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

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

[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]

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

[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: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.

[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.

[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.

[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.