Aurora - a Famous Speculative Project

[aliensporebomb]

That was a consideration too.

In other thoughts: So would Lockheed's "Darkstar" for "Top Gun: Maverick" be a rare instance of a defense contractor providing a "prop" for a film? Has anything like that happened before?

I do recall that film "Stealth" from 2005 that had prop Mach 4/5 faux aircraft in it but I doubt they were produced by a major defense contractor.

At least we might have a rough idea of what "aurora" would have looked like if it came from Lockheed based on this design.

 

[Hydroman]

If you remember the Firefox aircraft, Lockheed and Northrop were involved with that concept. It should be noted that Firefox's nose has a striking similarity to the F-117 (faceting) which was still classified at the time. The aft part of the aircraft had some Northrop influence probably from older Northrop concepts, specifically the early Loral concept. The TGM Darkstar aircraft could be a teaser to something already flying, I assume larger and maybe in a slightly different but similar configuration?

 

[archipeppe]

If you remember the Firefox aircraft, Lockheed and Northrop were involved with that concept. It should be noted that Firefox's nose has a striking similarity to the F-117 (faceting) which was still classified at the time. The aft part of the aircraft had some Northrop influence probably from older Northrop concepts, specifically the early Loral concept. The TGM Darkstar aircraft could be a teaser to something already flying, I assume larger and maybe in a slightly different but similar configuration?

At that time someone at Skunk Works should have risked an heart attack...

 

[Q-nimbus]

It's completely possible that any SR-71/A-12 successor(s) were three-letter assets and thus, why you'd never hear anything about them.

I disagree. While it’s true the CIA and especially the NRO are very good at keeping secrets, if they had something like Aurora flying around we would know. Just like we know, while not knowing the details, that the NRO has at least one stealth satellite flying around. We even know what kind of Stealth technology it deploys.

I think it’s impossible to keep programs like this secret. The RQ-180 is a perfect example; while we don’t know much, we know and have known for quite a while that it exists, even though it’s a truly black program. Hell, we even know which hangars the Great White Bat calls it’s lair.

Maybe, maybe some sort of Aurora-like prototype flew around in the early nineties, but even then I I believe that if that was the case we would know more about it by now.

I think there never was an Aurora. But I sure hope I’m wrong!

 

[In_A_Dream]

I disagree. While it’s true the CIA and especially the NRO are very good at keeping secrets, if they had something like Aurora flying around we would know. Just like we know, while not knowing the details, that the NRO has at least one stealth satellite flying around. We even know what kind of Stealth technology it deploys.

I think it’s impossible to keep programs like this secret. The RQ-180 is a perfect example; while we don’t know much, we know and have known for quite a while that it exists, even though it’s a truly black program. Hell, we even know which hangars the Great White Bat calls it’s lair.

Maybe, maybe some sort of Aurora-like prototype flew around in the early nineties, but even then I I believe that if that was the case we would know more about it by now.

I think there never was an Aurora. But I sure hope I’m wrong!

How many test aircraft have flown over the last 3 decades that we don't know about?

 

[archipeppe]

How many test aircraft have flown over the last 3 decades that we don't know about?

Nice question.....

 

[RavenOne]

I disagree. While it’s true the CIA and especially the NRO are very good at keeping secrets, if they had something like Aurora flying around we would know. Just like we know, while not knowing the details, that the NRO has at least one stealth satellite flying around. We even know what kind of Stealth technology it deploys.

I think it’s impossible to keep programs like this secret. The RQ-180 is a perfect example; while we don’t know much, we know and have known for quite a while that it exists, even though it’s a truly black program. Hell, we even know which hangars the Great White Bat calls it’s lair.

Maybe, maybe some sort of Aurora-like prototype flew around in the early nineties, but even then I I believe that if that was the case we would know more about it by now.

I think there never was an Aurora. But I sure hope I’m wrong!

How many test aircraft have flown over the last 3 decades that we don't know about?

quite a few according to this KC-135 boom operator

Confessions Of A USAF KC-135 'Flying Gas Station' Boom Operator

It is one of the coolest jobs in the entire U.S. military, "Booms" as they are affectionately called, are the folks who directly provide sustenance to America's thirsty air power as the gas station's of the sky. From flying over war zones to fueling top secret experimental aircraft, being a Boom...

jalopnik.com

his assigned with SCI clearance was mid to late 2000s assigned to Edwards….

cheers

 

[Manuducati]

I do recall that film "Stealth" from 2005 that had prop Mach 4/5 faux aircraft in it but I doubt they were produced by a major defense contractor.

Isn't Northrop-Grumman big enough?

US5984231A - Aircraft with variable forward-sweep wing - Google Patents

An aircraft with a variable forward-sweep wing and the method of configuring the wing in an optimal position for a desired flight regime. The variable forward-sweep wing is positionable from an essentially unswept position to a full-forward sweep position. In the unswept position the wing is...

patents.google.com

 

[Q-nimbus]

I disagree. While it’s true the CIA and especially the NRO are very good at keeping secrets, if they had something like Aurora flying around we would know. Just like we know, while not knowing the details, that the NRO has at least one stealth satellite flying around. We even know what kind of Stealth technology it deploys.

