Area 51 Tours

Does the United States Air Force or one of

America

's intelligence agencies have a secret hypersonic aircraft capable of a Mach 6 performance? Continually growing evidence suggests that the answer to this question is yes. Perhaps the most well-known event which provides evidence of such a craft's existence is the sighting of a triangular plane over the North Sea in August 1989 by oil-exploration engineer Chris Gibson. As well as the famous "skyquakes" heard over Los Angeles since the early 1990s, found to be heading for the secret Groom Lake (Area 51) installation in the Nevada desert, numerous other facts provide an understanding of how the aircraft's technology works. Rumored to exist but routinely denied by

U.S.

officials, the name of this aircraft is Aurora.

The outside world uses the name Aurora because a censor's slip let it appear below the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 in the 1985 Pentagon budget request. Even if this was the actual name of the project, it would have by now been changed after being compromised in such a manner.

The plane's real name has been kept a secret along with its existence. This is not unfamiliar though, the F-117a stealth fighter was kept a secret for over ten years after its first pre-production test flight. The project is what is technically known as a Special Access Program (SAP). More often, such projects are referred to as "black programs."

So what was the first sign of the existence of such an aircraft? On 6 March 1990, one of the United States Air Force's Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy planes shattered the official air speed record from Los Angeles to Washington's Dulles Airport. There, a brief ceremony marked the end of the SR-71's operational career. Officially, the SR-71 was being retired to save the $200-$300 million a year it cost to operate the fleet. Some reporters were told the plane had been made redundant by sophisticated spy satellites.

But there was one problem, the USAF made no opposition towards the plane's retirement, and congressional attempts to revive the program were discouraged. Never in the history of the USAF had a program been closed without opposition. Aurora is the missing factor to the silent closure of the SR-71 program.

Testing such a new radical aircraft brings immense costs and inconvenience, not just in the design and development of a prototype aircraft, but also in providing a secret testing place for aircraft that are obviously different from those the public are aware of.

Groom Dry Lake, in the Nevada desert, is home to one of

America

's elite secret proving grounds. Here is Aurora's most likely test location. Comparing today's Groom Lake with images of the base in the 1970s, it is apparent that many of the larger buildings and hangars were added during the following decade. Also, the Groom Lake test facility has a lake-bed runway that is six miles long, twice as long as the longest normal runways in the

United States

. The reason for such a long runway is simple: the length of a runway is determined either by the distance an aircraft requires to accelerate to flying speed, or the distance that the aircraft needs to decelerate after landing. That distance is proportional to the speed at which lift-off takes place. Usually, very long runways are designed for aircraft with very high minimum flying speeds, and, as is the case at Edwards AFB, these are aircraft that are optimized for very high maximum speeds. Almost 19,000 feet of the runway at Groom Lake is paved for normal operations.

Lockheed's Skunk Works, now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company, is the most likely prime contractor for the Aurora aircraft. Throughout the 1980s, financial analysts concluded that Lockheed had been engaged in several large classified projects. However, they weren't able to identify enough of them to account for the company's income.

Technically, the Skunk Works has a unique record of managing large, high-risk programs under an incredible unparalleled secrecy. Even with high-risk projects the company has undertaken, Lockheed has a record of providing what it promises to deliver.

By 1945, only a small amount of jets had the capability of reaching speeds of 500mph. In 1960, aircraft that could exceed 1,500mph were going into squadron service. Aircraft capable of 2,000mph were under development and supposed to enter service by 1965. This was a four-fold increase in speed in two decades.

From this, the next logical step was to achieve hypersonic speed. The definition of hypersonic isn't as clearly defined as supersonic, but aerodynamicists consider that the hypersonic realm starts when the air in front of the vehicle's leading edges "stagnates": a band of air is trapped, unable to flow around the vehicle, and reaches extremely high pressures and temperatures. The edge of the hypersonic regime lies at a speed of roughly one mile per second - 3,600mph or Mach 5.4.

What is regarded by many as the most successful experimental aircraft program in USAF history, the X-15 rocket plane was created in response to a requirement issued by NASA (then NACA) for an air-launched manned research vehicle with a maximum speed of more than Mach 6 and a maximum altitude of more than fifty miles.

The X-15 program, which involved three test aircraft, went on to exceed all goals set and provided valuable data which has been used on many high speed/altitude aircraft of today, including NASA spacecraft, and most likely, the Aurora aircraft.

