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USAF Developing New "SR-72" Supersonic Spy?
Kadin2048 writes "According to an Air Force Times article, the famed Lockheed Martin 'Skunk Works' may be hard at work on a new supersonic spy plane (with 'artist concept') for the U.S. military, to replace the SR-71 'Blackbird' retired a decade ago. Dubbed by some the SR-72, the jet would be unmanned and travel at about 4,000 MPH at as much as 100,000 feet, with 'transcontinental' range. Some have speculated that new high-speed spy planes could be a U.S. response to anti-satellite weapons deployed by China, in order to preserve reconnaissance capabilities in the event of a loss of satellite coverage. Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed Martin would comment on the program, or lack thereof."
Given the size of the thing, and the speed and height it flies at, that's going to look a lot like a missile. Might not be the best thing for an already paranoid enemy to see.
I believe the full article said it's designed to be unmanned, regardless, reconnaissance aircraft are the best candidates for going unmanned, the missions tend to be simple, tedious, often dangerous, and requiring little extemporaneous thinking.
I bet the fact that they leaked that a contract had been awarded means the damn thing is already flying.
I hate to state the obvious, but the article is pretty sensational... I can summarize:
Cower before our unmanned 6000mph stealthy black aircraft! If the Mach 6 shockwave doesn't get you, the nuclear handgrenades it carries will!I already have an SR-72.
p
http://www.apogeerockets.com/SR72_Darkbird_Kit.as
It doesn't go 4,000mph, though. It just sits there. I think I was ripped off.
I agree, especially since most of our satellites are unmanned. /I just couldn't pass that up. //I say most, because of the ISS.
I suspect it could be shot down with a particle beam weapon. With the particle beam traveling at a good fraction of the speed of light, it would be vulnerable.
And, I guess, if they're shot down, there's no pilot captured by the baddies, which is a tad harder to explain away than a bunch of debris.
Add to that other bonuses of not having a human on board, like not worrying about g-forces and being able to self destruct if need be.
We are all just people.
I'm sure a lot of you guys already know this, but for those that don't...
The SR-71 Blackbird was originally named the RS-71, but it was renamed when Lyndon Johnson accidentally rearranged the letters during his 1964 announcement of the existence of the SR-71 (which he was supposed to call RS-71). Anyway... airplane history for ya'll.
When they SR-71 was retired, they claimed it was no longer necessary as satellites could do the job. I assumed they had a replacement aircraft in place.
that's clearly a submarine. And at 4000MPH, a flaming fast submarine too!
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
*sigh*
Ok fine. I'll fly it.
http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/aurora.htm
Its existence hasn't been officially confirmed, but there is some evidence that a successor to the SR-71 already exists.
I was wondering when they'd have an official designation for Aurora.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Sounds like the beginning of another cold war.
Is this really even necessary? Un-mothball a couple SR-71s. Is there even anything that can bring one of those down?
Sorry, no dyslexia for LBJ :)
_ and_designation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird#Name
USAF Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay preferred the SR (Strategic Reconnaisance) designation and wanted the RS-71 to be named SR-71. Before the Blackbird was to be announced by President Johnson on 29 February 1964, LeMay lobbied to modify Johnson's speech to read SR-71 instead of RS-71. The media transcript given to the press at the time still had the earlier RS-71 designation in places, creating the myth that the president had misread the plane's designation.
"In the near future, the Navy develops a fighter jet piloted by an artificial intelligence computer. The jet is placed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific to learn combat manuevers from the human pilots aboard. But when the computer develops a mind of its own, it's the humans who are charged with stopping it before it incites a war" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382992/
In coolness...
ahref=http://www.cnw.mk.ua/weapons/airforce/razv/s r71/image/sr71ff.jpgrel=url2html-9407http://www.cn w.mk.ua/weapons/airforce/razv/sr71/image/sr71ff.jp g>
ahref=http://perso.orange.fr/romain.g/sr71-1.jpgre l=url2html-9407http://perso.orange.fr/romain.g/sr7 1-1.jpg>
They'd probably just find a piece with "Made in China" stamped on it.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
(My previous post had bad links. Sorry.)
http://www.cnw.mk.ua/weapons/airforce/razv/sr71/im age/sr71ff.jpg
http://perso.orange.fr/romain.g/sr71-1.jpg
And, I guess, if they're shot down, there's no pilot captured by the baddies, which is a tad harder to explain away than a bunch of debris.
