SECRET PLANE SAID TO FLY 5,280 MILES PER HOUR by Associated Press

LONDON - The U.S. Air Force is operating a new generation of
secret spy planes capable of reaching eight times the speed of
sound, Jane's Defense Weekly said Friday.
In a report, prepared for next week's issue, the military affairs
magazine said the triangular shaped planes have been in service
since 1989.
"We've been working on this report for aboutthree years," Jane's
editor, Paul Beaver, said in a telephone interview. "The evidence
has grown overwhelming - all we need now is a photograph to prove
that it exists."
Beaver quoted the report as saying that the $1 billion plane,
dubbed Aurora, could reach cruising speeds as great as Mach- 8 - or
5,280 mph and more than 2 1/2 times the official world record.
The defense establishment continues to deny the existence of
Aurora, be said.
There was no immediate comment from Pentagon officials in
Washington.
The Pentagon announced in 1990 that it was retiring its super-
sonic spy plane, the SR-7l Blackbird, and would rely for its future
high-altitude surveillance on orbiting satellites.
But Jane's technical editor, Bill Sweetman, who compiled the
article, reported that the so-called "hypersonic" Aurora operates
mainly at night and incorporates the latest radar-evading "stealth"
technology.
Sweetman, an expert in high-technology aircraft, maintained
the Pentagon story about satellite spying was a smokescreen.
Beaver said Sweetman reported extensively on the U.S. Air Force's
stealth fighter and bomber programs before they were made public
and has written a book on the development of stealth technology.
A Mach-8 plane would be able to reach any point on the globe
in less than three hours.
Such a plane, fueled by liquid methane, would be of potentially
greater use than high-resolution images from orbiting satellites
that can take 24 hours to arrive over the subject, the report said.
Beaver said Sweetman based his conclusions on pieced-together
data, including strange sounds reported above air bases in Nevada
and California, multibillion dollar spending on classified research
projects and the sighting over the North Sea of a wedge-shaped
aircraft under fighter-bomber escort.
Chris Hudson, 30, a trained aircraft observer, told Jane's that
while working as an oil-drilling engineer in the North Sea in 1989
he saw a bizarre wedge-shaped plane flying between two conventional
F-111 fighter-bombers and a Hercules tanker.
Sweetman believes this was the first sighting of Aurora.
Beaver said the sighting can be linked to mysterious sounds heard
by aerospace professionals near military airfields in California
and Nevada that are characterized as a "low-frequency, high-ampli-
tude pulsing."
Sweetman said in his article that he believes the U.S. aero-
space giant Lockheed, which produced the F-117 stealth fighter, is the most likely manufacturer of Aurora.
"Lockheed's financial figures have indicated a continuing, large
flow of income for 'classified' and 'special mission' aircraft," he
wrote.
The Lockheed Advanced Development Co. developed the previous
generations of U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Both designs
flew high-altitude spy missions undetected for years - in the U-2's
case until Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russia and
captured in 1960.
Though the report places Aurora's first flights in 1989, Beaver
said he considered it unlikely that the plane was used during the
Gulf War.
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