Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.)
Ezekiel 23:20