2020-09-20 at 8:32 AM UTC
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has secretly designed, built and flown at least one prototype of its enigmatic next-generation fighter jet, the service’s top acquisition official confirmed to Defense News on Sept. 14.
The development is certain to shock the defense community, which last saw the first flight of an experimental fighter during the battle for the Joint Strike Fighter contract 20 years ago. With the Air Force’s future fighter program still in its infancy, the rollout and successful first flight of a demonstrator was not expected for years.
“We’ve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it,” Will Roper told Defense News in an exclusive interview ahead of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before.”
Almost every detail about the aircraft itself will remain a mystery due to the classification of the Next Generation Air Dominance program, the Air Force’s effort for fielding a family of connected air warfare systems that could include fighters, drones and other networked platforms in space or the cyber realm.
https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-air-force-has-built-and-flown-a-mysterious-full-scale-prototype-of-its-future-fighter-jet/Aurora was notable as it was/is scramjet powered, which was an entirely new type of engine, which could provide power at hypersonic speeds using a class of air flows discovered in the 80s, and which led to a unique contrail. The air intakes in the concept art above (which is from 2018) look just like the air intakes in the aurora.
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this
post didn't die in a fire!
2020-09-20 at 9:12 PM UTC
Nil
African Astronaut
[the overexcited four-footed chanar]
Ya but the aurora wasn't alleged to be a fighter I thought it was the successor to the sr-71, not exactly a fighter.
I wonder if drones will work out against peers, they're vulnerable to novel strategies like being hijacked.
Bleh misread the op.
2020-09-21 at 1:21 PM UTC
All I know is it will hit you before you hear it.
Which means you'll never hear it.
also they want to use pilotless fighters in the near future. just ground base go anywhere. not a drone so much but an actual hyperspeed pilotless jet which I guess is classified as a drone. but bigger. an probably extra room for more STUFF to be loaded on it.
2020-09-23 at 11:10 PM UTC
Is the Aurora slated to come after the current generation of state-of-the-art stealth fighters armed with directed mind control energy weapons on full fire against "dissident" (read: free-thinking) citizens of the United States at all times?
2020-09-23 at 11:39 PM UTC
aldra
JIDF Controlled Opposition
They designed and built it in-house? I didn't know they still had the capability to do so without relying on private contractors
