The wildest aircraft people THINK America operates in secret 

Go to ground.news/Sandboxx to stay fully informed on military developments around the world. Subscribe through my link right now for 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is what I use everyday.

The mere fact the F-117 flew combat missions for a decade before being photographed answers the question of are we operating advanced aircraft the public is not unaware of.

I lived in Ojai California, every time a space shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base it flew overhead and the house would shake from its double sonic booms. Then I started hearing double sonic booms when the shuttle wasn’t flying (early 90’s). Not too long after the double sonic booms there was an incident. Something crashed in the mountains above Ojai and the MILITARY closed all access to those mountains for about a week and a half. Something other than the shuttle was definitely flying in the early nineties.

The Stargate program alone must cost multiple billions of dollars a year!

I've spent most of my life believing in Aurora and now at 65, I'm too old to change my mind. I will continue to believe in Aurora because I want to! 😉

With the Black Budget, there is no doubt that top secret aircraft are being developed. Had read about 10 years back that the US Air Force has a strategy of staying about 20 years ahead of our adversaries. Also, no one mentions anything new with the Space Force.

OK. You asked for it. I'm a past Air Force Weather Tech, so I know my planes and meteorological phenomena. One late afternoon, while lying on a lounge chair in my back yard, I saw something streak down from high altitude right over me. This thing came down so fast it glowed cherry red on the edges. When it came down to what I estimate to be 10,000ft, it stopped! I could see the red glow disappear. This thing was cloaked! I knew there was something there but couldn't make out the shape. Then I saw three conical jets light up and push this thing forward, slowly. Once again, when the jets were turned of, this thing blended into the sky. This repeated four or five times until it was out of my view. At no time was it moving fast enough to be supported at elevation by wings or any aeronautical support. It just floated slowly. There you go.

A key part of what people label Aurora is a 'string of puffs' trail indicating some pulse engine.

I saw a Stealth Relay Aircraft -TR3A in 1985. Mather was closed for the weekend and as I locked up the squadron building, I heard a weird turbine sound, similar to a short intake NAVY jet. I watched it go around into the sunset and the shape was undeniable. It reminded me of the Air Force recruiting poster showing the rounded tips on the delta wing "USAF 2000" jet. Only later in AW&ST did I learn what I saw.

My dad flew was a flight engineer for C-141sout of the west coast for 20 years and he swears he saw Aurora flying over the pacific in the mid 90s. He says it tailed them for a few hours going to Japan. Dude doesn’t believe in anything supernatural or aliens or whatever but he was sure about seeing that

In 2016 personally witnessed an unknown/unidentified aircraft on multiple nights flying over an unpopulated area in the central U.S. The engines emitted a low, rumbling sound different from anything I’ve ever heard.

What we see now was being tested 25 years ago. So i can only imagine what we are testing now. Public is always 25 years behind

I grew up hearing about the Aurora so yeah that'll always be my favorite.

That rocket-assisted C-130 taking off in what looked like 11 feet was INSANE!!!

Wouldn't doubt it! From an interview with the president of Lockheed's Skunkworks division, he stated that the U.S. is so far ahead in aviation technology, it's if WWI was held today the U.S. would be bringing F-4 Phantoms to fight the great war, now take it for what it's worth, but being 50 years ahead of everyone else. Kind of makes it stupid to go toe to toe with that type of knowledge!!

The project that would become the SR 71 Blackbird was started in 1959, and wasn't announced until 1989. There were numerous UFO sightings in the 80s and 90s we now know we're the F117 or B2.

I'm so glad this topic isn't as taboo as it used to be. Of course there are things flying in the sky that we don't know about. Just about every time I sit out in an open field at night I see something odd. They usually fly too high to be planes but too fast to be satellites (if that makes any sense). Sometimes they make sharp turns or fly in formation. The trick is to focus your eyes on the dim stars and watch for movement.

I like that. Technological Cryptids. Rolls off the tongue nicely. And has presence in the real world. Keeping in mind what a helicopter is and how it works. It blows my mind that a stealth helicopter is even remotely possible. Yet we managed to pull one off ish. God bless America.

