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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."
Not quite... "Conventional" wisdom now says that then president Lyndon B. Johnson messed up the designation in his public announcement and called it the SR-71 - and nobody wanted to correct the president. Because the strike mission had been cancelled anyway, "SR" was quickly reinterpreted as "Strategic Reconnaissance". However, a first-hand witness of those events recently revealed in Aviation Week & Space Technology, that LBJ did not misread anything. In fact, then USAF Chief of Staff LeMay simply didn't like the "RS" designator - he already objected it when the RS-70 was discussed, preferring "SR-70". When the RS-71 was to be announced, he wanted to make sure it would be called SR-71 instead. He managed to have LBJ's speech script altered to show "SR-71" in all places. Using archived copies of LBJ's speech, it can actually be verified that it reads SR-71 both in the script and on the tape recording. However, the official transcript of the speech, created from the stenographic records and handed to the press afterwards, shows "RS-71" in three places. It seems that not the president but a stenographer did accidentally switch the letters, and thus create a famous aviation "urban legend". http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/nonstan dard-mds.html#_MDS_SR71
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
If it's anything like the SR-71, it won't be an issue whether they see it or not, they'll just accelerate. The Blackbird was a horribly un-stealthy plane, seen from hundreds of miles away by radar. However, while they were shot at quite frequently, they were never destroyed by enemy fire because of their speed and altitude. If a new version is in the works and this isn't just the same rumor that's been passed around for years, then it could easily incorporate the same defense mechanism.
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.
apparently its almost impossible to make something that fast stealthy, as the gas shooting out of it is superheated to the point where it actually reflects radar. thus, they're going to detect a couple hundred mile long radar contact moving at speeds lower than a ballistic missle, and in a non ballistic path.
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)
One. It is not the SR-72. It is not even the SR-75 or the 79. Those designations are already being used for other vehicles. Nor is it likely called the AM-11 or the A-17, nor even the 'Stealth Triangle.' To the rest of us, its designation is unknown.
Two. It does not generate heat through the atmosphere, nor does it require 'fuel' in the normal sense.
Three. It is not exactly stealthy, since it 'glows' somewhat at night. However, due to its tremedous speed and its operating silence, it still maintains an element of surprise with a target.
Four. The basic shape is triangular, but that is not its only shape. You would not believe that the Air Force or any other branch of the government would reveal the stealth fighter (F-117) and the stealth bomber (B-2) to the public and the world, if they did not already have something much more advanced and in production, did you?
What can we gather from all this? Evidently, the great secret and the power of the new craft are its propulsive 'engines' which may or may not be magnetic in nature. Therefore, if they are so radical, I wonder if they can only work within the atmosphere, or if they indeed have been used to go to other nearby bodies in space?
But, what do I know? I just live near a base where they test out its weapons delivery. Your mileage may vary.
"If it doesn't work out the way you want it to, it will work out the way its supposed to be."
Have a look at the Russian S-300 family of SAMs (NATO SA-10 GRUMBLE/SA-12 GLADIATOR and successors). Max engagement altitude is ~100k ft, and top speed is in excess of Mach 6. The SR-71 lives near the edge of the S-300's engagement envelope, but it's close enough to be a real hazard, and the S-300s are pretty widely deployed. It's at least as much of a threat as the SA-2 GUIDELINE represented to the U-2.
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.
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...
Redundant. Flak is a German-style contraction for Flugabwehrkanone, anti-aircraft cannon.
Guess that makes me a German Nazi...
rj
I would think the plane would probably smack its self into any payload it carried.
This happened with the M-21 drone delivery version of the A-12, which was the predecessor type to the SR-71 Blackbird. While practicing the drone release, the drone bounced off of the shock wave (despite the prodigious thrust of its ramjet) and impacted the M-21, essentially ceaving the jet in half.
Any payload released at these speeds or altitudes has to get past the shock wave first - and that's a problem so intractable that Lockheed gave up on it....in the 60s.
According to the wikipedia article, it would have been stealthy if it weren't for the fact that it was going so darn fast and so hot that they could see it from hundreds of miles away and it appeared to be the largest thing in the sky. While it had some stealthy parts, it was horrible at it in practice.
You obviously didn't follow my suggestion to research hypersonic IR seekers. Come back when you learn to read. Further, try learning a little about compressible fluid dynamics before trying to comment on such a topic. THAAD is just one "famous" application for such technology, but there are numerous other projects around the world for lower-tier interception that use IR for final stage guidance that would be applicable. Finally, THAAD does not operate in a "vacuum"...and it must deal with the same thermal envelope problems due to its speed. Such heating has more to do with Mach number than the density of the surrounding air...altitude is largely irrelevant since the Mach number "auto-adjusts" to the altitude due to the relationship of the speed of sound to density. THAAD is not just a out-of-the-atmosphere interceptor..it is designed to engage targets both endo- and exo-atmospherically including short-range ballistic missiles. The IR seeker was designed to function in a an environment exceeding Mach 7 inside the atmosphere...
