The best defense is a good offense. How many times have we heard that? Apparently the armed forces of the United States have really taken this saying to heart. How do we know this? We know it because of all the offensive weapons that we possess. The armed forces are fond of saying that all our major weapons are strictly for defense, but nothing could be further from the truth. I think that you have to classify a weapon's category using several criteria:
1. By the way it has been used in the past.
2. How it is deployed
3. What it is designed to do.

Let's look at the nuclear submarine fleet. It is said that the missiles on these subs are only going to be launched if we are attacked. I am talking about the nuclear missiles. That is probably true. Does this make them a defensive weapon? Not at all, since that have what is known as first strike capability. That means that they could be launched before we were ever attacked and most, if not all would survive to hit their intended targets. The same is true for the platforms that they are on. A submarine is really an offensive weapon not a defensive one. If you fire on a submarine, it's job is not to try firing back, although it could. It's mission is sneaky. It is a device that is designed to sneak into an area unseen and do things. It might fire a torpedo and sink a ship, fire a missile or missiles or even land commandos that are on some secret mission.The same is true with aircraft carriers. They were created to take the air fight to the enemy. They do also have a defensive capability however. They provide air cover for other ships and troops, among other things like bombing runs and such. So what exactly would be a defensive weapon? It would be one that was designed strictly to defend against weapons that were fired at us or troops that sent against us. An example of a defensive weapon is an anti-missile missile, anti-aircraft missile, anti-aircraft gun and troops defending their homeland. There are a lot more things that fall into these categories, but most of them have double uses and are both offensive and defensive, depending on how they are deployed. Take a machine gun for example. If I set it up at the border to my country and only fire it at troops that are attacking, than it is a defensive weapon at that moment. If I take the same machine gun, give it to invading troops, then it becomes an offensive weapon.

There are some things that are not exactly weapons, but they are dangerous, never the less. Look at all the trouble that was caused when we sent U-2 spy planes over the Soviet Union. These planes had no weapons, they were basically flying cameras with other sensors aboard. Their mission was to study what the Soviets were up to and get the information back to us. Sometimes information can also be a powerful weapon. Knowing your enemies' deployment of things like missiles and air fields is valuable information. You can also find out what new technology he has come up with. Today many countries are using spy satellites. Everyone knows much more about everyone else today than they ever did. This has forced many countries to move their secret projects under the ground or into huge buildings where they are hidden from prying eyes in the sky. Right now, the US probably has the most to lose if it's secrets become known, because it looks like we are way ahead in aviation and in some other areas as well. These areas are very important to the military because the technology allows us to do things that other countries can't. One of the biggest open secrets is that we have a plane called the Aurora and it can probably go into low earth orbit and may be able to hit those speeds that they talk about achieving with the X-43. I am talking about speeds up to 24 times the speed of sound, which is anywhere from about 650 mph to 770 mph depending on your altitude. At 24 times 770 mph the plane would be going at 18,480 mph. Looking at this, it would make sense to get rid of the SR-71 Blackbirds as we did in the 1990s. The SR-71 is a plane that still holds many of the world's speed records today and no official announcement was ever made on what plane replaced it, when it was retired.

What makes us think that the Aurora really exists? Well for one thing, it was named by mistake in a budget request. The request never stated it was a plane however, it just stated that a sum of money was being requested for further development of the Aurora. Another reason we believe that it exists, is that mysterious contrails are being seen all over the world. They look like a trail of smoke with puffs appearing at equal intervals. This indicates a pulse jet engine of some sort. Pulse jets use measured explosions to propel aircraft forward and can be capable of great speed. Another reason, though weak, is the fact that a famous toy company makes a model of what they call the Aurora. What I find especially interesting about the Aurora rumor is that it is sometimes described as a black triangle that is very stealthy. There has been talk of using helium in some air frames. If we put these facts together we could get a plane that is shaped like a black triangle, can float along slowly without noise because the helium keeps it up and is capable of great speed. Does this sound familiar? In case it doesn't, let me remind you about all the sightings lately of black triangles that sail silently through the sky and sometimes take off at extremely fast speeds. These craft are constantly being reported as ufos and it might just turn out that people are seeing the Aurora and don't realize it. It is believed that the Aurora program cost over 10 billion dollars and resulted in the production of about 30 aircraft and that the planes have been around since about 1995. This is just about the period of time that most of the black triangle sightings started getting reported.

If the Aurora has been around since 1995, obviously 13 years has passed since it's deployment. It would be foolish of us to believe that research stopped with that plane. I am not the only one that thinks this. A recent article appeared in Pravda, a famous Russian newspaper and contained the following headline, "Secret American Space Planes to Dominate Planet Earth". This may be a little melodramatic, but I think you get the point. The article goes on to say that Russian intelligence discovered that the US was testing a top secret plane at one of it's bases. At this point I want to tell you that there is some confusion here. We are talking about the mid 1990, when the Aurora was supposedly already deployed. Reading the article I can't help but get the feeling that the Russians discovered a plane that was being developed after the Aurora, even though they called it the Aurora. The article went on to say that security was so tight that they couldn't get a look at it or take photos. They said that they did find out some things about the plane such as the plane is capable of flying at an altitude of at least 40 kilometers. They pegged the speed at 2,040 meters per second. That is over 2 kilometers per second. In terms that we are familiar with, that is well over a mile a second. The article claims that the Russians have one photo of the Aurora.

The Russians are worried because there is a part of the atmosphere between the ceiling of fighter planes and space, that is empty right now and they feel that the Americans will be building planes to fly in this area, giving them a substantial lead. They feel that we are building a space army with the capability to hit any target on earth without fear of being shot down. Are we really doing this? No doubt that we are. Can we maintain the costs of such projects? One has to wonder about that. Right now the national debt is over 800,000 dollars for every man, woman and child in America and increasing every day. This is unheard of in the annals of history. How long can we run at these huge deficits before the entire country's economy collapses? One has to only look at the former Soviet Union to see what it is like for a country/s economy to collapse.

There are many rumors out there of secret planes that were built by the US. Remember that these are just rumors and there is no proof that they actually exist now, or have ever existed, so you can take this for what they are worth. General Dynamics was said to have built a plane known as the F-121. It was said to be able to reach speeds in excess of 3 times the speed of sound and this was really the replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird. It is said that it later became known as the Sentinel. Interestingly, this was also a black triangular shaped plane. Another plane was the Snow Bird, which was said to be an aircraft capable of 3.5 times the speed of sound. The last plane worthy of mention was built under the code name Copper Coast. and was also said to be the successor to the SR-71 Blackbird. It was designed to reach speeds up to 7 times the speed of sound. It is said that this contract was cancelled.

I guess there is no way that we will ever really know what we are building or flying. The only time we will ever find out, is if any of these things land up in a museum some time in the future. Still, there is no doubt that we are working on advanced aircraft and we are pouring billions of dollars into their development. Let us hope that this will not be another atom bomb type case, where we pour in all the money and other countries steal our secrets.