In the early 1960s, Lockheed and the USAF Flight Dynamics Laboratory began a hypersonic research program which would provide data on travel at hypersonic speed as well as more efficient shapes for hypersonic vehicles. From this program came the FDL-5 research vehicle, which bore an amazing resemblance to the North Sea Aurora sighting of Chris Gibson. Building on both the FDL-5 Project and Aurora, the aircraft which may have been seen over the North Sea could have been Northrop's A-17 stealth attack plane.

There are three reasons why the North Sea sketch drawn by Chris Gibson is the most persuasive rendition of the Aurora vehicle. Firstly, the observer's qualifications, with which he couldn't identify the aircraft; which would have been instantaneous if the aircraft was known to the "white world". Second is the fact that the North Sea aircraft corresponds almost perfectly in shape and size to hypersonic aircraft studies carried out by McDonnell Douglas and the USAF during the 1970s and 1980s. The third factor is that the North Sea aircraft looks unlike anything else. No aircraft other than a high-supersonic vehicle, or a test aircraft for such a vehicle, has ever been built or studied with a similar platform.

At hypersonic speeds, traditional aerodynamic design gives way to aero-thermodynamic design. In order for a hypersonic vehicle to remain structurally intact at such high speeds and stresses, the vehicle must produce minimum drag and be free of design features that give rise to concentrations of heat. The aircraft design must be able to spread the heat over the surface of the structure.

Thermal management is critical to high-speed aircraft, especially hypersonic vehicles. Skin friction releases heat energy into the aircraft and must be pumped out again if the vehicle is to have any endurance. The only way to do this is to heat the fuel before it enters the engine, and dump the heat through the exhaust. On a hypersonic vehicle, thermal management is very critical, the cooling capacity of the fuel must be used carefully and efficiently or else the range and endurance of the aircraft will be limited by heating rather than the actual fuel tank capacity.

So how will an aircraft reach such speeds? Conventional turbojet engines won't be able to handle the incoming air streams at such speeds, they can barely handle transonic speeds. In the case of hypersonic propulsion, an aero-thermodynamic duct, or ramjet, is the only engine proven to work efficiently at such speeds. Even ramjets have drawbacks though, such as drag created in the process of slowing down and compressing a Mach 6 airstream.

To make a ramjet engine efficient is to spread the air over the entire length of the body. In a hypersonic ramjet aircraft, the entire underside of the forward body acts as a ramp that compresses the air, and the entire underside of the tail is an exhaust nozzle. So much air underneath the aircraft serves another purpose, it keeps the plane up.

The ramjets need a large inlet area to provide the high thrust needed for Mach 6 cruise. As a result, the engines occupy a large area beneath vehicle and the need to accommodate a large quantity of fuel means that an all-body shape is most feasible.

Structurally, the all-body shape is highly efficient. As well as being extremely aerodynamic, the average cross-sectional area being very large provides a great deal of space for load, equipment and fuel. This being inside a structure that is light and compact having a relatively small The spy plane's airframe may incorporate stealth technology, but it doesn't really require it should its mission simply involve high altitude reconnaissance. Hypersonic aircraft are much harder to shoot down than a ballistic missile. Although a hypersonic plane isn't very maneuverable, its velocity is such that even a small turn puts it miles away from a SAM's projected interception point.

Choosing the right type of fuel is crucial to the success of Aurora. Because various sections of the craft will reach cruising-speed temperatures ranging from 1,000 degrees fahrenheit to more than 1,400 degrees fahrenheit, its fuel must both provide energy for the engines and act as a structural coolant extracting destructive heat from the plane's surface.

At hypersonic speeds, even exotic kerosene such as the special high-flashpoint JP-7 fuel used by the SR-71 Blackbird can't absorb enough heat. The plausible solution is cryogenic fuel.

The best possibilities are methane and hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen provides more than three times as much energy and absorbs six times more heat per pound than any other fuel. The downfall is its low density, which means larger fuel tanks, a larger airframe and more drag. While liquid hydrogen is the fuel of choice for space launch vehicles that accelerate quickly out of the atmosphere, studies have shown that liquid methane is better for an aircraft cruising at Mach 5 to Mach 7. Methane is widely available, provides more energy than jet fuels, and can absorb five times as much heat as kerosene. Compared with liquid hydrogen, it is three times denser and easier to handle.

On 16 November 1998, a camcorder video was taken of a mysterious "fireball" in the sky. While this was very interesting, what was even more amazing was the aircraft which was seen shortly after flying at very high speed producing the mysterious "donuts-on-a-rope" contrails. Does this video, which is currently undergoing intense study at JPL, show the mysterious Aurora spy plane?

