Aurora, Does it exist?

The Aurora was rumoured to touch down at RAF Machrihanish in Scotland (along with the now de-classified F-117).
As far as I know Machrihanish is now under 'care and maintenance' which basically means it's not a full time military base and can be used by commercial aircraft apart from in wartime.

Whether or not the base is in operation for the War on Terror, I do not know.

(Edited for spelling)

[edit on 15-4-2005 by Ultron10]

I first heard of the "Aurora" back in '89 while serving a military tour in Stuttgart, Germany with duties as an an Avionics Tech.
I think that the development program may have been called the "Aurora project", but that it is not nessesarilly the name of the aircraft.
My brother was also stationed at Ramstein and served with the Air Force as an Egress tech. During a visit to see him he told me about a previous TDY assignment at Nellis in which he told me what he could of the "Aurora".
How much of this is 'disinformation' is anyones guess.
It wasn't until a while later that I started hearing other 'stories' about the 'Aurora' after hearing about it first from my brother.
Supposedly able to fly at extreme altitudes and being able to take advantage of the Earths rotation so that it had the capability to reach any point on Earth for a bombing mission within 4hrs maximum (at the furthest possible target point) when alerted from the ground using any one single existing (?) plane. He didn't say that the plane was used in the same survailance role as the SR-71...but was supposed to be an extremly high altitude cruising bomber.
When the target area was within range, the plane would decend from a near space 'high orbit' to an attack altitude.
With several planes placed strategically- the response time to a possible attack taget is significanly reduced. Supposedly there would only need to be a handful of planes needed to exist to have the capability to carry out attacks within a 1-2 hours (or less) of notification. Not relying on stealth beyond the on-board avionics jamming capabilities, its main strength being speed & cruising altitude beyond ground based detection methods making it invisible to all but satelites (and it had the capability to jam those anyway, so...) until it was too late for an 'enemy' to defend the target once it (if?) was detected in-bound anyway.
Once the bombing run was completed the plane would return to a high-orbit cruise and then land at the nearest Air Force base.

...So anyway...there is my $0.02!
T.S.

I'm not that read-up on the Aurora, however this article might interest some of you:

www.isrjournal.com...

It's basicly talking about the sucessor to the SR-71, and has similar applications that some of you were saying the Aurora might have. So could this plane be responsible for the rumours? anyway here's a few extracts..



A possibility?

oops. i started toppic like this.
oh well
i wasent able to find much on arourabut i think that its a stealth fighter that is an off shoot of the various german rocket expiraments undertaken at the end of the second world war.
the cia is probably using ufo storys to cover up its existance as they did with the u2/stealth bomber.

I saw this banking near my house w/ my binoculars:



[edit on 6/9/2005 by TheRanchMan]


Let me explain. This can further prove Aurora's second home is Avon Park. I was walking my dog when I heard a sound coming from the north ( was facing south) that did not sound like a regular fighter jet, as fighter jets fly over going to MacDill. The sound was like a lightsaber almost. It had a purple lights at the nose and two white lights near the wing tips. I used a pair of night vision gogles that I got from the ARMY/NAVY store. I could see the wings and the belly mounted engine as it passed me going south. It then turned, going east, and sounded as though it was slowing down. Avon Park is about 10 miles away from me, and then it faded put of view. That was the same night as the two supposed F/A-18's going supersonic to MacDill. Makes you wonder...

[edit on 6/9/2005 by TheRanchMan]

i have pictures i took back in 1991 of the suposed contrail with rings along it which some say is caused by the arora these photos were taken near canberra the capital of australia i am happy to scan them and email to anyone who would like to see them and give me an opinion about them.

you know, joe, if you go toPhotobucket, you can get a free account and upload pics from your computer into your account.

RanchMan, that is damn close to the pictures I saw of "aurora", check this out



check out how close these two are.....

I edited the above picture from something that someone posted based on two rough photo's that I saw of a plane sitting at Groom Lake.

The rear Vert.Stab's maybe adjustable or outward like you have them, and I am not 100% positive about the rear angle on the trailing edge of the wing.

But damn if they are not pretty close, even with the compound leadning edge.



[edit on 10-6-2005 by robertfenix]

WOW. They are almost identical! Mine looks a lot like Bill Sweetman's Aurora Sketch:



I'm still in ecstasy over the fact that Aurora flew over my HOUSE!

robert, i think the sketch you have is one of the conception models of Aurora.