- a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs= 4KB&q=thaad+ir+seeker&btnG=Search6 70
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox
http://www.arnold.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123051
In any case...as I said before...this proves the concept...it *is* possible despite the previous poster's assertions...but I doubt a missile-based defense system would be the most viable against the proposed "SR-72"...energy weapons from perhaps an airborne platform would be my first choice for flexibility and probability of kill.
Try doing a little research before calling someone stupid, next time. Your comment drips with ignorance in the subject.
Valkyrie was worth it just to make the most beautiful airplane of all time. If you've ever seen it in person at WPAFB you'd know what I mean.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Nice try for informative mod points though.
Launching from a B-52 using a booster rocket to accelerate to the speed needed to start the drone's ramjet engine was another option. One problem there was that the radar signature of a D-21 launch looked a very similar to the launch of a Hound Dog missle so there was concern that somebody might jump to the wrong conclusion and shoot back.
In the end the poor reliability of the drone itself killed the project; of the four operational D-21 missions no film was ever successfully recovered.
As this is slashdot, I'll throw out what I've heard without siting a source. I hear the USSR shot plenty of missiles at the blackbird, but at that altitude, the missiles turned into flying bricks, unable to turn effectively. Designed for that altitude, the blackbird simply had to make a slight turn to avoid a missile.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
SA-2 missiles often flew within 300 meters of the SR-71 over North Korea and China, not hitting due to jamming. If they really wanted to score a hit, commies could launch their "flying pole" with a nuclear warhead, which nixes anything within one mile radius.
As a bonus you shouldn't forget about the giant SA-5 Gammon missile as well (russian code S-200 Vega). That thing is larger than a MiG-21, weighs 10 tons and flies slightly faster than Mach5. It has a very high-powered radio ground control system which cannot be effectively jammed. Because of its large size and huge inertia the SA-5's missile cannot catch highly manouverable fighterjets, but the SR-71 at Mach3.2 top speed and 24km altitude is barely able to turn in the thin air. The SA-5 has exhaust nozzle steering, so it can hit its targets even at 30-40km altitudes.
The SA-5 is huge cost because of its massive ground support infrastructure with bunkers and generators and whatnot, but it was in service across the WARPAC and the SR-71 did not dare to come near anywhere a Vega, which nominally has a 250km range and targets 175km away were regularly felled with it on live fire excercises held in the USSR. The kills Libya did against USAF were all scored with SA-5 Vegas.
All in all, anything airborne can be killed with SAM missiles. In fact the new S-400 system of the russkies (a vast development over the Patriot-analog S-300) has specifiec abilities to catch hypersonic airborne targets. Me thinks this new SR-72 may very well end up at a Moscow exhibition just like Gary Powers' U2 did. Not worth the effort to build a mega-SR71.
Can't be stealthy, the skin temperatures at that speed will be up to around 900K = 600+ deg C, or a nice bright orange colour, you just can't cool all that surface area, so it will stick out in IR like the proverbial canine's gonads. You can also forget stealthy radar absorbant coatings. Temperature also makes it extremely difficult to do things like communications, radar, landing gear, and especially optics at speed without heavy cooling (fuel cooling is the only real option, and there isn't that much fuel available). You also have a ridiculously bad lift to drag ratio - about 5 if you are lucky, (concord was 8 and 747 about 18), which of course means that you have a lousy range of maybe 2-3000km. Noise is also going to be huge, with a power output of more than twice what the blckbird was, even if you can't see it, you will hear it once it is 100km past you. I think the difficulty of hitting this baby is also overestimated. You don't need a Mach 6 missile, you only need an accurately guided Mach 2-3 missile with a range of 50-100km lying in the path of the SR72 and an integrated aerial defense network that is smart enough to fire the missile to intercept. Think something a little like the Patriot which is 30 year old tech. SR71A might have survived in an era of primitive missile defence systems, but no longer. Weapons deployment is also likely to be hugely difficult at such speed, given how finicky hypersonic aerodynamics are, and the added kinetic energy of 1800m/s is still only about half the energy content of TNT per kg, so it's of doubtful benefit. Development cost would be huge, and utility against other than low tech enemies (like maybe middle east) is probably not great. For the same money you would be better off creating a reusable sub-orbital rocket powered ballistic craft that could be both faster and stealthier (aerodynamics less important) as it does its fly over. It could be built to have long range efficient subsonic self-ferrying and it would be a much much more difficult target to hit. It could also deploy weapons, bigger better optics and other sensors without having trouble with hypersonic vibration and heat. And as a final added bonus, might help develop tech for the naescent space tourism/RLV industry.
From the tone, UID and nick, I assume you're about 16 years old, so not necessarily trollish, just misinformed. Here's a free geopolitics lesson, kiddo: if the US embargoes China, Walmart goes titsup. Last I checked, that's the largest employer in the country. Dig?
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
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.