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T.A. Heppenheimer offers the latest attempt to sift fact from fantasy out of the reports of secret hypersonic surveillance Aurora aircraft. Links for further Aurora Aircraft information.
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Aurora Aircraft
'Aurora' is the alleged top-secret hypersonic aircraft project undertaken by the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Claims made on these pages and the linked sites are for informational purposes, and no specific claims or beliefs are inferred.
Aerospace writer T.A. Heppenheimer offers the latest attempt to sift fact from fantasy out of the reports of secret hypersonic surveillance aircraft, often referred to as "Aurora," or the "Aurora Aircraft" in the first chapter of his new book Hypersonic Technologies (Pasha Publications, 1993).
Heppenheimer carefully reviews the evidence, allegations, and sightings, and presents these conclusions:
It is not plausible that a hypersonic aircraft exists or soon will exist as an SR-71 replacement.
It is highly plausible that at least one major high-speed aircraft program has gone forward within the black world, featuring a new type of propulsion-- the pulsed detonation engine, as alleged in the Aurora Aircraft.
Rather than regard this craft as moving toward operational status, one should view it as an experimental testbed.
The National Aerospace Plane program may well have served as a cover for this Aurora Aircraft project, supporting particularly the development of new materials. Having served its purpose, NASP will gracefully fade away.
As Bill Sweetman and others have pointed out, the possibility that NASP was a cover for some sort of Mach 6 (or so) Aurora Aircraft program is consistent with the curious fact that the "low speed" (Mach 6 to 10) portion of the NASP program is classified, while the higher speed (Mach 10 to 17 and above) portion of the program is not.
More broadly, it is increasingly clear that many unacknowledged black programs such as the Aurora aircraft parogram are paired with an analogous unclassified program that is used to deflect attention from them. "This basic cover and deception maneuver has been identified repeatedly in black programs," said John Pike of FAS.
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