America's Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back -- And Hypersonic (bloomberg.com)

A Lockheed Skunk Works executive implied last week at an aerospace conference that the successor to one of the fastest aircraft the world has seen, the SR-71 Blackbird, might already exist. Previously, Lockheed officials have said the successor, the SR-72, could fly by 2030. Bloomberg reports: Referring to detailed specifics of company design and manufacturing, Jack O'Banion, a Lockheed vice president, said a "digital transformation" arising from recent computing capabilities and design tools had made hypersonic development possible. Then -- assuming O'Banion chose his verb tense purposely -- came the surprise. "Without the digital transformation, the aircraft you see there could not have been made," O'Banion said, standing by an artist's rendering of the hypersonic aircraft. "In fact, five years ago, it could not have been made." Hypersonic applies to speeds above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The SR-71 cruised at Mach 3.2, more than 2,000 mph, around 85,000 feet.

"We couldn't have made the engine itself -- it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago," O'Banion said. "But now we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation." The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts, he said. A half-decade before, he added, developers "could not have even built it even if we conceived of it."

Comments

Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Rei]

The programme was killed because they were a pain to maintain. Advancing needs meant that they would have on top of that had to spend money on a tech upgrade (such as adding a realtime data link). Meanwhile, there were programmes hungry for its budget, including stealth aircraft (B2) and drones (Global Hawk).

That said, in today's threat environment, I'm sure mach 5 would be appreciated ;)

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Chrisq]

I thought that they were superseded by satellite imaging

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, in today's threat environment, I'm sure mach 5 would be appreciated ;)

I'm sure that at mach 5 speeds it's only viable to fly in a straight line. Must be super easy to hit such a target with a laser or microwave based weapon.

Point it to the already overheated engine exhaust ports and watch it turn into a beautiful, hi-speed ball of fire.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In part. Satellites are conveniently cheap(when amortized across the amount of area they cover; and how long they cover it; they are not 'cheap' in terms of sticker price); but don't fly any lower than earth orbit and are predictable against any vaguely competent adversary(tracking satellite launches is a hobbyist thing; and downloading their conclusions to know when you are being over-flown is easier still); and continuous coverage requires either lots of satellites to blanket one of the lower orbits; or satellites in geostationary orbits which are quite distant and have the accompanying challenges to getting good image quality.

If you really need a surprise inspection of a specific place at a specific time the gap isn't really filled; but having satellite sensors to work with keeps you from being in the dark; and you can use drones or less capable aircraft in places where adversary air defenses aren't all that interesting.

Nothing quite fills the niche; but filling the niche is an expensive specialty operation; and one that might become quite risky if anyone is capable of pumping out SAMs of similar tech level; since they don't have to support a pilot or a bunch of cameras; just have to hit you; which makes outrunning them without being substantially more advanced a bit nerve-wracking.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Greyfox]

Satellites take forever and the pixels are really chunky. They also have trouble with cloud cover. If you want a bag of pixels from today, you're probably not going to get them from a satellite. A turn-around time of three days on a satellite would be astounding. Yeah, you might be able to get some shitty off-nadir and cloudy pixels from 15-20 hours ago with an appropriately-placed briefcase full of cash, otherwise you can generally assume that the pixels you're looking at are weeks-to-months old.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[AHuxley]

The problem was other jets got better and could reach up further with some accuracy e.g. Foxhound, R-33.
The SR 71 support was coveted by other agencies wanting space budgets.
e.g. Manned Orbiting Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and the later unmanned reconnaissance satellites.
Nothing was going to be allowed to take away from the prestige of the new unmanned reconnaissance satellites.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The amount of soliloquists appearing these days is astonishing!

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But the problem with low-ish altitude is that now your hi-tech weapon needs to be placed in a fairly small region (or you need to have a lot of them and dot your landscape with them). Perhaps some kind of point interdiction of strategic targets would be possible.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[AmiMoJo]

The SR-71 was made obsolete by surface to air missiles. Even back in the day the USSR was able to hit one with a SAM, and modern designs make high altitude high speed flying basically suicide.

At first aircraft switched to flying low, staying below radar and using terrain as cover. Then came stealth technology. These days they mostly operate in areas where they can fly low and hide from surface to air missiles, or go up against opponents with old technology that is defeated by their stealth and electronic countermeasures.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Aighearach]

The military has their own satellites, they neither have to wait a long time, nor hand over briefcases full of cash.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Dutch Gun]

That doesn't take into account technologies which penetrate cloud cover, like infrared and high resolution terrain mapping radar. Your argument about "chunky" images may have been true a few decades ago, but I'd be willing to bet that modern military spy sats have excellent optics, given how good even civilian ones are these days. And since when do military services need to bribe each other with a briefcase full of cash to get up-to-date satellite intelligence? You just need to have enough stars on your uniform, or be placed highly enough in the government.

That being said, I think you hit on the correct answer, if not via the correct line of reasoning. The dominant feature of a spyplane is its flexibility in deployment. Any competent enemy will know exactly when spy satellites are passing overhead, being easily observed and predictable in motion. A spyplane can provide very focused reconnaissance whenever and however military planners want.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Applehu Akbar]

And because improvements in satellite tech made its spying role obsolete. But good hypersonic engines have all kinds of other uses.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Camaro]

I believe you're thinking of the U-2, which was shot down twice. On 1 May, 1960, over the Soviet Union, and 14 October, 1062, over Cuba.

No SR-71s were ever lost to enemy fire, although they were certainly shot at. The North Vietnamese shot over 800 missiles at it, without scoring a hit.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[mjwx]

In part. Satellites are conveniently cheap(when amortized across the amount of area they cover; and how long they cover it; they are not 'cheap' in terms of sticker price); but don't fly any lower than earth orbit and are predictable against any vaguely competent adversary(tracking satellite launches is a hobbyist thing; and downloading their conclusions to know when you are being over-flown is easier still); and continuous coverage requires either lots of satellites to blanket one of the lower orbits; or satellites in geostationary orbits which are quite distant and have the accompanying challenges to getting good image quality.

Satellites were also hard to detect and shoot down. ASAT weapons are relatively expensive.

The SR-72 was not undetectable, quite the contrary, anything travelling at Mach 5 will show up on weather radar (even if it's just the wake turbulence). Its main defence was that it flew so fast that by the time you've targeted and launched your fastest missile at it, the SR-72 was out of range. This can be countered in the same way they've countered stealth bombers, by launching missiles into its flight path in advance. Any modern integrated defence system can do this with ground or air based missiles.

Manoeuvring whilst travelling at 1,500m/s isn't easy either.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

SAMs were no threat to the SR-71. I doubt that they will be a threat to the SR-72.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[gtall]

Foxhound is the MiG-31, the R-33 is a missile fired by the MiG.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[swillden]

In part. Satellites are conveniently cheap(when amortized across the amount of area they cover; and how long they cover it; they are not 'cheap' in terms of sticker price); but don't fly any lower than earth orbit and are predictable against any vaguely competent adversary

Against a highly competent adversary they're sitting ducks, tracking nice, predictable orbits and completely defenseless against a canister of ball bearings in their path. Given that, there may be value in having a more survivable and harder-to-stop camera platform. It may even be worth telling potential adversaries about your hypersonic spyplane in order to deter them from building anti-satellite capabilities. Though if they're sufficiently competent they may respond by building anti-satellite capabilities and their own hypersonic spyplane.

Then you need to develop practical terawatt lasers with precise aiming and tracking, at which point nothing in the sky is survivable, regardless of how high it flies or how fast it moves. Then come the hovertanks with iridium armor, crewed by hard-bitten mercenaries... er, I guess I've strayed into science fiction.

Getting back to reality, if you believe you may enter into a conflict with a technologically-advanced adversary, or perhaps if you wish to ensure you do not enter into a conflict with a technologically-advanced adversary, it may make sense to build a hypersonic spyplane.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

When it literally takes an act of congress to get a satellite "re positioned" to where you might need it, when you might need it. No there were still valid needs for the SR-71. In fact the initial camera / control systems for drones were tested on the SR-71. Nothing like putting a nail in your own coffin before you are retired.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[ScentCone]

over the Soviet Union, and 14 October, 1062, over Cuba

And just like that, four years later, the Battle Of Hastings.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[ceoyoyo]

There's a story from one of the SR-71 crews about being shot at with a Russian SAM. It missed, but came close. If the SR-71 hadn't been retired one would have been shot down eventually.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[jimbolauski]

SAMS are not a big worry. A hypersonic plane travels at least a mile a second, if the time it takes from initial detection to firing is 3 minutes, the SAM will have to chase down the plane, it would need to have a range of 500 miles to catch it.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Camaro]

And it was William's use of air power to overfly Harold's armies that proved decisive!

Thanks for catching that stupid typo, though. Didn't catch that in Preview even!

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know, put thrusters on the satellite, like they do. Orbits can change, some finite number of times.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Greyfox]

There are some aspects of flying a satellite that are the same no matter who you are. One is that the satellite can't just go anywhere. You have to wait until it gets to what you want to take a picture of, and the sun has to be in the correct position. If you look too far left or right, your images will have a lot of distortion and it'll be hard to determine individual pixel coordinates. If your satellite does happen to be right over what you want to look at right now, you can't just tell it to turn and look there. You have to wait until it's over an antenna to send it instructions and then wait until it's over another antenna to get its images. And you still have to compete with other people for satellite time because the satellite can't look at two different places at the same time. And once you get the images back, you need to get them into a useful format, which means a fair bit of work to determine the exact coordinates of various features in the image, assessing whether cloud cover is blocking what you want to look at, and figuring out whose hands to put that imagery in. If you're flying your own satellites, you've also already handed over some briefcases full of cash. Anything involving satellites always involves briefcases full of cash.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[AmiMoJo]

Yes, thanks for the correction.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or as parent said air defenses down the flight path are launched in advance of the aircraft arrival. Kinda like crooks cannot outrun Motorola.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Rei]

There were over 1000 recorded attempts to shoot them down. None came particularly close. Among other problems, most antiaircraft missiles (particularly air-to-air) rely on flight surfaces designed for maneuvering in the denser air at lower altitudes and become poor at tracking at SR-71 flight altitudes. Most missiles couldn't win in a tail chase either. And they weren't designed to deal with the high net velocity of closing head-on (more similar to those for ABM defenses). The low radar cross section made it even more challenging, reducing the amount of time they had to prepare.

The Soviets and/or other anti-US powers would surely eventually have gotten the job done with advancing tech and enough tries, but at the time of its retirement, it still flew in a pretty safe envelope. Not perfectly safe. but pretty safe.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Doctor Memory]

Spy satellites had optics good enough to read billboards back in the 80s, I wouldn't be surprised if they could read license plates today.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was William's use of air power to overfly Harold's armies that proved decisive!

Thanks for catching that stupid typo, though. Didn't catch that in Preview even!

Well, if it wasn't for Queen Victoria's Dirigible Corp, we'd all be speaking Esperanto now!

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[plague911]

Or you put them in a satellite or a balloon. Not to say there is not a counter to those options. It is just a very very complicated form of chess, with moves and counter moves.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

God damn you're stupid. Not even creimer would say such monumentally false and stupid things.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It is implausible that a novel kind of laser or microwave weapon capable of hitting or disabling a hypersonic vehicle would fit into a satellite or, even worse, a balloon. The energy requirements alone are significant, not to mention stabilization, targeting, target detection etc. At best, you could hope to fit it onto a heavy land vehicle.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

The three minute timeline was obsolete by the end of the Vietnam War. 20 years ago, the entire fight was over in 45 seconds. The fight is longer now due only to the range of the strategic SAMS like the S-300 and THAAD.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And just like that, four years later, the Battle Of Hastings.

No need to haste things, right?

