. As someone who has studied everything I could get my hands on about the Aurora project, I'd like to say you nailed it. GREAT JOB!
One thing I could add was the reports from LAX of aircraft traveling east at incredible speeds into the desert. The military did not inform or confirm which it routinely does for air safety.
In the late 80s/early 90s techno-thriller author Tom Clancy would participate in public roundtable chats on GEnie (an early online service). In one of those chats, a user asked Tom about the cancellation of the SR-71 program. Tom recounted that his sources in the military had told him about “Aurora”, that it operated out of Groom Lake, and that it was Mach 4.5+ capable. Source is me. I asked him the question. Having Tom Clancy answer my question with such a cool answer is of my childhood geek out best memories. I wish there was an archive of the GEnie roundtables.
That would be consistent with the video's Ben Rich quote - as "hypersonic" is defined as Mach 5+ :)
Hanna-Barbera talked about Flying cars in the 60's The Jetsons, I would still want an engineer's expertise on that topic though. Not a novel-writer. I blame your childhood for maintaining that dream. Don't take it too harsh, i fell for many-a statement, in my youth too.
That’s awesome, you’re very fortunate to have talked with Tom. He had an enormous amount of inside information, god knows how he got it or how he was allowed to let it out.
@@Rohan3CAV Regarding 'letting it out', ideally you want the potential of your capabilities to be known to the enemy, as expressed in Dr. Strangelove, "What's the point of having a Doomsday Device if you didn't tell the world, eh!?". You don't want anyone to know the exact capabilities of your bleeding edge - because then they can potentially counter it - but you Do want their best analysts to be able to speculate that Something must exist in that ballpark: because then the rumour itself is an effective deterrent.
For this purpose, I've always believed the Pentagon has relied on pseudo-military sci-fi and hollywood assets like Tom Clancy to imply the bleeding edge of their capabilities. As example, Top Gun 2 (Maverick) was practically an admission that Darkstar is real, especcially accompanied with Lockheed's press conference that refused to deny that it exists, while winking at the camera the whole time. Is it Mach 5, or Mach 10? Who knows. Is it stealth? Air refeulable? Suborbital? A drone shepherd? Nobody knows - but Something exists. And if our enemies are planning to start some shit, the insinuation may be enough to give them pause.
@@Rohan3CAV His books from that era still read well today . . .
I remember a story from a cadet from AFA who spent a summer turn at Edwards AFB. He was assisting a pilot in plotting a mission and the instructor seemingly took them through a restricted airspace. The cadet politely reminded that they were going through a restricted test range. The pilot looked at the cadet and said, "that airspace starts at 60,000 feet, and what lives up there goes very fast and very high and makes the SR-71 look like a biplane." This was in the early 90s and was likely a tall tale, but it was a fun story regardless.
Yes, my Dad and I read Ben Rich's Book when it first came out. His entire attitude when discussing the existence of the 'Aurora', was a kind of 'Winking Mockery'. He spent a lot of time talking about how good the SR-71 was and how, even 30 years later, he all but said it was just so good it couldn't be beat.
This also from the Man who said that much of their technology came from UnFunded Opportunities, and how he also claimed that they, 'can now take E.T. home and it won't take a lifetime to get there.'
According to a senior Air Force officer, AURORA is not a plane. Aurora is a PROGRAM and a series of craft. In the early 2000's on Sunday mornings I would see contrails looking like a knotted rope, presumably originating from Edwards or Vandenberg AFB
That is probably it, we have a series of "technology demonstrator" aircraft that have been declassified lately. Some stealth, some near space, some hypersonic.......now combine all that into one plane and add the laser systems they've been developing. And you've got a near low orbit fighter that can get anywhere in the world fast. Could be useful to take out satellites without making a mess and nuclear weapons. Imagine a plane that could fly almost into space, hit a satellite with a laser so it's useless for its purpose but still controllable, and then come down to do whatever else you needed
Oh, now with the contrails. That's proof positive isn't it?
You did your homework this was even disclosed on national television by the pilot that invented the program.
Popularized by whistleblower Edgar Fouche who wrote the book "Alien Rapture" about the ostensible TR-3B.
Contrails are scant evidence but one time travelling in the SW US I saw something hard to explain. One moment I looked up and the sky was clear. The next there was a spot with light clouds spreading out from a central point and a weird contrail exiting the cloud and zipping to the horizon. Way too fast for a normal plane.
Back around 1990 there was talk about 'external combustion' aircraft that would use the supersonic shock cone to contain a fuel explosion behind the aircraft for propulsion. At P&W we worked on lots of 'Black' programs out in the General Shop as small bits and pieces normally wouldn't arouse any suspicions as to where they went or what they did....the only clue was that the work order # always began with an 'X'. I had a bank of small rocket nozzle looking things that needed some work and had just heard about the 'external combustion' theory and mentioned this to the engineer overseeing this piece...and me saying those words made the color drain quickly from his face and I ended up needing to go talk to Security about it. Was basically told to shut up, don't think and quit trying to figure out things....or else. OK!!! I'm dense but got the message.
The 'external combustion' deal might very well be what caused the 'donuts on a rope' exhaust trail. And this is just the kind of experimental stuff that they do ALL the time...the 'what would happen if' guys that build and test and even when/if it doesn't turn out to be a feasible concept they get lots of data from it that will be useful elsewhere. We were working on SCRAM engines back in the 1990 time frame too among other neat things. Someday we might find out what was going on once the information is no longer relevant to contemporary machines.
Back in the early 90s, I had a friend who worked at Edwards AFB as well as “that area that shall not be named”. His job involved a certain aspect of flight testing vital for all long range aircraft. While he could share certain non-classified interesting stories about his work, otherwise he was always very tight-lipped.
The “Aurora” rumor was quite active at the time and there had been reports of “interesting sightings” around the Antelope Valley, which no one could explain.
One day I asked my friend about the rumored Aurora program and those “interesting sightings” - was there any connection? His response was “Well, if one day you just happen to see a flying object moving amazingly fast while changing directions in ways that you think that an airframe cannot, then remember what you just asked me.”
Interesting
One of my professors in engineering school claimed to have worked on Aurora, and he certainly had the resume complete with an NDA gap. According to him, "Aurora" was a technology demonstrator and testbed for a number of new technologies that were expected to be used in 4th and 5th generation fighters, high altitude hypersonic bombers, and spy planes. And it proved to be a failure.
My professor said that they only built and flew 2 Auroras with a partially constructed 3rd prototype sitting in a storage hangar at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio last time he checked in the early 90s. The planes were mostly off-the-shelf parts taken from other high speed high altitude aircraft, including the A-12 and SR-71. The only interesting components were a camera designed for hypersonic recon (which ultimately didn't work) and J-58 engines modified with an additional mode after the ram jet. In this third stage the j-58 engines served as the compressor and fuel mixer for an early pulse detonation engine, which produced the iconic contrails.
