Aurora ( aircraft ) Aurora was 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 . 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 . " Others come to different conclusions . 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 . " Background . The Aurora legend started in March 1990 , when " Aviation Week & Space Technology " magazine broke the news that the term " Aurora " had been inadvertently included in the 1985 U . S . budget , as an allocation of $ 455 million for " black aircraft production " in FY 1987 . According to " Aviation Week " , " Project Aurora " referred to a group of exotic aircraft , and not to one particular airframe . Funding of the project allegedly reached $ 2 . 3 billion in fiscal 1987 , according to a 1986 procurement document obtained by " Aviation Week " . In the 1994 book " Skunk Works " , Ben Rich , the former head of Lockheed ' s Skunk Works division , wrote that the Aurora was the budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly - off that resulted in the B - 2 Spirit . Evidence . By the late 1980s , many aerospace industry observers believed that the U . S . had the technological capability to build a Mach - 5 replacement for the aging Lockheed SR - 71 Blackbird . Detailed examinations of the U . S . defense budget claimed to have found money missing or channeled into black project s . By the mid - 1990s , reports surfaced of sightings of unidentified aircraft flying over California and the United Kingdom involving odd - shaped contrails , sonic booms and related phenomena that suggested the US had developed such an aircraft . Nothing ever linked any of these observations to any program or aircraft type , but the name Aurora was often tagged on these as a way of explaining the observations . British sighting claims . In late August 1989 , while working as an engineer on the jack - up barge " GSF Galveston Key " in the North Sea , Chris Gibson and another witness saw an unfamiliar isosceles triangle - shaped delta aircraft , apparently refueling from a Boeing KC - 135 Stratotanker and accompanied by a pair of F - 111 fighter - bombers . Gibson and his friend watched the aircraft for several minutes , until they went out of sight . He subsequently drew a sketch of the formation . Gibson , who had been in the Royal Observer Corps ' trophy - winning international aircraft recognition team since 1980 , was unable to identify the aircraft . He dismissed suggestions that the aircraft was an F - 117 , Mirage IV or fully swept wing F - 111 . When the sighting was made public in 1992 , the British Defence Secretary Tom King was told , " There is no knowledge in the MoD of a ' black ' programme of this nature , although it would not surprise the relevant desk officers in the Air Staff and Defence Intelligence Staff if it did exist . " A crash at RAF Boscombe Down on 26 September 1994 appeared closely linked to " black " missions , according to a report in " AirForces Monthly " . Further investigation was hampered by aircraft from the USAF flooding into the base . The crash site was protected from view by firetrucks and tarpaulins and the base was closed to all flights soon after . American sighting claims . A series of unusual sonic boom s was detected in Southern California , beginning in mid - to late - 1991 and recorded by U . S . Geological Survey sensor s across Southern California used to pinpoint earthquake epicenters . The sonic booms were characteristic of a smaller vehicle rather than the 37 - meter long Space Shuttle orbiter . Furthermore , neither the Shuttle nor NASA ' s single SR - 71B was operating on the days the booms had been registered . In the article , " " In Plane Sight ? " " which appeared in the " Washington City Paper " on 3 July 1992 ( pp . 12 – 13 ) , one of the seismologists , Jim Mori , noted : " We can ' t tell anything about the vehicle . They seem stronger than other sonic booms that we record once in a while . They ' ve all come on Thursday mornings about the same time , between 4 and 7 . " Former NASA sonic boom expert Dom Maglieri studied the 15 - year old sonic boom data from the California Institute of Technology and has deemed that the data showed " something at 90 , 000 ft ( c . 27 . 4 km ) , Mach 4 to Mach 5 . 