We are talking about overflying other countries without their consent and explaining it away when we get caught, but they are the "baddies?"
Moral compass for sale. Will point whichever way you want it to.
"I'd assume they wouldn't want or need a pilot, but that's not mentioned."
what do you mean it's not mentioned??
FTFA:
"The new jet -- being referred to by some as the SR-72 -- is likely to be unmanned"
looks like it was mentioned to me...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
That does highlight the one area in which you'd want a pilot, though, and that's to make sure that no real technology falls into the enemy's hands. If there's one thing that can't go wrong, it's the contingency of having one get captured.
To the person with the "clever" moral compass comment, just because the US is performing reconnaissance doesn't make them the bad guy. Or are you saying that all through both world wars and the cold war the US was morally wrong to perform flyovers?
Except there was never any suggestion that Aurora was "crew optional". Nothing solid provided by the article, but no one should be surprised if it turns out to be true.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
We all know the pilot is going to be D.A.R.Y.L.
As in Mutually Assured Destruction, if the SR-72 were falsely interpreted as a nuclear missile. I doubt that would happen, but I believe that was the point of the "first post".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
*I* heard it was going to be used by Gooogle to do the next run of Street views...
to make a more maneuverable/agile LEO satellite? And the lessons learn can be applied to the [manned] space program and vice versa...
Gentlemen, this may be the very first sighting of this new spyplane on Slashdot. Observe the shape made by the bold text under a resolution of 640*480 @ 60Hz.
I believe he is commenting on the fact that though the US and indeed, just about any country, portrays themselves as "the good guys" to their citizens, these same countries would perform spy operations on the enemy country, maybe even in times of peace. I don't really think he said or meant (though he might have) that they are the goodies, just that the contrast between the two isn't quite as clear cut as it's made out to be.
I sadly do not know a lot of about the Cold War but I'd say that as long as such flyovers do not raise tensions or create annoyance, they are a good idea as they provide proof that the country being flown over is not preparing something big.
My blog - This link wouldn't be interesting even if we set fire to
ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen... Uh, he's already got one, you see?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If the headline ends in a question mark, it's not news.
Question everything
Does it matter? Well, the first to build a working waverider aircraft was a Scottish amateur rocketry group. Story has it that when NASA and Boeing engineers saw footage of the vehicle flying, they were staring at the screen in sheer envy. They'd got no further than theory. We also all know the story of the New Zealander who has jet-propelled go-karts and his own low-cost cruise missile. And the Gauss Rifle linked to above didn't look too complex, either.
Although amateurs are very unlikely to be building supersonic or hypersonic spy planes in the near future, none of this looks so complex that it could not be done by other nations in comparable time. Don't think it won't happen - too many potential benefits. Variants will also inevitably be adopted by commercial space planes, as it's so much cheaper than using vanilla rocketry and should be much more reliable.
To me, the only question I think worth asking at this point is who will be there first? Lockheed-Martin, China or Rutan? (And after Lockheed's disastrous hovering shuttle replacement in the late 1990s, it's not wise to just assume they'll automatically win such a race.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To the person with the "clever" moral compass comment, just because the US is performing reconnaissance doesn't make them the bad guy. Or are you saying that all through both world wars and the cold war the US was morally wrong to perform flyovers?
There is no need to explain away anything when doing legitimate reconnaissance. If a reconnaissance flight is shot down over hostile territory, then we just send another.
What we are talking about here is the difference between reconnaissance (Action during war. No excuses or explanations needed) and spying (and lying about it when we get caught). If Iraq were to overfly the US on a "reconnaissance" mission today, we would be frothing at the mouth with moral indignation.
And Yes, much of what the US and USSR did in the cold war was morally wrong. Most of today's problems that can't be traced to the British drawing a line on a map can be traced to the US and USSR playing chess with the world.
I'm not saying that it might not be convenient to know what everyone is doing (even during peacetime) But to excuse any action that we deem "necessary" while hurling judgmental titles like "baddies" at others smacks of a lack of self awareness.
