SR-71 replacement

[MillCreek]

A thread on another forum got me thinking: what has replaced the SR-71 Blackbird?  Surely we still have another high-speed manned recon aircraft.  Drones and satellites cannot do everything.  I remember reading Net speculation about the 'Aurora' in years past, and I wonder what is out there that has not yet been revealed to the public.

[Brad Johnson]

The Blackbird and it's Lockheed sibling the A-12 were designed for speed and altitude goals in order to keep them from being shot down.  Advances in anti-aircraft technology forced the change in thinking from High And Fast to the then new area of Low Observability.  Plus, low observability usually means small, slow, and quiet.  That means the craft doesn't encounter the structural challenges of high altitude or supersonic flight.  That means less expensive on a per-unit basis.  That, plus advances in camera and data transmission technology, give engineers and designers the ability to scale down the craft to the point that you can deploy hundreds of them for the cost of a single HA/HS craft.  Or thousands of them vs an orbital observation platform.

As much as I love the Blackbird, both out of respect the incredible achievement it was for Lockheed as well as it's proven service record, I think the era of brute-force aerial observation is a thing of the past.  Sad, too, as they are truly unique and incredibly neat aircraft.

Brad

[TechMan]

At the USAF Museum in Dayton OH you can walk around the SR-71.  Since the U2 is still in service, AFAIK, it is hung from the rafters so you cannot see in the cockpit.

[wmenorr67]

At the USAF Museum in Dayton OH you can walk around the SR-71.  Since the U2 is still in service, AFAIK, it is hung from the rafters so you cannot see in the cockpit.

I can confirm that the U-2 is still in service.  But there are a lot of other toys at our disposal.

[AJ Dual]

There's enough photographic evidence of pulse-detonation contrails, and even seismic evidence of something moving faster than the SR-71 did.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/jasper999/ufos-secret-Image8.jpg

So in that respect, I think that there is a successor, but I definitely agree with birdman, that it's not used as a spy platform. If amateur photographers and college geology depts. can detect it, I imagine its utility for covert ops has to be limited. You push something through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, it tends to become more of a "atmosphereic event" than an aircraft. Unless it's really tiny.

Uncle Sam has been very interested in rapid global force projection of conventional munitions without needing friendly countries as FOB's, or without having to have aircraft carriers right where you need them. I'd guess that goes at least as far back as our first raid on Libya as payback for the pan-am bombing and France denied ourF-111's overflight.

Except that anything on a ballistic trajectory has an undesirably high pucker-factor for the world's ICBM capable powers, unless we give them advance warning. And they in turn my tip off the tin-pot dictator that World-Police-America want's to make go-splodey on.  So that's th niche I think any new toys we have flying around at over Mach 3 are trying to fill.

Probably not manned anymore though.

[RocketMan]

For those in the NW that are interested, the Evergreen Air and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR has an SR-71 and a D-21 drone on display.  A pretty slick display.

[TommyGunn]

I think the Space Museum in Huntsville Alabama along 565 has one too.

[MillCreek]

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1216913&page=1

The above link is a very interesting thread on donuts-on-a-rope contrails.

[wmenorr67]

The thing about the SR-71's is that even though they are "retired" if they get moved at all, even a foot, the U.S. has to notify Russia because of different treaties. 

[Brad Johnson]

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1216913&page=1

The above link is a very interesting thread on donuts-on-a-rope contrails.

I like the way the guy showing his pics is so conviced that the one with the dit-dit-dit path across it is absolute proof of a pulsed propulsion system when, in reality, it's a great long-exposure shot of an aircraft's blinking anti-collision light. 

Reminds me of a vid a few years back a guy had taken while on the southeast coast of Florida at night.  It was conjoined hazy donutty-looking light circles suddenly joined by a second set of conjoined hazy donutty-looking light circles, the first set slowly dimming and diverged course.  He claimed was absolute proof of alien aircraft.  Me?  I'm pretty sure it's absolute proof of poor lens quality (lens flare), an idiot who doesn't know how to properly focus his camera, and one of the multi-stage rockets that are routinely launched from... *gasp*... the southeast coast of Florida.

Brad

[Perd Hapley]

Brad, are you suggesting that some UFO sightings are just the result of people not being smart enough to identify flying objects?

[lee n. field]

There's enough photographic evidence of pulse-detonation contrails, and even seismic evidence of something moving faster than the SR-71 did.

Orion-ish?

[lee n. field]

Brad, are you suggesting that some UFO sightings are just the result of people not being smart enough to identify flying objects?