2 " . He also said the booms did not look like those from aircraft that had traveled through the atmosphere many miles away at LAX , rather , they appeared to be booms from a high - altitude aircraft directly above the ground moving at high speeds . The boom signatures of the two different aircraft patterns are wildly different . There was nothing particular to tie these events to any aircraft , but they served to grow the Aurora legend . On 23 March 1992 , near Amarillo , Texas , Steven Douglas photographed the " donuts on a rope " contrail and linked this sighting to distinctive sounds . He described the engine noise as : " strange , loud pulsating roar . . . unique . . . a deep pulsating rumble that vibrated the house and made the windows shake . . . similar to rocket engine noise , but deeper , with evenly timed pulses . " In addition to providing the first photographs of the distinctive contrail previously reported by many , the significance of this sighting was enhanced by Douglas ' reports of intercepts of radio transmissions : " Air - to - air communications . . . were between an AWACS aircraft with the call sign " Dragnet 51 " from Tinker AFB , Oklahoma , and two unknown aircraft using the call signs " Darkstar November " and " Darkstar Mike " . Messages consisted of phonetically transmitted alphanumerics . It is not known whether this radio traffic had any association with the " pulser " that had just flown over Amarillo . " ( " Darkstar " is also a call sign of AWACS aircraft from a different squadron at Tinker AFB ) A month later , radio enthusiasts in California monitoring Edwards AFB Radar ( callsign " Joshua Control " ) heard early morning radio transmissions between Joshua and a high flying aircraft using the callsign " Gaspipe " . " You ' re at 67 , 000 feet , 81 miles out " was heard , followed by " 70 miles out now , 36 , 000 ft , above glideslope . " As in the past , nothing linked these observations to any particular aircraft or program , but the attribution to the Aurora helped expand the legend . In February 1994 former resident of Rachel , Nevada , and Area 51 enthusiast , Chuck Clark claims to have filmed the Aurora taking off from the Groom Lake facility . In the David Darlington book " Area 51 : The Dreamland Chronicles " he says : I even saw the Aurora take off one night - or an aircraft that matched the Aurora ' s reputed configuration , a sharp delta with twin tails about a hundred and thirty feet long . It taxied out of a lighted hangar at two - thirty A . M . and used a lot of runway to take off . It had one red light on top , but the minute the wheels left the runway , the light went off and that was the last I saw of it . I didn ' t hear it because the wind was blowing from behind me toward the base . " I asked when this had taken place . " February 1994 . Obviously they didn ' t think anybody was out there . It was thirty below zero - probably ninety below with the wind chill factor . I had hiked into White Sides from a different , harder way than usual , and stayed there two or three days among the rocks , under a camouflage tarp with six layers of clothes on . I had an insulated face mask and two sleeping bags , so I didn ' t present a heat signature . I videotaped the aircraft through a telescope with a five - hundred - millimeter f4 lens coupled via a C - ring to a high - eight digital video camera with five hundred and twenty scan lines of resolution , which is better than TV . " The author then asked " Where ' s the tape ? " Locked away . That ' s a legitimate spyplane ; my purpose is not to give away legitimate national defense . When they get ready to unveil it , I ' ll probably release the tape . Additional claims . In the controversial claims of Bob Lazar , he states that during his employment at the mysterious S - 4 facility in Nevada , he briefly witnessed an Aurora flight while aboard a bus near Groom Lake . He claimed that there was a " tremendous roar " which sounded almost as if " the sky was tearing . " Although Lazar only saw the aircraft for a moment through the front of the bus , he described it as being " very large " and having " two huge , square exhausts with vanes in them . " Upon speaking with his supervisor , Lazar claims he was informed that the aircraft was indeed an " Aurora , " a " high altitude research plane . " He was also told that the aircraft was powered by " liquid methane . " By 1996 reports associated with the Aurora name dropped off in frequency , suggesting to people who believed that the aircraft existed that it had only ever been a prototype or that it had had a short service life . In 2006 , aviation writer Bill Sweetman put together 20 years of examining budget " holes " , unexplained sonic booms , along with the Gibson sighting and concluded : " This evidence helps establish the program ' s initial existence . My investigations continue to turn up evidence that suggests current activity . For example , having spent years sifting through military budgets , tracking untraceable dollars and code names , I learned how to sort out where money was going . This year , when I looked at the Air Force operations budget in detail , I found a $ 9 - billion black hole that seems a perfect fit for a project like Aurora . "