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

With modern guidance, though, hitting a hypersonic vehicle with limited maneuvering capabilities head-on should be significantly easier, though. (Its comparative fragility and high relative speed isn't going to make it any more resilient to a cloud of small tungsten balls either.)

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[drinkypoo]

Satellites were also hard to detect and shoot down. ASAT weapons are relatively expensive.

Now that the work on satellite-to-satellite communications has been done, that's not true any more, since the difference between a satellite with that technology and a satellite-killing satellite is one of laser power. Now it's relatively inexpensive to kill satellites, as long as you can afford to launch satellites. I'd bet money that at least the US and Russia already have satellite-killing satellites in orbit, masquerading as something else. It would be frankly irresponsible not to.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

the SAM will have to chase down the plane

Why? Chasing it means you're already too late. You absolutely need to strike it as it is approaching. It's also very helpful in terms of using the vehicle's own kinetic energy against it.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You have to wait until it's over an antenna to send it instructions and then wait until it's over another antenna to get its images.

I'm pretty sure this in particular has been eliminated by modern satellite-based communication networks. I mean, NASA has had TDRS for decades; you think the military is less advanced in this respect? (The other issues remain, of course.)

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[nitehawk214]

The latest version of the S-300 might be able to go Mach-6.

However, there were SAMs that could match the SR-71's top speed during its day. The problem is that it took them so long to get up to altitude and speed that the SR-71 was long gone by the time they arrived. Same story for air launched missiles from the Mig-25.

SAMs were a threat, they could not simply ignore them. But, as the track record proves, the SR-71 and its pilots were just better than any defense thrown at them.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[rogoshen1]

i figured it was killed because spy satellites were faster, cheaper, and safer to operate?

kinda like how subs supplanted ICBM's.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Spy satellites had optics good enough to read billboards back in the 80s

Very large billboards, perhaps.

I wouldn't be surprised if they could read license plates today.

Well, I for one would be because that would violate the diffraction limit for practical optics.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[SandorZoo]

Nowadays there's the option of a constellation of micro-satellites like Earth-i's Vivid-i that use off-the-shelf components, get reasonable resolution (sub 1m), and only cost a few 10s of millions each to buy and launch. Many nations could afford to maintain a large enough constellation of those to provide blanket coverage - Earth-i reckon 15 of them can image most places on Earth 3 times a day. This stuff is only going to become cheaper.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Jon Peterson]

And since when do military services need to bribe each other with a briefcase full of cash to get up-to-date satellite intelligence?

All the time! Services and agencies are not only constantly competing with each other for limited resources, they also like to try and undermine each other by deliberately not sharing intelligence.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Type44Q]

Very large billboards, perhaps.

KH11's were known for picking up details much smaller than that.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Type44Q]

Meanwhile, there were programmes hungry for its budget

Lol! Like its direct replacement??

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yes, but not even KH11s can violate the laws of physics. The theoretical diffraction limit for a KH-11-sized primary mirror at ~200 km is around 5 cm. Count optic imperfections, diagonal instead of horizontal separation, and atmospheric disturbances into this ideal and you're in practice at the point of reading only fairly large characters on billboards. (Unless US billboards are way bigger than ours.)

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[LifesABeach]

It does not have VTOL, it does not have a Gatling Laser. Billions spent at the DOD, with nothing show for it. Damn, now I'm starting to figit!

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[plague911]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... may do the trick.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[jdschulteis]

I'd bet money that at least the US and Russia already have satellite-killing satellites in orbit, masquerading as something else. It would be frankly irresponsible not to.

Hopefully, if such satellite killers exist, they capture and drag their targets out of orbit instead of blowing them up, that would be truly irresponsible.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellites take forever and the pixels are really chunky. They also have trouble with cloud cover. If you want a bag of pixels from today, you're probably not going to get them from a satellite. A turn-around time of three days on a satellite would be astounding. Yeah, you might be able to get some shitty off-nadir and cloudy pixels from 15-20 hours ago with an appropriately-placed briefcase full of cash, otherwise you can generally assume that the pixels you're looking at are weeks-to-months old.

The pixels prefer to be called "big boned," not chunky.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[careysub]

I believe you're thinking of the U-2, which was shot down twice. On 1 May, 1960, over the Soviet Union, and 14 October, 1062, over Cuba.

No SR-71s were ever lost to enemy fire, although they were certainly shot at. The North Vietnamese shot over 800 missiles at it, without scoring a hit.

No, he is right. The USSR did develop a missile capable of downing an SR-71. It was the S-200, also known as the SA-5 Gammon (NATO code name), which entered service in 1966. Now, none of these actually shot down an SR-71, because the U.S. had the good sense not to put an SR-71 within range of one while over-flying Soviet territory.

The S-200/SA-5 was a 2.5 km/s (Mach 7-8) missile able to engage at an altitude of 40,000 m, versus the Mach 3.3 and 26,000 m limits of the SR-71.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting something: the KH11 is moving.

Now, under normal circumstances, that would seem to be a disadvantage. However, with advanced processing and interferometry, what it means is that your effective aperture is increased to the distance that mirror has moved sideways over the time interval (at least along that axis).

Surprise! Now you can see more detail.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[drinkypoo]

Hopefully, if such satellite killers exist, they capture and drag their targets out of orbit instead of blowing them up, that would be truly irresponsible.

Why go to all that trouble? Just burn their sensors and communications equipment, and let their orbit decay. Actually blowing them up would take more energy, so it would cost more.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I have no idea how you propose to do interferometry with a single moving device using light arriving at different times. This would have to involve some kind of theoretical optics breakthrough that I, or the whole world for that matter, would be likely to heard about. Astronomers in particular would have been overjoyed already. And advanced processing only gets you so far. Surely, there are ways to extract the information if the character of the target is very well known (such as the fact that it's a static shape on a vertical plane at a changing, but known relative position and orientation with regards to your imaging device), but this only gets you so far. Most of satellite intelligence does not consist of reading billboards. (Not to mention that reading vertical surfaces is almost the worst case for satellite imagery, only second to to reading surfaces tilted downwards.)

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That would eliminate some of the issues but otherwise has very few benefits compared to a land device. In particular, relative to the hypersonic vehicle, it's almost fixed in place. So it's not much better than an equally fixed land-based emitter (perhaps with the exception of mitigating some atmospheric effects, but at the cost of high visibility to the enemy and high vulnerability, and potentially lower energy output), or a high-velocity specialized SAM with proper guidance and kill vehicle (which could also potentially cover a significantly larger area than a land-based laser could by virtue of being able to "relocate" the kill vehicle into the target's path by flying perpendicular to its estimated trajectory).

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[plague911]

I didn't say it was a perfect solution. Just an interesting one. It would also be good for covering mountainous terrain. Thinking of a semi mobile SAM with extended LOS for energy defenses.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

the program was mothballed; we dont have an imediate need for super sonic or hyper...(lame) sonic... tactical nuclear delivery platforms. but when armchairing "future war" scenarios, its still a great ace in the hole.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Thelasko]

I thought that they were superseded by satellite imaging

I've heard a rumor that the North Koreans have been able to avoid detection of sensitive equipment by moving it while spy satellites are not overhead. They are apparently tracking spy satellites, and are good at it.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

The BEST country God has ever created in his infinite wisdom! #blessed #freedumbs

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

The expensive part of keeping things in space is establishing an orbit. A long range missile can be fired from fighter aircraft reaching a great many satellites since the missile only needs to fly a few more miles up to intercept the target.

My point is, an attack satellite isn't really needed (the idea of it was used as a bluff that contributed to the breakup of the USSR.) Land based ballistic missiles are capable of intercepting satellites at fractions of the cost.

https://www.airspacemag.com/as-next/aim-high-180963955/

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I for one would be because that would violate the diffraction limit for practical optics.

More photons collected from target referenced to non-stationary lightfields the larger effective aperture. Modern space-based ISR use optical frequency computational surfaces (superconducting plasmonics).

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic-aperture_radar

You're joking, right?

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

This might come as a surprise to you, but planes can change course.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

I'm sure that at mach 5 speeds it's only viable to fly in a straight line.

I don't know why you would be sure of such a ridiculous thing.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

He watched this movie and figured that it made him an expert on soviet aviation.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

Now, none of these actually shot down an SR-71, because the U.S. had the good sense not to put an SR-71 within range of one while over-flying Soviet territory.

I've never beat the shit out of Mike Tyson because he had the good sense to avoid me. But I like totally could.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Nivag064]

I believe you're thinking of the U-2, which was shot down twice. On 1 May, 1960, over the Soviet Union, and 14 October, 1062, over Cuba.

No SR-71s were ever lost to enemy fire, although they were certainly shot at. The North Vietnamese shot over 800 missiles at it, without scoring a hit.

They had actually only just engaged the Hyperdrive when the missile hit. So the hit was last century, but the plane came down in 1062.

The US base on Cuba is mostly there to guard the top secret archaeological site where it had crashed.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

not even KH11s can violate the laws of physics.

I am certain Trump abolished the laws of physics soon after his inauguration. It was probably his first successful action!

... and in the final days, the Trump shall sound, and the four Norse men with paperclips ...

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And so do missiles. They're even better at changing course than airplanes.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Huh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic-aperture_radar

You're joking, right?

Synthetic-aperture_radar

radar

I'm sorry, when exactly did we switch to a radar discussion? You can't read lettering using a SAR.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

So, tell me ... when you launch a missile at an approaching airplane, and then that airplane turns 90 degrees, how likely is your missile to "strike it as it is approaching"?

How successful are you going to be at "using the vehicle's own kinetic energy against it"?

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Shotgun]

Why would it need to read letters on billboards? Generally these images are used to monitor the movements of truck and armaments convoys. They're not going to be checking the truck's registration with the DMV.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[swillden]

Or, you know, put thrusters on the satellite, like they do. Orbits can change, some finite number of times.

Slowly. Not likely to interfere with the targeting of an anti-satellite missile, even if the launch were detected early, and immediate action taken.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same technique can be used with light. You are aware that light and radio waves are the same thing??

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You seem to be ignoring dynamics and frames of reference. An airplane can't suddenly turn 90 degrees. For example, at Mach 6, even using the optimum acceleration vector theoretically possible with an 8 g magnitude (which is impossible for an airplane, although it's possible for a rocket in vacuum, for example), such a direction change would take half a minute. For a turning airplane, it would take about thirty five seconds. And obviously, if the airplane survives, the target area will already have been denied to its surveillance equipment since it's dozens of kilometers off course, and/or potentially heading into more missiles, (especially if you fire a spread accounting for the possible maneuvering). On the other hand, missiles have little problem with maneuvering at dozens of gs, so really the only option for the hypersonic vehicle is to turn away and run. Again, area denial success!

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The same technique of illuminating the target with a kilowatt-power coherent EM wave source, only in visible range? And additionally filtering the return signal out from natural sunlight? Yeah, that's exactly the kind of breakthrough I was referring to. Where is it?

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Note that it was not my suggestion that they needed to.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Richard_at_work]

At least 5 U-2s operated by Taiwanese pilots were shot down by China during the 1960s.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[c6gunner]

I'm not ignoring anything; I'm well aware of how long such a turn would take. I'm also aware of how far ahead you would have to launch a missile if you actually hoped to intercept such an aircraft. If you do the math, under pretty much any circumstance your missile ends up chasing the plane. The only circumstance in which you get a head-on hit is one in which the pilot is drunk, blind, and unconscious.