We've known it's been in the works for a while. Several interim projects were specifically to test portions of the technology, such as the pure evil on the wing looking Bird of Prey (http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q4/nr_02 1018m.html). The SR 72 design (often called Darkbird, though that's not official) is pretty much frozen. Air Force Times has an artists' rendering which is probably pretty close to the final result (http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/06/airforc e_sr72_070617/)
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Cold wars and hot wars start the same way.
To the person with the "clever" moral compass comment, just because the US is performing reconnaissance doesn't make them the bad guy. Or are you saying that all through both world wars and the cold war the US was morally wrong to perform flyovers?
Well, normally when you send your military forces into another country without permission it is called an act of war.
Of course, the Russians and the Chinese spy on the USA all the time. They don't tend to use spy planes though.
That does highlight the one area in which you'd want a pilot, though, and that's to make sure that no real technology falls into the enemy's hands.
That's what the C4/Thermite is for. Debris isn't worth much when all that's left won't even fill a teaspoon.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Seriously.
The SR-71 is easily the baddest mofo of any item in either the Smithsonian's downtown Air & Space or Air & Space II in the big hangar out by the airport [which is where the SR-71 sits, right smack in the middle of the floor, dominating everything else around it].
Badder than the Wright Bros' biplane, badder than Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis, badder than Apollo 11, badder than the Space Shuttle.
Just one great big Samuel Jackson Pulp Fiction Bad Mofo of an airplane.
by the looks of it, there is no way it would be launched from a conventional runway
the SR-71 is a famous example of something very advanced remaining classified for a long time. By the time the public saw them, they were practically retired. I'd guess that this vehicle exists now in classified form, and by 2020 we'll "officially" know they've built and flown them.
stuff |
If it's Kim Jong Mentally Il who intentionally murdered 2 million of his own people while sipping cognac and building shoddy nukes then yes, they are the baddies. From your vernacular I see you are from England, just remember, in WWII the Allies dropped plenty of bombs on the Nazis, and yes, the Nazis were still the baddies. (and don't even try to give me that moral-equivalency the UK has nukes so therefore it's only 'fair' that North Kore have them, this is Slashdot, not a playground for retarded 4 year olds).
As for this plane, it could single handedly save the lives of a whole bunch of North Koreans or Iranians. Yes, I said save their lives, since having proper intelligence could avert a war, which with nutball countries like those could force the U.S. to use some pretty nasty weapons. Proper intelligence is what prevented the Cuban Missile crisis from getting out of hand, and if it had been available then Iraq might not be in the shape it's in now either.
No weapon. It's a reconnaissance craft.
At 4000 mph, it would be able to outrun any anti-aircraft missile.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Now I wonder scramjet + non-existant unmanned stealth spy plane, and massive development budget hmmmm.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I don't care if there are better solutions or if it's expensive or bad for the environment or whatever. The engineer in me just thinks that the SR-71 was too cool to be taken out of service. I look forward to the SR-72.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
While I agree that it was wrong of the US and USSR to play chess with the world, would it have been any better if the US hadn't played at all? If the US hadn't opposed the USSR, what would have stopped them from raping the world as they saw fit?
If it's intended as a satellite-replacement in case of reconnaissance satellites being destroyed by ASAT weaponry, wouldn't there be some issues in remotely controlling an aircraft with "transcontinental" range without relying on communications satellites that would also presumably be destroyed by the point this aircraft is needed?
There are spaces in OP's URLs, so they don't work (not to mention they're not links). I'm a kindly soul with time to kill, so here is the Boeing link, and here is the Air Force Times link.
http://blackbirds.net/u2/blackcats/u2deployedpics. html
http://blackbirds.net/u2/blackcats/blackcats.html
Why go fast when you can go anywhere? O|||||||O
I'm confused.
...this is Slashdot, not a playground for retarded 4 year olds
You really make it easy, Baldrick.
They used the lasers to light up the satellite, and smacked it down with a missile (kinetic).
They also have the ability to blind some satellites cameras with lasers.
They do not have the ability to destroy satellites with lasers.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
Aurora:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_aircraft/
Maybe he thought that meant they were going to castrate it?
Just a thought...