The pulse detonation stage burned a mix of JP-1 and isoborane ("zip fuel") leftover from the "Boron Boom" and B-71 era of the 1950s. The USAF bought a few hundred thousand gallons of several isoboron fuel mixes before it was discovered that stuff can't be used safely in a turbine engine, so the development contract stipulated that Aurora and a few other black projects used it. If it was successful there were plans to restart isoborane fuel programs in the late 80s.
According to my professor the Aurora quickly proved to be an impressive disappointment as while the cobbled together aircraft and the exotic new engines performed incredibly well, it proved that both hypersonic reconnaissance and bombing were impractical to impossible. The behavior of atmospheric gases around a hypersonic aircraft proved to be chaotic, and the technology to compensate for it is still decades away.
Hypersonic reconnaissance with photos or electronic equipment didn't work because of the ionization of air around the aircraft. Air becomes superheated, glowing first red than blue, which also releases a storm of high energy electrons around the aircraft. The electrons in term release radio waves as they drop down to a ground state around normal atoms. Those radio waves blind electronic surveillance equipment and gave the Aurora a massive radar signature that "a blind operator could see in the dark". Essentially the same thing that happens when spacecraft reenter the atmosphere ("Blackout"). The camera couldn't see through the glowing gases or compensate for the ground speed.
Hypersonic bombing proved to be a failure because of the turbulence experienced by a bomb decelerating from hypersonic velocities. A nuke could be dropped hundreds of miles away from the target with all the momentum to hit, but would do so with less accuracy than WW2 era strategic bombing. ICBMs proved more effective.
My professor said that the Auroras did achieve the highest velocities of any manned jet plane ever, but they never actually conducted record setting flights. You have to meet certain mission requirements to set an official speed record (closed course, both directions, multiple agencies corrobating the event), and the secrecy of the program required they avoid attracting attention.
The fate of the two Auroras was grim, unfortunately. They both exploded due to problems with the isoborane fuel. The first aircraft exploded over the Pacific Ocean somewhere between Hawaii and California during a "high speed research flight" (just flying the expensive things because they had the money and aircraft just sitting there) in 1989. They never found the wreckage.
The second prototype exploded just after takeoff due to a likely fuel leak in 1990. The pilot, who was killed in the explosion along with the copilot/flight engineer, was the son of a "wealthy and well connected United State congressman" (my professor didn't actually know who, and regarded the pilot as what we now call a "nepo-baby"). The destruction of the second prototype also happened while a number of ranking military brass were present at the airfield to witness see the Aurora.
After the second disaster the program was canceled. Test flights using smaller versions of the engines on unmanned drones were planned to continue in the mid to late 90s, but my professor left "the company" (presumably Lockheed-Martin) in 1992 and lost his security clearance accordingly. My professor regarded the Aurora project as a waste of time and money, and said he would have preferred to have worked on the F-22.
Indeed interesting post, thanks for sharing!
I would left a few questions to it if you don't mind:
Were both of the Aurora prototypes the same design or wwre the different in terms of planforms and appearance/design?
Were both of them fully manned birds with no autonomous option? I guess so, but it is always better to ask.
What was the speed? I consider Mach 5 as a good guess as technology was there to develop it at the time.
Were both of them operating out of Groom Lake or some other Nevada fields?
Very interesting subject indeed!
This is the most believable post about the subject. The contrails/exhaust shown are pretty obviously produced by some kind of pulsed engine, not a typical ramjet. The sounds described in the reported sightings confirm this. Everything you said about the difficulties of hypersonic reconnaissance and bombing is true, along with the stealth and communications problems. Whatever it was, it was too ahead of its time to be viable in the 90's.
Your professor had an awful lot to say about potential super secret Gov’t projects…
This sound entirely convincing, but just because your professor no long worked for "the company" and no longer had security clearance wouldn't give him carte blanche to talk openly about such a highly classified project. Also if he shared all of this with you then he presumably shared it with other people but it's never come to light before....
This is probably correct. Our company supplied certain types of guidance equipment to a project of this type. We supplied only "handful" of products, so this never went beyond a test platform, but it did go very very high, essentially a vacuum. One rumor was that one of the platforms was "destroyed" due to it having been backed into a power pole, during a night launch, causing major fire damage to parts of the airframe.
My dad was in fuels for the Air Force 1970-1997. He was picked up by the DOD for about another 17 years and became fuels branch manager at NAS Corpus Christi. About 4-5 years ago we were at my parents house for the holidays and I was telling my brother how I saw a contrail that looked like donuts on a rope and my dad pops into the conversation to say “they don’t fly of Texas.” Got an Oh shit look on his face. He legitimately got a job offer for groom lake but choice German instead in the mid 70s.
in 2015-2017 I lived in Aberdeen ,Wa ,,, every tuesday at noon or so I heard the SR-91 take off as it was dropped from WIDBEY ISLAND NAVAL STATION ,,, I was in the military on an airforce base(1969/1971) and have heard every thing we had at that time ,, hearing the SR-91 ignite and take off is quite an experience ,,, you feel it as well as hear it ,,, that power is unmistakable and truly an awesome experience ,,, to hear it and feel it is not like anything else you have ever heard or felt ,,, except maybe a saturn 5 ,,,
If I remember correctly, the USAF retired the SR-71 (rather abruptly) right around the time the Aurora was supposed to have been developed. Then, a few years later, they put it back into service. Connecting those dots suggests that the Aurora was developed and flew but either proved an ultimate design failure or was too expensive, as Simon stated, to build an entire fleet of them.
if the sonic booms are correct thats most likely why it was canceled
The mid 90s saw a defense spending drawdown in the US. I suspect why no one ever saw or heard of this project since then is it got the budget axe in a time of competing priorities in the Pentagon. They had just won the cold war, and digital satellite reconnaisance was a thing - who was going to fight for Aurora? The Air force had to fight for the F22, and the CIA didnt have enough leverage with the then-friendly relations with Russia. Who needed a spy plane when they were broke, let you into the country, and you had satellites anyways?
The SR71 was “cancelled” but returned briefly to undertake scheduled SALT style disarmament Treaty confirmation overflights of the USSR. I used to watch it depart, regular as clockwork, from Mildenhall on Thursday afternoons! 😂
SR 71 haven't flown in years.
@@garydarby2548they still maintain a small fleet of them
My theory is that "the Aurora Project" was a program that had several craft come out of it, the TR-3B being the most advanced. Tangentially related: my freshman science teacher ('92) told us to keep our ears out for something called the Aurora Project in about 20 years (from then). That's all he said about it.
I believe the TR-3B is real and people still claim to see them to this day. Some going as far to say it has some sort of “propulsion system” that illuminates the center of the underbelly. Who knows, but the technology has advanced much further than we realize.
@@ThatSoonerGuy TR-3B descriptions look way to much like the F117 or B2 for them to not be F117 or B2.
@@ThatSoonerGuy The strange thing is that i read many comments of people saying they've seen the tr3b fly close to ground level. But there isn't a single authentic photo of the aircraft despite it flying so low to the ground?? I still do believe this aircraft exists though..