Of course the standard evasive manoeuvre for the SR-71 was never to turn 90 degrees; it was to climb, which makes your missile's job even more difficult. Their record of success speaks for itself.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case "suitcases full of cash" translates into political capital. For example U.S Join Special Operations Command wants a satellite to concentrate on a specific village in Iraq's Al-Anbar province. Meanwhile CIA wants the same satellite to provide imagery intelligence in a different area. Who gets their way?
If they have an aircraft like the SR-72 under their direct command then JSO can simple send it. Else their bosses at the Pentagon and Langley will be spending political capital trying to get someone on the National Security Council to agree their use is more important to national security.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The only circumstance in which you get a head-on hit is one in which the pilot is drunk, blind, and unconscious.

The missile in this scenario has a distinct advantage. Compared to a hypersonic fireball, it can be almost invisible. The hypersonic fireball has a distinct disadvantage. Compared to a normal airplane, it has a lot more stuff to deal with at its nose. What are chances the vehicle will detect a properly designed, low-observable approaching missile in time? If a Mach 4 missile is detected 50 km away by the Mach 6 vehicle, there's only 15 seconds to react. The vehicle will only have a 9 km cross range at that point (assuming it starts turning *instantly*, which is much more difficult for a winged plane than it is for a missile with X-shaped aerodynamic surfaces, but hey, it's screwed anyway, so what's the point...), while the missile could either have a 34 km cross range at 30 g transversal in the same time, or alternately, cover the same cross range in 8 seconds.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Of course the standard evasive manoeuvre for the SR-71 was never to turn 90 degrees; it was to climb, which makes your missile's job even more difficult. Their record of success speaks for itself.

Their record of success more likely speaks of obvious avoidance of any advanced SAM systems that were cropping up at that time.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[chihowa]

Aperture synthesis works for optical wavelengths, too. The advantage of a smoothly translating satellite (versus multiple discrete cameras) is that you have a aperture that increases in size continuously with time (and you can get data from every point along the line, exposure time allowing).

The difficulties then remain that the observed angle of the target changes with image time, as well as the path through the atmosphere, the length of the path through the atmosphere, and the atmospheric makeup at the time of the image. It's not that bad of a problem, really.

I think that the AC was mixing up synthesis imaging and interferometry...

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so easy.

First you have to detect it in time to load and train your missiles or whatever you're going to use to shoot at it with on the target properly.

Secondly your missile/projectile needs time to travel to the interception point, it bloody well can't teleport there, you still have to obey the laws of physics.

Thirdly you need to find out exactly where this point is, and at these speeds even "limited manoeuvring" could make quite the difference. Turning just a degree could make you miss with a country mile.

Fouthly, if you are going to hit the target in your airspace, you will probably have to shoot at the target while it's still in international airspace unless you plan to shoot it down somewhere over central Russia - which of course means it has to be on it's way there in the first place, a rather unlikely scenario.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask the Chinese , since they tested a kinetic kill device on one of their own old weather sats, and made a heck of a mess doing it

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern radio astronomy uses the Earth's orbit to allow for greater distances between observations in order to determine the distance to the furthest recorded galaxy. Additionally, other observers are combining multiple radio telescopes to provide greater detail to their observations.

The main elements are knowing where you are and what time it is when you are there, I will leave it as an exercise for the gentle reader to apply this to satellite imagery

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the mid-90's I tail-gated myself into a sales meeting of satellite imagery providers at a GIS conference
I was as stunned by the abilities (I was working with SPOT, ERDAS and aerial photography at the time) and the cost.
Truckloads of cash, unless your briefcase is full of T-Bills

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can google the theories that either the Mig-31 or S300 were the death knell for the SR-71

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Cederic]

1 - loading missile and pointing them up can be done any time, including long before the aircraft is spotted
2 - you detect aircraft crossing your border. 500 miles away you launch missiles. It has a few minutes to gain altitude
3 - you launch multiple missiles. Shit, something moving mach 6 has a relatively low set of options for turning
4 - countries able to develop this level of tech would include China (plenty of space once something crossed its border), Russia (same) and India (oh, look). Sure, Switzerland are going to struggle but maybe that's why they're neutral

I'm not going to pretend it's easy but shit, give me a room full of weapons engineers and even I could design something that would knock down the SR71 these days.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[EETech1]

Right! Dangit, they just keep gaining altitude!

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

SR-71 was good but U2 still has The Edge.

Re: Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. True, but then you'd have to have highly advanced and expensive systems ready to go at a moments notice constantly, everywhere in any direction.

2. Well. Detecting at the border means the aircraft, if it moves at Mach 6+ will be far away from it when your missile arrives. Question is, did it want to go that far beyond it? Are you prepared to shoot it down in international airspace, provided that your missiles can even catch it?

3. Limited options for turning goes both ways, your missiles won't be any gymnasts either. And they will have to deal with drag in a completely different way compared to the aircraft. Pure physics will put a brake on them until they reach altitude, meanwhile the aircraft is briskly moving on.

4. The point was never that it would be impossible to stop, or that it would be able to go absolutely everywhere. The point is that it's a more flexible system that can be deployed at any time and still cover significant amounts of interesting areas, since dealing with it requires such a depth in your defence that it's basically only Russia, the US, China and India which can really hide anything from it. And if you're going to hide everything beyond it's eyes, that's going to get impractical and crowded pretty fast.

Point still stands. Neither impossible nor cheap, but definitely "not so easy".

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I mean that was part of the Star Wars program in like, the 80s. Didn't the Russians kill an American sat back in the day just as a proof of concept? I'm sure both nations have even more advanced capabilities now.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

> SR-71 was good but U2 still has The Edge.

I can see those fighter planes.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Aighearach]

That was all true 40 years ago, too.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[DarthVain]

While kind of the same thing, but rather in 3 dimensions as opposed to just speed, the other thing was the fact that it flew at altitudes not normally transversed by other aircraft.

i.e. not only would said defense need to target and launch said missile, it would also have to climb to the required elevation to intercept which adds another challenge.

As I recall the issue with them was maintenance, and much of that to do with materials science. I remember one of the astounding facts about it was on the ground, it apparently leaked fuel like a sieve. It wasn't until it got up to speed that just the air friction would heat up the metal that it would expand and tighten up. Pretty crazy to think about it.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[stoatwblr]

"Just burn their sensors and communications equipment, and let their orbit decay. "

Or their fuel tanks/reaction wheels - bigger/easier targets and if you can pinhole the fuel tank then it's only got ion thrusters to work with - which moves it into "predictable orbit" territory and probably wont be interpreted by the owners as a hostile action (more likely a bit of debris)

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[stoatwblr]

"Satellites take forever"

Only if you have one or two of them.

"and the pixels are really chunky."

They're getting better all the time - and if the civilian ones are as good as we're seeing now that means the military lenses are an order of magnitude better.

"They also have trouble with cloud cover."

Nope. Clouds are transparent at certain IR and radio frequencies. You don't have to rely soley on 400-900nm

"A turn-around time of three days on a satellite would be astounding. "

Then be astounded, because satellites have been achieving that for a decade at least. The trick is to use more than one.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[stoatwblr]

"North Koreans have been able to avoid detection of sensitive equipment by moving it while spy satellites are not overhead"

That's not unusual. All the militaries do this.

The only countermeasure is to increase the number of satellites so they can't do anything useful between passes.

Re:Speed wasn't SR-71's problem.

[Thelasko]

That's one advantage of a spy-plane though. It's movement isn't as predictable as a satellite.

Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

You would probably need 2000 miles to turn that 180 degrees!

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turning?

How far enough away do you start the turn signals blinking??

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[tinkerton]

'Agile' means that it can turn!

Re: Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Agile meant a lousy programming shop.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[oobayly]

Not quite, but it's still quite a lot. At 85,000ft the speed of sound is about 300m/s (690mph) which is about 88% of that at sea level (340m/s). So at 85,000ft and Mach 5 it'll be travelling at about 1,500m/s (3,450mph). Depending on how many g the pilot wants to feel the turn radius might be as high as 343km (213mi) at 1.2g and as low as 47km (29mi) if the airframe can survive a 5g turn (the SR-71 had a limit of about 3g).

Because I like speadsheets, for a given g-force that the pilot feels, the turn radius & time to do a u-turn.
g(pilot) - radius(km) - radius(mi) - time
1.2 - 343 - 213 - 12:02
1.5 - 204 - 127 - 07:08
2.0 - 132 - 82 - 04:36
2.5 - 99 - 62 - 03:29
3.0 - 81 - 50 - 02:49
3.5 - 68 - 42 - 02:23
4.0 - 59 - 37 - 02:04
4.5 - 52 - 32 - 01:49
5.0 - 47 - 29 - 01:38

Re: Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[rickb928]

Agile means able to quickly avoid. Both in aircraft and programming.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[tinkerton]

I would think though that it's faster to take your foot off the throttle when you initiate such a turn. To use a car metaphor.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Bearhouse]

Nice work, but you can up the loads - building 'planes that can survive +10g is not trivial, but very doable...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and "modern pilots can typically handle a sustained 9 g"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Unfortunately, AA missiles can do 30 to 50g (depending on if their rocket motor is still burning or not...), so your best option here is outrunning the buggers at extreme altitude not out-turning them...and good luck with that, since mach 5+ is easy for modern missiles...

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on how many g the pilot wants to feel

Except that the plan is for the SR-72 to be unmanned.

I expect that g-forces will still be an issue, though. Hard manoeuvering stresses the airframe of modern fighters, and they're designed for it. The SR-72, optimised for speed, will probably be more fragile.

Re: Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

This!!

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

To use a car metaphor, you hit the brakes just hard enough BEFORE you enter the turn such that you can apply 100% throttle all the way through the turn without running off the road.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[tinkerton]

Wait, wait, since this thing will be understeering like a pig you'll need trailbraking al the way to the apex. Not easy without an apex.

Also you'd be surprised how hard your car will be braking if you just take your foot off the throttle at mach5.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[oobayly]

Yeah, humans can handle high g loads, especially with suits and training, and like you say modern aircraft are capable of surviving higher loads than their fleshy inhabitants! Plus, as somebody mentioned it appears that this will be unmanned.

The reason I went with 5g is because of the upper limit of the SR-71 (3g), plus something that's designed to fly at hypersonic speeds is unlikely to be built to deal with the high loading that an F-22 - for instance - can handle (9g x 150%). You also have to keep the aircraft within the flight envelope, which gets narrower at high altitudes and speeds. Encountering a compressor stall at Mach 5 doesn't sound appealing.

For reference, at 9g, the turn radius is a mere 25km, and a 180 would take just 54 seconds.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[oobayly]

There's only so much speed you can lose when you're flying at and above 80,000ft. Take the SR-71's flight envelope. At 70,000ft, you didn't want to be below 2M, and not above 3M, at 80,000ft the range was even less (2.75M to 3.3M). Plus the whole point was to be faster than any threats (or at least be out of range by the time they reacted).

Re: Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iâ(TM)m always ready for a good scrum!

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Encountering a compressor stall at Mach 5 doesn't sound appealing.

Not likely to happen. At Mach 5, you're flying on [SC]Ramjet, no compressors involved. Even the SR-71 was something like 80% ramjet at speed.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[slacktide]

Other missiles have been built to withstand far higher acceleration and speeds. HIBEX had lateral acceleration of 300g during experimental testing, and in-service, Nike Sprint accelerated at 100g to Mach 10.

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Except that the plan is for the SR-72 to be unmanned

That would be a shame--it would deny pilots like Brian Shul the chance to gloat!

L.A. Speed Check

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[Anne Thwacks]

you'd be surprised how hard your car will be braking if you just take your foot off the throttle at mach5.

I drive a Ford - I'd be astonished if it did Mach 0.5!

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[tinkerton]

You have to kind of uh, extrapolate from your experience at Mach 0.1 ..

Re:Agile at hypersonic speeds?

[oobayly]

Yeah, compressor stall was completely incorrect, I was thinking of inlet unstarts which in at least one case had catastrophic (and fatal) results. I can see no reason why a ramjet couldn't suffer from unstarts.

