TECHNOIR (15 page)

            The X-37 was born from a unique, stand-alone secretive Air Force program. A program that has many descendants; actually a long-line of classified aircraft designed and built with the military in mind. The X-37’s heritage – as its name shows – comes from the “X” series of planes. And pinpointing how many planes are in the X-series is a challenge many investigative tech-journalists and scientists have been trying to figure out since the beginning of the Cold Water.

            One X-series brother of the X-37 is the
X-43
. Just 12-feet long, the X-43 is a scramjet or Supersonic Combustion Ramjet; its engine is designed  to take oxygen from the atmosphere instead of from a huge and cumbersome liquid oxygen tank on board, like all rockets must do. In November of 2004, the X-43 broke the world record for a jet-powered aircraft by reaching Mach 9.6, or about 7,000 mph. NASA says the scramjet makes the “craft become smaller, lighter and faster and researchers predict scramjet speeds could reach 15 times the speed of sound. An 18-hour trip to Tokyo from New York City becomes a 2-hour flight.” The scramjet may also someday put satellites in orbit and don’t forget the military application: scramjets also might be able to deliver cruise missiles at record speed.

            One of the X-37’s most classified descendant’s was the spy-plane the Aurora, which unlike the X-37, is manned. Whether the program has been terminated, or now under a new name, is unknown because the Air Force refuses to talk about it. But conspiracy theorists believe the “black aircraft” – researched under the Pentagon’s black or secret budget – has secretly been streaking through the skies since the 1970s. The Pentagon let it slip the classified Aurora existed when in 1985 the name “Aurora” appeared, accidentally, below a budget request for the SR-71 Blackbird and the U2. These manned super spy jets could fly from Los Angeles to Washington in just over an hour, at an altitude of 85,000 feet or 16 miles up. Because of the speed, these plane’s outer surfaces could reach 900-degrees Fahrenheit. Another factor requiring the pilots to wear astronaut suits pumped with pure oxygen.

            The 1985 budget request for the Aurora, the apparent heir to the
SR-71
and the
U2
, stated it was an “air-breathing” plane, meaning it has inlets that take in air so it mixes with fuel. Billions have been spent on the Aurora, claim experts, an aircraft that theorists stress must be hypersonic (fly between Mach 5 to Mach 20) due to all the secrecy. More exact speculation says the Aurora’s speed could be one-mile per second, or just over Mach 5 (3,600 mph roughly). Giving an armed Aurora the ability to reach a target potentially within minutes. Theorists say the prime contractor must be Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works (now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company), one of the US military’s most secretive civilian-run research efforts.

            As for Aurora witnesses, they are few and far between. In 1989, while working out on the North Sea, engineer Chris Gibson said he saw a strange triangular-shaped craft accompanied by a pair of F-111 bombers. Indeed, the Aurora has been glimpsed several times over the North Pole. Satellite imagery has also captured a single, high-altitude contrail stretching from Area 51 to deep into the Atlantic. And the Aurora has most likely been mistaken for extraterrestrial craft – when ripping through the atmosphere at Mach 5, it causes the plane's edges to glow red considering they’re 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To handle the heat, the plane’s outer surface is believed to be titanium.

            Perhaps the
most recent sighting
can be viewed on YouTube. Skeptics claim the Aurora is shaped like an isosceles triangle. The YouTube video is actually a set of stills depicting a large black craft shaped like an arrowhead with fins sprouting from the corners of its wings. The pictures were taken in August of 2008 near Area 51. The photographer, who wished to remain anonymous because he was clandestinely out of sight in restricted land controlled by the US military, said the plane – a literal phantom aircraft – made no sound.

            Closely related to the Aurora is
the FALCON program,
or the Falcon Application and Launch from Continental United States. Katz-Hyman said the Air Force and DARPA are desperate to build a space place that will simply take-off from a runway and enter space, which would make it a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. This is the FALCON’s ultimate objective – and thus is probably the main candidate to become the US military’s future space bomber. The Air Force and DARPA say the FALCON is a hypersonic cruise vehicle that will reach over Mach 12 speed, enter space with a 12,000 pound payload, be able to bomb any target within 90 minutes, and then re-enter the atmosphere and go home. Katz-Hyman said the FALCON annual unclassified budget is around $100 million.

            The FALCON program, so far, has given birth to the CAV, or
Common Aero Vehicle
, an unmanned, unpowered (flap controlled), and unremarkable capsule-looking “hypersonic glide vehicle.” A cone-shaped craft, the
CAV (X-41)
can carry 1,000 pounds of munitions. Such a payload might include cruise missiles or the odd looking Small Diameter Bombs. And what the US military calls “hypersonic deep earth penetrators” to take out Al Qaeda troops hiding in caves. These are just like the non-explosive “Rods from Gods” that have been proposed for Battlesats (see chapter 3). The Air Force also wants the CAV to carry drones, so it can drop them into the atmosphere and insert right over the target. The CAV might also release killer satellites while in orbit and turn them on enemy satellites.

            But the Falcon Project and the CAV has competition. Katz-Hyman said US Strategic Command is trying to see whether a Trident submarine loaded with a re-engineered ICBM with a conventional warhead could deliver a Rapid Global Strike without igniting a nuclear exchange. But radar systems cannot distinguish a Trident launch and whether its ICBM is tipped with a nuclear payload. Thus using the Trident could set off the extinction of the human race. If US Strategic Command can convince Congress they can do the mission much cheaper and more effective, MSP funding could be significantly slashed, said Katz-Hyman.

            “While FALCON and CAV could be revolutionary in how the US projects force, research and development is currently moving at a slow pace and Congress has put key restrictions on it when it comes to using CAV as a weapon. The space plane will either be revolutionary or a big waste of money,” said Katz- Hyman. “In the meantime R & D is currently moving at a slow pace.”

            What’s more, in 2005, Congress, as budget stipulation, forced the Air Force and DARPA to “exclude” all weaponization activities from CAV related research.

TECHNOIR IMAGES

This now-famous drawing of the Arizona V first appeared in
USA Today
. The V would literally become a life-changing event for many witnesses.

Strange lights over Lake Erie is a mystery locals have been talking about for centuries. But are recent sightings UFOs or a hoax? Skeptics say these lights seen here near Cleveland are actually incoming planes, in succession, preparing to land at a nearby airport.

The USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser based at Pearl Harbor, is quite possibly the first space battleship ever. That's because it's equipped with the Aegis missile system, which can take out targets in space, as it did in 2008, when it shot down a malfunctioning satellite.

The Starfire Optical Range at Kirtland Air Force Base has lasers that can "paint" satellites. Will these same lasers someday be boosted to a weapons-grade level so to shoot satellites down?

The "Kill Vehicle" for the US military's THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), a mobile unit under the US Missile Defense Agency that can take out targets in space. The Kill Vehicle is roughly 6 meters long contains no explosives, and destroys simply with kinetic energy. Thus it is a huge spike that can travel at 15,000 miles-per-hour.