Tr3b has to be top of the list

I live west of Salem Oregon, and south of McMinnville... triangulate away. One clear, moonless night in 2006/08-ish our house started to rhythmically shake "thump-thump-thump" at a very low frequency around 6-16 Hz Hz (my best estimate). There was a bit of an acoustic overtone in that 16-20 Hz range, and virtually no higher-freq 'whoosh'. Inside, we only felt the 'whump', outside it was almost silent. I went outside and initially didn't see anything. Then I realized some stars almost directly overhead were winking out, while others were popping back into site. There was a black 'void' overhead that was moving south to north over our forested ridge 1-200 feet over the tall Doug Firs and was on a heading which would roughly take it back to Evergreen Heli- , ER, McMinnville. I'm a former technician/engineer (hwr/sw, in the 70s-mid-90's), I hold a DMD degree which includes a lot of head/neck anatomy/physiology knowledge and I went on to teach clinically for 3 years at the U (=verified nerd), and I'm a musician who worked for a year at Rodgers Pipe Organ Co (I know my way around very low frequency calculations for closed-system (pipe) and open-air audio wave generation and energy. And I really know my math around 9 Hz waveshapes as I worked for the first Co to get an AED thru FDA approval back in '82-84, and 9.5Hz is the fundamental electrical frequency associated with the downstroke (working contraction) a normal, healthy QRS waveform in the heart...which is right in the middle of the freq range I associate w/the sound I was hearing. AND, I also tangentially knew someone who worked at Evergreen. Months after my 'flying-black-hole' encounter, I bumped into them and kinda/sorta mentioned in passing** : - a rotating wing with sufficient leading-edge diffusion might eliminate rotor-hiss AND - a modified cross-sectional wing/blade shape might reduce the characteristic thump-thump attributable to the lift-effector as it passed a specific point. - but the transition from 'lift-to-no-lift' as the trailing edge moves past a specific point will cause a loss in the downward pressure - and while a rotor could be operating in a 6-12 Hz zone which should be inaudible to humans - the existence of a 6-12 Hz pressure wave impacting on a relatively airtight wooden structure will cause said structure to deform and shudder, creating sounds which are audible to any inhabitants within. They just shot me that 3 second look of : "STFU. I can't talk about this. But I REALLY want to talk about this" Nothing more was said... just silent laughter and smiles. Nerds be nerds. ** ok, I might not have used those exact words, but that was the gist of what I blurted out.

The aircraft that I think exists, but the USAF and USN don't want to publicly disclose, is a stealth refueler. So much of (potential) enemy defense plans against US air power are based around keeping American planes as far away from their territories as possible, either by threatening aircraft carriers or regional airbases. This requires the US to do a lot of refueling to get combat planes where they need to go, but these are vulnerable planes. There's also bound to be situations with special operations forces needing to infiltrate countries that we're not at war with directly but still want to keep us out. Operators can of course infiltrate by land or by water, but having the option of long ranged air deployment is faster, and made a lot easier by having refueling planes that don't show up on radar. After the Iran hostage crisis rescue plan went bad during that ill-fated ground refueling mission, I'm sure there was a lot of people wanting better options for covert ops beyond just having better trained helicopter pilots. Having just a small number of stealthy refueling planes would add an invaluable capability for all sorts of high risk missions in contested airspace, just like having a small number of stealthy helicopters would be. And we know the latter does exist.

How long was the SR-71 flying before the general public knew about it? The F-117 before it was used in Panama for it's first battle action, NOT desert Storm?

Keep China guessing....GOOD...thank Alex..👉🏻

"Tactical High Altitude Penetrator" lol "THAP" LMAO

I always thought I had seen an alien craft until I learned about the TR3B. I was so spooked I went and hid under the nearest large tree.

Imagine this: You're entering Disney World and you hear Alex greeting you with "I'm Mickey Mouse and THIS is Disney World" in the same voice he uses to start his videos. I think it'd be a FANTASTIC draw. 🤣

tic tac drones are intriguing as the validity and quality of the personal who has seen them are most trusted.

Keep it up Alex, you cover it all. Without your investigative efforts we would still be in the dark. I am an ex-Huey pilot and particularily enjoy the rotary wing stories.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, damn, I love this channel! It is a little like xmas morning every time I see a new video drop lol

I have seen TR3B type of vehicle in 1998 fly over Hawaii at night no sound from engines but you could see the distinct triangle shape even at night

My great uncle worked for Lockheed at Area 51, he worked on the development of the F-117. Back in the 90s early 2000s he told me he was working on the aroura project, he told me it was flying and what to the contrails looked like since the were so unique. He didn't disclose any other details. All I knew other than what he told me was that he worked for Lockheed, lived in Las Vegas, and he flew to work from the LV airport every day.

I saw a black triangle outside of Dallas TX in 2004. It blocked out the sky and stars. That's all you could see. 3 dim lights like looking a a road is summer heat. What I saw was the size of football field.

The elusive On-Time/On-Budget-FXXX is my favorite.

