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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 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.
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.
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.
It's also vulnerable to psionic telekinetic mutants who could pull the thing to Earth and then disassemble it with their minds.
I hate printers.
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.
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.
I hope you get modded up to at least Insightful +3.
(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
"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)
Interesting comment. I think it should also be pointed out that this plan would be vulnerable to magic, dragons that can fly really fast, and UFOs.
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
That's just what they want you to think. Much cheaper than actually building one.
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.
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 |
It's not just a matter of hitting it. You've got to deal with dwell time. That is, keep your DE weapon on-target long enough to pump sufficient joules to do damage.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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"
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.
You don't need anything that fancy or high-tech. The ability to shoot down a few high-altitude, high-speed targets has been around for quite a while. Sophisticated anti-missile defenses are required for hundreds, if not thousands, of VERY high-altitude, VERY high-speed targets, of which you can't afford to miss a single one because of the destruction it would cause.
Shooting down a high-mach atmospheric drone only requires decent radar and a few dozen surface-to-air missiles. You pop up a bunch directly in front of the target (that kind of a targeting solution doesn't require computer tech beyond the 1980s or so), and the shock from the explosions doesn't require a direct hit. The aircraft is trying very hard not to self-destruct at that speed, you don't need to add much to cause it to break up. Oh yeah, you don't use conventional warheads in your SAMs for targets like this. The USSR and USA had nuclear-tipped ABMs and SAMs as far back as the 60s. As the saying goes "a nuclear warhead solves a whole lot of targeting problems".
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
But when the computer develops a mind of its own, after being hit by a lightning bolt that scrambles its programming, it's the humans who are charged with stopping it before it incites a war
Fixed that plot summary for you.
Even the most 'intelligent' AI software is going to be constrained by whatever its programming is, so that really isn't anything to worry about. Especially since something as expensive as a long range recon aircraft is going to have 3 or 4 redundant systems.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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...
Tom Cruise, call your agent...
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.
I, for one, welcome our new psionic telekinetic mutant overlords.
Redundant. Flak is a German-style contraction for Flugabwehrkanone, anti-aircraft cannon.
Guess that makes me a German Nazi...
rj
Exactly, it's really quite amusing to consider that a lightning bolt would happen to strike an AI's core in such a way as to either
:P)
A: Copy/Paste code around into a sentient computer, then somehow debug it, something we can't even do right (the debugging that is
or B: Write code from scratch to make the airplane sentient.
The day anything like that happens we'll have flying AI pigs divebombing a frozen Hell while the Spice Girls sing...and people enjoy it. Course that doesn't make it any less of a fun movie, I enjoyed it. It's just amusing to me that some people, probably not the GP but I have seen people, can think that something like that is actually possible and worry about it...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
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
Damn you, MrNaz, I thought I had that planned that alone and secretly.....
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;
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.
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...
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
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 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.
IMHO, recon assets are probably the best bang-for-buck that the taxpayer gets from the defense budget. You don't always have a satellite where it needs to be to see something *when* you want...that's where these come in. Good recon can prevent wars...or at least help keep wars small (dependent on the cowboy factor in the whitehouse, of course). Far different from the nuclear stockpile...recon assets have immediate benefit and impact on national security while being used in an active role. As others have surmised...I'd be surprised if this thing wasn't already operational. I never bought the story that the air force was going to rely 100% on satellites for strategic recon...especially since the Soviets demonstrated ASAT weapons decades ago. The recent tests by the Chinese in that arena have only refocused the public on a long-existing threat to our global surveillance capabilities via our satellite systems.
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.
What kind of particle beams? Anything carrying charge will diffuse because of it's self-repulsion, and neutrons wont hurt the target enough. Some sort of neutrally charged plasma? I'm ignorant of this area, and it really does sound like mutant territory. Is there anything real? Got a good laugh from the mutant reply, though.
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;
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.
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.
"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."
Sounds very useful.. are they up there hotwiring TV satellites so that the russians can all get pay-per-view for free, which will shatter their already poor economy beyond all repair?
which is totally what she said
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
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?
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...
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?
Jean Grey?
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
Ok. Sorry about my tone. The point I was trying to make is that mass unemployment would result from a sudden drying-out of Chinese imports. That's never a good thing in my book.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
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