A newspaper article about this event was also written in the The Sun Herald newspaper.

Boeing Bird of Prey (Confirmed Project)

The Bird of Prey was a black project aircraft, intended to demonstrate stealth technology. It was developed by McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in the BirdofPrey

1990s. Funded by the company at a price of $67 million,it was a low cost program compared to many other programs of similar scale. It developed technology and materials which would later be used on Boeing's X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. As an internal project, this aircraft was not given an X-plane designation. There are no public plans to make this a production aircraft. It is characterized as a technology demonstrator.

Development

Development of the Bird of Prey began in 1992 by McDonnell Douglas's Phantom Works division for special projects. The aircraft's name is a reference to the Klingon Bird of Prey warship from the Star Trek television series. Phantom Works later became part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems after the Boeing–McDonnell Douglas merger in 1997.

The first flight was in 1996, and 39 more were performed through the program's conclusion in 1999. The Bird of Prey is designed to prevent shadows and is believed to have been used to test active camouflage, which would involve its surfaces changing color or luminosity to match the surroundings.

The aircraft was made public on October 18, 2002, and was later put on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.

Design

Because it was a demonstration aircraft, the Bird of Prey used a commercial off-the-shelf turbofan engine and manual hydraulic controls rather than fly-by-wire. This shortened the development time and reduced the cost significantly (a production aircraft would have computerized controls).

The shape is aerodynamically stable enough to be flown without computer correction. Its aerodynamic stability is due to the same mechanisms found in canard aircraft such as the VariEze, the lift normally generated by the canards being provided by the chines (which therefore keeps the nose from sinking). This configuration, which can be stable without a horizontal tailplane and a conventional vertical rudder, is now a standard in modern stealth unmanned aerial vehicles such as the X-45 and X-47, tailless aircraft which use drag rudders (asymmetrically-used wingtip air brakes) for rudder control.

Aircraft on display

The Bird of Prey was put on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio on July 16, 2003. It is on display in the Museum's Modern Flight Gallery. Along with the XF-85 Goblin, it is the only experimental aircraft that has not been moved to the Museum's Research & Development Gallery.

Specifications:

300px-NorthropSwitchblade_Swing-wings_InMotion

As far back as 1989 the buzz inside aviation circles was that the Pentagon was developing a variable-sweep wing aircraft to replace the aging fleet of F-111s which were retired by the USAF in 1998. The F-111 was a medium sized bomber also capable of defending itself as a fighter and then speeding away at over 1600 MPH. In the mid-90s reports began to surface concerning a new swing-wing aircraft sighted near Cannon Air Force Base, NM and at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. In September 1994, that aircraft was observed circling high over Amarillo, TX for several minutes at midday. The plane was not a standard variable swing-wing aircraft as first reported, rather employing a unique forward-swept swing wing mechanism that enables the jet to become an advanced attack aircraft capable of precision weapons delivery, super maneuverability (for air combat) and Mach 3 "dash" capability. It is a bomber, fighter and high-speed aircraft all-in-one. Like the FB-111A, it too has been nicknamed the "Switchblade".

For a time it was concluded that this top-secret project by Northrop was officially named Bird of Prey on account of the squadron patch worn by pilots involved in the covert BoP project, though it is now known that the Bird of Prey was in fact another Black project stealth aircraft altogether, by Boeing. It is possible that this ATF/B -type "Switchblade" craft is a stealth concept plane from back in the Multi-Role Fighter [MRF] competition days, given its aptitude. Multi-mission aircraft of the past have invariably had to make design sacrifices in one area or another, never really coming close to becoming true flying Swiss Army knives. The Northrop design seems to meets all the design criteria for an advanced multi-regime tactical bomber/fighter aircraft. Northrop Grumman have considerable expertise in designing advanced aircraft. Northrop was the chief contractor on the stealth B-2 Spirit, the YF-23 Black Widow II and the Tacit Blue. Grumman has experience designing forward swept wing and variable-swept wing aircraft, the X-29 and F-14 Tomcat, respectively.

The wings are attached to the fuselage (body) at a pivot point toward the rear of the aircraft. With the wings fully swept aft the aircraft can slow to drop precision weapons or land on short unimproved runways. Swept forward twenty degrees and the aircraft takes advantage of the maneuverability that forward-swept wings offer becoming a highly agile air combat platform. Sweep the wings fully forward and they become flush with the aircraft with the trailing edge becoming the leading edge, forming a highly swept 75 degree stealthy delta ideal for high-speed Mach 3 exits. Or as it is understated in the U.S. Patent 5,984231 abstract, "the aforementioned apparatus may be used in a method to configure the aircraft for the desire flight regime" thus becoming the aircraft for every mission.