No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

The SR-71 was developed (like all military programs) to serve a specific need: the Communist nations were closed off to the world and their secret police did an enthusiastic and effective job catching traitors. America was simply cut off from intelligence on the ground. Hence, the super-fast spy plane was developed, capable of violating borders guaranteed by international law, racing in to take photos, and racing back out again before the outraged victim country could defend itself. Moreover this was when the space program was in its infancy, satellite photography was unreliable and took a long time from photo to print. There's simply no need today for a spy plane like this.

The Communists never developed a similar plane because if they wanted intelligence, they just sent out a man from their embassy with a camera and a pencil. There was also no shortage of Americans who either believed in Communism or who were easily bought off. At one point, the head of the FBI's counterintelligence agency was a foreign spy.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

And potentially hostile nations still have zero capability to interfere with spy satellites, right?

Re:No need for it any more

[shortscruffydave]

The SR-71 was developed (like all military programs) to serve a specific need: the Communist nations were closed off to the world and their secret police did an enthusiastic and effective job catching traitors. America was simply cut off from intelligence on the ground. Hence, the super-fast spy plane was developed, capable of violating borders guaranteed by international law, racing in to take photos, and racing back out again before the outraged victim country could defend itself. Moreover this was when the space program was in its infancy, satellite photography was unreliable and took a long time from photo to print. There's simply no need today for a spy plane like this.

Or, to put it more succinctly, to do the same job as the U2,but while travelling fast enough not to get shot down by a Soviet missile.

I agree with you though, given state of the art in space-based imagery, I don't really see a need for this - certainly not at the cost it is likely to carry.,

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if America stopped being such a global dick, it wouldn't have to worry about hostile nations. Maybe try not being a dick? Not bombing the shit out of countries? You'd be surprised how angry and hostile people get when American drones are killing innocent civilians in the pursuit of terrorists that American policies created in the first place. I'm just saying, maybe give it a try.

Re:No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

But these these the Americans spy on their allies rather than on their (potential) adversaries. They have done so by any means at their disposal already, so why not add spy planes?

Re:No need for it any more

[Viol8]

With anti-satellite weapons as demonstrated by china a few years back a threat, possibly they're thinking that the days of LEO spy satellites may be numbered in a war scenario.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

And laser based weapons won't negate any advantages of speed, right?

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Every country is a global dick. That's how foreign relations works. North Korea is a total dick with their nukes. China is an epic dick claiming other countries' islands in the South China Sea. You don't get to opt out of an arms race.

Re:No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Flexibility.

Satellites have known orbits and are easily predicted and even countered. They are basically like security cameras. They can easily be dealt with in one way or another, either by only letting them see what you want them to see, or if what you want to hide is on such a scale it can't really be hidden, simply blind or destroy them.

Spy planes are more like a patrol. They show up unpredictably with short notice, are a lot more manoeuvrable and on the whole quite a bit more difficult to deal with.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

You've mentioned 2 countries. I'd add a few more, but your 'every county' claim is obvious bullshit. Those that indulge in this dickish behaviour could take a leaf out of the books of those countries who don't indulge in economic OR political imperialism

Re:No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Very few people get thrown to the wolves and stay true. HUMINT is the last and only the actionable intelligence available if you are trying to avoid war. Spy planes like the SR-71 give a picture with zero context. High-speed recon to confirm intel from the field is valuable, but otherwise it's useless (unless you want to lie and start a war.)

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every country are global dicks, just those who try to prove something.

China is an epic dick claiming other countries' islands in the South China Sea
China is trying to claim what they believe is theirs in the past. I think if you want to talk about being "dicks" confiscating their land and selling them opium for years would be a real dick move.

North Korea is a total dick with their nukes. - Can you enlighten us with who started this? Go back in history, they had a war to become communist.. someone invaded them and eventually gave up and went home??

Not specific to Korea, but you know this line right:
"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
  Lyndon B. Johnson

Yet you went anyhow.. why?

Why does it matter if North Korea is communist? They are like 10,000 miles away from the US and you could have just left them alone.

Re: No need for it any more

[Drethon]

Maybe if America stopped being such a global dick, it wouldn't have to worry about hostile nations. Maybe try not being a dick? Not bombing the shit out of countries? You'd be surprised how angry and hostile people get when American drones are killing innocent civilians in the pursuit of terrorists that American policies created in the first place. I'm just saying, maybe give it a try.

So Syria and Russia aren't an issue? Plus they don't break down which countries in the international coalition actually did the killing. The US leads to coalition but other countries are involved.

http://www.iamsyria.org/syrian...

Re: No need for it any more

[AHuxley]

The gov in Syria invited Russia in. Govs can do that. Together they stop terrorists.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, every country is NOT a global dick. Holland is not a global dick. Botswana is not a global dick. Philippines is not a global dick. There is a very short list of warmongering dick countries and the USA is at the top of that list. Hell, we're closing in on a year with the Orange Dick in charge and America hasn't even started a single war yet. What's stopping you? Go on, start bombing! You know you want to.

Re:No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless your satellite is called "Zuma" ?

One that can't be tracked easily and that you claim to be a mission failure. You now have a spy satellite

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single person killed in the syrian civil war is the fault of the US and its allies (Arabia, Turkey and Israel mainly), every single one.
The US and their allies started the war (remember Cablegate ~2005 or so) and they also bought and sent the weapons for all the terrorists there fighting against the syrian government.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if America stopped being such a global dick, it wouldn't have to worry about hostile nations. Maybe try not being a dick? Not bombing the shit out of countries? You'd be surprised how angry and hostile people get when American drones are killing innocent civilians in the pursuit of terrorists that American policies created in the first place. I'm just saying, maybe give it a try.

We believe that women should have basic rights. That's being a "dick" to countries who barely recognize a woman as a creature with a brain?

You have a point to an extent, but spare me your bullshit rhetoric that if the US suddenly went the way of the monk in the global community, everyone would play nice and we would no longer have any enemies. That's as fucking delusional as believing that organized religion was a good thing for humanity.

Re: No need for it any more

[rickb928]

Maybe if you were dirt poor you wouldn't have to worry about theft and could leave your door open at night.

No, someone would always want what little you have. And so it is in geopolitical relations. So you lock the doors and either engage security forces credible enough to deter overt theft, or you maintain your own deterrent, overt or not, and expect your external security to make preventative efforts, wither at the local/individual level, or internationally.

And yes, the US government is and has been a supreme dick to many nations. Some of our adversaries need no such motive, however.

Re: No need for it any more

[mjwx]

Maybe if America stopped being such a global dick, it wouldn't have to worry about hostile nations. Maybe try not being a dick? Not bombing the shit out of countries? You'd be surprised how angry and hostile people get when American drones are killing innocent civilians in the pursuit of terrorists that American policies created in the first place. I'm just saying, maybe give it a try.

So Syria and Russia aren't an issue? Plus they don't break down which countries in the international coalition actually did the killing. The US leads to coalition but other countries are involved.

http://www.iamsyria.org/syrian...

So ISIS wasn't an issue.

ISIS was forced out of Syria by Russian involvement. The correct choice was not choosing a side in that conflict because we had the choice between supporting Assad's despotic but somewhat stable regime and ISIS's unstable and completely batshit insane desire for an Islamic state.

Unfortunately Trump couldn't keep his limp dick out of it.

The Russians are also prime examples of not sticking your dick in when it's not wanted. Because of Syria, Russia is facing a much increased risk of terrorist attacks (and it's not like they had a shortage of pissed off extremist enemies before Syria either).

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's being a "dick" to countries who barely recognize a woman as a creature with a brain?"

Indeed, us civilized nations know a woman's reason for existence is to provide the life support necessary for pussy!

Re: No need for it any more

[gtall]

Syria used chemical weapons against its own pop. and had Russia's support. Together they spawned a new crop of terrorists that will never accept Assad or his Russian lackeys.

Re: No need for it any more

[ScentCone]

You know, if you cough hard enough, you might be able to dislodge that childish meme you have stuck in your head.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. If a country has not released the US from it's treaty obligations to defend it, it is part of the problem. The US is held accountable by all of the countries with defense treaties and by those which refuse to spend enough to defend themselves from Russia or China. That includes Holland.

The Europeans like to condemn the US but are heavily dependent on it for defense and use trade laws to shake it down for money.

Re: No need for it any more

[swillden]

Maybe if America stopped being such a global dick, it wouldn't have to worry about hostile nations.

"Don't be a dick" is a good strategy for getting along, certainly. It doesn't really eliminate the need for having powerful armed forces, though, because your decision not to be a dick doesn't mean others won't be dicks. Having a powerful military is a good way to ensure they don't decide to be a dick to you, and being willing to use your military to stop them from being dicks to others is a good way to reduce global dickishness (actions, at least, not attitudes), which increases global stability and aids global economic development.

Of course, the flip side is that military might is expensive, and there's a strong tendency for political leaders to want to use their toys. The cost isn't a huge issue if you're also the biggest economy, though it's obviously a form of wealth redistribution (all government spending is wealth redistribution) that favors educated and already-wealthy people when perhaps it would make more sense to shift some of that redistribution to those who need it more (that's a political question). The second problem is the one you're alluding to. IMO, we should go back to a constitutional military structure, where all standing non-Naval military might is owned by the states and can't be used by the federal government without a formal declaration of war from Congress. That was what the framers intended when they banned multi-year military appropriations, though their strategy obviously didn't work.

Even leaving the military in federal hands but reducing the ability of the president to order strikes without Congressional approval would help.

Re: No need for it any more

[aaarrrgggh]

I am pretty hard pressed to come up with any country that is not somewhat dickish to at least a couple other countries. Even Sweden and Switzerland have a few dickish things about them, but generally more in commerce.

Re: No need for it any more

[Bearhouse]

Poor Uncle Sam , the global cop that's damned if he does, or does not...
Of course US gets a lot of well-deserved stick for fuckups like Iraq and Vietnam, but don't forget that in most of these operations he was accompanied by more-or-less enthusiastic allies such as Canada, UK, Australia...and for Iraq 1 nearly everybody...
Also, how is the USA less of a dick that Russia and China? Do you really think that Putin would not be laying Europe to waste right now if he had the military might of the USA? What about Syria? You think it was Father Xmas bombing the hospitals and the aid convoys?
Face it, AC, a large section of the world is going to hate "The West" (and especially the USA), always, forever, and whatever they do...
Of course, that does not excuse illegal "police" actions or extrajudicial killings, but the USA is by no means the only - or worse - offender in this. (Yeah, I know, a liberal western democracy should be held to a high standard, but life ain't fair...)

 

Re: No need for it any more

[tsqr]

"Don't be a dick" is a good strategy for getting along, certainly. It doesn't really eliminate the need for having powerful armed forces, though, because your decision not to be a dick doesn't mean others won't be dicks. Having a powerful military is a good way to ensure they don't decide to be a dick to you, and being willing to use your military to stop them from being dicks to others is a good way to reduce global dickishness (actions, at least, not attitudes), which increases global stability and aids global economic development.

Obligatory Team America: Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes - assholes who just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much, or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show 'em that. But sometimes pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves, because pussies are only an inch-and-a-half away from assholes. I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we are going to have our dicks and our pussies all covered in shit.

Re: No need for it any more

[sabbede]

That's like saying there would be no more crime if we just got rid of the police. International affairs have barely begun to move past the Hobbesian "state of nature" (without civil society life is "nasty, brutish and short"), and even then it is only between the Liberal democracies where some semblance of a civil society exists. Morality does not apply or even exist at the level of the Nation State, leaving only interest, advantage and the necessities of survival to guide them.

Anglo-American hegemony (not imperialism, wrong term) is unique in human history as it provides a pathway to civil society through penetration. Yeah, sounds funny but "penetrated hegemony" means that unlike every other hegemony in history, instead of enthralled client states it has vocal partners which consent to cooperate while retaining independence constrained only by the bonds of agreement and shared values.

