I remember reading an article in the 1990’s published in Popular Mechanics and also in Janes Defense weekly about this project. However, I haven’t seen much in the last several years. Was this shown to be unlikely? One would think that this technology like the Stealth would have been “rolled out” for the public to see by now.
cryptography!
All that is really known about “Aurora” is that it’s a classified project whose name accidentally appeared on a non-classified budget document. Anything about the project, including the fact that it’s even a plane, is pure speculation. There were a lot of folks who were disappointed in the retirement of the SR-71, if for no other reason than they thought it was a wicked cool plane. Aurora happened to become public knowledge shortly after the retirement of the SR-71, so these folks naturally latched onto it as fullfilling their dreams of an SR-71 replacement. If there is a replacement for the SR-71, the government isn’t talking about it. The government also is keeping rather quiet about what Aurora is. No news obviously isn’t any fun to talk about, so all you get in the magazines and on the internet is interesting speculation. Just keep in mind that there aren’t any facts around to back any of it up.
There’s no schedule for when classified projects get de-classified. The stealth became de-classified because it cost a lot to keep the planes totally secret, and also because a lot of folks were taking blurry pictures of the things and publishing them in magazines, so they probably thought there wasn’t much of a point to keeping it totally secret at that point. It could be a long time before we ever know what Aurora is.
The Aurora Project (as you know it) is no more.
There were two aircraft and they were both lost (not at the same time) in the 1990s.
Cite?
Actually, Executive Order 12958, section 3.4, privides for automatic declassification of documents after 25 years. There can be exemptions, but they have to be proven to be still highly sensitive.