There is growing evidence that a mini-shuttle was developed shortly after the space shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986 and that the trials began in 1992.

Operating under the mysterious Aurora Project, the system is believed to comprise a space plane roughly the size of an SR-71 spy plane and a hypersonic launch vehicle resembling the experimental XB-70A strategic bomber designed in 1957-60. This large aircraft could perform a number of roles, but it appears to have been designed specifically to carry the smaller space plane to a suitable launch altitude.

Sightings of the aircraft described as a "mothership" first began in the late summer of 1990. It was said to resemble a modernized version of the highly advanced North American XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, developed for the USAF, but never put into production. Designed to achieve high efficiency through a very close integration of propulsion and aerodynamics, the XB-70 could achieve a speed of Mach 3.

On September 13 and October 3, 1990, sightings of the aircraft were made at Mohave, near Edwards Air Force Base (AFB). Another sighting occurred north of Edwards AFB in April 1991. On May 10, 1992, a journalist with CNN saw the plane flying near Atlanta,

Georgia

. The final sighting occurred on July 12 at 11:45p.m. near Lockheed's Hellendale Facility and because it coincided with a severe thunderstorm in the Groom Lake area, speculation arose that an emergency divert had taken place. An indication as to the aircraft's manufacturer came on January 6, 1992, when there was a sighting of an SR-71 shaped forward fuselage section being loaded onto a C-5 transport plane at the Lockheed Skunk Works facility in Burbank, California. It was about 65 to 75 feet long and 10 feet high. The C-5 was bound for Boeing Field in Seattle.

The aircraft was described as having a large delta wing and a large forward fuselage. The wingtips were upturned to form fins. The edges of the wing and fins had a black tile covering, while the rest of the fuselage was white. The rear fuselage had a raised area with a black line extending down it. Some witnesses reported seeing a long-span canard near the nose. It was said to be about 200 feet long.

Nothing is known, however, about the aircraft's propulsion system. If the "Super-Valkyrie" has been designed as a hypersonic launch vehicle, the most likely method of propulsion would be Pulse Detonation Wave Engines (PDWEs). Operating on a different principle then conventional ramjets, PDWEs don't continuously burn kerosene, but detonate fuel as it starts to leave the combustion chamber. This generates a regular pulse which may be responsible for producing the unusual "doughnuts-on-a-rope" contrails. The most probable fuel for PDWEs would be cryogenic liquid methane, which could also act as a structural coolant.

At 1:45p.m. on August 5, 1992, A United Airlines 747 crew reported a near miss with an unknown aircraft as the airliner headed out of Los Angeles International Airport. The airliner was in the vacinity of Georges AFB, California, when the 747's Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) warned the flight crew that an aircraft was approaching at high speed. The unidentified aircraft flew past the 747 about 500-1000 feet below it at high supersonic speed. The UFO was described as having a lifting-body configuration, much like the forward fuselage of an SR-71, and being roughly the size of an F-16. It was speculated that the aircraft was a drone that had "escaped". Could this have been the secret space plane?

It has been reported that the space plane is codenamed Brilliant Buzzard or Blue Eyes. The space plane has most likely been based on NASA's X-24C proposals or the highly classified USAF FDL-5 Project. The aircraft was also most likely to have been developed alongside the "North Sea" Aurora. Feasibility studies by many companies all led to the same conceptual design: A one-man delta-shaped vehicle with a 75-degree sweep.

The X-24C rocket plane was intended to follow NASA's X-24B. At the same time, the USAF was considering the black budget Lockheed FDL-5 as a successor to the X-15 rocket plane, the most successful

high-speed research aircraft with 199 flights to speeds of Mach 6.7 and altitudes of 354,200 feet. A mock-up was built, and if the X-24C was fully developed and tested, it would explain why the X-24C was canceled by NASA. It may be however, that the FDL-5 and the proposed X-24C were actually "black" and "white" versions of the same vehicle.

Despite the X-24C being officially scrapped in 1977 and NASA and the USAF apparently unable to produce enough money to build prototypes, Historian Rene Francillon, in a survey of Lockheed aircraft published in 1982, reported that Lockheed had already flown an experimental aircraft capable of sustained flight at Mach 6.

If Lockheed had developed a hypersonic vehicle like the X-24C, it is possible that technology was used in the development of the "North Sea" Aurora and the space plane. Testing of the vehicle would have been undertaken at the top-secret Groom Lake installation and the decision to go ahead with constructing prototypes of the "North Sea" Aurora and two-stage space plane may have coincided with the Challenger disaster in 1986.

