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Former SR-71 Engineer Talks NASA's Blackbird Revival Program (www.twz.com)
submitted 21 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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I was waiting for The War Zone to do an article on the apparent SR-71 revival. The SR-71 engineer they interviewed believes that the most-likely thing being done is bringing the Blackbird back to be used as a testbed for new, high-speed engines.

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[–] 13 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

You're telling me it's not Hegseth longing for the glory days, nor Trump thinking it's still the best tool for reconnaissance?

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  • [–] 5 points 16 hours ago* (3 children)

    My thought is that renewed interest in this and the not strictly confirmed but seemingly under active developement SR-72 is...

    ... Platform for high altitude launched, satellite killing missiles.

    For a long time the US got to enjoy being basically the only power with a stupendous intelligence advantage from a network of spy and comms satellites vast enough to get total coverage, basically everywhere, at pretty low time lags.

    Well now, others have comparable capabilities.

    So, develop a way to remove that.

    We've been able to shoot down satellites from aircraft launched missiles since the 80s.

    We've specifically called for the end of tests of ground launched anti-satellite missiles, leaving aircraft launched anti-satellite missiles as a neat little carve out in our own rhetoric/intl. policy 'suggestions'.

    So, in a world where spy and comms sats are just viewed as valid targets in a large scale war/operation, a fleet of mach 3+ / potentially hypersonic aircraft that can deny intel to the opponent and likely also gather your own intel, that're significantly harder to shoot down than a satellite... seems like a plausible doctrine to me.

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  • [–] 6 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Shoots down 1 satellite.

    Splinters pollute low orbit. Wrecks havoc. Satellites brow up left and right. Low orbit is now useless. Splinters fly up in higher orbits and the destruction continues. No more satellites can be launched at all.

    SR-72 is retired.

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  • [–] 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

    Uh huh.

    Yep.

    They seem to be fine with that, just causing Kessler Syndrome.

    Now the SR 72 is not retired, because satellite based anything becomes extremely difficult to achieve, at best, and you can put cameras and comms datalinks on them, and have them do what satellites can now not do.

    Could also do ground attack on static / slow moving targets: Mach 4-6 from half a continent away, over to a target area, slow down, open bomb bay, drop a glide bomb (or a lot of em), close up, speed back up and fly away.

    You now have comms intel and air superiority, at least in an offensive sense; you destroyed the previous paradigm with your new paradigm.

    If you can get a reliable 'bombtruck' style airframe, human piloted or autonomous, working at around the Mach 5 range... who has anything that can shoot that down?

    The SR 71 wasn't really stealth, it just flew too high and too fast for anything to be able to touch it.

    Oh and for the 'glide bombs', just do what the Iranians seem to be doing: outfit some of them with a secondary boost phase that triggers semi-randomly, based on the munition either sensing its near the target, or, sensing that something is trying to intercept it.

    This also greatly relieves the entire problem of highly expensive single use long range missiles... just have a ferry for them, ease the cost and design specs of the actual munitions by doing 80% of their job.

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