Confirmation of Existence of Aurora?

No offense taken........the specifics of IFF(indentification friend/foe) and how they relate to a less than perfect missle system im afraid are beyond my level of knowledge, all I can say is that even the F-117 and B2 have transponders so they show up on radar...so in my (VERY humble) opinion it is entirely plausible, and very probable that secret aircraft utilise IFF transponders as a matter of course.

I'd have to agree with you.

If you'll permit me, I have an almost unrelated story...

My ex has an uncle who lives in Norfolk (uk). He's retired now, but when I met him and asked him what he used to do, he said military and went on to tell me his military life story. Right at the end, just as I was about to fall asleep, he mentioned that he had been the commander (or whatever the real term is) of the central military radar headquaters in the north (not his exact words, time has blurred my memory). I immediately asked him, "Are there ufo's?". He squinted at me, leaned in and said in a very slightly lowered tone, "No, not that I've ever heard of, but there are lots of things you don't know about flying about". I didn't think much of this at the time. He retired in '96. I wonder what knowlege he had in his head. Funny, it would almost make spending time with his dream-stealing ho' of a niece worth if if I though he'd elaborate on his comments.

Im laffin......

those bloodsucking, dream-stealin, wallet lifting, tv-watching, does my bum look big in these pants?types...will get you everytime!

American scientists have recently announced that "one wing" aircraft designs are far more efficient. This in itself leads me to beleive that the "aurora" is active.

But the things that people say about, god some of it is total #.

Mach 8?? Gimme a break. Nothing can travel that fast within atmosphere without burning to a crisp. And "pulse engine"? Who the hey? A pulse of what may I ask?

Engines that use air to squeeze burning fuel out of the back are very inefficient as far as fuel goes, but by the sound of things, chucking pulses of plasma out of the back isn't exactly "going for green" either.

Now I'm not an expert on this, but I do know how physics works, and to do what this plane does, you would need a material that defy's friction. Simply to avoid it burning up.

And I don't beleive this pulse engine crap, because I have a photograph here of the aurora being refilled by tanker plane.

Post the picture!

Well, there was a program on years ago that showed a working pulse engine. It shot a barel straight up into the air. The pulses were miniature nuclear explosions though, I doubt they ever went further with that project. I'd like to know what the pulses are. Ther are engines which produce thrust not from ignition, but I'm pretty sure the strongest particle beam engine I've seen documented only produces a few grams of thrust.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but at 12 miles high, the shuttle is already doing more than 17,000 mph. It doesn't seem to crisp up that badly. I think I remember reading that above 80,000 feet, you can get pretty fast without crisping. Don't quote me on this, my memory is failing the older I get. Perhaps someone here has some figures for this.

This link suggests this is more than possible.
www.space.com...


[Edited on 14-8-2003 by Zzub]

Id have to agree with the Mach 8 comment......anything in the conventional sense would be toast.....it leads me to believe that the so called "plasma spike" or in essence a beam of charged particles that ionises the atmosphere ahead of the high-speed aircraft could be a reality. According to Discovery science....the russians have had an operational system of this nature for over 10 years (project AJAX I think)...I find it incomprehensible that if the Russians have it.......that it wasnt stolen from somewhere.....mayby the US?..OR UK?

It's not quite aurora being refilled by tanker plane, but it is an interesting picture, definately large air intakes there.

I have to say, it looks like any one of the nearly infinite NASA designs I've seen over the years. Perhaps that's the best way to hide something, put it in the middle of many similar objects.

This may be a day late and a dollar short, but...
I believe the SR71 Blackbird made its debut in 1949 and not the late fiftys as reported

Im just doin this to get it up to the top of the list!

Hmmm...

SR-71 flies at about mach 3.5 at 80000 ft.

Drag increases with the square of the velocity. To go Mach 7 at 80000 ft would produce 4 times the drag. But, at these altitudes, the air is thinning out very rapidly. at 110000 ft, the air pressure is aproximately 1/4 the air pressure at 80000. Less air pressure = Less drag. To go faster, the aurora only needs an engine that will operate at a higher altitude.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
People in New Mexico near white sands and the like have sighted a similar aircraft. Thats usually where they devlop and test this crap out: out in the middle of nowhere, poluated only by a few towns and trailers. So people have seen it, not many, but a handfull.

Id say maybe within about 5 years. What do they need it for though?