@@DavidKnowles0 if its a test aircraft it could potentially be using an F117 as a base, and perhaps changed out the bomb bay for the engine that takes the undercarriage with the glow. F117 seems to be a popular guinea pig plane lately, also seen with a new experimental paint recently
I used to be a Postman between 95-02 in the North West of England. One morning at approximately 06:45 I was approaching the start of my round which looked out to the West and saw a streak travelling Northwards. This streak took literally seconds to cover the visual horizon and at the time I assumed was travelling behind streaky clouds as it kind of pulsed. My initial thought was meteor, but there was no descent in its flighpath, but nor was there any sound that I can recall all these years later. Having read some of the other comments here and theorising about its direction of travel (at first I thought Bae Systems in Warton, Lancashire) it could easily have been heading to RAF Machrihanish.. Maybe, just maybe what I saw was the Aurora? I spent 15 years photographing Military Aircraft at Warton and various airshows and deployments around the UK so I'm fairly well versed in what is currently around (or was during this time frame) within the military establishment. It isn't something I've thought of much since witnessing it, but this video has certainly got me wondering what I saw that day..
Interesting. Could you pinpoint the year more preceisley?
@@RallyRacingVideo I'm gonna say probably 98, but it could be a year either side... It WAS an awfully long time ago...
I remember the article they had in Popular Mechanics about this, for a time I was utterly fascinated by this alleged hypersonic SR-71 replacement and it's distinctive "Donut on a rope" contrails.
Given Skunk Works' nature, it's more likely to have existed than not, at least as a prototype. Tech from it was probably adopted into other newer planes, if so.
About 10 years ago before I quit smoking I was outside puffing down a cigarette when I saw a passenger plane fly over. It left a normal contrail and in a minute or so the wind blew its contrail into the perfect, prototypical "donuts on a rope" contrail. I wish I had taken a picture of it and far be it for someone to believe a random stranger on the internet but I can 100% promise that those contrails can be made by normal passenger jet aircraft.
@@Nefville Indeed they can, usually as the result of an engine malfunction like a compressor stall however, not as part of normal operation.
I think I remember that article from Popular Mechanics
@@cactuspete1973 Was way back in the '90s, wanna say 1998 or so. There was one with a whole slew of odd rumored black project aircraft, including a fucking dirigible. Sticks out in my memory 'cos my mother remembers actually seeing it. I was autismally chattering about the article the one day and after she voiced recognition, I of course had to find the issue again to show her.
I think it was Ben Rich that I met at the mall in Torrance, California. The man I spoke at length with was in charge of the F117 project. He talked a lot about how they kept the F117 secret for so long, and the failure modes of the wings.
Having talked with him, I have a feeling that keeping an Aurora project secret was well within their means.
As an aeronautical engineering student it was like meeting Einstein!
In 1996, i was working nights in Mississippi at the time. I was walking back out to get some tank gauges at about 0300 (3 am) and I glanced up and saw a plane approaching from my left. I watched as it got closer and I saw that it wasn't 1 plane but 4 planes. As it got closer still I saw that they weren't planes at all. There were 4 triangle shaped objects flying in a 1,2,1 formation. They weren't lit on the 3 point's of the triangle rather they glowed an amber color as if lit from the inside. It's how I was able to see them in such detail. They weren't perfect triangles as the sides were slightly longer than the rear section was across and the rear section was slightly concave. They were traveling at about the same speed and at same altitude as a twin engine plane but they were completely silent. When they were directly overhead they did something i can only describe as impossible. They did a tumbling, rolling, flipping, over, under and around each other then instantly froze into the original formation and continued on. No known aircraft could do such a maneuver within earths gravity without ripping the airframe apart let alone anyone inside surviving. If there was anyone inside. It was as if gravity had no affect on them. I did 6 years in the US Navy as a cryptologist and I never heard a rumor of anything like this existing. That was the first time i saw them and I haven't seen them since.
Decades ago, Paul Helyer, former defense minister of Canada, saud the US military has weapons to fight an extraterrestrial invasion and has discovered a new form of energy. I have no idea if these were the weapons. Whatever they are, I hope theyre friendly because seeing what these things did, we couldn't touch them with a missile. But, one thing is certain--we are either FAR more advanced than we're being told or ET really does exist--or maybe both.
The F-15 has an advertised ceiling of 65,000 feet. I was in an F-15 squadron based at Nellis AFB back in the early eighties that occasionally tried to do intercepts of SR-71's. "Tried" being the key word here. As the flighline dispatcher for a year or so it was my job to pick pilots up after missions and transport them back to ops. I got to be in on some interesting conversations. Several of these involved SR-71 intercepts. A couple of things that have always stayed with me was that the Blackbird was MUCH faster than advertised and that our aircraft were conducting these missions at 80,000 feet. So, it's untrue to say that only the U2 could fly at those altitudes.
F-15 my beloved
English Electric (BAE) Lightnings from the 1960's could get to 60,000ft+
The peak altitude a plane can attain in a zoom climb is much higher than the ceiling it can reach in sustained flight.
@@MrWillNeedham Yup. "Top Flight", 1959. Sent the XF4H-1 (F-4 phantom II prototype) on a zoom climb to over 98,000'.
The English Electric Lightning interceptor could also fly above 80,000 and was used to intercept U2 planes spying on the UK at a certain time - which apparently shook up the U2 pilots. It was also the only interceptor that was able to catch and overtake Concorde in level flight - there were concerns that a skyjacked Concorde might be used by terrorists
"Large number of aircraft..."
That, i think, is the key phrase. Even the Blackbird never numbered much more than a couple dozen.
I remember some of the rumors that were going around when i was in the Air Force and I am reasonably certain that Aurora is very real. Satellites might be more efficient in a lot of ways, but it can take several days to maneuver a Keyhole to look at a given spot. The Blackbirds and Arcangels were the only way to fill in immediate gaps and I can't believe they would put Habu out to pasture without something better to replace it.
You failed to mention: the SR71 was officially announced to exist at the same time as it's retirement being announced. The whole program stayed secret for almost 30 years.
Maiden flight 1964! Retired 1998!
Sorry but NO.
I sat in the cockpit (albeit with lots or missing gear and no ejection sat) on a recruiting trip into Beale AFB in 1978.
In 1981 the Japanese stood in droves outside the perimeter fence at the end of the runway at Kadena AFB Okinawa with massive telephoto lens’.
So no, it was NOT secrete until after retirement.
The SR 71 has been common knowledge since the early 1970s.
@@sigfried45 yep. And in the early 80’s in Okinawa the locals would be lined up at the end of the runway with massive zoom lenses taking pics as the SR-71 (known as the Habu) took off and landed.
We knew some of those people were intelligence officers for foreign countries but they let them all take the pics as the only interest that the pics could provide was what time the bird took off or landed.
The Habu would break ground, accelerate for a short time and then pull up and head for the nearest cloud as the gear continues to retract and it accelerated. Sometimes almost vertical.
It’s existence was well known.
Hell I sat in one on a high school recruiting trip (with massive holes where black boxes had been removed and a Jerry rigged “seat” as the ejection seat was removed.
I graduated high school in 1979 and the public was well aware of it.
That’s not even remotely true.
The public knew about the Blackbird in the 60s.