I think it’s impossible to keep programs like this secret. The RQ-180 is a perfect example; while we don’t know much, we know and have known for quite a while that it exists, even though it’s a truly black program. Hell, we even know which hangars the Great White Bat calls it’s lair.

Maybe, maybe some sort of Aurora-like prototype flew around in the early nineties, but even then I I believe that if that was the case we would know more about it by now.

I think there never was an Aurora. But I sure hope I’m wrong!

How many test aircraft have flown over the last 3 decades that we don't know about?

That’s an impossible question to answer by definition.

However, I would like share my thoughts about this.

I don’t think that that there are many test aircraft that we don’t know about. In fact I reckon we know about all manned prototypes that were flown pre Bird of Prey. While they may still be classified like Sneaky Pete and we haven’t seen them, we know that the program existed and we have a rough idea of their looks and capabilities.

On the other hand, I think it’s very likely that there are some UAV prototypes, especially from the nineties, that are still classified and that we know next to nothing about.

I’ve come to this conclusion because there are no obvious gaps of technology in the lineage of modern manned fighter and bomber aircraft. The path from F-15 to F-22 to F35 is very linear and is a logical technological evolution. You don’t need exotic airframes to do this, as new technology can easily be tested on or by existing (modified) airframes.

The same applies to bombers; once you have the F117 it’s a relatively small step to the B2 and B21. You don’t need exotic and classified aircraft anymore once you’ve had Have Blue, Tacit Blue and the F117.

The argument above doesn’t apply to UAV’s. To me it seems there’s an obvious gap in the lineage of UAV’s between Darkstar and the RQ-170/RQ-180, although the X-44 might very well be the missing link between those two. It would also stand to reason that if you acquired a stealth UAV you would keep it under wraps as long as possible. So I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two classified, maybe even operational UAV’s will be unveiled sometime; on the other hand it could very well be that the RQ-170 was rushed into production because there suddenly was an operational need (which there was; Pakistan and Iran).

And then there are quite some foreign assets buzzing around Groom Lake, some of which we know, and a lot that we don’t. The reason that there probably are quite a few of them that are still classified is not that the USAF wants to hide the fact that they have them (their former owners will know anyway), but it’s the way they acquired them that’s highly classified.

However, the aircraft near the Southern Hangar at Groom Lake photographed earlier this year? I lean towards that it’s probably the NGAD prototype.

 

[flateric]

for a memo

 

[archipeppe]

for a memo

This means that Russians believed to Aurora? Did they reported any anomalous sighting?

 

[steelpillow]

for a memo

This means that Russians believed to Aurora? Did they reported any anomalous sighting?

Have to say, I don't see a sane hypersonic waverider in that design. Unfeasibly short engines, impossible thermal challenges and shock-inducing bumps in unhelpful places just to start with. I am guessing this is more a report on the Western rumourmill than anything substantive.

 

[Archibald]

If that's like the Shuttle & Buran, then it is a case of "If they made it, there must be some hidden but very good reason. We have no clue about that reason, but one thing is sure: we must build one similar thing. Also applies to Concorde vs Tu-144."

 

[flateric]

for a memo

This means that Russians believed to Aurora? Did they reported any anomalous sighting?

They just translated everything they considered interesting just like WPAFB FTD did.

 

[serg.gonzp]

para una nota

¿Esto significa que los rusos le creyeron a Aurora? ¿Reportaron algún avistamiento anómalo?

Curiosamente en este artículo de topwar.ru, se observa que los soviéticos supuestamente comenzaron a investigar y desarrollar los ayaks en respuesta al proyecto aurora.

https://en.topwar.ru/25734-giperzvukovoy-samolet-ayaks.html

 

[martinbayer]

Current Russia, just like the Soviet Union before it, will continue to slavishly try to reverse (powerpoint) engineer any and all US concepts they come across.

 

[Kat Tsun]

for a memo

This means that Russians believed to Aurora? Did they reported any anomalous sighting?

Have to say, I don't see a sane hypersonic waverider in that design. Unfeasibly short engines, impossible thermal challenges and shock-inducing bumps in unhelpful places just to start with. I am guessing this is more a report on the Western rumourmill than anything substantive.

That's because it isn't a waverider. It looks essentially identical to any number of 1970's concepts of hypersonic aircraft such as McDonnell's GIUK Gap Interceptor or M12 Cruiser of the sort the late Dr. Paul Czysz worked on. There are images of these on this very forum.

It's very typical of 1970's hypersonic aircraft because that's all anyone knew in the 1990's, because it was relatively available information, and the "OSINT" crowd at the time just sort of assumed that SR-71 just had to have a faster replacement that flies in the atmosphere instead of a much better replacement that flies 300 miles above the Earth.

