The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) encompasses six U.S. installations, employs over 10,000 agents, and has operating costs of over ten billion dollars per year. The NRO maintains an astonishing arsenal of cutting-edge spy technologies—worldwide electronic intercepts, spy satellites, silent embedded relay chips in telecomm products, even a global naval-recon network known as Classic Wizard…a secret web of 1456 hydrophones mounted on seafloors around the world, capable of monitoring ship movement anywhere on the globe.

Built by Lockheed in total secrecy inside the famous Hughes Mining Barge, the Sea Shadow is the nautical equivalent of the F-117 "stealth fighter". The Sea Shadow is a SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) vessel with all above-water surface sloped radically inward. She is 160 feet long, 70 feet in beam, 14 feet in draft, displaces 560 tons and her diesel-electric propulsion gives her a top speed of 13 knots. She is invisible to shipboard radar, even at close range.

The U.S. Delta Force is made up of three 150-man squadrons and is the sole fighting squad whose actions are granted complete presidential immunity from the law. Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25) grants Delta Forces “freedom from all legal accountability,” including exception from the 1876 Posse Comitatus Act—a statute imposing criminal penalties for anyone using the military for personal gain, domestic law enforcement, or unsanctioned covert operations. Delta Force members are handpicked from the CAG (Combat Applications Group) — a classified organization within the Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Delta Force soldiers are trained killers—experts in SWAT operations, rescuing hostages, surprise raids, and elimination of covert enemy forces.

The Aurora is one of those secret aircraft that nobody is supposed to know exists, but everyone does. Even the Discovery Channel has covered Aurora and its testing out at Groom Lake in Nevada. Whether the security leaks have come from the repeated “skyquakes” heard as far away as Los Angeles, or the unfortunate eyewitness sighting by a North Sea oil rig driller, or the administrative gaffe that left a description of Aurora in a public copy of the Pentagon budget, nobody will ever know. It hardly matters. The word is out: The U.S. military has an aircraft capable of Mach 6 flight, and it is no longer on the drawing board. It is in the skies overhead.

Built by Lockheed, the Aurora looks like a flattened American football. It is 110 feet long, 60 feet wide, smoothly contoured with a crystalline patina of thermal tiles much like the space shuttle. The speed is primarily the result of an exotic new propulsion system known as a Pulse Detonation Wave Engine, which burns a clean misted, liquid hydrogen and leaves a tell-tale pulse contrail in the sky. For this reason, the Aurora only flies at night.