The commissioning of these two systems would also explain unusual changes within the "black world" and it's "white" exterior: The Pentagon's decision to scrap the military space shuttle launch facilities at Vandenburg AFB, the appearance of a major black program in the mid-1980s, and also its appearance showing up in Lockheed's company accounts in the form of an extreme budget. Another factor reinforcing the belief that these projects left the drawing board in 1986, is the redevelopment carried out at Groom Lake. The old housing area, built for A-12 Oxcart personnel, was replaced by modern accommodation blocks. An indoor recreation facility and a new commissary were also built. Four water tanks were built and an extensive runway upgrade program was undertaken. Another improvement was the construction of a new fuel tank farm at the south end of the base, which was believed to store the liquid methane which fueled Aurora. These improvements were initially attributed to the "North Sea" Aurora spy plane, but a larger hangar was built. Larger than the rest, this could house the "mothership", the Super-Valkyrie/ Space Plane Project. Known as Hangar 18 by base personnel (after the Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio), observers claim to have caught glimpses of large aircraft moving in and out of it prior to the closure of land overlooking Groom Lake in 1995. All evidence points to the existence of the Super-Valkyrie and while it's exact role remains unknown, the aircraft seems to have been primarily designed as a mothership.

The flight testing of a space plane would have began with a scale-sized demonstrator, used in a series of glide drops conducted from a converted B-52. Although the parent aircraft was being developed, a rocket booster may have been considered as a fall back launch system. Interestingly enough, in 1991 NASA awarded Lockheed's Skunk Works a contract to explore the possibility of developing a small lifting-body space plane.

A mock-up of this vehicle was built and designated HL-20 PLS. If it had been built, the mini-shuttle would have been an economical alternative for transporting astronauts and pay-loads into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The project was abandoned in 1993 in favor of the X-33 Venture Star demonstrator.

Propulsion for the space plane is unknown and may take the form of a highly advanced scramjet running on liquid hydrogen. The vehicle will carry two crew members within an ejection capsule who observe the outside via high definition video screens and small side windows.

Assuming the space plane is capable of reaching LEO this will allow it to launch small military satellites, inspect foreign satellites and destroy them if necessary. The space plane could also carry out global reconnaissance missions and deliver nuclear missiles. Current estimates suggest that as many as five space planes have been built, perhaps costing as much as a Super-Valkyrie.

The Super-Valkyrie may have been built by Boeing in Seattle and then transported to Groom Lake and/or Edwards AFB for testing in total secrecy at the beginning of the 1990s. Using proven technology and modern developments, Boeing could have built as many as four of these motherships, costing $2 billion each with funding secretly diverted from "visible" projects. The likely contractor for the small spaceplane is Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works who are also believed to be the contractors of the "North Sea" Aurora. The existence of both programs seems to be confirmed by the way officials from Lockheed-Martin deny their involvement with hypersonic aircraft and their existence.

Despite official denials, the CIA is probably responsible for operating the "North Sea" Aurora and mini-shuttle programs with support from the USAF. The spaceplane probably operates from Groom Lake, Nevada and the White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, with reports claiming that the Super-Valkyrie has occasionally visited Wallops Island, Virginia.

From where the "North Sea" Aurora spy planes operate is less clear, but some of the aircraft may be based at Beale AFB which is home to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing.

The US Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Northrop Corp. teamed up for the TACIT BLUE Technology Demonstration Program from 1978 to 1985. TACIT BLUE validated a number of innovative stealth technology advances. Most notably, it was the first aircraft to demonstrate a low radar cross section using curved surfaces, along with a low probability of intercept radar and data link.

TACIT BLUE initially was created to demonstrate that a low observable surveillance aircraft with a low probability of intercept radar and other sensors could operate close to the forward line of battle with a high degree of survivability. Such an aircraft could continuously monitor the ground situation behind the battlefield and provide targeting information in real-time to a ground command center.

TACIT BLUE was one of the most successful technology demonstrator programs in Air Force history, meeting all program objectives and most low observable and sensor performance goals. The aircraft made its first flight in February 1982, and subsequently logged 135 flights over a three year period. The aircraft often achieved three to four flights weekly and several times flew more than once a day.