"Aurora" itself was just a game of telephone about various half-baked ideas of hypersonic aircraft from 1967-1974 or so described in vague interviews after all. It never actually existed, like the notorious Blackstar, or the PLA's fleet of white Tic-Tacs. Desert Storm and Yugoslavia sort of put paid to the idea of needing high speed camera/ELINT photography reconnaissance aircraft when the NRO was able to map the dispositions of the entire Iraqi and Serbian armies and convert this knowledge to actionable intelligence by CENTCOM and the Croatian Army in basically the same amount of time it would take an SR-71 to be fueled, fly its mission, come back, and start developing film.

 

[In_A_Dream]

"Aurora" itself was just a game of telephone about various half-baked ideas of hypersonic aircraft from 1967-1974 or so described in vague interviews after all. It never actually existed, like the notorious Blackstar, or the PLA's fleet of white Tic-Tacs. Desert Storm and Yugoslavia sort of put paid to the idea of needing high speed camera/ELINT photography reconnaissance aircraft when the NRO was able to map the dispositions of the entire Iraqi and Serbian armies and convert this knowledge to actionable intelligence by CENTCOM and the Croatian Army in basically the same amount of time it would take an SR-71 to be fueled, fly its mission, come back, and start developing film.

And what do you use when your adversary can blind your satellites from the ground?

 

[Kat Tsun]

If they can "blind your satellites", the same applies to the much smaller and much closer-to-emitter sensors on an atmospheric vehicle. A satellite is just an airplane that flies above the atmosphere, has much better sensors, and they can even move around.

Being jammed by radio electronic means or lasers has never been an actual problem for NRO satellites. The inverse square law still applies in outer space, so it's unlikely to ever be one. US spy planes of the future will just be X-37 or larger vehicles that maneuver with various modular packages from repackaged NRO hyperspectral payloads to radar reconnaissance systems, augmented by a few layers of GEO, MEO, and LEO constellations forming a pretty much impervious method of observation of the ground that can be bombarded from the air.

There is no real getting around this and it's something of an annoying bugbear for wannabe Hitlers, because it means the USA can easily eliminate people it dislikes with the touch of a button, without ever needing to do the ugly work of sending helicopters full of commandos al a Baghdadi or bin Laden. Conversely, the USA itself is becoming vulnerable to this, so it's likely long-term strategic adversaries in the PRC or European Union will adopt similar satellite constellations (they already have, of course) to do similar leadership targeting, of which America is also increasingly vulnerable to.

Spy planes have simply evolved to fly so high they use solar powered engines and xenon propellant instead of air breathing engines and JP7 fuel. There's no real reason for them to go back into the atmosphere when they're more survivable and less easily attacked above it.

They might get shot down by a laser, or a long-range strategic SAM system, if they flew any lower. Fear of another U-2 incident is exactly why the SR-71 always skirted the border of the USSR and only overflew incidental and weakly equipped proxies like Libya, Egypt, and Vietnam, instead of the Warsaw Pact, or even the actual Union proper.

It's hard to think how well an "Aurora" might do against an S-400 or S-500, or PAC-3, or some other Super Patriot-type SAM, but it would need to be, like the 1970's aircraft, well beyond the state of the art of modern scramjets. It's a plausible and conceivable reconnaissance method for second-rate nations, like Japan, i.e. who can't afford a global satellite network but still need a regional or near-abroad near-real-time recce capability, in the medium to long term future.

It's nothing like what the big shots are using right now, which are far faster, far higher, and far more expensive though.

 

[In_A_Dream]

If they can "blind your satellites", the same applies to the much smaller and much closer-to-emitter sensors on an atmospheric vehicle. A satellite is just an airplane that flies above the atmosphere, has much better sensors, and they can even move around.

Being jammed by radio electronic means or lasers has never been an actual problem for NRO satellites. The inverse square law still applies in outer space, so it's unlikely to ever be one. US spy planes of the future will just be X-37 or larger vehicles that maneuver with various modular packages from repackaged NRO hyperspectral payloads to radar reconnaissance systems, augmented by a few layers of GEO, MEO, and LEO constellations forming a pretty much impervious method of observation of the ground that can be bombarded from the air.

There is no real getting around this and it's something of an annoying bugbear for wannabe Hitlers, because it means the USA can easily eliminate people it dislikes with the touch of a button, without ever needing to do the ugly work of sending helicopters full of commandos al a Baghdadi or bin Laden. Conversely, the USA itself is becoming vulnerable to this, so it's likely long-term strategic adversaries in the PRC or European Union will adopt similar satellite constellations (they already have, of course) to do similar leadership targeting, of which America is also increasingly vulnerable to.

Spy planes have simply evolved to fly so high they use solar powered engines and xenon propellant instead of air breathing engines and JP7 fuel. There's no real reason for them to go back into the atmosphere when they're more survivable and less easily attacked above it.

They might get shot down by a laser, or a long-range strategic SAM system, if they flew any lower. Fear of another U-2 incident is exactly why the SR-71 always skirted the border of the USSR and only overflew incidental and weakly equipped proxies like Libya, Egypt, and Vietnam, instead of the Warsaw Pact, or even the actual Union proper.

