Military Utility

From Dean Esmay, who wonders:

Why then did they announce the crash of an obsolete plane?



Likely because the plane that did crash was one of the modern upgraded U-2 variants, which are pretty rugged but are complex machines and are likely used far more often than "Aurora" would likely be.



The military actually does try to conserve money as much as they can, for a variety of reasons. Blackbird was wonderful, but capitally and operationally speaking, expensive to operate - the pilots got maybe one or two hundred hours per year. I imagine Aurora is no less so. The reliable old U2 and more modern variants aren't exactly cheap, from the point of view of a middle class family budget, but they're considerably less expensive than Blackbird, or I imagine, Aurora.