Un-mothballing a super secret machine like that is no easy feat. Once they retired it, the super secret parts, meaning all the really slick stuff that made it work so well, are destroyed. Shredded. Melted down. You don't want to leave that kind of equipment sitting around in a depot where it might be mistakenly sold off as surplus. Even the design blueprints may have been destroyed. Just because the USAF/CIA is done with it doesn't mean it's no longer beyond top-secret. If there aren't enough planes left to put together a working one plus all the necessary spare parts, you're starting over from scratch. Consider the one on display at the Pima air museum: it has no engines, so that nobody can get a good up-close look at them. Then there's that special fuel blend that only the blackbirds used...
Since a ramjet is just a specially shaped chamber, you can load it full of solid rocket fuel to get it going. Once that fuel is spent, you start spraying in the liquid fuel for ramjet operation. I recall reading on Wikipedia that some missiles use this method. Now if you could make the ramjet out of an ejectable cowling under the waverider you would:
1) burn solid fuel inside chamber
2) spray fuel inside chamber
3) continue spraying fuel as you release the underside of the chamber.
4) go really fast.
Redundant. Flak is a German-style contraction for Flugabwehrkanone, anti-aircraft cannon.
Guess that makes me a German Nazi...
rj
Why is this thing in the works at all? The US has plenty of nuclear weapons, but we don't use any of them... so is this just going to be another one of those "cool toys" that never sees battle?
If so, why are US taxpayers footing the bill?
Interestingly enough, the CAPTCHA for me was "fetish."
We should close all trade relations with China that were opened by that ass Clinton. China is getting richer, and acquiring technology it should not have given the type of government it has and its' attitude toward human rights and freedom. Treat China as we did the Soviet Union during the cold war. Isolate them until them break and give in. And start destroying their military satellites ASAP.
Ever hear about the ASAT projects? Could this be a platform for taking out the anti-sat sats?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Or use only female pilots??
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
You know, at 4000mph I really don't think C4 or Thermite would be needed. I think friction would do the trick if there were to be any unplanned aerodynamic manipulations.
Who is John Galt?
"Even the SR-71 is said to have evaded hundreds of missiles fired at it during its long career, although some aircraft sustained minor damage."
Any articles on this? I've not heard of any SR71s taking damage...
That artist's rendering image just makes me so excited. Pretty impressive design there. Very imaginative too! It's like they took a picture of an SR-71, cut off the wings and moved the vertical stabilizers to the fuselage. Wow! Almost as cool as this image of the fabled Miata SR-71.
that the SR-71 flew over a lot more than Vietnam, and was created in direct response to the U-2 shot down by the USSR?
The soviets tried many times to shoot down the SR-71, but it was simply faster than the missiles.
Clear, Dark Skies
Clear, Dark Skies
Doesn't NASA still fly a -71 though for research purposes?
You know, at 4000mph I really don't think C4 or Thermite would be needed. I think friction would do the trick if there were to be any unplanned aerodynamic manipulations.
It's not strictly necessary, but the guy that wrote the OpSec/UAV/Self Destruct guidelines really liked C4. In fact if it wasn't for damn brass, he'd be out on the airfield testing an improved self destruct mechanism on unused B1 bombers.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
you morons will be the last to know.
Ha ha ha!
I wonder does anyone remember Project Tagboard, the Lockheed D-21 unmanned drone that could fly at around 2,700 mph to fly a pre-programmed course before ejecting its camera pack? While the idea worked it was not a paragon of reliability and the project was cancelled in 1971.
However, thanks to technology improvements since then, this new drone could probably work, thanks to better materials, fly-by-wire systems, and GPS navigation for more precise control of flight path. It would probably be launched off modified B-52 bombers like the D-21 drone.
I got one of those "can neither confirm nor deny" statements from..someone who would actually know about such things.. and he said, well implied on my direct questioning, that the internet rumors about "brilliant buzzard" were the closest to reality.
They are always two generations beyond what they admit to. One generation is the prototypes, another is the smaller scale actual deployment as in "suitable for use, and being used".
So yes, I agree with you. I also think, although no way can I prove it, that there exists a black ops pure military manned space force outside of the shuttle.
Conspiracy time, but doesn't the Aurora look a lot like the NAS? I wonder if it was axed to slow the leaking of its technology into the civilian sector.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
McBride? God help us...
It would seem reasonable that a couple of these could fly by 2012+ They would in turn operate with complete deniability.