But not every nation participates in this burgeoning civil society. There is evil in the world. There are those who want to take what others have, fanatics bent on eradicating modernity and Liberal democracy, power hungry maniacs with genocidal intentions, and on and on and on...

It's a dangerous world and there is dirty work that must be done.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is a very short list of warmongering dick countries and the USA is at the top of that list."

But the only thing that can fuck an "asshole" country is a "dick" country.

I assume you are from one of those "pussy" nations. Pussies think that everyone can get along. Pussies hate dicks because they get fucked by dicks.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Anglo-American hegemony (not imperialism, wrong term) is unique in human history as it provides a pathway to civil society through penetration. Yeah, sounds funny but "penetrated hegemony" means that unlike every other hegemony in history, instead of enthralled client states it has vocal partners which consent to cooperate while retaining independence constrained only by the bonds of agreement and shared values.

I think the expression you're looking for is "soft power".

Re:No need for it any more

[magarity]

Hence, the super-fast spy plane was developed, capable of violating borders guaranteed by international law, racing in to take photos, and racing back out again before the outraged victim country could defend itself.

Wrong on two counts: the SR-71 was a reconnaissance plane, not a spy plane. A spy dresses up in civilian clothes driving an unmarked car and says "I'm just a travelling salesman!". Military reconnaissance has regular uniforms and markings, which the SR-71 and its crew did. Also, they never directly overflew hostile countries. The 12 mile offshore limit for coastal and right over the border on land was close enough to see pretty deep from 100K feet up.

Re:No need for it any more

[drinkypoo]

Moreover this was when the space program was in its infancy, satellite photography was unreliable and took a long time from photo to print. There's simply no need today for a spy plane like this.

What good is your satellite ground station, mister anderson, without any satellites? Nations have been developing satellite-to-satellite weapons. If your spy satellites are getting taken out, then it's back to drones and planes.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

And laser based weapons won't negate any advantages of speed, right?

Correct. Aiming a laser at a supersonic, let alone hypersonic object is a bitch.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are a threat to Japan and South Korea, who are our allies.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

The Europeans like to condemn the US but are heavily dependent on it for defense and use trade laws to shake it down for money.

Would you care to cite an example? The US has a well-deserved reputation for abusing its dominance and its military might to shake down other countries, but I have never heard of the US being shaken down by another country. It seems exceedingly unlikely that a European country (which tend to be extremely compliant with US wishes and demands) would even attempt such a thing.

Re: No need for it any more

[Type44Q]

Syria used chemical weapons against its own pop

That one simply wasn't put together well enough to be convincing (I guess shilling's like anything else; you win some, lose some).

Re: No need for it any more

[Type44Q]

the SR-71 was a reconnaissance plane, not a spy plane.

Um...

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Anglo-American hegemony (not imperialism, wrong term)

Thank you, I wish more people understood this. I've been confused by complaints of US imperialism for a long time, now it makes sense.

Re:No need for it any more

[Bohnanza]

There is a need - a reason for the US Government to hand over a trillion dollars to Lockheed

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, what... You prefer to see the Russians and Chinese doing it? I, for one, am very grateful to be part of the dominant empire. Obama was right, "We are the indispensable nation". If we withdraw now, the whole world will collapse into immediate devastating warfare. We are the only thing holding the human race together right now. Once we lose that grip, all bets are off. And I wish you the best of luck.

Re:No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

The Outer Space Treaty prohibits weapons in orbit. Any violators will feel the full force of the UN.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

Europeans have not been paying their fair share of NATO for decades. NATO is supposed to be a *mutual* defense treaty, not a free ride for ungrateful pricks. America pays billions every year to subsidize European defense, sounds like a shakedown to me. Then the Europeans turn right around and heartlessly criticize America for being warmongers - and yet if America ever decided to stop warmongering and tend to its own affairs, Europeans scream "you're leaving us to Russia, get back here you isolationists". You know, like they did in 2017.

It seems like the other countries are like America's crazy girlfriend. Saying how we always make things worse and that one day another big strong country is going to come along and sweep them off their feet. One day we get sick of it. We say we need some space and it's not you, it's us. We just need some time to work on ourself. Suddenly crazy gf countries start crying about how they can't live without us... But we know now. We were just a sugar daddy all along.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. At mach 5 it will be inevitably flying in a straight line. No matter the speed once a direction vector is calculated the target is a hypersonic sitting duck.

Vector is a bitch.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yaknow, if you're taking your foreign policy knowledge from a satire movie from 2004, I think the adults can safely ignore what you have to say. America is the world's #1 leading warmongering nation, starts more wars than anyone else, second place isn't even close. America is the asshole country that needs to be stopped. Why do you think your elites hate your new president so much? He's been in office almost a year and still hasn't started any new wars!

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

Uh, I've got some bad news for you about the US-backed rebels...turns out they were Islamic terrorists. Oops.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

What on Earth are you talking about? It has nothing to do with protecting America from threats. Reality is that America has long ceased to be a force for good. In this century America has invaded more countries, started more wars and killed more civilians than any other Nation on this earth - and this includes Russia under Putin. The Mid-East is littered with graves of innocent men, women and children blown up by bombs from 30,000 feet. Dropped from American planes.

It was Obama who pushed the Russians and Chinese together, not Trump, after his sanctions against Russia in response to the Ukrainian fiasco. It was Obama who fomented a civil war from a domestic situation in a thoroughly corrupt country, Ukraine, when he sent the CIA director to advise the coup government in Kiev the day before they declared war on their own citizens in the east of the country.

It was Obama who degraded the dignity and respect of America's foreign services when he declared that Raymond Davis, CIA, Blackwater contractor James Bond wannabe, a diplomat entitled to the highest level of diplomatic immunity after he killed two Pakistani citizens with an illegal gun, thus severely damaging diplomatic relations with that country.

It was Obama who exacerbated an already unstable situation in Syria when he armed the so-called resistance fighters, thus making sure the country blew up into a full fledged civil war. The war in Syria never was one for diplomatic reforms. It is just a battle among factions, many who are not inclined to respect American values.

I have some bad news for you. There's no universal law that has anointed the U.S. the honor of being "the greatest country in history." You're far from being a "global force for good." In fact, the rest of the world has learned, in one short year, just how phony and shallow your leadership actually is. You can hardly fund your schools, fix your infrastructure or provide decent care to the majority of your people. You're too busy funding a bloated military welfare complex and feathering the nests of your (non-productive) corporations and rent-collecting elites. Don't despair, China seems willing and capable of helping the world move further into the 21st Century through vision and investment. I've been to Germany recently and they are investing in their infrastructures and people.

So go ahead, keep telling yourselves that you're "great!" The rest of the world knows the truth and you can't handle the truth.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

There is evil in the world. There are those who want to take what others have, fanatics bent on eradicating modernity and Liberal democracy, power hungry maniacs with genocidal intentions

Thank you! Yes! I couldn't have said with better words myself the reason that America must be restrained. Was America a force for good when it attacked Mexico? Spain? Germany? Germany? Korea? Viet Nam? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen? How long will you go on kidding yourself?

America is a sick country, always has been. From the good old days when we importing Africans as slaves and murdering Native Americans so we could steal their land; to our nefarious role in overthrowing democratic governments in South America and Iran and replacing them with horrible dictators; to our imperialist adventures in Korea and Vietnam to the unneeded and uncalled for invasion if Iraq, which has destabilized the entire Middle East - we've shown the world that we are indeed exceptional we've actually accomplished what Napoleon and Hitler only dreamed of - setting up a nationalist empire that dominates much of the globe.

The faux "Pax Americana" brought us unprovoked wars, illegal coups, regime changes, shock and awe, ultra-right wing or jihadi proxy armies, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, agent orange, CIA backed mujahideen, death squads, torture, assassinations, extraordinary renditions, black sites, Guantanamo, drone wars, big brother and the surveillance state, etc. Countries that don't waste their resources playing world cop are able to afford social protections for their citizens and wind up with more prosperous, secure, and successful societies. For example - Canada, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Forcing other countries to adopt American cultural norms is cultural imperialism. It is jingoistic exceptionalism bullshit and needs to be loudly called out. Your "shithole country" rhetoric has no power and your champion Trump is going to end 2018 in prison. You fuckers who support him are either 100% behind his bigotry, or you are 100% okay with it; there is no effective difference between the two. Apathy is just as dangerous as active hatred.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

For example - Canada, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland.

You forgot Brazil!

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

That is 100% pure American Exceptionalism and Obama himself spent considerable time debunking that very concept. Nobody believes in it any more except a bunch of jingoist fools and alt-right trolls.

The Myth of the Indispensable Nation: The world doesn't need the United States nearly as much as we like to think it does. Like many foreign policy concepts overwhelmingly endorsed by officials and policymakers, this one has little basis in reality. If you consider everything encompassing global affairs - from state-to-state diplomatic relations, to growing cross-border flows of goods, money, people, and data - there are actually very few activities where America's role is truly indispensable, defined by Webster's as "absolutely necessary." The problem with allowing this classification of Americaâ(TM)s global role to persist is that it is so patently false, and thus an illogical basis upon which to base and prescribe U.S. grand strategy. Indispensable nations on the right side of history don't lose votes in the UN 200-9.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

You are talking about a purely fictional situation, that you made up in your head, about Putin invading Europe. Without America the European militaries could easily handle Putin - if they spent any money on them, which they don't, because they have a sucker to do it for them.

The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm people in beautiful rooms at the US State Department, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in the future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real.

Re: No need for it any more

[istartedi]

I think what he's getting at is a distinction that matters under the Geneva Convention. If the plane were shot down, the crew would be wearing regular uniforms. The plane is marked. Thus, they are not spies but soldiers under the GC. It's not even over-flying the target country. Legally it's not spying, although in the common vernacular it's definitely spying.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct choice was not choosing a side [...]

Unfortunately Trump couldn't keep his limp dick out of it.

For those of you unfamiliar with this, Trump intervened when the Syrian government launched a chemical-weapons attack on a civilian population, ordering the airbase which launched the strike to be hit by a bunch of cruise missiles. This was probably, as the parent says, not the correct choice from a keeping-out-of-this-mess perspective - but it absolutely was the correct choice from the perspective of human rights, keeping the world sane, and showing everyone that there are some things you Do Not Do.

Unfortunately, some people hate Trump so much that even when he orders the most well-justified attack - more so than any of Obama's interventions, which were generally well-reasoned - they criticise it, criticise his genitals, etc.

Re: No need for it any more

[Duhavid]

"China is an epic dick claiming other countries' islands in the South China Sea
China is trying to claim what they believe is theirs in the past. I think if you want to talk about being "dicks" confiscating their land and selling them opium for years would be a real dick move."

    The islands that they suddenly 'believe are theirs from the past' are very near other nation/islands who also believe them to be theirs. China is being rather undiplomatic and forceful about it, their claim looks pretty weak. Also, fortifying the islands when they claimed they would not does not seem peaceful.

"North Korea is a total dick with their nukes. - Can you enlighten us with who started this? Go back in history, they had a war to become communist.. someone invaded them and eventually gave up and went home??"

    Go back in history, to be sure. Who was it that wanted them to be communist? Russia, exporting communism on their end of their rifles. So, North Korea, with support from Russia and ( eventually ) China, invaded South Korea. So, the US ( and others in the UN ) sent assistance, including troops, to keep the North from succeeding. Seems that those in South Korea didn't want this communism, they could have had it if they wanted it, without war.

Does it matter if NK is communist? Sure, but it is what they have. Be nice if they had chosen it, rather than having it forced on them.

Re: No need for it any more

[Duhavid]

"Together they stop terrorists."

