It might fall down on the fact that it was in the Mail, but...
The Aurora stories have been going on for years now. The most recent and authoritative line from a commentator (although annoyingly I forget who) was that the programme did not exist in the form that the press claimed - i.e. it was not a hypersonic SR-71 replacement, but a convenient cover for a variety of 'black' projects. Of course, this was far too boring an explanation, so the stories about Aurora range from:
1. A stealthy F-111 replacement
2. A subsonic stealthy Recce platform
3. A UAV of some kind
4. A hypersonic recce plafrom that arrives home before it's cleared for take off.
5. The code name for a UN-driven conspiracy that covers up the fact that JFK was assassinated by John Lennon (or similar type story).
Problem is that a number of the papers are now desperate to provide a new angle on 'gosh, haven't the Americans got an awful lot of kit', so have dug something out of the archives that they run every so often.
Personally, I'm sure that the USAF will let us know if there's anything to the story in their own good time and am quite happy to wait...