It probably did not work out after testing until the current mystery of the SR-72. The single engine technical demonstrator was seen near Palmdale around 2017. Then in Jan 2018, Lockheed announced that modern 3D printing technology allow them to build an engine that will allow an aircraft to fly 2-3 times faster than the SR71. Then all reference to the SR72 was removed from Lockheed's official webpage in Mar 2018 which include the phrase "Global Strike" .
All mentions of any specifics on anything hypersonic was removed after the media fuss about russian hypersonics initially broke out
@wildcountry.that’s the scram jet technology, without question.
DARPA has been bank rolling hypersonic test engines for 15 or 20 years now. I have worked on a few iterations. The additive manufacturing components have become unbelievable in their size, detail, and complexity. The printing technology is the big change that's going to make these engines feasible. The combustion is driven by the old school TEA/TEB injection just like the SR-71. They also use other non-organic compounds to keep the party going.
@wildcountry. Military aircraft still go trans-sonic off the coast. Occasionally over land for an intercept, too.
It exists, my father worked on the radar system for the plane. He was a senior electronic engineer for Raytheon in Goleta CA in the electronic warfare division. They were never told exactly what the plane was, just that it was a hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft that was to utilize pulse jets and that the program name was project Aurora. They were given a physical mock up of the cockpit/nose cone of the plane so they could fit the system. He told me about the project after he retired before his untimely death. He worked on many top secret classfied projects and was a senior engineer on the development of the SLQ-32 missile defense system that protected our aircraft carriers. He was a true American hero and i miss him dearly.
This plane absolutely doesn't exist
@@gr8crash _[citation needed]_
@CakePrincessCelestia there's no USAF aircraft listed with thst designation. The "SR" designation also ended when SAC was dissolved. Also IF this aircraft were operational since the SR71 retirement? Where is it? How has it never been seen in decades? Common sense tells you that's impossible based on the logistics alone not to mention there wouldn't even be a need to keep it secret, especially that long.
@@gr8crash Why should it even be listed with a designation if it's so secret. I just have the theory that it does (or did) exist, but the program ultimately ended the same way the SR-71 ended. Was too expensive to run a recon aircraft of that capabilities program when you have satellites all around the globe.
@CakePrincessCelestia why should it be? Because that's how it works in the military. Especially once an aircraft becomes operational its given a designation identifying what type of aircraft it is. What ended the SR71 wasn't costs, or satellites it was purely politics. Satellites even today, are less capable than reconnaissance aircraft. Also forgot to mention that even if it was built it would have been a reconnaissance aircraft and wouldn't have carried a radar system.
For the Aurora to NOT exist, it means that aeronatical engineers must have sat on their hands for the past 50+ years...
No, they gave us the F-22, and F-35 The latter is still in development,(sorry, meant to say "adding capabilities") technically. And the F-22 will reenter development, To become "MegaRaptor II", with better avionics, radar, stealth, and more room for payload/Drone remote control.
Not really. It just means they've been doing other things.
@@Gunni1972 would you intercept me?
Yes, and we know they didn't do that!
Unless there's some kind of diminishing returns in terms of aircraft performance.
DARKSTAR (or Dork-star as we like to call it) is the FTU E3 squadron callsign for the controllers in the back. E3s are based out of Tinker in OKC and a training sortie last several hours all over that area. Fighters were at Cannon in that timeframe and likely worked with the E3s frequently. Also, when I was flying Vipers, we used the DARKSTAR callsign when flying as Red Air to replicate GCI.
All I know is that we often heard the Aurora's signature pulsing "rumble" in Anaheim, Ca. and multiple sonic booms.
@tahwseodtichill bro tf he did to you
@@suspiciousstew1169
It’s not what he’s doing to him; it’s what he’s not telling you and anyone else. That he never actually observed anything whatsoever.
Two planes going through Mach create 2 sonic booms. 4 planes going through Mach create 4 sonic booms. But a plane going through Mach 2 doesn't create another boom. Go figure.
I read another testimony claiming that you can feel the Aurora's engine rumble in your chest. Did you feel it, and was it much louder than any publicly known military aircraft today?
In 1985 I was working at Lockheed on the D5 SLBM project. We had a monthly corporate magazine. I had also been at Beale AFB one time. One issue of the magazine had a cover depiction of what was called the Aurora. The plane was said to be the successor to the SR-71. It had a stretched triangular shape, although an angular shape, similar to the F117.
I highly doubt a classified "black" project plane would literally be on the _cover_ of a company-wide magazine, *and* that it would so plainly and openly link itself to the SR-71like that. Besides, if it was sent to the whole company then there would be hundreds or thousands of copies that I presume employees could have taken home, or even just cut the cover off of, and yet somehow none of those copies (or even photos of them) made it onto the internet, despite the fact that employees would have undoubtedly known how desperate people were for any info verifying the plane's existence and purpose.
My uncle used to work for Lockheed doing graphic design and print layout for that magazine! But he never told me any information about Aurora because he wasn’t privy to anything.
It could have been a concept drawing for a cancelled proposal?
I recall hearing about the Aurora when I was working as a USAF mechanic on SR-71s in 1969. So the word gets around, secrets or not. I also recall that a few pilots came back terrified. Of what I don't know. Maybe just scuttlebutt. But the Aurora wasn't.
also RAF Mildenhall never left UK MOD ownership. we just leased it from you for special recon plane parking purposes. its where we stashed the blackbirds that did USSR overflights.
It was a tanker base as well. I was stationed there for 4 years. Then combat controllers moved in as well.
mildenhall is currenty the primary US tanker, transport and heavy recon base in the uk. KC-135's come in and out of there all day. RN if you wanna see the super cool stuff hang out at the fence of RAF fairford.
@@M3PH11 i will check that out ty sir :)
Yes,I worked as a contractor (civils and building,nothing exciting)at menworth hill and,as I understand it there’s legal reasons to do with security and being able to prosecute intruders(problems in court with protesters)that means the MOD have to own the base and lease it to the US.Its just a case of being practical to jump through a couple of hoops and all parties just pretending its not the US calling the shots with everything important that happens.
When I was a child in Okinawa in the early 1970's we clung the the chain link fence outside of the Kadena AFB runway and watched SR 71's land. We also watched B52's land with holes as large as cars through their fuselages landing.
Exchange between me and my brother (who worked for General Dynamics for 25+ years):
Me: "What's that? (pointing to tiny model of SR-91 on his desk)"
Him: "It's a plane. SR-91, Aurora".
Me: "Oh cool." Eyes narrow. "Is that a real plane?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "Have you seen it before?"
Him: "Yes".
Me: "Where did you see it?"
Him: "I can't tell you."
“I don’t believe anything is true until the government denies it“ ~ Jim Marrs
I was camping on BLM land at Simpson Springs, UT- directly in-line, above, and about 14 miles from (11,000') runway 12 at Dugway Proving Grounds around 2008. Sitting around the campfire about 2 hours after sunset I heard an aircraft approach from the SE, nearly overhead, making a "waa-waa-waa" sound. The nav lights were turned off. The runway lights came on, and from the sound of the aircraft it landed, likely back-taxied and took off again. As it accelerated down the runway the unique sound of the aircraft grew in pitch and frequency "WAA-WAA-WA-WA-WA..." until it faded over the salt flats to the NE. Unforgettable.