[edit on 6/10/2005 by TheRanchMan]

no no concept sketch, I did that from memory, I just used a drawing that someone posted as aurora and modified it to what I remember seeing in the photo. If its close to some other sketch or concept is only because this thing is real and has been seen by a few people.

plus Bill Sweetman's image is a little off, it make "aurora" look huge like the size of XB-70, when in fact its a little less then half that size.

its wingspan is shorter then the B2, and its body length is more similar to a B1B. The ends of the winglets drop down much like the XB-70 though. As for it being a bottom breather I believe it has both a bottom inlet, low speed transonic inlet and an upper RamJect, ScramJet type ducting or additional inlet openings to facilitate the high speed super cruise feature of the engines... not exactly sure...

and from what I "heard" a portion of the aircraft is tiled like that of the space shuttle, using some sort of sandwhich ceramic composite on the underbelly and leading edges, while the rest of the skin is some sort of carbon/ti/ composite material. Part of the reason why the A51 workers keep complaining about Hazardous material exposure is the material composition on the "aurora" airframe.

I think after being super heated, from high speed testing the outer skin material is quite noxious to people who inhale it. Even several hours after the plane is back on the ground.

I remember a popular mechanics article that was talking about how some A12/SR's got retrofitted with pulse jets which people speculate are responsible for some of the donuts on a rope contrails like this one


external image

havent posted in quite awhile. noticed this thread. thought i'd make my "memberly" contribution to ATS. i saw the Avon Park stuff and thought i would look into it. Checked out the Satellite views (Google!) and found a big runway. cant zoom in ALL the way, BUT close enough to make out some details. if u look just east of Frostproof (going back and forth between Map and Satellite, finding stuff is alot easier) there is the corner of a dark grey shaded area. this indicates a military installation (the bombing range). if you zoom in some and look directly to the east of Lake Isabell, you can see the runway. also, if you look to the north of the airport, and in the southeastern section of the range there are nearly identical facilties. i'm not sure what these are, but im willing to bet those aren't anything classified. if anything probably bunkers. i live in Savannah, Ga, and see Donuts-On-A-Rope contrails all the time. i do have one picture of the source of the contrail, and it does appear to be similar to the aircraft pictures that have been posted on this thread. those contrails are running parallel to the coast. a good explanation for this might be that the aircraft in question may be moving towards or away from Avon Park.





[edit on 10-6-2005 by truthseekerX]

I don't mean to pimp it, but I, TheRanchMan, whas the one who came up with the theory and I madem that spiffy map.

It came out a few years ago that the name "Aurora" was the classified name of the B2 project, and it's funding. There probably IS a new spy plane flying, or at least in the testing stages, but I doubt that it's named Aurora.

Never know... But the Aurora is something totally different from the U2 that's for sure...

Either there's some smart rich guy that made a hypersonic bomber in his backyard or the gov't is lying (I'm going with the latter one).

Anybody familiar with the story that back in the mid 1990's, an aircraft suspected of being Aurora suffered a crash while trying to take off from Boscombe Down? The story states that the aircraft looks similar to the YF-23. Maybe the YF-23 was never to go into production at all and was merely a cover for technology developed for Aurora. The best place to hide something is right under someone's nose.

If you are right, this would suggest that the Aurora is a Northrop Design! In a way, this makes sense to me. Think about it for a minute: Lockheed has won most of the "Known" contracts for high tech planes (EX: ATF, JSF, Ect.) in the last few years. Yet, without any known new contracts, Nothrop remains the second biggest company in the Military market! To make money, a company has to sell something! If you look in the business section of the news paper, you can see evidencs of Northrop Grumman Trying to expand. Expansion costs money.

Maybe Northrop is Working deep in the Black World, supplying Top Secret Aircraft to the NSA and CIA for covert operations! Remember, a sucessful Black Project, is one Noone on the outside knows Exists!

What if the Military has always planned to use the loosing AFT design again for a secret project? How do we know for sure that a 3rd YF-23 wasn't built in secret to test something else besides the ATF design? Case in Point: The SR-71 and the A-12 Blackbird. The SR-71 was shown to the public first. For many years the world saw the Air Force's Blackbirds and had no Idea the The CIA had the Blackbird for more then two years before the SR-71 version was build! Another example from the past we've all heard of the YB-49 flying wing bomber of the early 1950's. Who's ever heard of the RB-49 Spy Plane Version? Guess what, they were real and the CIA used them along with the U-2's. I found it in the book: Alpha Bravo Delta: Guide to Stealth Warfare By: David Alexander. See the link below to get a copy:

Guide to Stealth Warfare

It a really good book on the history of stealth and covers all areas of warfare: Air, Sea, and Land!

As for the Future of of the YF-23, it could easly be flying under some other designation with a few modification to the design. Look at the A-12 and SR-71 Blackbirds, the only real change was the addition of a second seat and lengthing of the airframe! Also, the last YB-35 and first YB-49 were the Exact Same Aircraft! All they did to go from the YB-35 to the YB-49 was change the engines and the engin mountings!

Secrets and Lies go hand in hand! If you find one, the other is always hiding nearby! They lied once, why not twice?

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

this is the real deal!

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Now this is the real Aurora!