Akkam’s Razor

Saw a whole bunch of hits looking for the rumored Blackstar plane, the possible Aurora craft that the US military has been using, as referenced in this Aviation Week and Space Technology article.  Apparently, this craft, which may have been operational, functioned with a mothership launching a smaller space-capable craft for advanced surveillance.

A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital.

The manned orbiter’s primary military advantage would be surprise overflight. There would be no forewarning of its presence, prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights. 

The article mentions that the craft resembles the stillborn Boeing XB-70, and that the parasite orbiter uses technology that was developed during the DYNOSAUR program in the early 1960s.

Personally, while reading the article, I thought of the Cobra Night Raven (blueprint), which based on the description in the article, seems to be a pretty close match.