65 billion dollar black budget larger than some countries economies and most nations military spending gets me hard af and I’m not even American 😂 you guys are dope

I saw something very unusual in about 1995, Suffolk,England. The time was about five PM in winter so it was dark, I was driving home when something caught my eye moving over and ahead of me, it was an incandescent blue afterburner type ‘flame’. The bright colour was amazing and while keeping one eye on the road I tracked it flying in a dead straight line in a North East direction. I couldn’t make out anything ahead of the light and with the window already part down I couldn’t hear anything. When I got home I asked my wife if she had seen anything while walking the dogs (she had just got in) and she said she saw a bright blue light track across the sky. I asked her what noise it made and she said it didn’t make any. That night we were out at a 40’s themed restaurant (about 20 miles away) and the table behind me started talking about exactly the same thing as I had seen - so we swapped stories. They had seen it near Norwich and I had seen it near Bury St Edmunds, probably 40 miles apart. Now where I live I see a lot of aircraft during the day and at night. RAF Honington is about 2 miles away and Lakenheath and Mildenhall about 10. Before it closed for flying we used to get many Tornadoes flying around on night exercises, we are also on the ILS approach for Mildenhall. I am an amateur astronomer so I know what ‘stuff’ in the sky looks like. This was different, I have no idea what was in front of the blue flame, couldn’t make it out. The object was either high and fast or low and slow, it appeared to travel at the speed of a Tornado on a training flight across country. It’s the blue colour and the lack of noise I remember most. I’ve seen many satellites, the ISS, meteorites, fireballs from stuff breaking up in the atmosphere etc but this thing only once. Suffolk has ‘big skies’ so it’s not unusual to see things, this ‘blue flame’is the only thing I can’t identify, if there was an aircraft ahead of the flame it had no navigation lights and it must have been really black.

You've been killing it this year. Thank you Alex for all the hard work you put into each video, You are the wind beneath my wings.

Those of us that frequented the areas near Edwards Air Force Base know what we saw and heard in the early 90s in regards to "Aurora" hypersonic aircraft. This episode just contrubutes to the confusion.

Honorable mention- F-19a Ghostrider

“And THIS….is AIRPOWER.” BEST OPEN EVER! :)

Why would anyone assume they are NOT? This has been SOP for decades. There is no reason to expect otherwise now.

I have a screenshot of flight radar showing an aircraft that crossed the Atlantic in 1 hr. Coming into lakenheath. Had an escort too.

I worked on the B2 when it was still being denied. It was fun to see how accurate or not the speculation was.

I just learned a few months ago that one of my friends (who currently works for Boeing) was a materials engineer on the exhaust nozzle on Bird of Prey. The things you won't know until you ask.

When us mere mortals openly talk about it on the internets, then we can all rest assured, that America indeed possesses at least that, and then some, and most of these things are probably even „standard“ already with the rare breed of people who are actually in the know.

This was a great episode. Love this stuff!

Every other aircraft flown by the USAF/CIA turned out to have been operating in secret long before it was publicly disclosed, so the answer is obviously yes. Drones are the easiest ones to assume. Anything with a surveillance mission or electronic warfare mission is going to be the most classified. We know the F-117s are still operating in small numbers as well but there's very likely a replacement stealth strike fighter already, whether drone or otherwise (and no, the F-35 doesn't count). And there's certainly a triangular high speed aircraft flying probably manned missions too as a replacement for the SR-71, and has for quite a long time now. It's been photographed several times. And lastly there's the military space shuttle for highly sensitive missions involving foreign satellites and deploying our own.

The Hypersonic Aurora Bomber that has been Legend since the early 2000s has to be my favourite yet to be seen plane :)

you should look into the high altitude contrails that were seen a while ago from satellite photos. spanned from Antarctica to the Arctic circle. high altitude contrails drift into unrecognizable stratus clouds within 20-30 mins. these trails were a solid white line for about 10 thousand miles. indicating whatever created them was performing utterly mind blowing speeds.

Noone playes poker showing what's in their hand😂

Can I hire Alex to record my voicemail greeting?

I love the photo that's circulating of a TR3B on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It's simply a superimposed image of a plastic model made by Mattel.

I've lived in Tucson my entire 44 years and have been interested in all aircraft my whole life. With Davis Monthan here, there is always a lot of air traffic so I get to enjoy lots of cool stuff. Usually if I'm inside and hear a fighter I can make it outside to see what it is. Just last Thursday at about 11am I heard a jet so loud I jumped up to run outside and see what it was, but it had already passed over and was absolutely gone and out of sight before I even made it to the door. Whatever it was, it was by far the craziest most fast jet I have ever heard go over. On a Thursday early afternoon, not morning like Alex mentioned in the video but this really makes me wonder what I heard.