Yeah, so?

[Brad Johnson]

Brad, are you suggesting that some UFO sightings are just the result of people not being smart enough to identify flying objects?

Nah, I think it's the result of people being too dumb to identify painfully obvious flying objects.

Brad

[RevDisk]

A thread on another forum got me thinking: what has replaced the SR-71 Blackbird?  Surely we still have another high-speed manned recon aircraft.  Drones and satellites cannot do everything.  I remember reading Net speculation about the 'Aurora' in years past, and I wonder what is out there that has not yet been revealed to the public.

Drones and satellites. 

We have the X-37, some prototype scamjets like the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) project, etc. They're cute.  Satellites and drones do the bulk of the actual work.

[Brad Johnson]

Drones and satellites. 

We have the X-37, some prototype scamjets like the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) project, etc. They're cute.  Satellites and drones do the bulk of the actual work.

I've heard about those scamjets.  Shifty buggers, always trying to steal you blind with some fast scheme.

Brad

[MechAg94]

Drones and satellites. 

We have the X-37, some prototype scamjets like the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) project, etc. They're cute.  Satellites and drones do the bulk of the actual work.

I've heard spy satellites have gotten to be scary precise.  I imagine that covers a lot of the spying jobs. 

[MechAg94]

I like the way the guy showing his pics is so conviced that the one with the dit-dit-dit path across it is absolute proof of a pulsed propulsion system when, in reality, it's a great long-exposure shot of an aircraft's blinking anti-collision light. 

Reminds me of a vid a few years back a guy had taken while on the southeast coast of Florida at night.  It was conjoined hazy donutty-looking light circles suddenly joined by a second set of conjoined hazy donutty-looking light circles, the first set slowly dimming and diverged course.  He claimed was absolute proof of alien aircraft.  Me?  I'm pretty sure it's absolute proof of poor lens quality (lens flare), an idiot who doesn't know how to properly focus his camera, and one of the multi-stage rockets that are routinely launched from... *gasp*... the southeast coast of Florida.

Brad

There was one of those shows a while back where some biker type guys were supposed to be proving or disproving myths in 30 minutes.  They got some long exposure camera footage of an area showing lights circling over head.  Turns out it was a distance shot of an airport approach area showing airplanes circling.  They at least admitted that.

[MechAg94]

I had a old materials science professor in school in the mid-90's.  It was his opinion that we were capable of building aircraft that could go Mach 10 or 15, but due to the extreme high temperatures on the wing surfaces at those speeds, either materials to build them were very very expensive and hard to make or the useable life was extremely short. 

That hypersonic missile we heard about is what speaks volumes to me.  If we were able to build a anti-ICBM system that was even half effective, that hypersonic missile would allow us to hit just about anyone else with impunity. 

[Tallpine]

I wonder what is out there that has not yet been revealed to the public.

Ask the Iranians 

[RoadKingLarry]

Actually, I'd be pretty pissed if it was to turn out that we don't have a crap load of really cool, super secret, high tech gadgets and weapons to use against "the other guy"*.

* who ever that happens to be at the time.

[RevDisk]

Actually, I'd be pretty pissed if it was to turn out that we don't have a crap load of really cool, super secret, high tech gadgets and weapons to use against "the other guy"*.

* who ever that happens to be at the time.

The super sekret stuff is less useful than most folks thing. Boots and rifles are still the most important weapons in a country's arsenal. The minds and training are more important than even those. Drones, satellites, and super-weapons are cute. But they are not very important in the long run. The industrial base and personality of the country involved are the telling signs.

We have expensive shiny toys with limited real world value, because we can afford the luxury. You want the toys? Keep an economy healthy enough to afford the inefficiency of such groundbreaking but limited use tech.

[Perd Hapley]

Yeah, so?

WHO'S EVER HEARD OF STEEL MELTING? BUSH KNEW!!!!

[Jamisjockey]

Brad, are you suggesting that some UFO sightings are just the result of people not being smart enough to identify flying objects?

Like flares.  I know a couple people who were working ATC in the Phoneix area when that whole to-do over the UFO happened, and have personally witnessed enough flare launches in the desert to be able to identify flares.  They do weird things on very clear nights over the desert, though.

[Fly320s]

Like flares.  I know a couple people who were working ATC in the Phoneix area when that whole to-do over the UFO happened, and have personally witnessed enough flare launches in the desert to be able to identify flares.  They do weird things on very clear nights over the desert, though.

Like get moved by the wind?  Or even climb?  Crazy!