In March 1990, the magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology first broke the news that the term "Aurora" was inadvertently released in the 1985 US budget, as an allocation of $US455 million for "black aircraft production" (emphasis added) in FY 1987. Note that this was for building aircraft, not research and development. According to Aviation Week, Aurora referred to a group of exotic aircraft projects, and not to one particular airframe. Funding of the project allegedly reached $US2.3 billion in fiscal 1987, according to a 1986 procurement document obtained by Aviation Week. However, according to Ben Rich, former director of Lockheed's Skunk Works (now the Lockheed Advanced Development Company), Aurora was the code name for the B-2 stealth bomber competition funding, and no such hypersonic plane ever existed.

Lockheed Skunk Works

Lockheed's Skunk Works has been suggested as the prime contractor for the Aurora. Throughout the 1980s, financial analysts concluded that Lockheed had been engaged in several large classified projects, but the known projects could not account for the declared net income. Financial analysts at Kemper Securities have examined Lockheed Advanced Development Company's declared revenues from Black programs:

• Returns for 1987 were $US65 million.
• Returns for 1993 were $US475 million.

The only declared Lockheed black projects are the U-2R and F-117A upgrade programs, and nothing new has been announced between 1987 and 1993. It was also discovered that the total U.S. budget allocation for Project Aurora for 1987 was no less than $US2.27 billion. According to Kemper, this would indicate a first flight of around 1989. The spread of U.S. Government payments to Lockheed indicate that the aircraft was probably about one-fifth (20%) of the way through its development program as of 1992, or has been "extensively prototyped". Around $US4.5 billion has already been spent.