I've been curious about something for ages regarding a very specific SR-71, namely A-12 #60-6933, permanently mounted on display at the San Diego aerospace museum.
That particular plane flew an insanely short life--something like 68 hours. Does anyone know why?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
...the headquarters for halliburton is in dubai. Hasn't seemed to slow down the tax payer cash pipeline to them. Ya, technically not a government, but close enough for government work.
All industry is global now. We give cash aid to israel, they turn around and buy alleged "USA" arms with it, then sell them to china-or try to.
Stuff like that. Tons of examples. Advanced armaments are big business, and cash talks. You got enough cash, you can buy anything, one way or the other.
War is a racket, a congame. Big budget warstuff is just a real big racket, and when it comes to *really* big money, words written on paper mean about nothing.
In the excellent "Skunk Works" about Lockheed Martin's special projects division, Ben Rich discusses the problem of masking the heat signature from air friction against the airframe of a plane flying Mach 6, saying it would show up like a meteor to a thermal detector. At that speed you can't shoot it down, but the observed can detect it thermally. I recall that he said they put additives in the SR-71's fuel to reduce the heat signature of its exhaust.
It seems that the U2 and SR-71 overflights may have had a calming effect on US military actions, as they allowed the US to better understand the USSR's level of alert, and prevented overreaction to a false belief that the USSR may have been massing for an attack.
Yeah. NOAA has one too.
I have a friend who used to work on them. We have spent more than a few hours discussing them. Nice plane.
Too bad I can't talk about our discussions.
qz
A-12 60-6933 flew 217 flights for a total of 406.3 flight hours.
http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/flighthours.php
Isn't that redundant?
A satellite can be seen from all over China. It can thus be hit, simultaneously, from all over China.
This is a simple matter. Make lots of lasers. Use them.
High end pulse lasers have down to femtosecond dwell times, presumably a microsecond pulse laser could manage some damage. Even so, a good ablative material could reduce laser effectiveness by a substantial margain.
Storm
- I flew into Osan (the base pictured in your links) many times in the 90's. The Patriot batteries were handy references to North.
- They had two Ford Mustangs that would drive alongside landing U-2's to catch the wing tips.
- I went there once and saw a U-2 nose down in a ditch, tail raised about 45 degrees. The pilot had ejected. It was a woman...not that that's relevant.
Evil is the money of root.
Nonsense. Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane were captured by the Soviet Union because Gary Powers believed in self-preservation. A robot doesn't, and will destroy itself on command.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Good intel is a great way to save lives, and I'd mod your post insightful if I weren't in the discussion and if I had points. I suspect that the end of the Cold War was partly due to both sides finally having excellent real-time intel on each other's big projects (clearly visible from space). The Cold War fed on fear and paranoia. As for England dropping bombs on German cities, yeah it happened, and war sucks. Why is it that we Americans seem to think we held the moral high-ground in WWII bombing? In Europe, we bombed mostly military targets in daylight, at huge cost to our pilots, while England did much night bombing of cities (an outstanding book about this is one my step-father edited: "No Foxholes in the Sky"). However, we dropped napalm on Japanese cities at night, and later nuked them. I'm not saying we were wrong for what we did, but it's just impolite to keep reminding our English friends of the awful things they did in the war. War sucks, and we have zero moral high ground in how we fought the war. However, we share with England the moral high ground in what we fought for. That's what made us the "good guys" and the other side the "baddies", and it's why I'm so proud of "the Greatest Generation", and all of their efforts and sacrifice.
You haven't touched on the Iraq war, but slashdot is for flaming: I think Bush would like us to think of Iraq as a war where we hold the moral high-ground. Come on... what the hell are we fighting for over there? We simply don't have a clear moral mandate. It's hard to say who the "baddies" really are. Are the Sunni bad, yet the Kurds and Shiites good? Yeah, right. I think most people living in that region would identify us as the "baddies". Had we stopped with Afghanistan, we would have retained the moral high-ground, as well as world-respect. Similarly, if Israel had either naturalized the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, or had they simply pulled out of those regions after winning the '67 war, they would still hold the moral high-ground today. The Middle East is a damned mess, and if we can't figure out who the "baddies" are, we should just get the heck out.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Yeah, the Cold War days were awful, but it had to be fought. I feel like we should make the day that the Berlin Wall fell a national holiday, not to take credit for it, but to celebrate the end of the Cold War. It's funny how most people I talk to in NC can't even remember who was president on that day (Bush Senior).