Without a doubt there is a pitch black/silent/hovering/instant accelerating triangular aircraft with a disk shaped light at each corner. Witnessed one roughly 1 mile from Hill AFB in ~2012. Hovered stationary in complete silence maybe 50 ft off the ground. After several minutes it zoomed straight up into the sky and was out of sight within 1 second.

Brilliant Buzzard. A high mach, maybe hypersonic XB-70 shaped spaceplane and mothership

I lived and worked in the San Gabriel Valley at the time of the reports of Aurora and Eest Coast landings of the space shuttle. I happened to work at Frank G Bonelli park (AKA Puddingstone). I had to arrive very early in the mornings to unlock the gates so that the fishermen could get into the lake for fishing. Many, many, many times in the early mornings, sonic booms (sometimes singly and other times double) could be heard AND felt as "something" was transecting the skys over SOCAL. I never did catch sight of what was up there because the boom comes after the craft has passed overhead, but everybody knew that, that was the sound of American black-ops in action. It was AWESOME! [edited because, apparently, I can't spel.]

Alex, you put some awesome video footage in this episode.

No one absolutely no one knew about the f117 until the war and the one that got clipped by a great well informed and a little lucky A/A

There's something flying around in the shape of a giant, black, flying V or chevron. It has no fuselage and has the ability to fly silently. Just a giant flying wing. 600-700 feet from wingtip to wingtip. It's been called the TR-6 TELOS online.

Thanks, sandboxx.

Nine minutes, and you haven't named ONE of these possible aircraft. Life is too short; I have to go.

I recall a story from airline pilot who was of course former military that talked about a series of contrails that appeared to be a pulsed engine exhaust leaving 'donut holes' in the sky. And it had pictures. theory was the pulse could have been scramjet engine being tested.

I think the reason the Chinese pilots have so many incidents like this is because they don’t know what the hell they are doing. One of these days they are going to make the wrong move and trigger something huge. I just think the Chinese military in all are all very inexperienced in all aspects. I’m no expert, but to do this so many times is idiotic. It puts themselves in harms way, as well as whoever they think they’re dicking with. It’s all a bad idea, but I sometimes wonder if it’s all on purpose or if they just don’t know what the hell they are doing.

Darkstar is real. I’ve seen it……in Top Gun 2

Always good content!! Thank you

For real though, El Chupacabra would be a cool name for an advanced aircraft.

The subject of Cryptids is very fascinating. I had an epiphany as to the origin of one automotive cryptid (or conspiracy) thanks to Vice Grip Garage and a comment by someone who claimed to have first hand knowledge of the event. The story is that a fellow bought a Cadillac in the 70's that got incredible mileage. The engine also looked quite unlike anything else around. Supposedly Cadillac got wind that he had this particular engine in his car and tried to buy it back. The fellow said no. Supposedly one night, someone came and replaced the engine in his car with a regular engine. After watching VGG work on an early 80's Caddy with the 8-6-4 engine, I realized that the story could have been true and what the fellow had was a test mule for development, which Cadillac would definitely want back. I still have doubts about the tale, but there is a plausible route for it to have occurred.

Without the Advanced Research Projects Agency we wouldn't even have the Internet.

Much of the black budget goes to expanding and maintaining the Moombase on the backside of the Moon. The base is cloaked to all types of surveillance. The base is also where many types of spacecraft and Earth craft are kept. When needed on Earth the craft are ferried back to Earth in a few hours onboard a very large spacecraft.

I think it would be great to cover the “TicTac” from the perspective of it possibly being our (USA) own technology. Also, no one really discusses the idea that there is a much deeper secretive part of private industry that has developed this tech quietly runs along side or in the continental background of our military apparatus. It would make for a great video.

I like Tacit Blue and sr-72. Tacit blue been out for a while now. I like American Aircraft Penetrator saw it outside a base in California never forgot.

I’m intrigued by the story of the dark gray rounded-diamond-shaped craft that Tim Alberino says he saw hovering silently over a parking lot in Ohio ten years ago

I stopped believing in aliens when I looked at a contrail over Area 51 and thought "military's spending money again." And part of my inner child died.

