Last year, a new book on Area 51 by Peter Merlin, titled
Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51, was published by Schiffer Publishing:
A highly detailed look into the Groom Lake test site known as Area 51, from the early years (circa 1955 to 1969) through to present day Area 51, a top-secret military installation hidden in the desert northwest of Las Vegas, has been shrouded in mystery since 1955. Now, aerospace historian...
schifferbooks.com
This book retells the early history of Area 51 and the story of testing of the well-known U-2, Archangel-12 (A-12), D-21, F-117, Tacit Blue, Have Blue, and Bird of Prey at Area 51 and the nearby Tonopah Test Range, but it is also the first book to include comprehensive sections about the history of development and testing of the Aquiline reconnaissance UAV as well as Senior Prom and TSSAM stealthy cruise missiles near Area 51, the latter which is discussed in detail in the chapter "Unusual Flying Objects". The chapter titled "Unusual Flying Objects" also gives in-depth accounts of the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned stealthy tactical reconnaissance flying wing, the experimental Lockheed Martin P-175 Polecat and "X-44" Manta flying wings (the latter not to be confused with the Lockheed Martin X-44 Multi-Axis No-Tail Aircraft project), and the still-secret Northrop Grumman unmanned stealthy strategic reconnaissance flying wing informally dubbed "RQ-180", but also the canceled CIA/NRO-funded Quartz program to develop a stealthy HALE reconnaissance unmanned flying wing to replace the U-2 and SR-71.
When I first became aware of the book
Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 when it was on pre-order, I wanted to see if it touched upon rumors about a hypersonic spyplane (with which the 1985 Pentagon budget line item codename Aurora was associated in several publications) and a two-stage-to-orbit system being tested at Area 51, especially when bearing in mind the fact that the supposed "Blackstar/Brilliant Buzzard" TSTO system never existed, and that several aviation experts, like the late Curtis Peebles, doubted that the aircraft seen over the North Sea by Chris Gibson in August 1989 could have been of a classified hypersonic spyplane. Merlin confirmed to me that the "Blackstar/Brilliant Buzzard" rumors are not in this book because of a lack of evidence, and that the North Sea sighting had nothing to do with Area 51. Ben Rich mentioned in a 1994 memoir about his time as head of the Lockheed Skunk Works from 1975-1990 that Pentagon official Colonel Adelbert W. “Buz” Carpenter told him that the 1985 Pentagon budget document line item Aurora had nothing to do with hypersonic aircraft and instead was related to the B-2 program, and
Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 briefly discusses the codename Aurora by mentioning a clip from a 2020 episode of the documentary series
Black Files Declassified titled
"American UFOs", whereby “Buz” Carpenter verbally reiterated what he told Ben Rich regarding Aurora, saying: “AURORA looked like a reconnaissance program but, in fact, [represented] a lot of production money that was to be used for the B-2.” While the requested funding for the line item Aurora did not appear in the final version of the Pentagon budget for FY 1986 and FY 1987, the fact that Aurora was the codename for requested funds for B-2 program support/logistics, namely testing and production infrastructure not only confirms that was there no operational hypersonic spyplane but also vindicated
initial speculation in the press that the line item Aurora might have been the B-2.