It's hard to think how well an "Aurora" might do against an S-400 or S-500, or PAC-3, or some other Super Patriot-type SAM, but it would need to be, like the 1970's aircraft, well beyond the state of the art of modern scramjets. It's a plausible and conceivable reconnaissance method for second-rate nations, like Japan, i.e. who can't afford a global satellite network but still need a regional or near-abroad near-real-time recce capability, in the medium to long term future.

It's nothing like what the big shots are using right now, which are far faster, far higher, and far more expensive though.

It would be advantageous to use something that's so good at hiding in plain sight, it can loiter in the area longer than satellites can, and sponge up as much data as it could possibly hold.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Why? None of that actually makes sense in the context of modern, much less future, reconnaissance systems.

Satellites are approaching the point of saturation where they no longer need time to pass over targets because they can quite literally observe everything as a staring panopticon. It's not the 1990's anymore, satellites are cheap now. Spy satellites so dirt cheap that, in addition to them being much more difficult to intercept, they can fulfill observation-targeting needs for even civil operators like firefighters and forestry officials. They can also be extremely stealthy as X-37B has routinely proven in USAF and USSF field tests. Said satellite or space plane can then provide that information at real-time using Starlink integration or direct air-to-ground microwave datalink back to the national command posts.

Alternatively, they can be massively redundant and difficult to destroy, as Starlink's tremendous network proves. Eventually there will be tens or hundreds of thousands of Cubesats blanketing the Earth for dozens of boring interior departments and forestry services, perhaps renting out their infrared cameras to find lost children in woods or something, because helicopters are expensive.

A hypersonic, atmospheric spy plane is just a poor person's version of X-37B or -C.

It will probably show up eventually for the likes of Iran or Japan or South Korea or other second- or third-rate powers to challenge the dominance of the superpowers in orbit because a hypersonic spy aircraft is almost as responsive as a staring electric eye for regional observation, but it isn't useful for either a global empire or an aspiring global empire. It would be incredibly stupid in light of the eventual arrival of passive targeting, orbit based, infrared or hyperspectral systems that will be especially built to detect, track, and destroy hypergliders, but dumb ideas have never stopped anyone before.

The time for actually useful-to-empires hypersonic aircraft was the 1970's and '80's, around the time when SR-71 stopped overflying the USSR because PVO interceptors and SAM systems had reached the point where the SR-71 was as vulnerable as the U-2, and a new system would be needed. The technology for this was bypassed in favor of much cheaper reconnaissance satellites, under the assumption that the latter would pay off in the long-term, which it did. Satellites have more or less completely obviated the need for advanced, high flying, high speed aircraft entirely.

America's future airbreathing reconnaissance platform will just be a cheaper, stealthier Global Hawk, with a more impressive ZPY-69 or something, to provide weapons-grade targeting to battalions and companies, because the brigades and divisions will be soaking up all the orbital targeting bandwidth.

The only place left for a hypersonic airbreathing aircraft now is an offensive nuclear strike system to replace stealth bombers. That's a highly dubious prospect, unless some technology appears that makes stealth bombers obsolete due to their inherent slowness, or it appears as a airbreathing hypercruiser weapon carried by said stealth bombers. Something like HyFAC or HAWC will eventually show up to improve the capacities of older bombers and eventually new ones, though that would probably be the most serious implementation of hypersonic airbreathing technology by major air forces.

 

[In_A_Dream]

Why? None of that actually makes sense in the context of modern, much less future, reconnaissance systems.

Satellites are approaching the point of saturation where they no longer need time to pass over targets because they can quite literally observe everything as a staring panopticon. It's not the 1990's anymore, satellites are cheap now. Spy satellites so dirt cheap that, in addition to them being much more difficult to intercept, they can fulfill observation-targeting needs for even civil operators like firefighters and forestry officials. They can also be extremely stealthy as X-37B has routinely proven in USAF and USSF field tests. Said satellite or space plane can then provide that information at real-time using Starlink integration or direct air-to-ground microwave datalink back to the national command posts.

Alternatively, they can be massively redundant and difficult to destroy, as Starlink's tremendous network proves. Eventually there will be tens or hundreds of thousands of Cubesats blanketing the Earth for dozens of boring interior departments and forestry services, perhaps renting out their infrared cameras to find lost children in woods or something, because helicopters are expensive.

A hypersonic, atmospheric spy plane is just a poor person's version of X-37B or -C.

It will probably show up eventually for the likes of Iran or Japan or South Korea or other second- or third-rate powers to challenge the dominance of the superpowers in orbit because a hypersonic spy aircraft is almost as responsive as a staring electric eye for regional observation, but it isn't useful for either a global empire or an aspiring global empire. It would be incredibly stupid in light of the eventual arrival of passive targeting, orbit based, infrared or hyperspectral systems that will be especially built to detect, track, and destroy hypergliders, but dumb ideas have never stopped anyone before.

The time for actually useful-to-empires hypersonic aircraft was the 1970's and '80's, around the time when SR-71 stopped overflying the USSR because PVO interceptors and SAM systems had reached the point where the SR-71 was as vulnerable as the U-2, and a new system would be needed. The technology for this was bypassed in favor of much cheaper reconnaissance satellites, under the assumption that the latter would pay off in the long-term, which it did. Satellites have more or less completely obviated the need for advanced, high flying, high speed aircraft entirely.

