Rumors of clandestine programs and hypersonic planes fascinate defense buffs and analysts alike. A case in point is the rumored SR-91 Aurora, a rumored replacement for the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, covered in the same veil of secrecy that surrounded the F-117a stealth fighter a tradition of Skunk Works’ masterful skill in cloak-and-dagger innovation.
The history of the SR-91 Aurora is not one of hard facts, but of a quilt of unexplained events, financial mysteries, and rumors within the aerospace community. What they imply is a reconnaissance aircraft with hypersonic capability, supposedly Mach 5+ or better, long speculated but never officially confirmed.
Let us follow the crumbs that have fed the rumor of this supposed wonder of aviation. The British Ministry of Defence report of May 2006 suggested United States Air Force (USAF) interest in creating a Mach 4-6 supersonic vehicle. This is not proof, but it may be taken as a wink towards the project’s existence.
And then there are the sonic footprints upon our planet, such as the ghostly echoes. The “skyquakes” rumbling over Los Angeles since the beginning of the 1990s, ever on their way to the mysterious Area 51, implies operations beyond any publicly acknowledged capability. These so-called skyquakes fall on the historical precedent set that retired the SR-71 on March 6, 1990. Unchallenged by the USAF, this quiet shut-down indicated a potential substitute could the Aurora be the missing piece of this aerial puzzle?
The Aurora itself allegedly blinked onto the fringe of public consciousness as a result of a censorial slipup, its name appearing within the Pentagon’s 1985 budget proposal alongside the SR-71 and U-2. The accident has likely altered nothing and everything: even though the name since was changed, the reputation of that blunder persists.
Celebrated flight writer Bill Sweetman has been a prime interpreter, reading between the financial and auditory lines suggesting the existence of the SR-91. In 2006, he spotted a $9-billion hole in the Air Force operations budget that could quite conceivably fit a project of Aurora’s size and covertness.
The most pictorially satisfying evidence, though circumstantial, came in August 1989 when Chris Gibson, an experienced observer, spotted a triangular-shaped aircraft flying over the North Sea. This, combined with subsequent reports of strange contrails and a strange aircraft combining with a USAF formation close to Beale Air Force Base, makes up the saga of a working hypersonic vehicle that is taking the aeronautical engineering boundaries to their limits.
The Groom Lake base, so bound up in secrecy, is itself a probable testing ground for such an aircraft. Its six-mile runway, laid out across the desert, would support the extreme take-off and landing rates that a hypersonic aircraft would require. And Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works, whose legacy includes the administration of high-risk, high-secrecy programs, is the profile of a prime contractor for this ghostly machine.
But the SR-91’s story does have its doubters. Some have speculated that technology developments in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and spy satellites could have made the Aurora project obsolete prior to its disclosure. Others, such as retired Skunk Works chief Ben Rich, have scoffed at the mere possibility of such an aircraft as mythical a designation tacked on to the B-2 bomber program that acquired a life of its own.
