So THAT’S what that damned thing was! BIG mo-fo; maybe a few hundred yards long. Unconscionable number of unlit (could’ve been black–it was night so color didn’t matter ) helicopters around it. (I counted nine from the sounds–mo-fo was big enough you could hear individual escorts.) And I’ll assume the feeling of an upward pull was because I was woken from a sound slumber when the power went out and the tornado sirens started going off. I’ll even assume that the power going out was because the local transformer was in lousy shape and liked to do that. AND I’ll assume the tornado sirens going off in four towns in sequence as it passed over them was a coincidence (the newspaper said authorities couldn’t explain it).
But what the hell was it doing over west-suburban Chicago?
The idea behind some of these programs is to be able to rapidly strike at targets anywhere in the world within a very short time, using aircraft based in the US. Currently we can strike pretty much anywhere from the continental US (with B-52’s or B-2’s), but it takes time. We can also strike quickly with forces based around the globe, sometimes at the cost of having to deal with/prop up unsavory regimes. (Of course any such hypothetical vehicle might be a teeny bit more expensive than conventional equipment.) If you search for the DARPA FALCON program (Force Application and Launch from the CONintental US) there should be at least some teaser propoganda out there.
As you note, materials are the key. (At least the key to figuring out what the next set of problems are, gosh darned false summits). It only becomes really freaking hard once you start getting much past Mach 5 or so.
As CynicalGabe pointed out, missles make that impossible now.
It still holds sustained altitude, sustained speed, and closed course speed records for manned air breathing aircraft. At the time it was introduced it was capable of entering and exiting Soviet airspace without getting shot down. That’s quite an accomplishment.
But Russian technology has certainly caught up to it. The current horizontal altititude record is 85,135 ft (SR-71) but the absolute altitude record is held by a Mig 25 at 123,524 ft. It wouldn’t take much to shoot one down today.
There was a time when radar wasn’t exact enough to direct an intercept fighter. After the US was caught using U2’s, England ran bomber sorties into the Soviet Union to map out routes. The Soviet Union could not could not direct a fighter close enough to them to shoot them down. They were instructed to ram them if visual aquisition was attained.
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I would imagine the ceiling of both aircraft is still secret.
No not really. Talk to an SR71 pilot and you’ll understand that they fly at the very edge of the plane’s capability. If I remember correctly it took less than 1/2 deg of trim to cause a lot of problems.
The Mig 25 record was set with an airplane that had larger engines installed. It was a ballistic record (the altitude was the result of thrust) and not a sustained altitude record (which the Mig couldn’t touch).
I’ve read seismologists have been claiming that somebody has been flying a hypersonic aircraft over the Great Basin deserts for years. I don’t know if this in any way corroborates the “Aurora” stories, but the seismographic data isn’t the product of crackpots, at any rate. I think I’ve read elsewhere of rumors of traingular hypersonic drones being developed by the AF, which wouldn’t surprise me. The future of fighter tech is unmanned aircraft, which lack some of the limitations imposed by keeping a pilot protected and conscious during high-altitude FTS flight, and high-g-force maneuvers, among other things. As soon as the avionics technology is up to the challenge, the next fighter jocks will never leave the base. Why not small hypersonic concepts? It’s a far cry from the lunatic-fringe speculation about anti-gravity propulsion and somesuch.
Again, the Pentagon has stated that the next generation of Air Force craft will be ‘edge of space’ types. We’ve seen theoretical designs for skip-bombers since, well, the 40s. It’s probably a good thing, it’s the only way we’ll get reliable shuttlecraft, anyhow, thank you NASA.
An abstract apparently referencing the suspicious seismic data I spoke of.
Also, it’s actually hard to search the web on the subject without bringing up gazillions of links to UFO fruitbats. Wading through the mess, I have gleaned that “Aurora” is supposed to be a spy plane, replacing the SR-71. Who knows? Unfortunately, you can’t take denials from the USAF seriously (e.g., the Stealth Fighter), nor can you take the ravings of the Area 51 crackpots seriously either. Beyond that, you’ve got some suspicious vibrations, and sightings of black triangles going like hell. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if “Aurora” is real. Nor would it surprise me if it’s a big joke.
Hmm. Found a link that lets you download a pdf of the paper I referenced. I’m no seismologist, so I can’t really comment on its quality one way or another, except to say it’s published in a peer-reviewed journal. Here’s a relevent exerpt:
So much for the “seismic evidence” I heard about and, quite mistakenly, took to have some validity. I’m a little ashamed of myself now for having lent the original accounts that I read (I think in Popular Mechanics, or some such mag) any credence.
Considering that government budgets run 4,000-5,000 pages, it’s not really that far-fetched to think you could hide funding if you really wanted to try. I’m not saying I think there are lots of “black ops” on the books, but it’s certainly possible.
Being a senator doesn’t give you automatic security clearance and even then “need to know” procedures would limit access. If there were a dedicated committee that looked into the matter they could probably find out, but they’d need the interest and the time to penetrate the bureaucracy. Frankly, it’s probably not that high a priority for most of them.
Secrecy on special projects is probably preserved mostly because nobody really cares all that much except the people involved in the project and enthusiasts who want to find out about something like that.
Without actually identifying the “source offshore.” I’m not saying they’re aircraft-produced, but it sounds like the original source of the sound was far away from California, but still a mystery.
) helicopters around it. (I counted nine from the sounds–mo-fo was big enough you could hear individual escorts.) And I’ll assume the feeling of an upward pull was because I was woken from a sound slumber when the power went out and the tornado sirens started going off. I’ll even assume that the power going out was because the local transformer was in lousy shape and liked to do that. AND I’ll assume the tornado sirens going off in four towns in sequence as it passed over them was a coincidence (the newspaper said authorities couldn’t explain it).
If you are close enough to ram them, you can shoot them.