America's future airbreathing reconnaissance platform will just be a cheaper, stealthier Global Hawk, with a more impressive ZPY-69 or something, to provide weapons-grade targeting to battalions and companies, because the brigades and divisions will be soaking up all the orbital targeting bandwidth.

The only place left for a hypersonic airbreathing aircraft now is an offensive nuclear strike system to replace stealth bombers. That's a highly dubious prospect, unless some technology appears that makes stealth bombers obsolete due to their inherent slowness, or it appears as a airbreathing hypercruiser weapon carried by said stealth bombers. Something like HyFAC or HAWC will eventually show up to improve the capacities of older bombers and eventually new ones, though that would probably be the most serious implementation of hypersonic airbreathing technology by major air forces.

Satellites don't capture everything one might need.

 

[Kat Tsun]

And what might that be?

If a satellite constellation provides (near or actual) real time observation in ESM, airborne radar, visual/infrared or hyperspectral, weather, and gamma-ray/radiation detection...what exactly is missing here? Nothing for a strategic reconnaissance strike system, that's for sure. A plane takes time to fuel, a hypersonic aircraft probably has a fairly significant turnaround time, probably longer than an hour and a half or so. So it's not faster than a (very meager coverage) satellite, that's for sure, much less the 20-45 minute revisit times of some commercial constellations, or future military constellations.

There are cases for airborne observers obviously, but they absolutely have no need (nor desire) to be hypersonic airbreathers. Airborne reconnaissance aircraft desire to be subsonic, both for reasons of fuel efficiency and infrared stealth, and very low-observable in the radar regimes. This means large, to avoid being detected by OTH-B or OTH-R radars, so nothing particularly small like F-35, which means large mass for MASINT sensors to detect airborne particulates of radioactive particles indicating NUDET and possibly something like Gorgon Stare to provide all aspect IR/visual observation, as well as radars and fuel for long loiter times and wide area detection of mobile vehicles.

Being very fast is detrimental to reconnaissance aircraft obviously, but it's useful for bombers and more specifically bombers' weapons.

It's why SR-71 itself had radar stealth built-in, and since it existed before orbital infrared targeting/tracking, the problem of going fast was non-existent and itself to evade detection by potentially exceeding the speed gates of extremely early SAM systems like the S-25 Berkut. Naturally this was flubbed before the Blackbird even flew because electronics caught up to it and the Soviets had little to no problems scrambling interceptors or attaining weapons grade locks on Blackbirds skirting their borders, so SR-71's undetectability was made more detrimental by its high speed.

Of course a hypersonic nuclear weapon has no particular desire to be unknown to its opponents. It merely has to evade SAMs. Which is why speed is extremely useful for a strategic nuclear weapon but absolutely dreadful for a reconnaissance system.

 

[Nigelhg]

And what might that be?

If a satellite constellation provides (near or actual) real time observation in ESM, airborne radar, visual/infrared or hyperspectral, weather, and gamma-ray/radiation detection...what exactly is missing here? Nothing for a strategic reconnaissance strike system, that's for sure. A plane takes time to fuel, a hypersonic aircraft probably has a fairly significant turnaround time, probably longer than an hour and a half or so. So it's not faster than a (very meager coverage) satellite, that's for sure, much less the 20-45 minute revisit times of some commercial constellations, or future military constellations.

There are cases for airborne observers obviously, but they absolutely have no need (nor desire) to be hypersonic airbreathers. Airborne reconnaissance aircraft desire to be subsonic, both for reasons of fuel efficiency and infrared stealth, and very low-observable in the radar regimes. This means large, to avoid being detected by OTH-B or OTH-R radars, so nothing particularly small like F-35, which means large mass for MASINT sensors to detect airborne particulates of radioactive particles indicating NUDET and possibly something like Gorgon Stare to provide all aspect IR/visual observation, as well as radars and fuel for long loiter times and wide area detection of mobile vehicles.

Being very fast is detrimental to reconnaissance aircraft obviously, but it's useful for bombers and more specifically bombers' weapons.

It's why SR-71 itself had radar stealth built-in, and since it existed before orbital infrared targeting/tracking, the problem of going fast was non-existent and itself to evade detection by potentially exceeding the speed gates of extremely early SAM systems like the S-25 Berkut. Naturally this was flubbed before the Blackbird even flew because electronics caught up to it and the Soviets had little to no problems scrambling interceptors or attaining weapons grade locks on Blackbirds skirting their borders, so SR-71's undetectability was made more detrimental by its high speed.

Of course a hypersonic nuclear weapon has no particular desire to be unknown to its opponents. It merely has to evade SAMs. Which is why speed is extremely useful for a strategic nuclear weapon but absolutely dreadful for a reconnaissance system.

The maximum resolution of a US spy satellite is estimated to be 10-20cm and it has a predictable orbit so if you want to surprise an enemy and get your Intel you need something unpredictable closer than LEO.

