Last week Flying photographed Aurora, or at least what looks to be strong evidence of Aurora, the much rumored, never-acknowledged U.S. military spyplane.
I snapped the pic not because I thought I was catching a peek at Aurora but because I thought the contrail was evidence of some strange meteorological phenomenon. The contrail was odd indeed, as you can see here, with a scalloped edge and a smooth edge with a well defined margin at the several-hundred-mile long path. I wondered if the contrail was situated exactly on the edge of a line of wind shear — after all, why else would only one side of the contrail be blown out? In an earlier Facebook post I postulated that the contrail was at around 40,000 feet, the altitude around which most transcontinental flights would fly, but I was probably flat-out wrong. If it was indeed an Aurora spotting, and it likely was, then the altitude in question might as easily have been 200,000 feet, an altitude that would put it well above the range of conventional missiles.
There’s been much speculation about Aurora, much of it promulgated by respected aviation journalist Bill Sweetman, who has scoured DoD budgets for signs of hidden projects and found billions of hidden outlays to pique his interest. Aurora, it is speculated, is powered by a pulse detonation wave engine of some kind, most likely using some form of liquid fuel, perhaps hydrogen, to power its engines. The unusual scalloped formations on the contrail, which are difficult to reconcile with any known weather phenomena, are almost certainly the result of some kind of detonation engine, such as NASA has publicly discussed flying in recent years.
After the Air Force revealed the existence of the SR71, it’s hard to argue that Aurora (or whatever the military is actually calling it) is a fantasy. Indeed, the argument could be made that Aurora, which has been speculated upon for more than a decade now, will be fully disclosed by the military before too long, but probably not before it has a replacement well along in development if not already flying.