Resources

Aurora Flight Sciences

HALE/MALE autonomy house · Orion prime

Founded 1989. Chiron optionally piloted aircraft 1996. Global Hawk structures since 1995. Centaur optionally piloted DA42 from 2010. AACUS autonomous helicopter demo February 2014. ALIAS is later drop-in copilot work.

Aurora Orion contract FA8620-12-C-3027

~$86.56m aggregated · completion extending to 2019

Public award aggregation for the BIG SAFARI / Orion definitive contract. Transaction-level FPDS history — especially modifications August 2013–March 2014 — is still open. Budget authority, ceilings and obligations are not the same as cash spent.

MAGIC, Aurora and Boeing/NRL patents drop from the paper trail in 2014

Follow-up briefing: Aurora’s remote-operation work for the US military from about 2010; MAGIC and several Boeing and NRL patents then become hard to find in open documents in 2014. Redacted Blue Devil letters are shown with matching date cut-offs.

Aurora Orion RPA

Twin-diesel MALE UAS · China Lake first flight 24 Aug 2013

Selected air vehicle for MAGIC: a multi-day, medium-altitude remotely piloted ISR platform designed to carry multiple sensors. First flight (24 Aug 2013) had no mission system; the December 2014 endurance record carried ballast. Those two flights do not decide what was fitted on sorties 2–17, including March 2014.

Orion 123-hour engine bench test

January 2012 · Manassas, Virginia

Propulsion endurance exceeded the 120-hour flight objective on the ground rig before the airframe flew.

MAGIC

Medium Altitude Global ISR and Communications

USAF endurance-ISR programme. Air vehicle: Aurora Orion. Office: 645 AESG / BIG SAFARI — the same rapid-acquisition group that ran Gorgon Stare and took Blue Devil residuals. Confirmed as a multi-day ISR platform in that family. A specific MH370 operation is not established and is not ruled out.

Orion flight 18 — 80-hour record with 1,000 lb ballast

December 2014 · not an ISR-payload demonstration

Aurora’s endurance attempt was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Maiden flight (no mission system) and this record flight both fail as evidence of an operational ISR stack. Payload on flights 2–17 remains open.

Blue Devil, MAGIC, Orion, BIG SAFARI — 2014 window

Briefing collages, 18 September 2026

Nic Moneypenny published investigation collages placing Blue Devil (including an egg-shaped airship), MAGIC, Aurora Orion, BIG SAFARI, Lockheed and DARPA in the same 2013–14 spending window as MH370, with Freescale’s last gyro presentation among the plates.

MAGIC JCTD initiated

FY2010 Q3 · OSD/DDR&E

Competition among five defence-industry partners. $5m initial to AFRL. CENTCOM persistent-ISR sponsorship in Aurora’s 2010 release.

MH370 Daily Research — working papers

18 September 2026

Working ISR report, source ledger and master chronology gathered the same day, with a cited-URL set pointing at contemporary MAGIC, Orion and Gorgon Stare reporting.

Orion 80-hour remotely controlled flight

December 2014 · 1,000 lb ballast · fuel for ~37 more hours

Contractor-confirmed endurance after MH370. This was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Shows the air vehicle matured; does not rewind payload status to March.

Orion first flight, China Lake

24 August 2013 · ~3.5 hours · 8,000 ft · no mission payload

Remote launch from GCS. Air vehicle and command link demonstrated. ISR stack not yet fitted.

Orion’s first flight carried no mission system

Confirmed by contemporary September 2013 reporting and consistent with PB2015’s FY2014 “best of breed” sensor-selection language. December 2014 endurance attempt was flight 18 with 1,000 lb ballast — also not an ISR-payload demonstration. Those two flights do not decide what Orion was, and they do not decide March 2014.

What were the two MAGIC JUON numbers and the FY2012/13 add sponsors?

USAF says two Joint Urgent Operational Needs for long dwell / persistent ISR. Exact numbers, submitting commands, and the $19m / $50m Congressional language are unresolved.