I think there are more secrets at Dugway than Area 51.
That’s called a plus jet engine
@@badpandavideos or is it "pulse"?
@@jasonwooden correct. It looks like AutoCorrect got me.
I saw over Cornwall long ago ( late 90's - 2000 or around that ) a very high very fast contrail that had puffs just like that, small, but clear. Didn't hear any sound with it.
I was used to seeing Concorde leaving the area with a soft boom as it went supersonic over the Atlantic and this was very different, much more like seeing the ISS go over in speed terms and for as long so not a meteorite.
Funny enough as a follow up to the Blackbird was rumored at the time I wasn't really surprised or confused as to what I was seeing, more like, "hur, so that's one."
I'm glad that the metric ton we spend on defense continues to give Simon good material for videos.
Metric ton?
Olympic size swimming pool, perhaps.
If it's a metric ton then it's a tonne. And it's only 10% bigger than a ton, so not really a suitable expression of extreme largeness.
@@adriandaw3451when its a metric ton of shit, I think then its useful.
What are our tax dollar for, if not for UA-cam fodder?
Don't forget various dams and other large construction projects.
@@Justanotherconsumer "Rumours-sized". Once you have to build a runway for such a plane, those 2.3 Billions are all but asphalt in the desert.
The Aurora absolutely did exist. As an airborne security surveillance pilot under contract for the USAF many years ago, we eyeballed it one night on the ground from the air whilst on a security detail for the government and watched it briefly after it took-off.
The back-seater took screendump photos of it through the FLIR system.
There’s more to this story than I will ever publicly write about, but I can assure you, exist it certainly did. I’m just amazed it has never been made public knowledge even now, all these years later.
That’s how you know this nation is in good hands, this story has made me incredibly patriotic knowing the US always has another trick up her sleeve
What location you did see it?
If it hasn't been made public it's because there's info that may be dangerous if it ever falls on the wrong hands.
What info? We may never know. Whose hands? It could be a superpower, or even a small cell of bad actors.
There's plenty of information about how to fabricate nukes online, because not everybody has an uranium enrichment facility just lying around, or a rocket testing facility... Also nukes don't work for deterrence if they are kept a secret...
But with the Aurora? The information is just too advantageous or too dangerous to even publicly disclose its existence... Or it may not even be real... I mean, anything's possible! It could be a smoke screen just like alien spaceships were back in the day...
Sounds very plausible, but I would have to get verification from Russia and China...
Good to know that a lot of info is air-tight.
The first time I heard of this aircraft was during a 1993 publication of How to Make War by James F Dunnigan. I believe that 12 Aurora aircraft were listed if I am not mistaken. They are unlisted in the 2003 version I recently ordered.
I remember when I found out about “Aurora” in the early ‘00s and I’ve always been intrigued by it, and I believe that it’s possible that it was a real aircraft but highly unlikely because we would’ve heard something by now. Or Simon is right and there was only like 3 which makes secrecy easier, also it being a test bed for other aircraft would make sense. Real or not the idea is awesome.
The US military would have been remiss if it hadn't been working on something like this. The thing is, hypersonic engines are still a work in progress, so I doubt that if a prototype was built (which is likely) it was anything more than test airframe with nothing like the hypersonic capabilities of the intended article.
Like every thing the British do, they are real experts at air craft spotting. I absolutely have complete faith in his abilities. Thank you.
From the underside, an F-117 looks similar to what was drawn. And it was observed that F-117s operated out of Machrahanish. But that doesn't explain the recordings taken from seismic recorders up the west coast of the UK which tracked a disturbance travelling at around mach 5.
Good thing it was a highly secrect train!
Having grown up near Mildenhall / Bentwaters I saw triangular aircraft like that more than once. But as a kid looking at the underside of a classified aircraft, I couldn’t have said for sure if it was Aurora rather than an F-117A or anything else.
Remember the Brit who posted pics of Air Force One flying overhead when The White House hadn’t announced an overseas trip - then-President Trump on his way to visit troops in Iraq?
When I was stationed at Edwards, there was a radio report about the USGS getting repeated reports of earthquakes in California. They were checking their equipment, and found nothing.
One tech found the sheer number of the false reports intriguing, and decided to plot the report calls on a map. The calls ran in a straight line from Area 51, across Edwards, out near Catalina island, and back to Area 51. I forget what day of the week it was, but it was the same day of the week I want to say Thursday, every week, at the exact same time.
Theory was, something was making the flight from Area 51, over Edwards, to Catalina and back, generating some form of shockwave, that people were detecting and calling in.
Interesting comment. Thank you for sharing.
Do you remember what spacies were between a flight it was coming up to Catalina Island and back? I mean whether data suggested it was one flight or they were divided?
Regards
Probably hallucinations. Aurora likely/definitely never existed.
I live in Northern Utah (about 30 min from Hill AFB) my daughters and I saw two aircraft that fit the Aurora’s description one night 2 years ago. Flying relatively low, completely silent, we only knew they were there by their silhouettes against the stars of the night sky. They said thought they were UFOs, I wasn’t sure for awhile till I started seeing stuff about the Aurora, now I’m pretty sure this is what we experienced.
So I'm not crazy! I JUST posted a similar encounter my father and I had near Livingston, Montana. The fact that it was silent, or nearly silent, is what impressed me most! So it's definitely real. It's definitely stealth, and delta shaped, and it's NOT a B2, and it's not aliens (it had regular aircraft lights if I remember correctly)....what the heck is it?
Hey, if it was silent it was likely the TR3. The aurora was definitely not silent.
I grew up near Westover AFB and I can recall atleast three occasions that I'd seen those weird contrails in the air, right around the time that we launched the War on Terror. None of my military buddies ever had an answer as to what produced them, but I've since come to learn theyre a product of Scramjet engines like you pointed out, which raises my eyebrows a bit
Saw one of these once in the summer of 1998 off the west coast of Scotland. Sailing with a friend, who worked in `future projects` at Aerospace, when it appeared at an altitude of about 7 to 8000 feet from a westerly direction escorted with an F15 on each wing. I was an aircraft systems instructor on Tornado and Typhoon aircraft amongst others so was good at identification but hadn`t seen one of these before `in the flesh`. The Aurora then throttled up and left the F15s standing and the pulsing jet noise was very noticeable as it rapidly climbed and disappeared to the east. My friend said with a wry grin `you didn`t see that` and confirmed what we had just seen.
we guessed it must have come out of Machrihanish to be where it was and it was late afternoon so not far from darkness
Indeed interesting sighting, thanks for sharing! Comparing to the fighters that escorted it, how big was the 'Aurora'? F15 is a large fighter, no question about it, would you estimate it being half or so of the 'Aurora' length and width?
What was the shape of the Aurora that you saw being escorted by F15's?
@@RallyRacingVideo Exactly triangular/arrowhead as per the depiction on this vid.
