POPULAR SCIENCE - MARCH 1993

OUT OF THE BLACK - SECRET MACH 6 SPY PLANE

- An eyewitness description, a secret test site, and a new analysis of
advanced aeronautics paint a portrait of Aurora

By Bill Sweetman

Does the U.S. Air Force - or perhaps one of America's intelligence agencies
- have a new secret spy plane in action? A growing body of evidence
suggest that the answer is yes. A startling disclosure came recently when Chris Gibson, a British oil engineer and highly trained aircraft-spotter produced a sketch that captured the shape and size of an unusual aircraft
he saw during daylight hours in August 1989, flying over his drilling rig
in the North Sea. The expert eye-witness's drawing is the keystone that,
with other evidence, provides an understanding of a secret hypersonic reconnaisance aircraft that is widely rumoured to exist, but routinely
denied by U.S. officials. Its nickname is Aurora.

Gibson - a former member of the disbanded Royal Observer Corps, a group of volunteer aircraft-spotters - was able to estimate the strange airplane's length and width by comparing it with the known dimensions of the K-135 refueling tanker and two F-111 bombers flying alongside. But it wasn't until last year, when he came across a magazine design, that Gibson suddenly made sense of the sharp triangualr silhouette he saw.

Analysts believe that Aurora is an operational spy plane that replaces the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Like its predecessor, Aurora costs
several million dollars per flight, and is sent out only in missions where
the plane's sensors can gather vital information unobtainable by satelite reconnaissance or other means.

It's plausible that Aurora was used to photograph Iraq during Operation
Desert Storm in an attempt to provide tactical intelligence to ground-based military commanders. Aurora's unique capabilities also equip it for surveillance of nuclear proliferation. The list of nations of varying
political complexions that covertly possess or are pursuing nuclear arms capabilities include India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and South Africa. Suprise visits by a reconnaisance aircraft can give
intelligence analysts clues - such as the presence of military trucks at
an ostensibly civilian plant - which wouldn't be left out in the open when
a spy satelite is scheduled to make its pass overhead.

Aurora overflights of Russia have probably not occurred. Such missions
would violate an agreement in place since a Lockheed U-2 plane was shot
down over the Soviet Union in 1960. It is likely, that the Aurora monitors
the submarine-building programs of Russia, China and other nations from
well outside their airspace using side-looking sensors.

Gibson's North Sea sighting completes a puzzle that has obsessed military-aircraft analysts for several years. Consider the following pieces
of evidence hinting at the existence of something unacknowlegded that flies high and fast:

* In February 1990, the Air Force retired its SR-71 spy planes. The
official reason was saving the $200 million to $300 million a year it
cost to operate the fleet of Blackbirds. Reporters were told that the
SR-71's role had been taken over by advanced spy satellites.

* The money saved was less than 7 percent of the approximately $4 billion
the Air Force spends yearly on satellite reconnaisance - mere chicken
feed by Pentagon standards. Keeping the SR-71's in service would have
provided cheap insurance against an unlucky string of satellite and
rocket failures, such as the ones that occured in 1985-'86.

* The Air Force actually discouraged congressional attempts to reverse
this termination of its most glamorous aircraft mission. Never in its
history had the flying service walked away from a manned mission without
a fight.

* The pace of activity at the Air Force's top-secret Groom Lake test
site in the Nevada desert has increased dramatically in recent years,
suggesting the presence there of one or more secret aircraft programs.
By comparing recent photos of the base with ones taken in the late
1970s, its apparant that several large new buildings were added during
the 1980s. Always visible in the recent pictures are a number of
chartered Boeing 737 airliners that ferry workers in from other
defense-industry towns such as Palmdale, Burbank, or Edwards in Southern
California, or from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

* Since mid-1990, unexplained sonic booms have periodically rattled
Southern California. Officials at the United States Geological Survey,
the agency that monitors earth-quake activity, no doubt irked the
military with their public statements that a very fast, high-flying
aircraft was causing the "airquakes" registered on their array of
seismographs.

* The federation of American Scientists, a private Washington, D.C.-based
policy group, issued a report late last year on the likelihood that
unacknowledged military aircraft might exist. The cautious review of unclassified literature on the subject concluded that several new types
of aircraft may indeed be covertly flying around.

- * -

''It is close to midnight, but all the clocks are set to 0730 Greenwich
time. In a closed and guarded hangar, ground crews help two men into
orange pressure suits clamber into a delta-shaped, dull black airplane.
The pilot touches keys that tell computers to start the engines. At
first, the aircraft emits a subdued whine, whcich builds up quickly and
is joined by the sound of rushing air. Then there is a flash of light
from the intake and exhaust ducts as a wave of noise explodes, rolling
harshly over across the dry lake bed. Within the roar are the scream of
small rockets, the cracking thunder of a huge fighter engine, and a
massive pulsing - as low as one cycle per second - that shakes the
entire desert base.''

