Aurora (aircraft)

"SR 91" redirects here. For other uses, see SR 91 (disambiguation). For the Canadian maritime patrol aircraft, see Lockheed CP-140 Aurora.

An artist's conception of the Aurora aircraft (Janes conception, appearing in Advanced Tactical Fighters)

Aurora is a rumored mid-1980s American reconnaissance aircraft. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth.[1][2]

The U.S. government has consistently denied such an aircraft was ever built. Aviation and space reference site Aerospaceweb.org concluded, "The evidence supporting the Aurora is circumstantial or pure conjecture, there is little reason to contradict the government's position."[1]

Former Skunk Works director Ben Rich confirmed that "Aurora" was simply a myth in Skunk Works (1994), a book detailing his days as the director. Rich wrote that a colonel working in the Pentagon arbitrarily assigned the name "Aurora" to the funding for the B-2 bomber design competition and somehow the name was leaked to the media.[3]

In 2006, veteran black project watcher and aviation writer Bill Sweetman said, "Does Aurora exist? Years of pursuit have led me to believe that, yes, Aurora is most likely in active development, spurred on by recent advances that have allowed technology to catch up with the ambition that launched the program a generation ago."[4]

  1. ^ a b "Aurora, Strategic Reconnaissance." Archived 7 July 2009 at the Portuguese Web Archive AerospaceWeb.org. Retrieved: 17 October 2010.
  2. ^ "Aurora Myth." Aerospace Daily, 9 October 1990, p. 34.
  3. ^ "Skunk Works" p. 309 Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos, 1994
  4. ^ Sweetman, Bill. "Secret Warplanes of Area 51." Archived 6 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine Popular Science, 4 June 2006. Retrieved: 1 October 2006.