@@RallyRacingVideo The F15s were slightly smaller than the distinctive shape of the third aircraft, probably by a third.
@@hewittstevenson8300 right, thank you. Did you notice engine exhaust or the inlets on the Aurora?
Did you see any vertical stabilizers like tailfins?
The F14 Tomcat was named because Grumman, its creator, had a history of naming its fighters after cats.
Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, Panther, Cougar, Tiger and Tomcat
And, after Admiral Thomas F. Connolly who fought against the Naval variant of the F-111/TFX.
The Tomcat name was to be used on an earlier aircraft but it was considered too risqué
Imagine a time in our history when something was "too risqué" ... those were the days. @@Dave5843-d9m
Their emergency vehicle side too. Like the Aerialcat fire truck among others.
I just want to point out, that the US has a helicopter that we only know about, because it crashed in the Bin Laden raid.
This was in 2011, and we still don't know how it fully looks. Let that sink in.
Not shot down. Crash landed.
Otherwise, agreed.
@@PDXdjn Yeah. You are right. My old man brain forgot the detail. I'm going to correct it. Thank you 😉
@@JohDan6969All good. I completely agree with your statement now.
That's one of those "variations on a theme story". There was a helicopter that crashed during the bin Laden raid, but it was a fairly typical Blackhawk, not something more exotic. There was a different raid, under different circumstances, where a "project" asset was destroyed. I think this is the raid that the story is referring to, but it's since been conflated with the bin Laden raid since that one has greater notoriety.
@@Niven42During the Bin Laden Raid, they used a version of the Blackhawk that went through the entire Pakistani airspace undetected, they officially said "modified for stealth" but that's it. One of these helicopters crash landed in the bin laden compound. When they were leaving, they filled the helicopter with c4 explosives and blew it to bits for classification reasons. Then they bombed the place with f16s just for good measure. It was all rubble when the Pakistanis went in.
As someone who worked within military aerospace for a decade, there are so many things the public doesn't know. Let's keep it that way.
"Travelling at supersonic speeds on its attack runs, the Aurora Bomber is invulnerable to enemy AA fire. After ordnance is released, the jet slows and regresses to base at subsonic speeds. On its return flight or in large groups, the Aurora can be hit by ground fire."
-- Command and Conquer Generals manual
Lol. Games, not facts
Why the need for manned ordnance delivery at all? The ability to drop a missile in a bucket on the other side of the world has existed for many years.
@Jayjay-qe6um
"Supersonic Attack Runs".
How fast do you think bullets and Sidewiners go.?
Don't answere, I will not be replying.
Russians have a plane that can shoot itself down.
(*Super sonic attack runs*)
You have brightened my day. 👍
@laurieharper1526
Because; if a tree falls in the forrest, and nobody was there...
@@snakezdewiggle6084 One American F-11 actually did shoot itself down by testing its cannon while in a supersonic dive. The bullets slowed down but the plane didn't, and when the pilot pulled out of the dive the plane took three of its own rounds. The plane crashed but the pilot ejected and survived with severe injuries. That was 1956.
An F-14 Tomcat managed to shoot itself down with a Sidewinder missile, and more recently an F-16 was damaged by its own fire but the pilot was able to maintain control enough to land the plane. If the Russians only have "a" plane that can shoot itself down, they're 70 years behind American technology.
I can say that, if this aircraft ever existed, it was already surpassed by the time news of its existence was leaked decades ago.
Good optics on satellites for instance.
Wasn't leaked. The name Aurora appeared in a black budget paperwork.
@@thomasblankinship98 (Of the LA Times)?
I believe it at least *did* exist. A friend of mine in the early 2000s saw one while backpacking in Zion in Utah. He said there were 4 planes, and suddenly, one of them (that was a triangle arrowhead shape) just suddenly shot off going two to three times faster than the other ones.
This was a few years before any of us had ever heard of the Arora project.
Interesting report. Thanks for sharing. Did he mention any details of the size or dimensions of the unknown aircraft in question, comparing to the fighters that flew with it? Also, what was time of a day - noon, afternoon or just during daylight hours or at night (in the dark)?
The "aurora" had been known about since the 80s. Everyone knows the B2
@RallyRacingVideo if I remember correctly (it's been awhile), it was late evening, almost dark, and the lead craft was the one that popped off. It was just a dark wedge shape, with the other ones being more "airplane like."
@@playgroundchooser Thank you. Do you have any information about supposed height the planes were seen?
This issue with relying on satellites alone is that their flight paths are known. You simply cover up whatever you want hidden prior to the overflight by the satellite. You may remember multiple Soviet mistaken civilian airliner overflights of sensitive areas in the US in the 70's-80's and our allies comercial airliner overflights of Soviet bases or sentsitive areas. Memories of the Korean airliner incident in the '80s comes to mind. Airplanes can overfly an area at an unscheduled time catching whatever the target wants to keep hidden.
They got drones now.
Thank you for this. There may be 4-6 YT channels I trust to do the work to tell a story properly, accurately, and without clear bias- this one and Alex Hollings' Airpower. I recommend you both frequently. A long time subscriber.
I used to know someone who used to work at Knolls Atomic Laboratory in Schenectady, NY. They used to work for G. E. at that site. They told me almost 20 years ago about "The Aurora Project." They said that G.E. was developing an engine that could fly in the upper reaches of the atmosphere at more than 6 times the speed of sound. If that was 20 years ago,I can't imagine what they're working on now.
Aurora was built by Lockheed Skunkworks before Martin merged with them. Built in the mid - late 80's. Hypersonic, mach 7+. Stealthy. Used a hybrid fuel through pulse detonation scram jet engines.
It was a Mach 5 supersonic spy plane. It was not hypersonic.
I've assumed that this "SR-91" was just early test versions of the SR-72 Darkstar, which Lockheed confirmed the existence of a couple years ago. Such an advanced aircraft could take decades to develop and perfect, it makes sense to me.
Yeah, like it was super bleeding edge tech that cost too much back in the day, but now we are from the future and its become more cost effective to design fly and maintain an airframe with those capabilities.
More likely, they were just test beds for the propulsion system used in the 72.
DARPA has recently given a peak at some of the newer engine technologies, and 30 years seems to be the timeframe for them to reveal things to the public.
I saw something twin engined that ripped across the skyline recently, looked like Mach 6 at least, somebody's got a hot-rod up there for damn sure...
The SR-71 engines were hybrid turbojet/ramjets. The latter don’t really have an upper speed limit.
No. Aurora was built in the mid -late 80's through the early 90's. Dark Star probably wasn't even talked about at that time . Much less being built.
Alex and his channel @sandboxx are awesome. Imagine megaprojects but just for planes/military jets/videos like this.
When President Reagan did his first press conference as President he spoke of a prototype plane being built he called the Tokyo Express. He said two prototypes are being constructed and would go from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo in 45 minutes. Twenty four years later, I believe that there have been a hypersonic vehicle for years now as mentioned by the California Earthquake Seismic Center. They would get those booms on Thursday mornings with the MACH 4 sonic booms.