Don't forget about Edwards AFB, California and Nellis AFB, Nevada. Don't you remember the loud sonic boom over los angeles in the morning of.......geeze im sure it's somewhere in ATS.......but yea, the craft was seen going towards Nellis AFB, Nevada. They say look for the doughnuts on a rope contrails.

~Peace and Love~
Jeff

Originally posted by DarkStar

And I don't beleive this pulse engine crap, because I have a photograph here of the aurora being refilled by tanker plane.

If you mean this photo,



then i'm afraid that i will have to dissapoint you now (if you havent been yet) because the picture is a fake. It was montaged by Bill Rose for the October 1995 issue of Astronomy Now (UK) magazine.

You can find more info here:
www.fas.org...

I believe this picture was jigged together to illustrate an eye witness observation made by a fellow working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He was a memeber of the Royal Observer Corps and as such he knew his aircraft and easily identified the two FB-111's and the KC-10 tanker. The black delta was something he had never seen before and he provided fairly detailed sketches of the encounter that were later used to create this picture. Yes it's a fake but it was made to represent an eye witness event. This was before the B-2 was public as well so who knows what if anything it was.

Well to answer some questions based on my knowledge of working aircrfat in and out of Edwards. Yes all aircraft have an IFF normal Air Traffic use's mode 3a and c (altitude reporting) The military use other modes for IFF and other things that I don't know about. The subject of pulse engines I believe NASA tested the aero spike engine strapeed on top of an SR-71 a few years back. I don't know if the concept was verified or failed. Now I don't always see aircraft I'm working because everything looks the same on RADAR but I do know that the military flew the F117 at night in the airspace here they just told everyone it was an A7. Sometimes it's easier to hide in the open.

Originally posted by Bluetwo This was before the B-2 was public as well so who knows what if anything it was.

Maybe an old Navy A-12...

This is gonna be a long one - sorry if I bore anyone...

Originally posted by spear
No offense taken........the specifics of IFF(indentification friend/foe) and how they relate to a less than perfect missle system im afraid are beyond my level of knowledge, all I can say is that even the F-117 and B2 have transponders so they show up on radar...so in my (VERY humble) opinion it is entirely plausible, and very probable that secret aircraft utilise IFF transponders as a matter of course.

The current crop of publicly acknowledged US stealth aircraft use the Northrop-Grumman AN/APX-108 Mark XII IFF Diversity Transponder...(Friend or Foe Identifier) There are other military aircraft in US inventory that use this unit also but not with the software package and additional tweaks that the stealth aircraft use, (this software is constantly updated by the way...).

One note concerning this IFF beacon and secret aircraft...
A co-worker of mine was doing some installs on a Destroyer sitting in Chespeake Bay a few years ago. There was a training session going on in the radar room and at the time this ship had the 48Echo radar system, (it has since been upgraded).
The officer in charge of the training session was away from the screen when one of the guys at the screen said something about, "here's something coming out of Langley...". My "fly on the wall" friend was in close enough proximity to see the screen also - as the trainees were discussing the information coming out on the info screen positioned above the radar screen and commenting on it being a military aircraft, possibly stealth because of the lack of information available on the screen, and how you can tell and all that... typical trainee conversation.

Once the plane was out over the Atlantic, two or three of the guys at the screen said something like, "What th' F@#k is that!?" Everyone was pointing at the screen and the speed tail on the triangle that indicates an aircraft. The speed tail kept getting longer and longer and at one point one of the guys exclaimed "That's over Mach 4! What th' hell is that?"
Another trainee said something like, "It's getting faster! Look at that motherf@#er go!"
About that time the training officer came over, looked at the screen, stepped over to the wall and hit the big red button that has the instructions over it that say, "Do not Push!"... suddenly all gear in the room went dark, computers, everything.

The training officer then announced, "Gentlemen, you are to forget what you saw here tonight... is that understood?" There was a chorus of "aye aye" and after the officer made a phone call they powered everything back up.

Disclaimer: As I said, a co-worker who is also a close friend related this story to me and he has always been a pretty straight-shooting guy and not prone to tell exagerated tales - so I believed him and would not relay this story to you if I considered him unreliable.

Originally posted by DarkStar
American scientists have recently announced that "one wing" aircraft designs are far more efficient. This in itself leads me to beleive that the "aurora" is active.

But the things that people say about, god some of it is total #.