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I heard many years ago that the self-destruct mechanisms on the equipment in some of our aircraft had a major flaw: if you set them off, it would destroy the sensitive equipment, but if couldn't get out of the plane fast, you'd die. Kinda discouraged people from actually setting them off. Have we fixed this by now?
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Yeah, right. Get in line :-)
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Back around 1995 I used to work with a guy who was ex-Boeing and worked on one of their Stealth prototypes. He was most definitely not one for joking, tall tales or exageration so I was surprised when he noted that back then there was some 9 aircraft in active service that no-one knew about, 3 Airforce, 2 army and 4 naval. He also reckoned that one was equipped purely with energy weapons. If anyone had come out with this I'd have said, yeah, right but this guy really wasn't the sort to make stuff up for a joke. He also confirmed Aurora existed but added 'but that's not the good one'.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I'm not so sure that this craft will be invulnerable to surface to air missiles such as the S-300V (SA-12b) fielded by Russia, China and India. The SA-12b has a range of between 100 and 200 km and a speed of 2.4km/s (Mach 7.24) and is known to have a limited anti-ballistic missile capability. Any craft travelling at mach 6 is not going to be very manoeuvrable (less than a missile in any case) and if it were to come in range of the SAMs would very likey be shot down. It is also an interesting coincidence that the SR-71 was slowly retired as later variants of the S-300 became operational as it would have made intercepts possible even over international waters where the SR-71 usually operated (The limits of view at 80 000 feet altitude is about 640km so there good information could be gathered without endangering the crew and craft, and satellites could actually get closer to the target than the SR-71 could), but you can be sure that the SR-71 was never operated over any area where there were active and hostile S-300s.
That said, tracking a target at mach 6 is no easy task. If the plane deploys some stealth or good ecm it will be no easy target. But invulnerable I seriously doubt. In the same manner that Russia upgraded its S-27 Topol M ICBM to manoeuvre in order to make targeting by the US ABM interceptor missiles, I am pretty sure that both China and Russia would be able to develop a counter to the SR-72 relatively cheaply, probably by improving the S-300 system.
I think the real use of a system such as this would be against countries like Iran, which the US fears is going to threaten Israel.
Back in 1964 the UK was busy developing the TSR-2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2 which was pretty tasty even back then so it wuldn't take a huge jump to think that over 40 years later, the current state of the art is stuff we can only dream of and won't know about for some years to come.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
That means they won't find weapons of mass destruction or Osama far faster than before.
Do they even have self destructs I wonder? In Blackhawk Down (the book) they actually had guys go back and chuck in themite grenades into the helicopters. And in Iraq I heard the same thing about disabled M1A1s. I even heard of the USAF dropping napalm on downed equipment to destroy it. But all this is from journalists, so maybe it was bullshit.
Seems like if you had a self destruct, the guys that abandoned them would just have set a timer before they left. Maybe the safety issue makes it stupid idea in practice.
I dunno really. On one hand I think military stuff is full of explosives anyway, so a few small charges to destroy sensitive stuff is no problem, on the other I can see that it might be hard to do this if the inside is packed tight with soldiers and equipment, and maybe there are high tech ways to accomplish most of the effect of a self destruct if the computers reformat themselves and keys get revoked back at base. You certainly don't see the bad guys being able to use captured hardware, and it's not like al Qaeda will be able to reverse engineer it like the Russians could.
In that case, lobbing a thermite grenade is just to destroy any paperwork that might be left. I suspect there's an element of anthropomorphic thinking too, fragging equipment is sparing it the indignity of being captured.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The claim that the SR-71 was orininally meant to be called RS-71 and then misread by LBJ comes from the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed", written by a guy who should know what he writes (he was the head of the Lockheed Skunk Works after all ...)
Ben Rich's memories may be inaccurate, but the GP story is not just a baseless myth.
Accurately maybe, but the targeting isn't that fast. At 4,000MPH and 100,000feet you would only need a device that can rotate at 3.36 degrees a second.