 

[Kat Tsun]

10-20 centimeters is more than adequate to identify a tank or armed personnel in an assembly area, duh. Moving vehicles, aircraft, and ships are trivial to track with radar as well, and stealth aircraft like F-35 and F-22 will be problematic when orbital observation using infrared SBIRS-LO-type satellites becomes common.

If you need more resolution, you can use a cubesat with a MOIRE-type folding lens to increase it (you really wouldn't, it's not like you need to see someone's face to tell if they're carrying an RPG), obviously, and if it's always watching there's nowhere to hide. That's the actual future. There will be no more revisit times. Just a constant, staring, electric eye that provides actionable intelligence to colonels and major generals in real time.

In the further, latter half of the XXI century, it will become a method of eliminating wannabe Hitlers and other dictators with the push of a button. This would obviate the need, broadly speaking, of large standing armies and navies eventually. Possibly even air forces, outside of strategic nuclear forces, since hypersonic weapons can be launched with HGVs from CONUS. It's far more advanced and difficult to deploy than a hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft, which I guess is why it seems so "out there" though, but the basic building blocks have been in place since the 1990's in the USA.

Whether it will actually obsolete those prior systems is debatable, as revolutionary weapons have a habit of being quite boring in practice, and it's unlikely that such hypersonic weapons would help America in wars of conquest like Iraq in 2003. So the conventional armed forces will probably stick around for low-intensity wars on America's imperial periphery.

H/e, Prompt Global Strike is the ultimate weapon that will eliminate the need for the USA to base forces out of foreign countries permanently, at least for CIA-style assassinations using airstrikes and special operations forces. It won't solve war, obviously, but it will make wars far more surgical and targeted, at least provided they don't provoke nuclear retaliation, and possibly make SOCOM more useful for targeting nation-state actors instead of just dabbing on downtown dachas and underground parking garages.

There is no real defense against this besides strategic (nuclear) attack on launch sites, to deny the ability to launch further swarms, and massive counter-satellite arrays of kamikaze cubesats to destroy the enemy's constellations in LEO. Likely that MEO and GEO sats will be out of reach, unless you drive your own SHF/EHF SATCOM and GNSS satellites into the enemy's, given tit-for-tat responses on military launch sites would invite nuclear escalation which would deny most higher orbit ASATs beyond LEO. However, these are perfectly within reach right now and will be actual things in the coming decades.

Conversely, the only people talking about hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft is L-M, which has about as much validity as L-M promising to "fix fusion" or whatever, and essentially zero relevance because it's an unsolicited proposal from a contractor with no demonstrable utility to aerospace forces.

There's a reason the Space Force has a orbital combat Delta, after all. There's a reason the USAF is investing in hypersonic weapons.

What they aren't investing in is a reusable hypersonic airbreathing reconnaissance drone or something silly. Maybe Japan or the PLAAF or South Korea would be into that, since they have a better use for it, but the PLAAF (and Russia) want global systems to compete with America, the Europeans will eventually get one, and only Japan has both the means and the requirements for a regional near-real-time reconnaissance platform that can be met by a hypersonic atmospheric vehicle.

 

[In_A_Dream]

If our military and commercial satellite networks are sufficient for the US's ISR needs, what's the purpose of the U2, RC-135, their cousins, and the armada of ISR UAVs we employ all over the globe?

 

[Kat Tsun]

If our military and commercial satellite networks are sufficient for the US's ISR needs, what's the purpose of the U2, RC-135, their cousins, and the armada of ISR UAVs we employ all over the globe?

Please point out the scramjet within the CFM F-108, as I'm not aware of this ability existing for such engines.

The point is that airborne platforms are slow and getting slower, not fast and getting faster. The thread is about "Aurora", which is a hypothetical hypersonic reconnaissance jet that fanboys of the SR-71 invented in the 1990's based on misunderstood and weakly informed knowledge at the time of 1970's aircraft like the McDD Hypersonic Cruiser and GIUK Gap Interceptor. Such aircraft were designed with the threats of the 1970's (and 1980's) in mind, not the threats of the 2020's or later, but their technologies likely won't be practical until the 2030's or 2040's at least.

There's no real basis in reality for thinking this is going to happen outside of small countries with incredibly limited ambitions, maybe, provided they don't simply piggyback off America's ISR, because there's no particular reason to think that the anti-aircraft threat has diminished since the 1970's to the point where a hypersonic aircraft might be massively more survivable than a satellite. The opposite is true.

Anyway we've gone from billion dollar NRO satellites that can collate the dispositions of divisions in a few weeks (Iraq, 1991) to billion dollar USAF satellites that can detect gun batteries and MLRS from orbit based on flash spotting and transmit this to airborne battle managers or FA battery commanders (Syria, 2011). The next step is real-time intelligence based on collating information from million dollar cubesats that provides counter-battery targeting and C3I targeting to 155mm guns and hypersonic weapons in the division and corps (Grafenwoehr, 2020).

Airborne platforms just provide an additional bandwidth node because SATCOM is limited in throughput while everyone has a SINCGARS.