Mach 8?? Gimme a break. Nothing can travel that fast within atmosphere without burning to a crisp. And "pulse engine"? Who the hey? A pulse of what may I ask?

Engines that use air to squeeze burning fuel out of the back are very inefficient as far as fuel goes, but by the sound of things, chucking pulses of plasma out of the back isn't exactly "going for green" either.

Now I'm not an expert on this, but I do know how physics works, and to do what this plane does, you would need a material that defy's friction. Simply to avoid it burning up.

And I don't beleive this pulse engine crap, because I have a photograph here of the aurora being refilled by tanker plane.

OK, You seem to like the idea of a "one wing" aircraft design, but you have problems with hypersonic speeds (you said Mach 8), "pulse engines" and atmospheric friction burning up the hypersonic vehicle and lastly the picture of the "Aurora"...
Let's see if these issues can be adequately addressed.

One Wing" aircraft designs are more efficient:
You are correct, for hyperspeed air vehicles a shape known as a lifting body or waverider design is very efficient. The Hyper-X (X-43 I believe) is one such design for public viewing.

Hyper-X (aka the X-43) Hypersonic technology demonstrator


Hypersonic speeds:
Hypersonic speed is a speed defined as being over Mach 5, which is equivalent to about one mile per second, or 3,600 miles per hour at sea level.

X-15 with chase plane


43 years ago, the first manned vehicle hit hypersonic speeds, that was the X-15, attaining a speed of Mach 5.27 on June 23, 1961, and in fact later the X-15 went on to Mach 6.7, or 4,520 mph at sea level.
That was FORTY THREE years ago.
Has our technology been stagnant or gone backwards over the last 4 decades?
By the way, the X-15 didn't burn up in the atmosphere...

SR-71 Blackbird - Mach 3.2


The X-15 weighed 34,000 pounds at launch. The rocket engine developed 60,000 pounds of thrust. Contrast that with the SR-71 weighing in at 140,000 pounds with a full belly of JP-7 and 2 High-bypass-turbojets with 34,000 pounds thrust each, the Blackbird's official top speed was Mach 3.2.

Since the X-15 other technology demonstrators have been researched and/or flown, such as the Dyna-Soar (X-20) spaceplane, X-24, X-33, X-34, X-37, X-38, X-40, X-41, the Hyper-Soar, Hyper-X and even the Space Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle enters the atmosphere at speeds of nearly Mach 30... And somehow it survives with 1970's aerothermal technology.

I submit to you the following:
IF 43 years ago hypersonic speeds were made possible,
IF 40 years ago the DynaSoar spaceplane was designed and nearly ready for production,
IF 36 years ago the X-24 spaceplane was under R&D (albeit cancelled),
IF 23 years ago the Space Shuttle took off for Earth's orbit, with re-entry speeds closing in on Mach 30,
THEN what has been developed in the last nearly quarter of a century?
(The Space Shuttle is after all 1970's technology...)

The Space Shuttle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere at speeds nearing Mach 30


Pulse engine crap:
The concept behind the Pulse Detonation Engine (PDE) is simple. There are two kinds of combustion: the familiar, slow kind of burning, called deflagration, and another, much more energetic process called detonation, which is a different animal entirely.

Imagine a tube, closed at one end and filled with a mixture of fuel and air. A spark ignites the fuel at the closed end, and a combustion reaction propagates down the tube. In deflagration�even in "fast flame" situations ordinarily called explosions�that reaction moves at tens of meters per second at most. But in detonation, a supersonic shock wave slams down the tube at thousands of meters per second, close to Mach 5, compressing and igniting fuel and air almost instantaneously in a narrow, high-pressure, heat-release zone...

This type of propulsion could propel an aerospace craft to speeds way over Mach 8 and also could explain the pulsating thunder heard on desert bases at night, sonic booms refered to as "skyquakes" by the US Geological Survey folks rumbling over california in the early 90's and just recently a new crop of skyquakes being felt over Utah as well as the famed "donuts on a rope" contrails.

A simple web search will get you all kinds of good material on this technology - I must admit that I personally feel that what is operational on the "black" aircraft in question is possibly either a hybrid PDE or an aicraft with 2 seperate types of propulsion onboard.

Pulse Detonation Engine at China Lake Naval Research Lab


Picture of Aurora?
Unfortunately the grainy black and white image circulating around the internet is bogus, not to mention the aircraft pictured there is probably not streamlined enough to be a hypersonic vehicle.





