super secret aircraft

Why did the U.S government show the general public the stealth fighters and bombers currently in service?
They must already have its successor.
I mean the Blackbird was kept secret for years before they unveiled it.

Originally posted by Alien DNA
Why did the U.S government show the general public the stealth fighters and bombers currently in service?
They must already have its successor.
I mean the Blackbird was kept secret for years before they unveiled it.

Must? Is there not the possibilty that they do not?

Maybe, but why show the "stealth" aircraft to the media if thats what they are meant to be?

I suggest you check out the history of these things, but it can easily be summarised in one word: politics.

Originally posted by Alien DNA
Why did the U.S government show the general public the stealth fighters and bombers currently in service?
They must already have its successor.
I mean the Blackbird was kept secret for years before they unveiled it.

To let potential enemies know what we have.

Actually a Democratic Senator from California went around telling everybody that the Air Force was flying a Mach 3 aircraft at Edwards AFB. And I think he might have also showed some sketches of it. All of this while the Blackbird was still a classified program.

In the era of Blackbird America was in a cold war with USSR. Today that motivation does not exist in the same way.

I think the current stealth aircraft are just a distraction, it lets the enemy know we have stealth technology and gives them something to study and photograph while in the meantime they already have something else.
Its like when they released the Xbox they were already developing Xbox 360.

Its possible, however, Politics are a huge part of it.

Carter released information on the F-117 in an effort to stem claims from Reagan that he was soft on defence (The more I study things, Carter actually initiated many of the programs that Reagan was given credit for)

Also, the USAF wants to be better able to integrate the aircraft into its regular force and train with other units to increase its effectivness. That can really only be done by training both in day and nightime scenarios.

The cost of keeping the program Black is expensive in both money and the toll it takes on the highly trained pilots and ground crew. Several of the early losses of the F-117 were attributed to this type of fatique

yeah the cold war is over but stealth is still very much needed to "spy" on other nations such as China, North korea and Iran.

Its starting to become depressing this belief that things akin to the star ship enterprise and a X-wing (or TIE fighter) are hiding out in the nevada desert or somewhere.


Whats next? The death star?


Times have changed since the cold war and military budgets no longer allow for the extravagance of super secret projects.

There are almost certainly secret projects out there: Bird Of Prey was secret for several years etc -and if you look at UCAV artwork of that period you can see Bird Of Prey reference -but that then became public -no secret birds with the J-UCAS program.

BUT, these secret projects are unlikely to be anything like the same scale as the SR-71 or B2 etc. The Aurora myth is already old - hardly a worthwhile secret. (IMO).

Alien DNA, think about this one, the SR-71 Blackbird first flew in 1964, it was then mentioned in the YF-12 entry of the 1965 Observer's book of Aircraft and got its own entry in the following years edition. This is hardly 'keeping it secret for years' as this entry came with a photograph, three view drawing and 'estimated' data that is almost identical to what is known now, forty years later.

The idea that it was kept secret for ages is only true as far as the A-11/A-12 development aircraft are concerned, and then it was for only four years. As soo nas the type acquired an operational function with the Air Force it was publicised.

By contrast ' Aurora' was reported in 1980, yet here we are 26 years down the line and there is not the slightest sniff of anything concrete, or should that be metal

Aurora is a wonderful idea but it is becoming more and more of a stretch to believe in it as time goes by. Look at the accident rate of military aircraft, surely something would have shown up somewhere in 26 years of operations? Someone would have got a picture of is somehow, you can't fly around the globe for 26 years without leaving a trace.



[edit on 31-1-2006 by waynos]

Waynos you can keep a secret that long. Take for example Deep Throat, nobody knew it was the third man from the FBI until he came out. If he wanted nobody would have known...

