Because of the Roswell sighting and the subsequent national and international media exposure, I was let known that Monitoring Times (although happy with a jump in subscriptions) didn't like the
fringe aspects of my reporting and although they didn't fire me they asked me to keep my writings centered on the radio monitoring hobby.
As a result I started self-publishing The Intercepts Newsletter which I advertised in a the classified section in Monitoring Times, Popular Communications and other magazines. In no time it was an underground success. My (now late) wife at the time Teresa Douglass (a graphic artist for the newspaper we both worked for) helped me immensely in producing the monthly four page newsletter. I wrote it and she would type-set it on our Macintosh Performa computer.
Phil Patton wrote in Dreamland: Douglass and his wife Teresa, an artist and computer whiz, write and publish Intercepts - a newsletter for monitors - from their home. Douglass also runs a BBS and operates the Above Top Secret forum (under Aviation, Military) on America Online. He is also a stringer for CBS, and monitors fire and police channels for the Amarillo Globe Times, where he spent six years as a news photographer.
Intercepts became a full time job among of my many full time jobs as a free-lance photographer, writer and running my news-gathering service I called "The Reporters Edge."
At its peak we had about 3,000 subscribers, some who had government jobs in Langley, Virginia. I was aware they were reading every issue, but I didn't care. Everything I reported on was derived from open source reporting or from monitoring the airwaves. You'd be surprised how much you can find out by listening to the right frequencies.
The media and black-project watchers were buzzing about a possible hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71 Blackbird known as Aurora. I was drawn to investigate this almost mythic Mach 5 plus super spy plane and I had some success Aviation Week and Space Technology editor/writers such as William Scott and
Bill Sweetman were chief among the Aurora investigators.
"Why did the Pentagon retire the SR-71 spyplane in 1990? What has caused sonic booms over the California desert since 1991? What was the triangular craft spotted over the North Sea in 1989? In this groundbreaking book, journalist Bill Sweetman argues these mysteries can be traced to a U.S. spyplane called AURORA, the existence of which--denied by officials--lies buried in a secret military budget.
Aurora remains illusive to this day and almost 40 years later a new generation of aviation internet/aviation writers are fascinated by the possibility of its existence.
Alex Hollings of Sandboxx News (drawing on William Scott and Bill Sweetman's work) would write in 2022:
"On two separate occasions in April of 1992 (the 5th and 22nd, respectively), a journalist named Steve Douglass was monitoring military aircraft channels in Southern California when he picked up some very unusual radio chatter. According to Douglass, an aircraft with the callsign “Gaspipe” was coordinating with air traffic controllers out of the nearby Edwards Air Force Base, and based on what he heard, the jet must have been flying at extreme altitude and speed. “You’re at sixty-seven thousand [feet], eighty-one miles out,” the controller told the pilots, before continuing a moment later. “Seventy miles out, thirty-six thousand. Above glide slope. Coming in from 67,000 feet eliminated practically all of America’s fixed-wing assets save for the SR-71 and U-2, both of which were confirmed not to be flying on the days Douglass recorded the radio transmissions. Longtime Aviation Week and Space Technology Editor William B. Scott analyzed Douglass’ recordings for the Smithsonian Magazine in 2010 and felt confident that they were indeed real, suggesting the Air Force was either lying about the Space Shuttle secretly landing at Edwards in 1992 or “Gaspipe” had to be some kind of high-speed classified aircraft."
But the truth was - I didn't intercept the "Gaspipe" communications. I live in Texas. I've never been to California nor have I ever been even close to Edwards Air Force Base, although I the first to report on the Gaspipe intercepts, they weren't intercepted by me.
The recording of the intercept was sent to me by
"Mark" which I passed on to
William B Scott at Aviation Week.
