Flying Dorito? That one was known to be in development and was cancelled due to overruns and technical delays. There was a lawsuit that got settled, I think last year. There was a topic around here about it at the time I believe.
The Aurora is probably still in development; the spec must be something that can exceed the capability of the very successful (thank you Kelly Johnson) SR-71 Blackbird, which was capable of sustained flight above Mach 3, and flew very long missions over hostile territory, landing and taking off from the same few places, and refueled mid-air as much as necessary.
It’s been speculated that the Aurora and the Flying Dorito were confused for each other, and that the Aurora testing has been done at very high altitude and mostly over the mostly empty federal lands and other sparsely population areas of the SW.
Ben Rich, colleague and successor of Kelly Johnson at Lockheed’s Skunk Works, once cryptically remarked that a “beads on a rope” contrail report he was asked about would suggest a cryofueled engine. The Aurora used to be believed to use liquid methane fuel, and the “beads” were from the pulse jet propulsion needed to make the methane burn right.
Rich is also known to have worked on some very high speed pulse jet drones used in the 1960s to spy on the Chinese interior. The program was cancelled, but in the 1990s the unused inventory was still around and brought back out, apparently for test bed work (rumor).
Nice series of links BenLurkin!
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/forum/messages/17185.html
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/100years/stories/rich.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=Donuts+on+a+rope+contrail&tbm=isch
Hmmmn.
Only high speed drones I know of used over China in the 1960’s were the SR-71/A-2/A-12 body-plan single-engine “duplicates” built by Lockheed to fly from the SR-71, then return and be recovered.
Didn’t work too well, but nothing more significant than the usual teething troubles of the time for actual flight.
But recovery? Didn’t have to analog power to do it at the time. Several still exist - 2,3 perhaps?