- * -

Gibson's sighting now makes it possible to reconstruct the Aurora program's history. The spy plane was operational, or nearly so, by August 1989, just before the Air Force parked its SR-71s for the last time. Aurora would
have made its first flight by 1986 at the latest, following a development effort that was launched in 1981.

This analysis elicited denials by high officials involved in defense and intelligence matters. Ohio Democratic Sen. John Glenn asserted that his
sources in the intelligence community told him there was no such aircraft.
"I think they're telling the truth", he said.

Pete Williams, chief spokesman for the Bush administration's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, gave a standard answer to a query about Aurora. "If
there were such a program, we wouldn't discuss it". Williams explained that Pentagon policy says the same answer "must always be given" to queries
about secret programs - whether or not they actually exist - to avoid revealing the truth. Donald B. Rice, Bush's Secretary of the Air Force,
stated :"There's no program in the Air Force, none anywhere else that I
know of. It simply doesn't exist." To some observers the stridency of
Rice's response was puzzling. Why didn't he simply utter the usual
Pentagon disclaimer?

Black is the adjective most often applied to the hidden world in which such engineering activites unfold. In a 1985 Pentagon budget document
requesting production funds for 1987, a censor's slip let the line item "Aurora" appear, grouped with the SR-71 and U-2 programs. Even if Aurora actually was the project's name at the time, it almost certainly would
have been changed after being thus compromised; "Senior Citizen" is one
new label that has been reported. Rated by the Pentagon as an
"unacknowlegded special-access program," the plane's existence and real
name are secret, and therefore deniable.

Unconfirmed reports of Aurora's existence first surfaced in 1986 and
POPULAR SCIENCE conjectured about the airplane's likely design in the
November 1988 issue. Now, fresh reports from secret-airplane hunters such
as James Goodall, who heard the and felt bone-shaking sounds coming from
the Groom Lake facility late in December, continue to flesh out the
picture of Aurora and the technology that makes it work.

Armed with patience and braced for occasional confrontation with
no-nonsense security patrols, resolute observers like Goodall trek through the harsh Nevada desert to a mountainside overlooking desiccated Groom
Lake. From several miles away - as close as they can get without entering off-limits goverment land - the watchers can see the large air base with
its motley collection of hangars. Some of the buildings are vast.

Yet, like a mirage the isolated facility with its six-mile runway doesn't
exist - officially, that is. And its non-existence is longstanding. A 1992 Lockheed Corp. paper on the early days of the U-2 program refers to flight-testing at Groom Lake 35 years ago as having occurred merely at "a remote location"

For some, monitoring events on the dry lake bed provides the excitement of pursuing a mystery. Author and photographer Goodall, who has been chasing classfied programs for almost 30 years, is motivated by enthusiasm for
aircraft and a conviction that he's entitled to know how his taxes are
being spent. His earwitness account indicates that the airplane's
propulsion system is unconventional to say the least. "We heard Aurora
from 18 miles away. The sound was so intense that you feel it. It was quite something else - a pulsing noise that you'll never forget"

- * -

''The airplane begins rolling forward at half-past midnight, then
accelerates and noses up into the sky like a hot fighter. Seconds later
it is gone, trailing a shattering roar across the desert. In the
cockpit, the pilot sees his course overlaid on a detailed map as the
craft climbs through 60.000 feet at a steep 70-degree angle. Just
minutes after takeoff, the plane is cruising northeast at six times the
speed of sound, covering almost one mile per second. More than 20 miles
above the ground, it passes unheard over Montana and North Dakota into
Canadian airspace.

Five thousand miles away, a loaded KC-135 tanker lifts heavily into the
early morning sky from a secure air base in western Scotland. At a
second base farther south, four F-111 crewmen walk toward their pair of
aircraft. Only the crew and their base commander knows this will not be a
routine training flight.''

- * -

Aurora was almost certainly built at Lockheed's fabled Skunk Works, now
called the Lockheed Advanced Development Co. Of all known design
organizations, only the Skunk Works has the proven ability to manage large programs incorporating breakthrough technology in total secrecy. Analysis
of Lockheed's financial statements makes it possible to estimate Aurora's price tag at about $1 billion per aircraft. At most, 10 to 20 of the new
spy planes have been built.