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| The author and William Scott in 2013 |
My piece of the Aurora puzzle was a HF phone patch I intercepted where two very high ranking USAF officers were discussing the problem of debunking Aurora in the press,
I would write on my other blog
Deep Black Horizon:
"Way back in the 1990s there was a lot of speculation about a possible high-speed aircraft built secretly to replace the SR-71 Blackbird. There was even some evidence to support this, a series of "skyquakes" (in actuality sonic booms) over the western U.S. along with even stranger sightings of "donuts-on-a-rope" contrails (some I actually photographed) and sightings (some from trained aircraft identification spotters such as Chris Gibson ) of a highly swept-winged hypersonic aircraft seen flying in formation with other military aircraft.
This unicorn was dubbed "Aurora" after a mysterious line item that inadvertently was included in the 1985 U.S. budget, as an allocation of $455 million for "black aircraft production" in FY 1987.
"Funding of the project allegedly reached $2.3 billion in fiscal 1987, according to a 1986 procurement document obtained by Aviation Week. In the 1994 book Skunk Works, Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works division, wrote that the Aurora was the budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly-off that resulted in the B-2 Spirit."
But the name Aurora stuck and although no official successor to the SR-71 was ever acknowledged, in 2017 according to Lockheed Martin they were developing the SR-72, colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird" as a hypersonic UAV concept intended for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform as a successor to the retired Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. The company said the SR-72 test vehicle could fly by 2023. Coincidentally the "skyquakes" are back and the California coast is rattling again.
That said -was there ever an Aurora?
While doing my own research after my own sighting (and after a sighting of "Aurora" causes considerable stir in the media, a HF phone patch was intercepted by myself and another military radio hobbyist that was particularly telling. See attached. This comes from my Intercepts Newsletter and my book "The Comprehensive Guide to Military Monitoring" published in 1994.
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| click to enlarge |
At the time (early 90s) no one really knew who (sic) "McMann" was mentioned in the radio intercept was but it was a short walk to surmise he is a person of note who was charged keeping the aviation press at bay when it came to the subject of "Aurora."
Decades later a friend pointed out they now know who "McMann" could very well be, His bio was found on the website of
Modern Technology Solutions.
It reads:
About Jesse T. (Tom) McMahan
Jesse T. (Tom) McMahan is Co-President and Founder of Modern Technology Solutions, Inc. (MTSI) of Alexandria, Virginia. MTSI operates in several locations around the country with core capabilities in modeling and simulation of advanced aerospace systems, flight and ground test support, systems engineering, acquisition planning, operational concept development, and business and financial management.''
He has been with MTSI since its founding in 1993 and has seen the company grow to over 200 employees. His specialty is in advanced technologies supporting aircraft survivability and weapons as well as in modeling and simulation of air defense systems.
Tom left UMR with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1966 and worked for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in White Oak, Maryland until 1968 when he entered the Air Force. His 25 year Air Force career was devoted to science and technology programs and weapon systems acquisition. The Air Force sent him back to UMR in 1972 for a Masters Degree in Engineering Management. He was fortunate to become involved in the early days of the stealth and counter stealth technology programs and spent the last 15 years of his career in that area. His final Air Force job was as Director of Electronic and Special Programs in the Pentagon. Tom is now working about half time with MTSI. He is a past member and current ad hoc advisor to the Air Force Scientific Advisory board and sits on Boards of Directors and Strategy Boards of several small companies involved in advanced aircraft survivability technologies.
So does this mean that Aurora existed? Well, maybe not under that name but this finding (although decades late) does shed some light in a very dark corner of 90s conceptual military technology.
Maybe the SR-72 is the great grandson of Blackbird?"\
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One year (in my Intercepts Newsletter) I informally invited some of the better Interceptors to meet up in Roswell during another Roving Sands Exercise. That year we decided to do it big. A local good friend of mine (a amateur radio operator) had graciously offered the use of his 40 foot Bounder RV. We filled it with radio gear and camped not too far from where me and my father-in-law Elwood had the strange sighting that was showcased in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Radioheads, stealthchasers and skywatchers from across the world descended on Roswell with The Bounder serving as basically our rallying point.