The ideal is obviously that everyone has SATCOM in the SHF/EHF bands and this provides targeting information down to individual vehicles and rifle squads. That's what FCS was trying to do but that failed. It will come back eventually, probably in 20 to 40 years or so, and will be common in the latter half of this century. FCS was an attempt to "leapfrog" the competition and have a functional equivalent in the 2020's instead of the 2040's, although at this rate it's more likely that America will have it in the 2040's and everyone else in the 2070's, but the 1990's were fairly optimistic about the pace of technological change.

Trend lines are fairly tough to break unless something dramatic happens, like another 2008 or three, or a NATO-Russia nuclear war, or something similar. Those might push back the inevitable rise of the orbital panopticon a few more decades but it likely won't stop it. It just means someone else will pick up the pieces and make it work instead. The PLA Space Force takes up the torch from the US I guess and is much more liberal about using such a thing against its own population.

 

[publiusr]

Prompt Global Strike is the ultimate weapon that will eliminate the need for the USA to base forces out of foreign countries permanently, at least for CIA-style assassinations using airstrikes and special operations forces. It won't solve war, obviously, but it will make wars far more surgical and targeted, at least provided they don't provoke nuclear retaliation, and possibly make SOCOM more useful for targeting nation-state actors

And that—-were I to hazard a guess—is why Medaris and the ABMA were REALLY done away with—-because they threatened the fiefdoms of LeMay and Rickover…with space/missile advocates fastened up in the Pentagon’s Broom Closet…ranking below the janitors.

Flying Boats instead of carriers and Rods from God means the logistical nightmare of force projection can be peeled back—with the money saved going to space?

Naw! We can’t have that!

 

[quellish]

The thread is about "Aurora", which is a hypothetical hypersonic reconnaissance jet that fanboys of the SR-71 invented in the 1990's based on misunderstood and weakly informed knowledge at the time of 1970's aircraft like the McDD Hypersonic Cruiser and GIUK Gap Interceptor. Such aircraft were designed with the threats of the 1970's (and 1980's) in mind, not the threats of the 2020's or later, but their technologies likely won't be practical until the 2030's or 2040's at least.

The Aurora legend began in the mid 1980s, not the 1990s. See:

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/aurora-a-famous-speculative-project.7886/page-13#post-541037

"AURORA" was a classified program element in the FY1986 budget justification, published in 1985. It was listed among airborne reconnaissance programs. The press picked on this. Later articles described the Air Force as developing a new high speed, high altitude stealth reconnaisance aircraft and connected it to "AURORA". The legend grew further from there.

The "McDD Hypersonic Cruiser" and "GIUK Gap Interceptor" had nothing to do with that reporting, and both of those programs were largely unknown at the time. Sweetman's much later book did have material based on the McDonnell studies.

The point is that airborne platforms are slow and getting slower, not fast and getting faster.

There is an important distinction between reconnaissance and surveillance:

The difference between surveillance and reconnaissance has to do with time and specificity; surveillance is a more prolonged and deliberate activity, while reconnaissance missions are generally rapid and targeted to retrieve specific information.

 

[Dew]

for a memo

This means that Russians believed to Aurora? Did they reported any anomalous sighting?

Have to say, I don't see a sane hypersonic waverider in that design. Unfeasibly short engines, impossible thermal challenges and shock-inducing bumps in unhelpful places just to start with. I am guessing this is more a report on the Western rumourmill than anything substantive.

This is the Bill Sweetman credited illustration which appeared in his "Hypersonic Aurora: a Secret Dawning?" article which appeared in Janes Defence Weekly 18, no. 24-25 from Dec. 12 1992

 

[Dew]

" A member of the Senate once confirmed to me something that I thought I knew, and sure enough I was right"...
"There is a certain object that they say doesn't exist, but really does; I even guessed where it really is and he confirmed it was there.. ..It flies real fast"

Tom Clancy 2003

 

[lostcosmonauts]

" A member of the Senate once confirmed to me something that I thought I knew, and sure enough I was right"...
"There is a certain object that they say doesn't exist, but really does; I even guessed where it really is and he confirmed it was there.. ..It flies real fast"

Tom Clancy 2003

To be fair he was in the business of selling fiction cyber thriller books and the Aurora legend helps in making the intelligence world seem sexy enough to fill a doorstop sized tome

 

[Q-nimbus]

" A member of the Senate once confirmed to me something that I thought I knew, and sure enough I was right"...
"There is a certain object that they say doesn't exist, but really does; I even guessed where it really is and he confirmed it was there.. ..It flies real fast"

Tom Clancy 2003

To be fair he was in the business of selling fiction cyber thriller books and the Aurora legend helps in making the intelligence world seem sexy enough to fill a doorstop sized tome

Despite that the Aurora legend is over three decades old nobody has ever seen, let alone photographed the Aurora, nor has anyone come forward who worked on the program, not even anonymously, except for maybe the Chris Gibson sighting, that I consider reliable - but then we don’t have any clue at all what he actually saw, let alone that it was an Aurora.