Do you, indeed, believe this?

Re:No need for it any more

[drinkypoo]

The Outer Space Treaty prohibits weapons in orbit. Any violators will feel the full force of the UN.

Oh no! Motherfucking Hans Brix!

Re:No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Any violators will feel the full force of the UN

You mean "battered senseless with soft pillows"?

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget that every time there is some dick who is committing genocide or invading a neighboring country the first thing any of the these USA haters say is, "Why hasn't the United States responded to this threat yet?"
It is truly a case of damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

You watch what happens in Europe. They are in an enforced truce, just like the former Soviet states were. The only thing keeping the peace is American occupation. The moment we leave it's back to the feudal battleground. The Soviet client states are a prelude. For there to be peace, there must be an absolutely irresistible force. And there can be no doubt that the USA is the best there is. Just ask any buyer, of any product, especially the killing kind.

No sir, you got it all wrong. The whole world is only this peaceful by the force of the USA, and all of you with the ability to post here should be damn grateful for it!

Re: No need for it any more

[Enigma2175]

Syria used chemical weapons against its own pop

That one simply wasn't put together well enough to be convincing (I guess shilling's like anything else; you win some, lose some).

I'm sorry, are you saying that's false? Did the following attacks not happen?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, wikipedia articles as a "fact" ...

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

America is the world's #1 leading warmongering nation, starts more wars than anyone else, second place isn't even close. America is the asshole country that needs to be stopped.

Why don't you run off and join ISIS? They aren't doing too good these days. They can use the help. I don't think they have managed to completely wipe out the Yazidis yet. If Islam isn't your thing, give Kim-Jong Un a call instead. Help stop America.

Why do you think your elites hate your new president so much?

"Your new president?" So you are not American. That figures, because you sound like you come from a pussy nation, and America is not a pussy nation. Forget what I said about joining ISIS. They would probably use you as a sex slave.

Why do you think your elites hate your new president so much? He's been in office almost a year and still hasn't started any new wars!

The hatred comes mainly from the left. They have fear-mongered about Trump having his finger on the nuclear button. However, since World War III hasn't started, this destroys their narrative. So they go REEEEE!

Re: No need for it any more

[Bert64]

Well according to state published recently (http://www.businessinsider.com/nato-share-breakdown-country-2017-2)
, only 5 NATO countries are paying their fair share, and 4 of those are in europe.

It's also very much within US interests to have NATO allies in europe as they are closer to potential enemies (russia, the middle east etc). These countries can be used as staging points for the US to launch attacks, and will be the first to get hit when/if the enemy retaliates.
The same happened during WW2, the US sent aircraft to the UK and used them to attack Germany, with no german bombs falling on the US.

Re: No need for it any more

[DNS-and-BIND]

If we weren't in NATO, we wouldn't have enemies in Europe. We could just withdraw and have a lot fewer enemies in the world. You realize the US government creates its enemies by bombing the shit out of neutral countries, right?

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost isn't a huge issue if you're also the biggest economy

Pfff. Upfront costs you mean right? There's money to be made, secured and recouped in almost every conflict. People like to think of it as "freedom to the world" affair but it's more of a business model than anything else.

Re: No need for it any more

[sabbede]

There are countries that "don't waste their resources playing world cop" because we shoulder that burden. It is not an empire, nationalist or otherwise. If it were, France, Canada, Norway, etc., would never disagree with us. France would have joined the Iraq war and would not be complaining about us pulling out of the Paris accord.

And let's not forget that from 1947-1991 we were mired in the Cold War. A war fought through proxies across the world. A war fought with crooked elections, coups, guerillas and counter-insurgents; whatever it took to avoid a direct nuclear confrontation that would end the war and the world. One side would rig an election, the other would spark a coup or insurrection. Whatever it took to deny the other side a stable ally, no matter the cost. Why? Because every cost had to be weighed against the incalculably more costly alternative - the end of human civilization.

You have barely scratched the surface of the history, nature and practice of international relations. It is both far better than you think and far, far more dangerous.

But let's not forget the positives. A democratically united Europe as opposed to one that has a major war every other generation. International institutions providing non-violent resolutions to disputes. The complete absence of military conflict between highly developed nations. The historically unique possibility for non-Realist approaches to international relations (dynamically summed cooperation as opposed to zero sum games of advantage). Things are so much better now, you just have to dig a little deeper to see it.

Re: No need for it any more

[david_thornley]

If we weren't in NATO, it's questionable whether we'd have friends in Europe. The Soviet Union had a large military, often expansionist policies, and typically had what we perceived as an advantage in event of a European war.

Re: No need for it any more

[david_thornley]

Unfortunately, the airfield struck was back in business in hours, making it look like US Tomahawk attacks aren't that much of a threat. I call that a big negative. "Speak loudly and carry a small stick.":

Re: No need for it any more

[david_thornley]

The US federal government is explicitly allowed to have an army. It just can't get appropriations for more than two years each. The Founders were indeed worried about the oppression potential of armies (navies are a lot harder to use for oppressing populations), but realized a Federal army would be needed.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Best post on Slashdot, ever.

Re: No need for it any more

[swillden]

The US federal government is explicitly allowed to have an army. It just can't get appropriations for more than two years each. The Founders were indeed worried about the oppression potential of armies (navies are a lot harder to use for oppressing populations), but realized a Federal army would be needed.

Yes, and the two-year limit on appropriations was intended specifically to make it difficult for the federal government to maintain a standing army in peacetime.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, America is not to blame for Vietnam. That was France pulling us in.
And it is the same for Libya. Europe pulled us in on that one due to our aircraft.
However, Iraq is 100% ours. And while Afghanistan was not our initial fault, W fucked it up 100%, and allowed talibahn/AQ to continue to own it.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that most of Europe, esp. Germany, has to be pushed to put their own defenses against Russia, I would differ with you.
And more importantly, it is obvious that you have never served and have not a grasp of Russian or Chinese capabilities.
There is a REAL reason why all of Eastern Europe FEARS Putin. Even Merkel is smart enough to know that Russia is a REAL threat.

Re: No need for it any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor Uncle Sam , the global cop that's damned if he does, or does not...
Of course US gets a lot of well-deserved stick for fuckups like Iraq and Vietnam, but don't forget that in most of these operations he was accompanied by more-or-less enthusiastic allies such as Canada, UK, Australia...and for Iraq 1 nearly everybody...
Also, how is the USA less of a dick that Russia and China? Do you really think that Putin would not be laying Europe to waste right now if he had the military might of the USA? What about Syria? You think it was Father Xmas bombing the hospitals and the aid convoys?
Face it, AC, a large section of the world is going to hate "The West" (and especially the USA), always, forever, and whatever they do...
Of course, that does not excuse illegal "police" actions or extrajudicial killings, but the USA is by no means the only - or worse - offender in this. (Yeah, I know, a liberal western democracy should be held to a high standard, but life ain't fair...)

This reads like a tcpdump trace taken from an autistic mind trying to justify capitalism to itself.

Just bring the UFO out of Dreamland

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just bring the UFO out of Dreamland

Re:Just bring the UFO out of Dreamland

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would be telling. And it's not said they can make the thing fly.

Moreover, this may well not be about the 'plane, but about marketeering. The "digital transformation" buzzword dropping is telling. The way it was told me, Skunk Works excelled in "just doing", making stuff up then making it work, getting started first and wiping out the mistakes later, though preferrably before anyone else notices. They used to do that with just slide rules and practical tricks like using rockets to test hypersonic f104 wings--since they had no wind tunnel and computer simulation wasn't much a thing back then.

So this is really a declaration of conformity and marketeering for continued relevance. It doesn't impress me much, since the eurofighter has been all-up fully all-singing-and-dancing computer-aided-designed and it took more than ten years to even start flying. Not to mention, say, the F35 that managed to get permission for delivery before being able to fly, but then that's designed as a giant boondoggle; its ability to fly is really only coincidental to its real function. I do think that this namedropping is related to getting government contracts, though. But anyway, the A-12 and the SR-71 were much more pushing the envelope, and slide rule work. Think about that.

Apparently Skunk Works had very effective method and leadership, and just adding computers doesn't automatically get you that. But at the same time, I think that buzzwords, including "digital transformation" can be expected to work wonderfully well for this guy's core business. Which is to rake in pork barrel monies from any and all governments, though primarily the USoA one.

Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuffs that can really tough out the harsh punishment of pressure and heat are crystals and one just don't 'print' crystal. It has to 'grow'

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the engine can "survive for multiple firings". Maybe not ready for production yet.

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[AHuxley]

Have many engines. Replace as need for the performance until engine design is better.

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[burtosis]

Modern metal sintering allows for highly accurate 3D structure where you can create impossible to machine shapes like hollow structures (bone, cardboard). Even more impressive is you control the alloy of metal at each voxel. Using this technology you can put in one alloy best at heat and corrosion along the leading edges that will get hottest, blend it into the adjacent area where you need less heat resistance but deal with more stress, strain, creep, and fatigue. Or even try something completely new because your imagination is now much closer to being the limitation.

These new ways of additive manufacturing are going to replace most of the subtractive like machining, it's on a whole other power level.

Re:Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stuffs"? "Stuff" is already plural.

Re:Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[tsa]

Hardening metal by heating and subsequently cooling it makes the metal contain less crystals. This is important because in a metal the crystal planes can easily slide against each other, what makes the metal malleable and thus weak. So you want as few crystallites as possible in the metal for most applicatiojs where strength is an issue.

Re:Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[burtosis]

You print the base material then you put it into a special oven that bakes it carefully and precisely. It's during these thermal cycles you grow the crystal, you do have pretty good control of precisely how the grains form and can engineer the properties you want.

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[david_thornley]

Currently, additive manufacturing is slower and more expensive than subtractive manufacturing. There's lots of useful stuff that can be made by subtractive manufacturing, so we'll see how well it survives.

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you including the processes that produce the raw materials used in subtractive manufacturing?

Re: Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[david_thornley]

Why would they be more expensive than raw materials for additive manufacturing? Subtractively manufacturing a part means taking a block of some material and cutting away anything that doesn't look like the part. There's various methods for additive, but they generally require the material in a more fussy configuration than just a block.

Re:Can metal printed with 3d printer last?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stuff" isn't plural, it's a mass noun, and uncountable.

However, it can be pluralized in specialized words like "foodstuffs."

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of a fast spy plane. Spy satellites are as effective and probably cheaper to operate.
A Hubble class telescope is going to take really good photographs pointing down.
From five and a half years ago: https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-nasa.html

Re:What's the point?

[Gavagai80]

The point is that "let's spend more on the military" always gets you votes, and hypersonic spy planes are extra cool. Whereas if you tried to spend it on dirty ungrateful poor people you'd get booted out of office.

Re:What's the point?

[Viol8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The days of spy satellites in low earth orbit may be numbered. Shooting down a plane a 2000+mph that has anti missile defenses and can do active avoidance may be somewhat harder.

Re:What's the point?

[Vulch]

You have to wait until a satellite is in the right part of its orbit to take the images and possibly wait again until it is in position to download. An aircraft can be scrambled, flown over the point of interest and return the imagery at much shorter notice.

Re:What's the point?

[AHuxley]

Contractors, over time to create the project. Shareholders and contractors get profits. The operational role of the project will need support.
Support contracts over time. Win the profits for the design, win the profits to get the project flying, win the ongoing support and upgrade bids.
Money is on the table. A contractor will take it all.

Re:What's the point?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

A Hubble class telescope is going to take really good photographs pointing down.