4,000MPH = 1788.16m/s
100,000 feet = 30480m
arctan(1788.16/30480) = 3.35747538 degrees/s
In fact you only need to rotate 90 degrees a second to track something travailing at the speed of light from that distance.
Not sure what stops them adding some nice chrome effect panelling though.
Think global, act loco
Yeah it is what you are talking about only it was made 30 years ago the global hawk is very similar to th SR72 idea too wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21/M-21
A lot of people have made similar arguments here, and I do not dispute their basic truth. However, what's to stop someone from put a H-bomb on a supersonic plane and detonating it (not necessarily a hypothetical question)? Everyone seems to say that you would know it wasn't a nuclear weapon because it was so obviously a supersonic plane - wouldn't that make it the ideal vector for a first strike?
Of course, this leads me to wonder what an H-bomb detonation would look like if it was set off at Mach 6...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
if the SR-72 fuss is about Satellite menace, what about making invisible Satellites? I think it could be a lot cheaper, and also its necesary due to china menace of anti-satellite weapons.
Oh great, billions more tax dollars spent on a weapon we will never use. Flying this over any country other than our own will offend people and therefore it will never be used.
A lot of people in comments are claiming conspiracy about the Air Force and Lockheed Martin denying comment on the plane's existence or lack thereof. When someone says information is classified, it is not a confirmation or a denial of its existence... It simply means that any information someone might have about the possible existence of a theoretical super-plane is on a need-to-know basis. If the general public has a need to know (wouldn't happen unless it was something like Armageddon) then the general public will be informed.
There's no need to immediately jump to "It's classified so it must exist." If that was the case, then ask any Air Force officer privy to classified information for info on that information. If you asked "Are there aliens at Area 51?" I guarantee you they'd respond with "That's classified." Same thing with "Is the Air Force testing prototype beam weapons?" Classified. I know that in this case, they simply denied comment, but the same principle applies. Saying nothing on the issue is not a confirmation of a person's suspicions.
I'm not sure that SR-72 could be a valid name for the plane? During testing, wouldn't that imply a designation of XP-72 or XF-72, which has already been used? Someone that knows more about experimental aircraft and their designations may want to chime in.
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Reference the B1 Lancer Bomber. It is not stealth, like the B2, but it is designed for supersonic flight. Published specs say it travels at 1.25 Mach, so it is no match for a SR-71 or the SR-72, however it is capable of carrying 134,000 lbs of armaments.
Given the maximum sweep of the wings on the Lancer (67 degrees), a napkin calculation of asin(1/(90-67)) indicates the maximum speed is roughly Mach 2.49.
This is only a rough computation, and does not take into account engine requirements, etc., but it does suggest that the 1.25 number is understated. Perhaps... in a dive, with a tailwind...
An ideal vector for a first strike? Nope... the flight envelope of the Lancer is very different from a SR-71. I'd much rather have a SR-71 flyover than a B1. Though, it was quite neat at the OshKosh Airshow a few years back... in the morning humid air, curls of condensation whisping off the top while performing a banked turn...
But experts say enormous challenges remain. First, the SR-71's top speed was about 2,200 mph. Pushing a plane at twice that speed in the thin air of the upper stratosphere would require exceptionally powerful engines. Second, friction at high speeds could reduce stealth.
The base in question (I won't name it) still has a couple of SR71s and U2s, if Google Maps is to be believed. Of course, what I saw on Google Maps could well be not realy even aircraft.
I was stationed at this base during the cold war. There were more B-52s there than I could count, and they were all loaded with atomic bombs, waiting for WWIII. At one point my job was to make sure my vehicle was full of fuel and in good shape so when WWIII broke out I could drive the pilot to his B-52 so he could loose atomic hell on the Soviets. I spent the day playing pool and pac-man, reading, and eating the best chow I'd ever seen in a mess hall, better than most civilian restaraunts. Great duty! It was supposedly punishment for calling a higher ranking asshole an asshole. Go figure.
There were nine SR71s there. God, but those aircraft were unbelievable! They had HUGE engines on them. I've seen the space shuttle take off (actually saw every one up to Challenger, that was the first one I didn't seee take off) and the shuttle takes off SLOW. When the SR71 takes off, there is a humungous roar; a mile away the ground shakes. It rolls down the runway what looks like a short distance, does a wheelie, and takes off like a bottle rocket. In just three or four seconds it is completely out of sight!