Lol man the stealth Blackhawks... While in college.. one of my professors who works for NASA got a call from the military to borrow NASA's uh 60s with experimental equipment and he chuckled that it was likely that the military wanted it to make a stealth hawk. That was 2006/2007. Then the bin laden op happened and my buddies shot me a picture of the tail and ask me what that was... Dots connected and i said someone fucked up, hopefully not the 160th, and just crashed a black budget helo lol.. sure enough...

I love this stuff, thank you for doing "cryptid X planes" edition. It was before the History Channel got all goofy (late 90s, early 00s) they did a show about The Skunk Works. A retired engineer said "think about what might be flying in 50 years, that's what we already have in the air" I'm still not convinced about Bigfoot but l'm pretty sure a version of the NGAD and NGXX have flown. I want to believe!

My hypothesis is that the f-22 project was canceled To fund a better secret project

Great episode, Alex! I am a casual viewer of your channel, but this episode was next-level entertaining & educational. I am also a fan of @DarkDocsSkies . Keep up the content innovation!

I liked, the Novel by Tom Clancy Red Storm Rising. , regarding the F19 Frisbee / Testors model any truth to that shape of aircraft or platform. Ty Eddie.

the question isn't if the us airforce is or isn't, its what are they going to be called in 20 years? f22, f117, and sr 71 anyone? all these were never acknowledged until 10 years after they were first used

Imagine filing a public patent for a high-tech secret craft lol

Aurora has to be real. I refuse to believe otherwise

I recall an add in The Los Angeles Times from Lockheed (if memory serves me well) for a “Mach 5 liquid methane fueled aircraft. This was in the early 70’s. The add was looking for Aviation Engineers.

That TR3B really interested me.

Aurora, even the name is fitting!!! I love that one😂😂. I hope that some day (if not yet) America brings that one to life! (And keep that awesone name!!)

Great video Alex! I just wanted to say that you are an excellent writer, man...and you have a good voice for narrating these videos. I am left with a sense of excitement and anticipation for what we have "in the works" concerning aircraft these days. And if they have the budget that you claimed, for SURE, they should have come up with some very unconventional craft by now. Love your channel...THANK YOU for all of the effort you put into it. Keep up the great work!

My dad was in the Air Force in the 70's. Said he saw the guys get out of the SR71 with those suits on,he thought they came from space. But if you didn't know it would've been easy to assume.

13:20 is where the video ACTUALLY starts... come on Alex you do not get paid by the word man!

Grew up in central Nevada north of Area 51. People have been seeing strange UFO type aircraft for years before the F-117 was known. It explained a lot!

Q? Maybe NGAD should be small, completely stealth and simply carry the best radar, info interconnect and just a few Sidewinders. With AIM 260 and air launched SM-6, F15-II's (EPAWS) way back carrying 16-260's launch against air targets guided by NGAD and the F15 escapes near Mach 3, outflying even S300's? The secrets are all inside of a computer and sensors today, flying in planes we see all the time like the F15. A plane that could have been descending from 67k feet. 1000 AI flown F16's coming at you?

Gotta know more about "AIRWOLF" Thanks, Alex.

A Triton and a TBM went over while I was taking out the trash. Thanks for your work !

Folding single operator SOF helicopters? In Alex Ward's recent Book 'The Internationalists' he describes the last aircraft to land at Kabul international airport during the withdrawal as being folding armed single operator helicopters, later in the chapter he vividly describes Gen. Chris Donahue stepping over the folded helicopters as he takes his seat on the last flight out. On the smaller side of aircraft but I haven't seen anything online about this, and I fear knowledge of this is something that could be overlooked given the prevalence of small drones taking this role already.

Like you say, the triangle craft I saw in the desert in ‘91 (and all reported triangles) was thought to be alien or reverse engineered AF craft from alien crashes. Its antics, including releasing a drone swarm with spectacular display was mind blowing, but I reserved judgment until modern times when all this is commonly known today. That’s why I study UFO reports, to glimpse possible tech.

I want to know what Steve Douglass saw over Texas in 2014

skip the preamble and the meat begins at 13:20

When he mentioned the Aurora, one thing came to mind: "Hi-speed bomber ready for takeoff!"

Thank you again for an amazing show.

Airwolf

Meanwhile. Canada’s estimated DND budget for 23-24 … approximately 26 billion 😂 We suck.

The amount of footage showing unknown objects flying is phenomenal. The chances of it being of military origin is most probable. There is a lot of things we are not told about.

16:08 The camera operator seems to know in advance that the craft is going go vertical. That, or his reflex/reaction time is inhumanly fast. Before the craft is out of frame, he’s already moving the camera. Don’t get me wrong, I know Alex isn’t endorsing it just by showing the clip. Just take it for what it’s worth.