TACIT BLUE featured a straight, tapered wing with a "V" tail mounted on an oversized fuselage with a curved shape. It had a wingspan of 48.2 feet and a length of 55.8 feet and weighed 30,000 pounds. A single flush inlet on the top of the fuselage provided air to two high-bypass turbofan engines. TACIT BLUE employed a quadruply-redundant, digital fly-by-wire flight control system to help stabilize the aircraft about the longitudinal and directional axes.

The TACIT BLUE program cost approximately $165 million and covered development, construction and flight test. As the prime contractor, Northrop received a $136 million contract to provide one complete technology demonstrator and a partially-developed back-up airframe. The program provided valuable engineering data that aided in the B-2 "Spirit" design.

Washington DC -- The Air Force announced today one of its most successful technology demonstration programs when it unveiled "TACIT BLUE"; an aircraft which provided valuable engineering data and validated innovative stealth technology advances that aided in the B-2 design, as well as other platforms. The once highly-classified program ran from 1978 to 1985 and was unveiled today because the technologies and capabilities are currently in operational use and knowledge of the program no longer needs protection.

The team included experts from the United States Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The program cost approximately $165 million and was executed under a contract to Northrop Corp. as the prime contractor. TACIT BLUE was developed and tested at several different locations and flown by both Air Force and contractor pilots.

"TACIT BLUE was a leading edge program that took innovative stealth technologies out of laboratory and onto the flight line. The team of professionals who worked on this successful program serve as an example of the what can be achieved when industry and government work together," said Arthur L. Money, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition).

TACIT BLUE featured a straight, tapered wing with a "V" tail mounted on an oversized fuselage with a curved shape. It had a wingspan of approximately 48 feet and a length of 55 feet and weighed 30,000 pounds. A single flush inlet on the top of the fuselage provided air to two high-bypass turbofan engines. Only one complete airframe was ever flown, although a second airframe shell was constructed to serve as a backup.

The Stealth Blimp is believed to be an electro-kinetic propulsion type airship. Though very little is known about this type of aircraft it is stealthblimp

known that Lockheed Corporation has a design for a stealth blimp type of craft from 1982. There have been multiple sightings of these ships to back up the fact that they even exist. While the government has made no statements about whether or not such a "lighter-than-air" ship exists there have been multiple sightings of triangular lights going over the night sky. While many believe that these triangular craft are a type of alien UFO, there is much more evidence backing up that this is a military project rather than an otherworldly spacecraft. This type of aircraft is rumored to be associated with the US military base in Groom Lake, Nevada (unofficially called Area 51 by some) project.

California Sighting

On December 26, 1999 there was a sighting reported of an arrowhead-shaped ship in southern California. There is very little known about this sighting.

The Lebanon, Illinois Sighting

At approximately 4:00 a.m. on January 5, 2000, a man who had just drove home reported to see a "flying house" with many bright white lights around its edges and one red light in the center in the night sky. He reported that he had seen the flying object heading from northeast to southwest. The Lebanon police department was told to keep an eye out for the object. Then at approx. 4:10 a.m. a Lebanon officer called in a report claiming that he had seen "a massive elongated triangle." It was then that the object turned towards Shiloh where another officer reported seeing a large dark "arrowhead" moving at a slow pace in the night sky. A Millstadt officer sees a low flying (500'-1100') "fat arrowhead" shortly after the Shiloh officer. The officer took a picture of it with his Polaroid camera but later on the pictures did not come out as well as the officer had hoped so he rushed back to the station and made a report of the sighting along with sketches. He reported that the object had changed its course slightly and was moving northwest towards Dupo. At 6:50 a.m. a schoolteacher in Centreville, Illinois reported seeing an arrowhead shaped craft while he was driving to work. Overall there were four reports from police officers and about a dozen reports from others during that night.

Arizona Lights Sighting

On March 13, 1997 thousands of people saw a V formation of lights hover over Phoenix and many other parts of Arizona. At approx. 8:16 p.m. a series of reddish lights were reported by a former police officer and his family in Paulden, AZ. One minute later some residents in Prescott, Az reported seeing a strange object with a triangular ray of lights. Other reports came in from Chino, Valley, Tempe, Glendale, Pheonix, Tucson and Kingman, AZ. A statement by the Air Force identified these lights as standard decoy flares deployed during a training exercise; while some have refused to accept this explanation, analysis of video footage of the lights shows them to have a color spectrum consistent with burning magnesium, that they are in a constant slow descent consistent with a parachute-slowed flare, and that they disappeared as they pass behind a mountain. Recently the air force has said that there were no flares in the area and they have no knowledge of what was really out there.