A hypersonic prototype paved the way for Aurora. In 1975, Lockheed proposed
a small hypersonic research aircraft that would be launched from the back
of an early version of the SR-71. And a definite survey of Lockheed
aircraft, published in 1982, stated that the company had already flown a
mach 6 experimental craft. By the late 1970s the US government probably
had two main reasons for going ahead with Aurora. The first: improved
Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems posed an increasing threath to
the SR-71, which flies at Mach 3.2 (2.100 mph) and reaches altitudes above 80.000 feet. By 1980, two potent new Soviet antiaircraft weapons, the
SA-10 Grumble and the SA-12 Gladiator/Giant, were under development. Both
have a maximum altitude of about 100.000 feet and feature advanced
tracking and guidance systems. The second reason for building Aurora was
that the satelites alone are not the best solution to reconnaisance requirements. While they take superb pictures, satellites also have
inherent limitations. They follow fixed, predictable orbits, which make
their appearance no suprise to a shrewd adversary. Although earthbound controllers can command satellites to fire thrusters to adjust their
orbits, this ability is strictly limited by a finite on-board fuel supply.
In addition, because it is difficult to supply the amount of power needed
to operate an all-weather radar, most satellites carry only daylight or low-light cameras.

Although they cost several hundred million dollars apiece, spy satellites
last, on average, only five years before they are dumped into the
atmosphere and replaced. And it is difficult to increase surveillance
quickly in a crisis unless a stockpile of reserve satellites and launchers
is kept ready - as the former Soviet Union once did.

Aircraft are much more flexible. They can be dispatched exactly where and
when they are needed, and they can be fitted with day, night, or
bad-weather sensors, depending on the conditions in the target area.

- * -

''During the hour it takes to reach the initial point for descent, the
pilot and reconnaisance systems officer (RSO) in the backseat are fully
occupied with checking equipment to see how it operates in the 1.000
Fahrenheit friction heat soaking into their aircraft's structure - a
delicate balance between speed, altitude, and deceleration rate.

Over the North Sea, the tanker and the F-111s gather into a loose
formation and follow a racetrack pattern. Appearing suddenly, the black
jet turns in behind the KC-135 and connects with its refueling boom,
wavering a little while matching the tanker's low speed. During the next
ten minutes, 40 tons of liquid methane flow into the spy plane before it
turns away and hurtles skyward. Already, another loaded methane tanker
and two more F-111s are preparing to depart from their base in Britain."

- * -

An analysis of Aurora's three-dimensional shape can be extrapolated from
its 75-degree swept triangular outline. the aircraft corresponds almost exactly in form and size to hypersonic reconnaisance aircraft studied in
the 1970s and 1980s by McDonnell Douglas, according to Paul Czysz, now a professor of aerospace engineering at St.Louis University. Czysz worked on hypersonics while at McDonnell Douglas, including the company's proposal
for the National Aerospace Plane program, and is an acknowlegded expert in
the field. Efficient hypersonic planes "are basically air-breathing
propulsion systems," he says.

Like the SR-71, Aurora has a crew of two. Flying it is quite unlike
piloting a conventional aircraft. There is little if any outside view,
because a normally angled windshield causes too much drag and gets too hot. For these reasons, Aurora may have a retractable windshield used only for takeoffs and landings; at other times, the windshield would be covered by
a heat shield. Aurora's pilot is really a mission manager, monitoring the aircraft and its systems and following the course of the flight on large-format video displays. His or her most important function is to cope with the unexpected; shifts in upper-atmospheric temperature, weather developments over the target area or refueling zone, or developments with
the plane's mechanical or electronic systems. The RSO supervises a battery
of sensors. The most important is a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), a side-looking instrument that takes a sequence of snapshots of the target
as the aircraft moves and compiles them into a single radar image that is
as sharp as if had been acquired using an antenna hundreds of feet wide.
The best SAR images are classified, but have benn described as "near-photographic," allowing different types of land vehicles to be easily distinguished from more than 100 miles away, regardless of clouds or smoke.

In clear weather, Aurora uses daylight and infrared cameras for
ultra-detailed work. And unlike a satellite, the craft can be scheduled to make its reconnaissance passes at the golden hour for covert imaging;
early morning, when the low sun provides even illumination and long
shadows that highlight features on the ground, before heat-induced haze
forms. A phased-array antenna built into Aurora's upper surface - near the tail end, where aerodynamic heating is minimal - allows the airplane to transmit real-time or near real-time imagery to the Pentagon's satellite network.