With a ~20 cm resolution and advance warning. Sometimes not that useful, especially against irregular opponents.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of a fast spy plane. Spy satellites are as effective and probably cheaper to operate.
A Hubble class telescope is going to take really good photographs pointing down.
From five and a half years ago: https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-nasa.html

The surface of the Earth is whizzing by as Hubble orbits, and the pointing system, designed to track the distant stars, cannot track an object on the Earth. The shortest exposure time on any of the Hubble instruments is 0.1 seconds, and in this time Hubble moves about 700 meters, or almost half a mile. So a picture Hubble took of Earth would be all streaks.

http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=78&cat=topten

It should be obvious.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

US Spy satellites use a global communications relay system that is high b/w and near real-time. On top of that LEO average velocities are roughly 6 times faster than hypersonic and don't need to be prepped, take off from the continental US, be mid-air refueled in-route or deal with human meat sacks. Given the number and diversity of spy satellites the US operates, we can cover the globe in less time than a hypersonic aircraft could say get from Vandenberg to China, Russia or the Middle East.

What a hypersonic aircraft gives us is flexibility in payload. We can upgrade cameras and sensing devices as they become available and have them returning information long before a satellite could be made and launched. It gives us operation flexibility in that an aircraft can get closer, linger longer or fly a particular reconnaissance driven flight path. All of this can be done via slow drones now which are great for low tech adversaries but worthless vs China or Russia. It could be argued that the most benefit from operational SR-71's was psychological and that would be the same for an operation SR-72 hypersonic spy plane. Its a physical reminds to our adversaries that we can build something you can't. We can violate your air space at will and you can't do anything about it. We can watch you when, where and how we see fit. That's entirely the reason why Khrushchev made a media event out of shooting down Gary Powers, so he could deflate the psychological impact the technology was having, to prove the USSR was the USA's military equal.

Re:What's the point?

[mr.mctibbs]

If you've had your satellites taken out and you need to do recon to know what to do about it you've already lost.

Re:What's the point?

[magarity]

The surface of the Earth is whizzing by as Hubble orbits, and the pointing system, designed to track the distant stars, cannot track an object on the Earth. The shortest exposure time on any of the Hubble instruments is 0.1 seconds, and in this time Hubble moves about 700 meters, or almost half a mile. So a picture Hubble took of Earth would be all streaks.

http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/answer.php.id=78&cat=topten

It should be obvious.

OK except the Hubble is a repurposed Keyhole satellite. Yes, its optics were redesigned for astronomy but the original model was for Earth surveillance.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with fast planes is that they hit anything behind them really hard. Imagine a missile that can deploy a large cloud of dust. The plane can hardly detect it, but at 2000 mph, an small grain of sand can do severe damage to any surface.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The shortest exposure time on any of the Hubble instruments is 0.1 seconds, and in this time Hubble moves about 700 meters, or almost half a mile. So a picture Hubble took of Earth would be all streaks.

The shortest exposure time is 0.1 seconds, because it's meant to look at stars and those are faint. There's no point on taking a ms exposure on something that may actually need minutes of accumulated exposure to be seen.
However, if you're pointing towards the planet (and let's say doing pictures during daylight for the sake of clarity of argument) then the exposure time can be much shorter because there's enough light. So, rather than putting a slow shutter camera, you put a fast one.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to wait until a satellite is in the right part of its orbit to take the images and possibly wait again until it is in position to download.

That just means you don't have enough satellites ;-)

Im sure they already have something better...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the TR3B, when are they going to unveil that?

Re:Im sure they already have something better...

[oobayly]

Cute, you know a designation for an aircraft that doesn't have any evidence to support its existence. There is no TR prefix, just T for trainer, surely this should be a X (experimental) or Y (prototype). Not just that, you apparently know it's the 2nd in the series (B).

Re: Im sure they already have something better...

[Type44Q]

It's easier to ascertain the existence of black triangles (considering how many people have seen them); knowing whose they are is another story... though Gary McKinnon's leaks probably offer a clue.

More toys

[Anonymous Coward]

For the retarded boy-warriors

If you haven't heard this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have not had the absolute pleasure of hearing this story, please do take a listen.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a27340/sr-71-speed-check/

It is five minutes and seven seconds of your life you will be happy you spent on YouTube.

Re:If you haven't heard this story...

[sysrammer]

If you have not had the absolute pleasure of hearing this story, please do take a listen.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a27340/sr-71-speed-check/

It is five minutes and seven seconds of your life you will be happy you spent on YouTube.

Outstanding, thank you for this!

"The King of Speed lived,
The Navy had been flamed,
And a crew had been formed"

Much more interested to know...

[wisebabo]

... whatever happened or is happening with the Lockheedâ(TM)s nuclear fusion project?

For those of you who didnâ(TM)t hear, 3 years ago (2014) they claimed theyâ(TM)d be able to make a nuclear fusion power plant capable of fitting in a box car/shipping container IN FIVE YEARS. I presume they mean a power plant that generates substantially more amount of electricity than it requires (Iâ(TM)ve heard that you can âoeeasilyâ make nuclear fusion happen, getting more energy out than in is the trick).

https://lppfusion.com/lockheed...

Anyway whatever happened to this game changing (civilization changing?) technology? The only reason why I didnâ(TM)t dismiss it out of hand was because it was supposedly being developed by their âoeSkunk Worksâ, makers of the F-117, SR-71 amongst other things.

So where is it?

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is with all the "â(TM)t"... is my Firefox broken?

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you enter your post from a phablet or phone? It's Slashdot, most of the time.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[r0kk3rz]

Mining Bitcoin in the LMA skunkworks office obviously

Re:Much more interested to know...

[OzPeter]

What is with all the "â(TM)t"... is my Firefox broken?

Welcome to Slashdot. Where unicode support is slated to arrive *after* we get nuclear fusion power plants and flying cars.

Re: Much more interested to know...

[wisebabo]

Yes I did, Iâ(TM)m sorry about the illegibility, I donâ(TM)t know how to fix it (other than not use some punctuation marks)

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Bongo]

Isn't there also that German group with the twisty-wisty-timey-wimey-torus which is also meant to be a huge deal?

Re:Much more interested to know...

[burtosis]

5 years is to profitable and above unity fusion reactor technology as 2 weeks is to home renovation. It's the answer anytime someone asks contractors about projects like this.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there also that German group with the twisty-wisty-timey-wimey-torus which is also meant to be a huge deal?

 
That one you have to wait until 2035 to find out if it works

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever worked in a big company? There's always somebody who's willing to make grand claims because they're not senior enough to know better... or a public relations arm that will change the words so much that what is published has no bearing on the original research... or some crank that managed to stick around for years even though they don't know what they're talking about.

Just because someone said they would do something doesn't mean that it will happen.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Bearhouse]

Hey, don't you know? Fusion power is only 20 years away, and *always* will be...

https://www.newstatesman.com/s...

Re: Much more interested to know...

[drinkypoo]

There is a browser setting about "smart quotes" which you can disable to make it behave like every other browser on the planet. Sadly, there is no "disable hubris" switch.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[tsa]

It's like Linux on the desktop but only you have to always wait longer.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[MpVpRb]

Same problem on Chrome and Edge

Re:Much more interested to know...

[robkeeney]

"Smart" quotes aren't. Any software that inserts them should be banned.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

aka a Stellarator ?

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a stellarator. It is a research item though - nobody claims it is a powerplant.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[Bert64]

Well 3 years ago they claimed they would have something "in 5 years"... That gives them 2 more years before their claim can be proven false.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[david_thornley]

Just hope it's a PR suit that announces it rather than a salesdroid that sells it. Don't ask me how I know.

Re:Much more interested to know...

[strikethree]

The real question should be, "Why doesn't Slashdot handle the unicode more gracefully?"

SR-72 is old hat

[Anonymous Coward]

The SR-72 has been flown operationally for the last 25 years. It is old, out-dated technology, which is the only reason the US government (via contractor Lockheed Martin) is willing to publicly disclose it now. The rest of the world is 25 - 40 years behind what exists in the "black budget" world.

“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanityAnything you can imagine, we already know how to do.” --Ben Rich, second Director of Lockheed Martin Skunkworks.

True gravitic-wave propulsion systems, anti-matter weaponry, 97% speed-of-light capable spacecraft... All these things and more already exist, and most of them were designed in the mid 80s and fully operational by the mid 90s. Just ask Gary McKinnon why he hasn't been extradited... (His testimony would be far more damaging than his hack was. It's much easier to play him off as a 'crazy conspiracy theorist' without putting him on the stand, under oath.)

Re: SR-72 is old hat

[Anonymous Coward]

Blatant misquotation. Look it up.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[K. S. Kyosuke]

97% speed-of-light capable spacecraft.

It's funny that this kind of energy couldn't solve America's energy crisis and give you vastly superior weaponry on battlefield. So either the people in charge are scientifically ignorant, totally irrational, or outright crazy (on a supertrumpian level) to willingly cripple their own country by not using such a power source to make the US economically unbeatable.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[Anonymous Coward]

97% speed-of-light capable spacecraft.

It's funny that this kind of energy couldn't solve America's energy crisis and give you vastly superior weaponry on battlefield. So either the people in charge are scientifically ignorant, totally irrational, or outright crazy (on a supertrumpian level) to willingly cripple their own country by not using such a power source to make the US economically unbeatable.

Maybe they're just liars. #disinformation.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[sabbede]

You'll need to explain why such advanced tech would be kept useless. Trillions of dollars worth of commercial applications, the ability to render any threat harmless, the leverage knowledge of it would provide... It's like sitting on a winning lotto ticket.

Consider this - the Star Wars program back in the 80's didn't exist. The idea that it might was a major factor leading to the collapse of the USSR. What you're talking about would pull the rug right out from under North Korea and Iran. Hell, it could be used to strike the Ayatollah dead with what would look to observers like an act of God. It would take at most two such strikes to put an end to Islamic radicalism. Why keep it secret?

Greed and a lust for power can't be why, the tech you describe is a direct path to both.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[geekmux]

97% speed-of-light capable spacecraft.

It's funny that this kind of energy couldn't solve America's energy crisis and give you vastly superior weaponry on battlefield. So either the people in charge are scientifically ignorant, totally irrational, or outright crazy (on a supertrumpian level) to willingly cripple their own country by not using such a power source to make the US economically unbeatable.

Capitalism isn't a "crisis" to solve for those profiting the most from it. There's a reason oil companies hold a metric fuckton of patents for alternative fuel tech that would create competition and reduce their profits. Greed will always ensure strategic suppression is a preferred weapon.

Re: SR-72 is old hat

[Type44Q]

You fail to consider that "making America economically unbeatable" might not be in the best interests of "those in charge."

Re: SR-72 is old hat

[Type44Q]

You'll need to explain why such advanced tech would be kept useless.

Why bother?? If you can't figure out for yourself why there might be advantages inherent in such a course of action (albeit simply not advantageous to you or to "the nation"), you wouldn't understand the answer.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism isn't a "crisis" to solve for those profiting the most from it. There's a reason oil companies hold a metric fuckton of patents for alternative fuel tech that would create competition and reduce their profits.

Suppression patents is a dangerous game to play. A patent only last 17 years - and it is public in all that time. So you can read up on existing patents, and use whats left of those 17 years to prepare products. Then you start selling the day the patent expires.

Of course, if you're in China selling to non-westerners, you don't have to wait the 17 years.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[Bert64]

An unbeatable force will not have any enemies, as attacking such a force would be suicide... Without enemies, the military budget will end up being slashed.
Assuming this information is true, the reason is obvious - money.
To keep military spending up, you need a credible enemy to "defend" against, and preferably you need some wars to use up resources and require the military to buy more.

Re: SR-72 is old hat

[sabbede]

Humor me. What advantage is there in not exploiting such an incredible advantage? And keep in mind that every day it is sat upon means competitors are one day closer to discovering (or stealing) it themselves.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[geekmux]

Capitalism isn't a "crisis" to solve for those profiting the most from it. There's a reason oil companies hold a metric fuckton of patents for alternative fuel tech that would create competition and reduce their profits.