The Stephenville Texas Sighting

On January 8th, 2008 several residents of Stephenville, Texas reported seeing a large round object hovering about 300 feet over the ground. Some eyewitness accounts claim that the object was at least one mile long and a half-mile wide, but all maintain it was very large, very quiet, and that the strobing light configurations were highly unusual for a conventional aircraft. One viewer stated as to having seen military jets fly past this object.

General Specifications

All of these specifications are purely based on estimates made by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS).

Aviation Week describes Blackstar as a two stage to orbit system, comprising a high-speed jet "mothership" aircraft (which Aviation Week referred to as the SR-3). Its description of SR-3 is similar to the North American B-70 Super Valkyrie Mach 3 strategic bomber, and to patents filed in the 1980s by Boeing. The SR-3 would carry a second, smaller airframe, codenamed the XOV (experimental Orbital Vehicle). This rocket-powered Space Plane, with similarities to the X-20 Dyna Soar project, would be released by its mothership at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. The XOV would then light its rocket motor (aerospike engines), similar to those used by the Lockheed Martin X-33, and could achieve both suborbital and orbital flight; one source quoted by Aviation Week estimates the XOV could reach an orbit of 300 miles above the Earth, depending on payload and mission profile. The XOV would then reenter the atmosphere and glide back to any landing site where it would land horizontally on a conventional runway. This combination of jet-powered mothership and a smaller rocket-powered space plane resembles the civilian Teir One space plane system as well as NASA's X-15, but capable of much higher velocities and of thus attaining orbit. Readers are cautioned to examine the challenges involved in supersonic separation of vehicles as opposed to the more common subsonic separation of ordnance from aircraft. But this separation from the belly might be easier than from the top, which proved to be problematic on the Lockheed D-21/M-21

The program

The primary use of a military space plane such as Blackstar would be to conduct high-altitude or orbital reconnaissance, allowing surprise overflights of foreign locations with very low risk of the spyplane being successfully engaged by existing air-defense systems. This is similar to the goals of the earlier U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft; in some circumstances such an overflight yields more information than a pass by a reconnaissance satellite, as the satellite's path is predictable, allowing sensitive material to be hidden.

Military analysts have suggested that a military space plane could also be used to place small satellites in orbit, to retrieve them, to provide a means of launching nuclear weapons from orbit, or to serve as a platform for exotic orbit-to-ground hypervelocity weapons. The small spaceplane described by Aviation Week appears to have only a very modest cargo capacity, limiting its use in such missions.

Aviation Week suggests that the huge costs of the Blackstar program were borne both by the Department of Defense's own black budget and by hiding the costs of Blackstar inside the procurement costs attached to acknowledged military purchases. To assist in this, and to allow politicians to deny the USAF operates such a vehicle, the Blackstar assets may nominally be owned and operated by the civilian defense contractors who built it. The magazine suggests that a consortium of Boeing and Lockheed are responsible for Blackstar.

It is unclear if the Blackstar program became fully operational, although it may have been so since the mid 1990s. Aviation Week's article speculated that the success of Blackstar explains the Government's willingness to cancel the SR-71 Blackbird and Air Force satellite-launch programs.

Discussions of similar aircraft

During the 1970s, when studies were underway which led to the specification of the Space Shuttle, most leading US aerospace contractors explored orbital space plane designs, some based on a two-stage design. The most serious of these was the Lockheed HGV under the X-24C program, which was a manned hypersonic vehicle dropped from under the wing a B-52, even to the point of rumors that it had actually been flight tested, according to Encyclopedia Astronautica. With the adoption of the Space Shuttle design, these avenues appear to have been abandoned. The use of a space plane as part of the launching system to replace the Space Shuttle has been suggested in programs such as Venture Star.

Some of the details of the SR-3 resemble the rumored Brilliant Buzzard or “Mothership” aircraft, but these were supposed to carry their second stage aircraft on top, rather than on the bottom as with the SR-3. This second stage was rumored to be the Aurora, (a high-speed, high-altitude delta-winged aircraft), and the lengthening of runways at facilities such as Area 51 (taken by some as evidence of Aurora) could instead be necessary either to support SR-3's takeoff or XOV's landing. Most descriptions of Aurora, however, describe it as a hypersonic plane with the exotic engine technology; the SR-3 described by Aviation Magazine is similar to existing conventional aircraft.

In the late 1960s the North American Aircraft Corporation studied conceptual designs using the B-70 bomber for small space launch. These were abandoned as unpromising.