In 1992, at a White House briefing by a Lockheed engineer, he referred to “an engine that’s been flight tested in an aircraft that doesn’t exist”. He wouldn’t answer anything I asked about Aurora, though.
The SR 71 was a tiny glimpse into what was already being worked on on paper and developed. They kept it in service as a testing vehicle for the durability of the material materials and flight surfaces of high speed, but the design was quite old, but they learned so much by keeping that vehicle flying.
It's basically a techno-cryptid
that's a great term
SR 91 WEEEEEEEDIGO
@tahwseodtiYeah, but apart from a little ion-thruster, that is not much more than an orbital glider. Yes it does multiple machs at reentry. But it's main thrust comes from the Launch rocket. It can't take off from a runway.
Fantastic term! Love it.
Thats a cool term
I remember an Aurora bomber was an option in the PC game Command & Conquer Generals for the Allies. It would fly to the enemy base at hypersonic speed which meant AA couldn't shoot it down but after it delivered its payload it flew back to base at normal speed which made if vulnerable.
When I saw saw the title and the thumbnail for this video it triggered a memory I had from the mid 80s. I was thinking the story back then was about a model company who had gotten wind of a top secret aircraft and made a plastic model kit out of it. Seeing the name "Aurora," I thought maybe this video was about that story, since I remember Aurora model kits from the 1970s. I was very much disappointed that it wasn't, and then began to wonder if I was remembering something that hadn't even happened.
Of course I had to do some looking up on the Interwebs. There was a story of model company releasing a model of a plane that wasn't, the Testor F-19 Stealth Fighter in 1986.
I was happy to see that I did remember a delta wing stealth aircraft that some thought was, but wasn't from back in the mid-1980s, even if I got a bunch of the actual details wrong.
Lockheed make some of the coolest planes on the planet, i still have an airfix model my dad bought me and built with me of the SR-71 Blackbird.
😂 it's highly likely I have exactly the same model! Fun times 😊
Hah! Similar!
Australia
Devices of war are never cool.
@@samuelgarrod8327you realize the SR-71 was to document and photograph the USSR so we could better negotiate with them during the cold war, right?
@@samuelgarrod8327 I disagree. The SR-71 took pictures, no guns were fitted. Even if it did have guns on it or places to hang bombs, it doesn't stop the thing from looking absolutely awe inspiring. Furthermore, we are talking about a model kit of the SR-71.
There were ships carrying exotic aviation fuel to the base at RAF Machrihanish and pipelines going from the port there to the airbase at the time you suggest Aurora was flying. The exact type of fuel needed for the types of engines such a high speed aircraft would need.
My Grandfather worked at The Skunk Works, he never told any of us what he worked on and that he couldn’t share, but admitted to SR-71, F117 and B2 once they were in the public and he retired. He said he changed his clothes in a hanger and into a jumpsuit, everyone dressed in the same jumpsuit, then got on a 737 with no windows and flew for an hour and half, landed in a hanger that looked the same, went into another locker room and changed again into a new jumpsuit to work in. They flew to work everyday from Lancaster, CA to unknown location, turned out to be Burbank, CA. He told me in 2000 I can’t tell you what I did but if I worked on the stealth stuff in the ‘70s, imagine what I was doing in the 90’s! He said there are no UFOs, everything is US made and we had things that flew so fast you could be in two places in an instant. He said anti-gravity and that was the most he ever shared.
Living in SoCal in the 1990's and early 2000's there were periodic radar trackings (not so many sightings) and sounds of an aircraft with outrageous speeds which sometimes left funky "doughnut" tracks of a supposed pulse engine. The aircraft appeared to be moving to and from the inland desert and Pacific and often caused USGS seismic recordings. There was, I believe, at least one potentially viable photograph which was unverifiable. The radar and USGS signatures were confirmed and verified many times; however, there were never good explanations... and over time the public was conditioned to ignore the signatures.
I don't know about the 2000's, but yes.
the seismic recordings were what sold me on the idea long ago. that there was a collection of them that could be referenced to specific phenomena that something traveling like an aircraft at hypersonic speeds - this is a thing that I dont see a way to fake easily. In conjunction with the contrails, and the sporadic sightings, the evidence was enough to convince me.
If you look at the location of RAF Macrihanish it's ideal for going undetected from civilian radar stations for a very long time/way, no matter starting or landing. Also that AFB got a new runway in the 1990s that was long enough to support whatever exotic plane you can imagine AND it is said to have an elaborate bunker system below ground to hide whatever you wanted including planes or JP-7 tanks to fuel them.
I’m a massage therapist. One of my clients was an Air Force General. When I commented about how amazing the SR71 was. He commented. You would not believe what they have now. He told me about the SR 91. I asked him , “isn’t this something you should not be telling me.” He said,” It doesn’t matter. No one is going to believe you anyway.” He told me that they have several flying around the planet each carrying a single MIRVED nuclear missile. And that the USA has the ability to strike anywhere on the planet within just a few minutes. Is it true? I don’t know? But he said no one would believe me. And that was 14 years ago.
the aurora was the best air superiority fighter in the RTS game "Command & Conquer: Generals" in the US roster. IIRC the name came from basically a NGAD project name long before NGAAD was a thing.
It wasn't a fighter in the game but a bomber that couldn't be shot down until it delivered its payload.
Recently I went to the Santa Rosa Air museum (in Northern California)where I saw a Drone that was used on the SR 71 I was shocked because I knew there were only a few of those actually made and it was all in one piece!
I live in north central Texas. A state crammed full of huge military bases and contractors. Over the past 2 decades I have often seen ultra high contrails indicative of ram/pulse jet use (long thin lines with hanging “puffs”). I remember one time while floating in my sister’s swimming pool and seeing an extremely high altitude craft traversing the entire sky in a matter of mere seconds. That was almost 20 years ago. You don’t easily forget something moving that fast on a clear summer day.
Personally, I think it’s real. And I’m a firm believer that this plane has advanced technologies. The kind we’ve never seen before. The “aerial phenomenon” that’s been reported on recently I think directly relates to this aircraft.
Also, Machrinharish was widely known to house the F117 from time to time. It’s been documented on several occasions. It was a remote air base.
Look up the sandbox news video from a couple of weeks ago about the sr-72. It's definitely real
I believe that’s more with NGADS then this as the timing of sightings fit better to the timeline.
I believe there to be enough documentation and witnesses of an aircraft that looked and behaved like aurora to call it real. Will we ever hear the full story? Who knows. Many take it at face value that it was just a budget item for the B-2 that accidentally made it in. That may even be true. But that doesnt mean that there was no such aircraft as aurora is purported to be, and its not like the skunkworks is the only secretive aircraft division that exists in the US. Declassified documentation shows many things that were worked on by companies not named lockheed that were kept from public awareness for years or decades.
My take? Either it crashed or something else embarrassing and is being covered up, or it hasnt been declassified because the technology of the program is still considered very relevant, likely including its shape. If it was a technological dead end or just a test program for something we think adversaries already have figured out on their own, it likely would have been exposed at some point. Lets not forget the example of the Greenbriar Hotel (and its successor we dont know about) that successfully hid a fortified nuclear bunker for congress for 40 years and no one talked about it until an investigative journalist uncovered the thing.