I’m sure that if there’s any truth in Clancy’s story, the congress man in question would also have told other people about this project. I’m also sure a few of the thousands and thousands of people who worked on the project would have come forward by now as well. Maybe not on the record, but surely they would be able point writers and journalists in the right direction, perhaps they even would show a picture.

The fact that this didn’t happen, combined with the fact we know quite a bit about what happened in the black world up to the early 2000’s can only lead to one conclusion: there is and never has been an Aurora.

Does anyone know if Bill Sweetman still works at Northrop Grumman? I wonder if he has gotten any new insights in the black world now that he worked on the fringes of it.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Anyone working 'on the fringes' of the black world will have signed so many non disclousre agreements we will probably never know. Getting hot under the collar about non existence of any project, real or imagined, is wasting computing power better used elsewhere.

Folk will believe or not, their choice.

 

[FighterJock]

Anyone working 'on the fringes' of the black world will have signed so many non disclousre agreements we will probably never know. Getting hot under the collar about non existence of any project, real or imagined, is wasting computing power better used elsewhere.

Folk will believe or not, their choice.

Too true Foo Fighter.

 

[Hansblix]

" A member of the Senate once confirmed to me something that I thought I knew, and sure enough I was right"...
"There is a certain object that they say doesn't exist, but really does; I even guessed where it really is and he confirmed it was there.. ..It flies real fast"

Tom Clancy 2003

To be fair he was in the business of selling fiction cyber thriller books and the Aurora legend helps in making the intelligence world seem sexy enough to fill a doorstop sized tome

Despite that the Aurora legend is over three decades old nobody has ever seen, let alone photographed the Aurora, nor has anyone come forward who worked on the program, not even anonymously, except for maybe the Chris Gibson sighting, that I consider reliable - but then we don’t have any clue at all what he actually saw, let alone that it was an Aurora.

I’m sure that if there’s any truth in Clancy’s story, the congress man in question would also have told other people about this project. I’m also sure a few of the thousands and thousands of people who worked on the project would have come forward by now as well. Maybe not on the record, but surely they would be able point writers and journalists in the right direction, perhaps they even would show a picture.

The fact that this didn’t happen, combined with the fact we know quite a bit about what happened in the black world up to the early 2000’s can only lead to one conclusion: there is and never has been an Aurora.

Does anyone know if Bill Sweetman still works at Northrop Grumman? I wonder if he has gotten any new insights in the black world now that he worked on the fringes of it.

There is a joke that if you want something leaked you brief the Senate Intelligence Committee. In that. We are talking about a highly competitive edge towards foreign superpowers that is tied in with a sense of patriotism and protect protectiveness. While things classified are leaked or talked about. I have no doubts things like this are not.

Even if they told others. I doubt they care or would be in a position to be posting about this on a very niche site. We heard about this from Clancy as it’s in his wheelhouse and of interest to his fan base which ties into this interest.

No different than movies or flying a black project in the wild knowing it will send a message in times of political instability. Or even a double boom from an SR-71 in Asia. Sometimes leaking things is a great way to keep up an image that we have technology people can’t imagine. It’s leaked to people like Clancy knowing it will be brought up in media. Leaks aren’t always as they seem.

Edit: Also hasnt the term Aurora been explained many times over by many sources as the budgetary line item for the ATB/B-2 program?

 

[Dew]

Edit: Also hasnt the term Aurora been explained many times over by many sources as the budgetary line item for the ATB/B-2 program?

I think it has. Clancy only referred to the 'object' as 'something that flies real fast'. Whether the 'something' he refers to is or is not named, or related to the cryptonym 'Aurora' is a red herring (much like a lot of 'information' in this area).

I was hoping the 'speculative' part of the thread title was more pertinent than the 'Aurora' part and had only posted the Clancy quote/clip in this already meandering thread rather than clutter another.

 

[aliensporebomb]

I do recall that film "Stealth" from 2005 that had prop Mach 4/5 faux aircraft in it but I doubt they were produced by a major defense contractor.

Isn't Northrop-Grumman big enough?

US5984231A - Aircraft with variable forward-sweep wing - Google Patents

An aircraft with a variable forward-sweep wing and the method of configuring the wing in an optimal position for a desired flight regime. The variable forward-sweep wing is positionable from an essentially unswept position to a full-forward sweep position. In the unswept position the wing is...

patents.google.com

I was unaware that they were involved with the Stealth film, or at least it seems like Lockmart is advertising their involvement with the Top Gun film more. Interesting to know.

So which aircraft is more likely to form the basis of a real aircraft? I have my own ideas but it's interesting to think about.

 

[TMA1]

If unsettlingly clear information tangential to a black project started getting discussed on a forum like this, would there be one or two respected members here who would guide away/explain away conversations happening? Maybe deride the very discussion that was happening?

 

[Hansblix]

If unsettlingly clear information tangential to a black project started getting discussed on a forum like this, would there be one or two respected members here who would guide away/explain away conversations happening? Maybe deride the very discussion that was happening?

Many times it’s what’s unsaid.