What is known, and a matter of public record, is that, through the 1980s and 1990s, the USAF did undertake a series of projects to study, research, develop and test demonstrator vehicles capable of SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) and TSTO (two-stage-to-orbit) missions. These programs were code-named, in order, SCIENCE DAWN, SCIENCE REALM, COPPER CANYON, and COPPER COAST, and involved the development of three different competitive demonstrator vehicles. It was at the conclusion of COPPER CANYON's design phase that President Reagan proposed the X-30 NASP, which is claimed by the Blackstar story to have been used to pay for development of this spaceplane.

According to one declassified RAND Corp. report, two of the three vehicles failed to achieve their full flight envelope (i.e. couldn't make orbit), while the third, an "assisted SSTO", did achieve orbital capability. Furthermore, three code-named programs to design the stealthing of these three vehicles fell under the programs known as HAVE BLINDER I, HAVE BLINDER II, and HAVE BLINDERS III. All of these programs can be found in US military budget documents, with associated budget account numbers for years in the 1980s up into the late 1990s in the case of COPPER COAST, though the code name was dropped from the account number in the mid-1990s, even though many millions were budgeted up until recent years.

Whether any of these vehicles were individually code named "BLACKSTAR" is unknown at this time.

DTI reports this month that Northrop Grumman has won a classified Air Force contract to develop a secret bomber prototype. Naturally, nobody's confirming this on the record. I summarized the evidence pointing to a black-project bomber in October, tracing both the evolution of requirements and the money trail from the demise of the Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft System in 2006 to the USAF's bomber project.

Later in the month, I reported on Northrop Grumman CEO Ron Sugar's public enthusiasm for classified programs, including the fact that he directly tied the company's acquisition of Scaled Composites to advanced aircraft programs. In February, I pointed out the lack of visible funding for the Next Generation Bomber in 2008-2010.

More specifically, too, Sugar identified restricted programs as the company's top new business opportunity for 2008. That comment alone indicated the size of the business that the company was looking at, because - in the white world - the company was competing for BAMS, itself a billion-dollar contract.

As a consequence, those of us who look at these things carefully had our ears pricked up for any indications of progress on this front, and were rewarded on April 26 when Northrop Grumman issued its first-quarter financial results. Discreetly hidden on Schedule 5: "The company was awarded approximately $2.6 billion for restricted programs during this period." The results also showed that the only Northrop Grumman sector showing an increase in backlog on that scale, from March 31 2007 to March 31 2008, was Integrated Systems, the aircraft segment. So it is there in black and white that Northrop Grumman got more than $2 billion for a secret aircraft program or programs in the first quarter.

Covering black programs is a combination of reporting and intelligence, and the "mosaic" is a vital concept: like an archaeologist rebuilding a mosaic, you put the pieces together in a pattern that makes sense. In this case, all the indicators (funds, programs, hints dropped by Pentagon officials) point to the NGB having evolved from J-UCAS, which fragmented in late 2005 because the USAF saw it as a bigger aircraft than the Navy.

If that's the case, there are many reasons (read the DTI story) to expect that the airplane's going to look something like a big X-47B.

Above all, that means that the NGB demonstrator can build on J-UCAS technology - some of which we discuss in DTI - and that makes sense of a demonstrator first flight in 2010 and IOC in 2018, which otherwise has struck many experts as highly optimistic.

As noted in DTI's interview with Northrop Grumman's Navy UCAS program manager, Scott Winship, Northrop Grumman won the Navy project because it anticipated that split. That seems to have been the case with the bomber, too.

Back in the 1980's during the Reagan administration plans were announced for a new Orient Express, which amounted to a plane that would take off and land like a normal aircraft, but cruise at Mach 25 making runs into low Earth orbit as it went from Dulles airport to Tokyo in two hours.

Invisible Fighter

The Technology: Visual stealth, including active fuselage lighting that blends into background

The Evidence: Patent filing, development of key technology, obvious gap in current arsenal

Recon Platform

The Vehicle: Unmanned flying-wing capable of long-duration surveillance flights, measured in days and weeks instead of hours

The Technology: Autonomous flight controls and ultra-efficient electric motors powered by solar panels or fuel cells

The Evidence: Patent filing, clear current need, recent development of key technology

Special-Ops Infiltrator

The Vehicle: Vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft for transporting special-ops forces to hostile areas

The Technology: Blended-wing-body design with six jet engines powering lift fans and providing forward thrust

The Evidence: Patent filings, obvious gap in current arsenal, recent development of key technology

On-Time Delivery

The Evidence: Telltale sonic booms; unconfirmed sightings; unresolved history of long-rumored program; recent development of key technology; large, unexplained current budget allocation