"Mark" contacted me and told me he was going to be there. I was anxious to meet him since his radio intercepts were so good. I had an idea of where he was coming from (California by the looks of his radio intercepts) but he told me he was already in New Mexico and asked me where we could meet.
We had set up camp at a dry reservoir just east of Roswell, isolated but a perfect place to watch and scan the skies.
An Australian Discovey Channel crew would catch up with us during week two, and other Area 51 Interceptors would drop in for a day, get a taste and split, like the notorious
Psychospy, (Glenn Campbell) and
Peter Merlin who was famous in Interceptor circles as a
black world archaeologist and historian, specializing in finding crash sites and chronicling the history of Area 51. After years of research he wrote
Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 which is pretty much the bible on the most secret of CONUS black project air bases.
In fact if you clicked on any of the linked
noms above, you'll see who they really are and none of them are what someone would call underachievers.
The local (Amarillo) Interceptors were in attendance as well using their real names, Ken Hanson, Michael Dunlap (and his brother Travis) and Frank Murphy. We even had a GMRS radio call in net which we used instead of cellphones knowing that (back in the analog days) anyone's calls were too easy to intercept. In fact we knew that all too well because on any given day we were listening to USAF and Navy personnel making calls on their cell phones which provided us with a lot of information on the Roving Sands Exercise itself.
During the two weeks of the exercise we had about twenty or so Interceptors coming and going. It was great fun and a pleasure to meet many of those who I only knew from e-mails and letters.
We had plenty of toys with us, including dozens of scanning radios, all searching through the military bands looking for that nugget of information that would put in the right place at the right time to see something that mere civilians aren't supposed to know about. We also had night vision gear, video and still camera gear and recorders going on all the scanning gear. This loose-knit group of tech-savy radio-nerds worked like a mini COMINT unit. There was hardly anything flying in south-central New Mexico that we didn't know about.
On day 2 "Mark" joined us. He called in on the radio channel and camped right next to us. Our group watched the skies, went to dinners together and basically bullshitted. Although no one knew who Mark was (except for what I knew) but he fit right into our group. He was a good listener and funny. He had some great stories, asked a lot of questions and bought a lot of beer. He was older than all of us ( I guessed in his early to mid 60s) but still in shape enough to keep up with us as we hiked up mountains and trails to look into the White Sands Missile Range.
One day we decided to hike up
Rose Peak to see if we could watch aircraft bombing the Red Rio range, located on the north side of the White Sands Missile Range. It was a strenuous hike (even for some of the younger guys) but the view was pretty amazing. There were also these "stations of the cross" along the trail that went up Rose Mountain. They were little shrines adorned with intricate silver and turquois crosses, left there by the
Penitentes who lived and worshipped in the area.
Although it was tempting to want to take one of the crosses as a souvenir, none of us did out of respect and knowing they hiked this mountain every year at Easter to actually crucify one of their own.
Read more about them
HERE.
Anyway, once we got to the top Mark pointed out the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated.
I remember it clearly. I said, "Can you imagine being on this mountain and seeing it go off? What would be your reaction?"
He leaned over and said, matter-of -factly said, "I can, I was there."
"Really?" I replied."
"Really," he said flatly. "But that's a story for another time. I don't know you guys well enough to tell you any more."
Most of us took it as bullshit, stuff you say in a crowd of guys you want to impress and left it at that.
Mark stayed with us for another two days and left. It was the consensus that he was probably a "spook" (an intelligence agent) sent to check out our twisted need to know. We weren't concerned because we weren't doing anything unlawful or what we would consider a threat to national security and we welcomed anyone, even an outsider, into our camp to see we were not. I would learn later that some inside the Pentagon considered us a pain in the ass, but not much else, and my thinking was it was due to Mark.
After Mark left, I surely thought (like most of those who had shown up to our Roving Sands Interceptor party) I would never hear from him again.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
UP NEXT: THE BIG BANG
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