X-15 running away from a chase plane - circa 1961










[Edited on 9-1-2004 by intelgurl]

Intelgurl...one of the best posts I have ever seen on ATS.

Low on speculation, sky high on facts!

I guess I have a little more to offer on this subject...



There are references to "Aurora" in a number of Aviation Week articles as well as other very reputable industry trade publications.
Here are just a few:

1. The Dec. 18, 1989 issue. Pages 42-43. A VISTA issue. Talks about
pulser sightings + Aurora. (First report of 'the pulser').

2. The Oct. 1, 1990 issue. Pages 20-23. More detail about pulser
sightings, and a vehicle that looks like the new (now cancelled)
Navy A-12 seen working with F-117As in the Southwestern Test Ranges.
There are some incredibly provocative hints in this article
and the next about advanced aerospace technology.

3. The Dec. 24, 1990 issue. Pages 41-44. A VISTA issue. Talks about a
Mach 8 vehicle (with drawings) that uses an external burning scramjet.

4. Also check out the letter to the editor, on the last page of the
AW&ST 1/8/90 issue,pg. 74.

5. AW&ST 10/28/91 Pages 68-69. Article on Pulsed Detonation Engines (PDEs)

6. AW&ST 3/9/92. Pages 66-67. An interesting possible 'Aurora' operations
test at Beale AFB in the end of Feb. 92!

7. AW&ST 7/6/92. More sightings of doughnuts on a rope contrails.

8. AW&ST 7/20/92. Page 13. Article on another possible 'Aurora'
propulsion mechanism - the 'impulse motor'.

There was also supposed to be a Bill Sweetman piece entitled:
"The Aurora Enigma", to be published in the Nov., 90 issue of
Interavia Aerospace Review.

There was a Bill Sweetman piece in Janes Defense Weekly, 2/28/92, pg 333
entitled "Mystery Contact May Be Aurora".

There was also the most recent piece from the London "Sunday Telegraph"
dated 7/26/92 entitled: "Secret US Spy Plane Is Kintyre's Dark Visitor".



Relevant Anecdote:
I once overheard a USAF general tell a defense industry executive that he knew of 3 currently operational aircraft types he wasn't permitted to talk about.

Probably a year later I saw a non-conspiracy theory web site that had an interview with a USAF colonel who also eluded that there were 3 different types of aircraft in US inventory that were not for public knowledge. I have not been able to find that site today but i'll continue to try to locate it as time allows...

Should these USAF officers be correct, the 3 plane's functions are most likely reconaisance, strike coordination and attack... That is my assessment however, and I could certainly be wrong.

Now as a disclaimer I must say that maybe the Navy, NRO, CIA, etc... have some black op aircraft that these USAF guys don't know about - It may also be that these USAF officers could be talking about different aircraft and not know about the ones that the other is talking about... But probably not~

All this sort of information is special access and only available on a need to know basis anyway...



I am also intrigued by the various artistic renderings of what people think the Aurora craft would look like.

Personal Opinion:

I personally think that the Aurora was Eighties (maybe even late '70's) design technology and therefore would reflect that era's design look - I also feel it would have a distinctive Lockheed appearance and that it probably would look something akin to this rendering, although I also feel the design would feature rounded edges instead of the acute angles seen here - probably also have front canards, just a guess though:



Additionally I would not at all be surprised if there were a more up-to-date version or even a replacement to the original concept of the Aurora coming into the NRO's "black aircraft" fold soon, (or perhaps it is already operational) but even so, we will probably not see the Aurora come out of the black until public sector industry catches up with the propulsion technology the craft utilizes.







[Edited on 10-1-2004 by intelgurl]

I must admit the military has its way with keeping aircraft quiet. Two examples from my parents:

My mother used to work at WPAFB in the Flight Dynamics Lab in the mid to late 60's. At that point all the major designs for the FDL-5 series were done and deemed ready for test flight. Most of the information released about these test articles were not in the open until the mid to late 80's.

When my father was stationed in Tiawan durring the late 60's, the CIA had stationed something at his airbase. A hangar that was offlimits durring the day (never opened) housed U-2 aircraft. Most of these missions were not mentioned until the 90's. He used to mention that plain clothed people entering the officer's club onbase. These folk never socialized with other USAF personel.