Do we know who killed JFK for sure? No we don't

So if they somehow killed the President of the United States they sure can keep a plane secret. As to why, maybe the project hit a jackpot, something that is so way ahead of everybody else that after all this time it still is ultra cutting edge. So the cold war is over, precisely you don't have to show your teeth to the enemy... you can keep them to yourself. Besides showing will start an arms race to defend against it. Russia+China could put billions into developing something to counter that. So why risk that. As long as it stays a rumour, they wont put too much attention on it so when you use nobody will expect it.

[edit on 31-1-2006 by carcharodon]

an individual spy is a very different thing from a fleet of hypersonic planes.

Do we know who killed Kennedy? Yes, we do. I have seen the 'magic bullet' 'grassy knoll' etc etc throries comprehensively shattered into a million pieces, but thats for another board.

maybe the project hit a jackpot, something that is so way ahead of everybody else that after all this time it still is ultra cutting edge. So the cold war is over, precisely you don't have to show your teeth to the enemy... you can keep them to yourself. Besides showing will start an arms race to defend against it. Russia+China could put billions into developing something to counter that. So why risk that. As long as it stays a rumour, they wont put too much attention on it so when you use nobody will expect it.

None of which shows the Aurora to be real, its all just fantasy theory that is dreamed up by everyone who WANTS Aurora to be real, it certainly isn't any kind of proof.

Originally posted by carcharodon
....they sure can keep a plane secret. As to why, maybe the project hit a jackpot, something that is so way ahead of everybody else that after all this time it still is ultra cutting edge. So the cold war is over, precisely you don't have to show your teeth to the enemy... you can keep them to yourself. Besides showing will start an arms race to defend against it. Russia+China could put billions into developing something to counter that. So why risk that. As long as it stays a rumour, they wont put too much attention on it so when you use nobody will expect it.

[edit on 31-1-2006 by carcharodon]

Something soooo cutting edge that it HASN'T been incorporated into the hugely expensive F-22, J-UCAS etc etc programs. If the USAF really had Aurora, why are they fussing over arming Predators and buying Global Hawk etc?

This is something else that screams out to me. If US military tech is so capable that they had something in 1980 that is still worth keeping absolutely secret why have they spent so long, and so much money, develooping the F-22 for the last 15 plus years? Not to mention the F-35, UCAV's etc etc.

Accepting the need for diverse types then even so, if Aurora was real and sooo advanced, then building these should have been a doddle shouldn't it?

Oh, thats right, its all a diversion

I am convinced that traffic wardens are in on the conspiracy too. They have that knowing look about them.


And all those thousands of aeroengineers who built Aurora where hypnotised into believeing they'd made a giant washing machine. The guys who designed it merely forget to include it in their resume now that they've long since retired.

Before we left Pease AFB in 1983, 80 people left there to work on the "Night A-7 Upgrade". They were going to Tonopah for the F-117. The reason the Nighthawk was released was as FredT stated, they had to do daytime training, and integrate them with other units as they perfected its mission.

I'm sure it was something similar with the B-2.

Theres always something else on the drawing boards in every country. They all have their own secret projects. No surprise there is it really. Especially in the US, there is always some guys at Lockheed, McDonnel-Douglas, or some think tank that works for the military bringing in new concepts and ideas. Because if youre not working hard every day to stay ahead, theres someone working harder to catch up.

Absolutely, I completely agree. But people aren't saying the Aurora is on the drawing board, it has supposedly been around for 26 years.

My own personal theory is that the early reports of the Aurora were not far wide of the mark , in that America wanted a mach5+ replacement for the Blackbird, and that this may have had some sort of direct or indirect link with the NASP et al. However, my theory goes, this Aurora never actually flew because the science was just not there yet and the expensae of making it a reality was beyond even the USA, at the time, but the passing of years allows technology to mature and advance further, while the US probably never lost its desire to operate a mach 5 + type craft and that the new X-51 is the latest incarnation of a long road of development that stretches all the way to those early proposals, and that the rumours of Aurora that have abounded ever since are mainly fuelled by people who cannot accept that America might have failed to produce the aircraft successfully back in the '80's.

But like I said, that is just a theory and is worth no more in the grand scheme of things than any other theory.