Suppression patents is a dangerous game to play. A patent only last 17 years - and it is public in all that time. So you can read up on existing patents, and use whats left of those 17 years to prepare products. Then you start selling the day the patent expires.

Of course, if you're in China selling to non-westerners, you don't have to wait the 17 years.

The largest oil companies in the US earn over $500 billion in annual revenue combined. If they hold patents that provided or secured just 5% of that revenue, that's over $400 billion in revenue generated from suppressing the competition.

Dangerous? No, more like highly profitable. And besides, what CEO in any industry gives a shit what happens 17 years from now? They will have jumped and pulled their golden parachute long before then.

Re:SR-72 is old hat

[Anonymous Coward]

As for power through strength, note that the strongest man in a prison is usually covered in scars. He is the most in danger. The king of the hill is nothing more than the biggest target.

As for greed, in order to have wealth and privilege, you have to have poverty and suppression. The wealthy care more about their difference than their absolute condition. In general, their goal in life is to maintain that difference, not to achieve things. They exercise control by creating a lifestyle that they can wave as bait in front of the lowlife and making sure that very few ever catch the bait. Technology works against this system by giving a greater percentage of people an acceptable lifestyle.

It is easier to be richer than others by suppressing others than by gaining more wealth than others in a system that is swamped with wealth. This is the whole basis of the Make America Great Again campaign. By pushing back on technology that reduces the need to work, you can force more people to return to work in the system that allows the collection of their work product in the hands of the wealthy.

I don't care to ever be rich, I have enough and enjoy my life as is. This is a problem for many.

SSTO

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget spy stuff, this sounds like a SSTO in the making. Or at worst, a nice 0th stage for quick satellite deployment.

Re:SSTO

[AHuxley]

+1 for quick satellite deployment. Working satellite networks is what the US mil is now totally dependant on. If an other nations have a production line of ASAT the US mil is reduced to having to depend on mil skills again. Platforms will have to make up for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Re:SSTO

[OzPeter]

Forget spy stuff, this sounds like a SSTO in the making. Or at worst, a nice 0th stage for quick satellite deployment.

The Brits are handling that end of the research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:SSTO

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Except that SSTOs are useless, especially air-breathing ones. So, most likely not.

Re:SSTO

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But you already got ATK's solid boosters for that. Can't get more flight readiness than an ICBM slightly oversized for your payload.

Re:SSTO

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese, Russians, and US have all demonstrated some form of ASAT. Chinese have demonstrated the best-developed system, and it would be a total surprise if it weren't fully operational and targeted at both US and Russian satellites. Note that it's not just the "spy" satellites that are targeted; it's also the communication satellites that allow real-time recovery of the data. The first sign of an impending war will be sudden loss of all satellite recon, comms, and GPS.

In principle, anybody with IRBM technology can target low-orbit satellites; ICBM can get geosync. Of course, it needs more than big rockets, but rockets are the first step.

Let's face it

[tinkerton]

SR-71 was cool. SR -72 is a flying blob.

Boeing and Lockheed are uninventive dinosaurs

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see Tesla do this. Or google. How many billions of dollars is this worth again?

In giant bureaucracies the power of a dollar is de-leveraged. A buck can only buy a dime's worth there. Spending millions or billions at those megaliths is a waste. The military industrial complex has aged. It is brittle. It is unproductive. As addicted as it is to dollars, it is incapable of challenging itself with something truly revolutionary.

I think they need a solid slap in the face.

I would like to see what someone who makes a dollar buy a kilopennys worth could do in the space. That would be a good place to put taxpayer money. This is why scaled composites and Burt Rutan were amazing. They did real innovating on an infinitesimal fraction of what Boeing costs.

If they are unwilling to challenge themselves, then the challenge will arise from another nation. China? Germany? Making disruptively breakthrough technologies are one of the hallmarks of a superpower. Incremental improvements are the mark of deceleration of momentum.

-EngrStudent

PWDE and other Technologies

[ytene]

If you take an interest in this sort of thing, there are glimpses of technologies that have been under development since the 1980s that are beyond even what is hinted at here.

For example, there is plenty of evidence and acknowledged testing to show that we have working examples of things like Pulse Wave Detonation Engines, or Pulse Detonation Engines. These leave very characteristic contrails in the sky, which look like a chain of doughnuts connected by a thin central line. We know the technology has been made to work, but there is no acknowledgement of anything in use. Designed for reliable running at speeds of up to Mach 6...

Or what about âExternal combustion chambersâ(TM)... Picture an aero foil wing shape with a series of bleed nozzles on the upper surface through which fuel is carefully sprayed... The air moving over the wing section creates a contoured shape where it separates from the wing - still in laminar flow - such that the shape of the separated, moving air forms the upper surface of a combustion chamber... Much [much] lighter and simpler than conventional engines.

Or look at the latest commercial offerings from Rolls Royce and others, in which airliner engines actually pump neat fuel through turbine blades to help cool the engine, with micro-fine holes on the blades themselves acting as injectors...


Itâ(TM)s worth bearing in mind that even the Stealth Fighter used 1960s/70s technology to fly...

I would be *amazed* if this technology hadnâ(TM)t been designed, developed and tested. Whether it has been put into widespread use is another matter, but as hostile groups [even terrorists] develop the capability to predict the orbits of LEO surveillance satellites, it suddenly makes more sense to launch a plane, in an un-predictable pattern, to surveil a target.

But, this being the US, itâ(TM)s even more likely that there answer to this sort of question would be to develop all of these technologies - and more. Why have one option in the playbook when you can afford several?

Re:PWDE and other Technologies

[ledow]

I'm kinda with you, kinda not.

Pretty sure that they have some advanced stuff, which they wouldn't be bragging about if they had any clue about military intelligence.

But I doubt they have anything particularly amazing. The 60's was an era of spacecraft and firsts, compared to the best spyplane the Apollo launch moved much faster (escape velocity is Mach 33?). What was happening in public was infinitely more impressive than what was happening behind closed doors.

However, I'm sure they have some neat stuff.

But... the whole "terrorists running from LEO satellites?" I don't buy it one bit. First, those orbits are public knowledge, you just have to have the first inkling about looking for that information. Secondly, they can change immediately and rapidly. If they want to catch you out, they easily can. Thirdly... those satellites can image some vast portion of the Earth wherever they are... they don't have to only look straight down. They can literally see whole continents without having to do more than rotate an internal mirror. Fourthly, if anyone wants a surveillance network, they would launch enough to ensure overlap - about 5 or 6 identical should be fine to image any part of the globe, 24/7, any time they like, in whatever detail they like.

It's not like the old days where you could duck-and-hide for a few minutes as the only spy sat in the sky went overhead. They can see anything they like, whenever they like, and all kinds of countries have their own global systems too.

So... that bit? That's entirely nonsense. Which means that the use of a spy-plane like that for anything you could do from a satellite is just pointless and expensive. It's either doing something else entirely... or it's not got a purpose.

Re:PWDE and other Technologies

[Shotgun]

To add support to ledow, look at the number of GPS locks that your phone gets (use the GPS Status app on Android). Who put the GPS satellites in orbit? (The US military) Do you really think they would have failed to put a full complement of cameras and other sensors on them? Hahaha!! Yeah. Right. No way in hell I can I see a military general of any country missing out on that opportunity.

Re:PWDE and other Technologies

[muecksteiner]

Look up how high the orbit of the GPS satellite constellation is. These things are too far up to do much useful reconnaissance from there. So the motivation to put a lot of sensors on them is not that high.

Inconsistency in timeframes?

[dpilot]

So the plane is supposed to be flying by 2030 - that's twelve years away. Yet they also say,

"We couldnâ(TM)t have made the engine itselfâ"it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago,â Oâ(TM)Banion said. âoeBut now we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation.â The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts, he said. A half-decade before, he added, developers âoecould not have even built it even if we conceived of it.â

This makes it sound as if they have solved the hardest problem, that they couldn't have solved five years ago, yet they won't have anything flying for twelve more years? The numbers add up, with gobs of room to spare.

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

They lied.

Don't tell me...

[seven of five]

The first pilot is a young dude named Speed Racer, and he calls his dad "Pops."

Re:Don't tell me...

[sexconker]

Here he comes,
Here comes Speed Racer!
He's a demon on wheels.
He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after someone.

He's gainin' on you so you better look alive.
He's busy revvin' up a powerful Mach 5!

And when the odds are against him
And there's dangerous work to do,
You bet your life Speed Racer
Will see it through.

Go Speed Racer!
Go Speed Racer!
Go Speed Racer, Go!

He's off and flyin' as he guns the car around the track.
He's jammin' down the pedal like he's never comin' back.
Adventure's waitin' just ahead.

Go Speed Racer!
Go Speed Racer!
Go Speed Racer, Go!

The Breakaway Group

[Anonymous Coward]

....living 35 years ahead of the rest of us.

The real story here.

Chinese version

[Virtucon]

The Chinese version will be available in 2032, they'll just steal the plans and paint a red star on it.

Re:Chinese version

[ghoul]

Why steal the plans. Its probably going to be manufactured in a Chinese factory or do you think USA has any manufacturing capability left?

The SR-71 is my all-time favorite jet.

[sabbede]

So beautiful! Just look at those curves!!

I wish the 72 was as sexy. Looks too boxy to get my juices flowing.

Re:The SR-71 is my all-time favorite jet.

[eaglesrule]

If you ever have the chance, you should go see it in person. Pictures don't seem to do justice for the elegance and majesty of this black metal sculpture that once flew.

Re:The SR-71 is my all-time favorite jet.

[sabbede]

I think the closest I've ever been to one is driving past the Intrepid on my way through Manhattan. I've always wanted a closer look.

50 years old and it still looks futuristic.

Better sell thoes S-500's while you can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Murica is about to make all your nifty air defense look really...slow.

#OralDiarrhea

[Anonymous Coward]

Rei AND KS Kyosuke back with a vengeance, guess Elon's ejaculatants isn't staying down as planned, what a waste.

Aurora

[ne7minder]

For 20 years you have been able to buy the Revel model of the Aurora. The plans were stolen by a designers girlfriend and sold to the model maker. Aurora is the hyper-sonic replacement to the SR-71, it is launched from the back of a larger plane and typically causes double sonic booms. The DoD refuses to acknowledge the existence but it has been reported on in the past.

Re:Aurora

[sexconker]

Aurora is the B2, you clown.

Re:Aurora

[segedunum]

No it isn't.

Re:Aurora

[sexconker]

Yes, it is. Aurora was a name associated with some stage of the B-2 design. The name got out and people started running amok with it.
Bing it.

but this one goes to 11...

[Thud457]

I have a SR-73 sitting in my garage. Beat that, USA.

Re:but this one goes to 11...

[DigiShaman]

You mean this one? The one caught by Google Earth satellite imagery?

https://www.express.co.uk/trav...

Matt Damon!

[Thud457]

Holy shit, that movie is 14 years old and it's still relevant to today's geopolitical scene.
Matt Damon! Matt Damon!

SR 75 Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

In the next 5 years, the SR 75 will fly faster than the speed of light to deliver your pizzas.

whoooosh, in 1/77th scale!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aurora ?
I was more a Lindberg kind of guy.

Ahhhh. They've Lifted the Pre-cooler

[segedunum]

that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine

The notion of the need for rapid cooling of the air was seen at British Aerospace thirty years ago with the HOTOL project, and what a company called Reaction Engines has been working on for most of that time.

Fast Spy plane

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it out run the shock wave of a nuclear blast?

Re:Fast Spy plane

[Anonymous Coward]

> Can it out run the shock wave of a nuclear blast?

Any supersonic aircraft can.

But can it outsmart a bullet?