Note that this was decades ago. The same magazine TFA is in printed (while I was stationed there) that the SR-71 flew from England to the US in half an hour, and fifteen minutes of that was at tanker speed for refueling! I'll bet somebody got their ass reamed for printing that one.
The pilots wore what looked to me like astronaut suits. I suspected that they could reach the edge of space, but they might have just been G-suits.
As I said, I was stationed with these things over thirty years ago and they are STILL like science fiction. There is also more about them that I'm not going to mention, as there was/is technology in them that is still (rightly) classified.
I'm thinking these new ones are probably equipped with Photon Torpedos and Phasers. That's how incredibly science fictiony the SR71 was.
I was talking about exploding the H-bomb from within the supersonic plane. Considering the expense of a nuclear war, I assumed that the plane was relatively expendable.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
China already can hit a satelite. They've done it. BTW, can't you see the stars at night?
Regan wasn't proposing normal lasers. He wanted to use X-ray lasers. An X-ray laser has a tank of fluid which generates the beam when excited by X-rays. The X-ray source was of course a nuclear explosion. These were one-time-use devices that could fire numerous beams at once.
Mach 6.
Hmmm, assuming a typical security underestimation of speed, you can multiply it by about 1.6 to get the real top speed of roughly...Mach 10.
Fascinating.
Oh wait, I reverse-engineered based on historical records and applied it to currently classified information vs. admitted information.
Sorry! I'm sure no one else figured out how to do this, like that woman from the article two weeks ago about how large the secret organization budgets are.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This could exacerbate a problem with the SR-71 as far as friction goes. Like with the Concorde, the SR-71 would expand due to the heat from the friction. This would cause it to leak fuel while sitting on the ground and it would have to refuel after take off and heating up. So you have an aircraft in the works that'll go almost twice as fast as its predecessor, so the plane will only expand more and that could lead to more leaking fuel while on the ground. Does the government get a discount on petroleum? It just sounds like a concern to me of wasting fuel.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I'm confused.
That's what they want you to think!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I'm wondering if this is international scare propaganda? After all there have been a few references as of late to iron curtains. Besides, wouldn't it make sense to use the existing expertise and technology gained through the years our Predators have been around and leverage that platform to accomplish this mission? Wouldn't it be better to build massive numbers of smaller, more affordable, unmanned expendable aircraft that transmit imagery to nearby AWACS and other reconnaisance units? It would also fit more closely with the supposed future model of the entire military remote controlling their respective equipment safely behind enemy lines.
You'd think we learned our lesson with the costly F-22 and would be throttling ourselves back a bit on the whole "less numbers of top notch equipment."
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
This is, of course, one reason why it's a very bad idea to use a self-aware android as a weapon.
What would an H-bomb explosion at Mach 6 look like? ;)
(Not that I think we should find out.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
US's policy is to maintain a legion of obsolete workers by never winning wars and using obsolete equipment. They're not building any new planes.
I wasn't considering at all the added energy of the plane (since that would definitely be infinitesimally small compared to the detonation energy), but I was thinking more about the momentum of the plane being imparted to the explosion and how that would distort the mushroom cloud. From the plane's (and bomb's) inertial reference frame there's this huge quasi-wind (at Mach 6, it's not like any normal wind) that should significantly distort that shape.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's also bad to use pixie dust and Maxwell's demons as weapons, but the main reason it's a bad idea to use these things as weapons is that we have no idea how to make them.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
And then you spout that Mach 4.5 number?
The SA-2 has a maximum range of about 31 miles, a maximum operating altitude of 80,000 ft, and speed of Mach 3.5. It usually carried a high explosive warhead of 287 lbs, though nuclear versions are also known.
As for the SR-71, it's top speed has never been declassified, but assuming a top speed of 3.0, and a flight altitude of 100,000 feet, by the time the missile reaches that altitude, it only has a few miles of operating range left - easy enough to keep away from until it runs out of fuel a few seconds later.
And here's an example of what happens when you try.
Clear, Dark Skies
are a Hollywood invention. If you spend a lot of time making a vehicle indestructible, then figure out a way to easily destroy it with a small device, doesn't that mean you just wasted a lot of time?
Clear, Dark Skies