I remember back in the early 90's when Revell used to sell a model on what they understood was the prototype of the Aurora plane. So the idea for this plane has been around for at least 30 years. What's crazy is how its existence hasn't been leaked more during that time.
Pretty sure that was the Fp-117. Maybe both? Spies from Mattel, not Russia?
@@frequentlycynical642 No, the F-117 was already known to the public at the time. In addition, the Aurora prototype model was not similar to the 3d models used in this video. Oh well, no biggie :)
And the DoD tried to block Marvel from selling the model. Marvel sued and won by default, as the Pentagon would not put up evidence that the model jeapordized national security. 😅
I recommend "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich who worked for Kelly Johnson and took over running that part of Lockheed when Kelly retired. It covers the development of the U-2, the SR-71 and the F117 Nighthawk. It's also available as an audiobook.
A neighbor, civillian DOD worker on A-51 for many years, over beer on the back porch in Pahrump. stated that if one thought of all the aircraft musuems in the world, would not equal the underground hanger space tunneled within the A-51. He related that every plane ever made around the world had residence within the underground hangar. Much like the F-117, there are planes and other type of craft, air and space capable, that are used to aquaint the engineers from the free world as to what had been created, how it worked, and what was expected in the future.
I watched a massive super high flying triangular craft with 3 white lights on each corner, flying higher than any commercial traffic I have ever seen, do a pass over the UK from south to north at about 3am in the morning once. I watched it do a straight line pass, no funny maneuvers etc. It had no hazard lights and I watched it go from horizon to horizon, it took about 15 to 20 minutes.
British cheese manufacturers have convinced the UK population of the significance of the triangle shape. Being seared into the British perception the population of Britain projects this triangle shape through psychological obturation. Thus the mundane viewing of a bird or distant star is transformed into a sinister American spy craft.
Sounds like you saw the alleged 3rtb
I myself saw the same thing fly over Fort Worth in 1998. Very fast, but it was completely silent. And this was around 2 am.
I've seen a black triangle over london twice in the last couple of years, I don't think its aurora, but maybe some successor, it can hover and take off at high speed and it turns in a strange way, its like spin the bottle, it just spins until it locks on and goes in that direction which makes me think its unmanned and trying to lock on to a GPS signal or something spinning to get its berrings.
@@GreatSageSunWukong waiting till the mercury spins up to speed before it can engage the anti grav drive.. Classic 3 rtb m.o.
Super interesting. Thank you for this. Very well framed without entertaining anything ridiculous.
My wife and I made a visit to a friend in New Mexico in 1988. Our buddy's place was about 80 miles from White Sands Missile Test Range.
It was a beautiful clear night, and we were just hanging out admiring the night sky when something came into view. The 'Something' was at extremely high altitude, so there was no sound. The vehicle was being followed by a green-to-orange glowing plasma tail -- like we just saw in the reentering SpaceX starship test -- consistent with an superheated titanium airframe -- and went horizon to horizon in only a matter of a few seconds. All of us looked at each other in shock and confirmed that we'd all seen the same phenomenon. I was a recently graduated Physics student, so I did the math, and came up with a speed number that made absolutely no sense.
I started doing research to find out what the thing could be, and found a Jane's Defense paper on Aurora, whose details lined up perfectly with what we'd seen.
So yeah. It may not have made series production, but there was definitely an 'X Plane' that did research into scramjet propulsion.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works gave a design to the Top Gun Maverick movie which was called DarkStar in the plot. What if this is the Aurora, and Lockheed Martin are trolling us? That would be funny. I suspect Aurora never got past the prototype stage but did fly a few times.
When climbing to altitude at night what would the 'exhaust' pattern look like for these pulse engines? Would they produce bright "puffs" with each "pulse in its wake?
Pretty funny, i just finished watching the recent updates of "Iiiiiii'm Alex Hollings, and this is.. Airpower!"
Playing some Candy Crush while listening to this video, hearing his name made me look up a bit confused as i had not expected him to be quoted here, unexpected overlap, despite the topic.
Dang it, you stole my comment. Id love to hear "I'm Simon Whistler, and this, is Megaprojects."
Ayyyy another Sandboxx News subscriber
Came here to say "I know that name.." Sandboxx is awesome.
@@klonkimoNext channel will be called Manga-projects. LOL
While flying as a Flight Engineer on the C-5, in the mid to late 90’s, I was flying over the Atlantic and heard the following conversation between Gander air traffic control and an unknown aircraft:
Aircraft: Gander control, Dark Flight (some number) altitude request
Gander: Go ahead Dark Flight
Aircraft: Gander, Dark Flight, requesting flight level 60 (60, 000 feet)
Gander after a pause: Dark Flight, Gander, repeat request.
Aircraft: Gander, Dark Flight, requesting flight level 60.
Gander: Dark Flight, if you can get up to flight level 60, it’s all yours
Aircraft: Roger Gander, DESCENDING to flight level 600
Level 60 = 6000 feet, not 60000 feet.
@@jeanholmgren3127quite right. Missed that last zero
Hehe, your story looks amazingly similar to account of Brian Schul about LA Speed check with SR71...
SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul reported one exchange. His SR-71 was screaming across Southern California, 13 miles high and its crew were monitoring cockpit chatter as they entered Los Angeles airspace. Though they didn't really control the SR-71, LA monitored its movement across their scope. The SR-71 crew heard a Cessna ask for a readout of groundspeed.
"90 knots" Center replied.
Moments later, a Twin Beech required the same.
"120 knots," Center answered.
An F-18 smugly transmitted, "Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout."
Center (after a slight pause): "525 knots on the ground, Dusty".
The SR-71 realised how ripe a situation this was for one-upmanship: "Center, Aspen 20, you got a groundspeed readout for us?"
Center (after a longer than normal pause): "Aspen, I show 1,742 knots"
No further groundspeed inquiries were heard on that frequency.
In similar vein (airport not stated), an SR-71 crew were listening in on a similar "match this" contest. A Cessna asked to clear to 4000 ft, a corporate jet requested clearance to 12,000, an airliner to 18,000, etc. Finally the SR-71 called ATC.
SR-71: "Request clearance to 80,000 ft"
Tower: "Just how in hell do you plan to get up there?"
SR-71: "Uh Tower, I'm descending to 80,000
...(borrowed from Marc)
Is it what made your story or your own separate and different experience and case?
Yeah thats a story from the sr71...
Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.
Bitch please
Do you recall the year it happened? Good story
I remember as a kid that loved GI JOE, they came out with an Aurora type jet in the late 80's in the toy line and the comics....it was before any of the stealth jets came out during Desert Storm so I thought having an "invisible" aircraft wasn't possible...if I only knew😂
The funny bit is that the people who worked with the "Aurora" will be watching this video, reading these comments and laughing at our mistakes 😁
Simon always delivers an excellent reading, no matter the topic.
Some people really don't understand how hard it is to quietly build a single prototype jet let alone 6 of them and then fly them all over the world without anyone knowing. Especially back then, it'd be insane.