- * -

''In a Middle Eastern country, a bored radar operator in an underground
shelter fails to notice a faint blip on one egde of his screen. The
system's computer can't make sense of an echo that's too high to be an
airplane and stops displaying it. A few miles from a medium-size city
lies a walled, heavily guarded compound containing equipment test stands
and several small factory buildings. From time to time a siren sounds,
and temporary covers thrown over sensitive equipment. All activity
ceases for the few minutes it takes a known spy satellite's imaging path
to pass over the base. But no warning is given this morning.
Technicians, including two blond Caucasians, are busily preparing a
rocket motor for testing on an open stand, and a truck that left a Czech
machine-tool factory several days earlier is being unloaded. All of this
detail is faithfully stored on a battery of hard-disk memories by a
camera with a 48-inch telephoto lens. Three hours and 15 minutes after
its takeoff from Nevada, the spy plane makes a wide turn back toward
Northern Europe. The RSO selects the clearest image and transmits them
to a satellite with a few keystrokes. In five minutes, hard copies as
sharp as an original negative are rolling out of a processing machine
6.000 miles away.''
- * -

Aurora uses ramjet engines, because no other type can work as efficiently
at the speeds the plane travels. In its simplest form, a ramjet is a
pinched tube that slows, compresses, and heats the incoming supersonic airstream before adding fuel to it, producing enormous thrust from the hot
gas expanding out the exhaust nozzle. However, the compression process
also generates tremendous drag. The ramjet designer's challenge is to keep
the level of drag from canceling out the slim margin of thrust that
propels the aircraft. One way to make a ramjet engine efficient is to
stretch it along the entire length of the vehicle. In a hypersonic ramjet aircraft, the underside of the forward body is a ramp that initially compresses the air before it enters the inlet ducts, and the curved
underside of the afterbody guides the expansion of the exhaust gas.

IT'S A LIFTING BODY

The compressed air underneath the body serves a second purpose: It holds
the airplane up. At Mach 6, conventional wings would be superfluous
appendages creating horrendous drag. Accordingly, the tips of Aurora's
delta planform are mainly there to provide stability and control. The
basic problem with ramjets is that they don't work at all unless the
aircraft is moving quite fast, and they are not very efficient at speeds
less than Mach 2.5. Therefore, Aurora needs some other systems to reach
this speed. There are two clues to the way Aurora's designers solved the low-speed propulsion problem. The team for the X-30/National Aerospace
Plane (NASP), though tight-lipped about the "accelerator" portion of the
NASP engine design, has indicated that it functions as a ducted rocket in
parts of its operating cycle. The seconds clue is that Aurora has been associated with two unusual noises: very-low-frequency pulsing sounds and
an extremely loud roar on takeoff.


SUPER COLD FUEL

Even though Aurora is 80 to 90 feet long, which is about 20 feet shorter
than the SR-71, it could weigh more - as much as 170.000 pounds when fully loaded. A clear two-thirds of its total mass would be fuel. Choosing the
right fuel was crucial to Aurora's design. Because various sections of the craft will reach cruising-speed temperatures ranging from 1.000 fahrenheit
to more than 1.400 fahrenheit, its fuel must both provide energy for the engines and extract destructive heat from the airplane's structures. This
is done on the SR-71, but at hypersonic speeds even an exotic kerosene,
such as the special high-flashpoint JP-7 fuel used by the Blackbird,
cannot absorb enough heat. The solution for Aurora is a cryogenic fuel - a cold liquefied gas.

The best candidates identified so far are methane and hydrogen. Liquid
hydrogen provides more than twice as much energy and absorbs six times more heat per pound than any other fuel. The snag is its low density, which
means bigger fuel tanks, a large airframe, and more drag. While liquid hydrogen is the fuel of choice for a space launch vehicle that accelerates quickly out of the atmosphere, studies have shown that liquid methane is
better for an aircraft cruising at Mach 5 to Mach 7. Methane (natural gas)
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 - inflight refueling has been
studied and poses no problem. Aurora can fly at subsonic speeds because its entire body, which has a great deal of area, is a lifting surface. Also,
its sharply swept leading edge - like the Concorde's wing - generates a powerful vortex at nose-high flight angles, which clings to the leading
edge and boosts the body's lift. Unencumbered by aerodynamic freeloaders
such as a conventional fuselage, Aurora's shape is structurally efficient.
It packs a lot of fuel and useful equipment into a relativelu small volume that saves weight and minimizes friction drag.

The spy plane's airframe may incorporate some stealth technology, but it
hardly needs it. Hypersonic aircraft are actually much harder to shoot
down than a ballistic missile, Although a hypersonic plane isn't very maneuverable in the traditional sense, its velocity is such that, within
tens of seconds, even a gentle turn puts it miles away from a SAM's
projected interception point. So why bother with stealth?

- * -

''Having refueled a second time from a tanker over the North Sea after
its Mideast photo session, the black plane heads east at high altitude
across the Atlantic Ocean, North America, and beyond the California
coast. Decelerating and descending above the Pacific Ocean, the craft
drags a sonic boom over the water behind it. As it turns back towards
its Nevada base, part of the inevitable shock wave bends through the
upper atmosphere and rumbles across Southern California as Angelenos are
getting ready for work. "There goes another one," they say, wondering
wether it's a minor earthquake or "that plane we hear about." Time
elapsed from takeoff to landing: 6.5 hours. Distance traveled: 15,500
miles.''
- * -

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