I'd be more astonished if there isn't something superior to the SR71 (likely unmanned) that has been flying around at night from facilities like Groom Lake for years. Look at how long the RQ180 was flying around in semi-public and known about before it became seen in daylight by plane spotters in Greece. And a long time before that there were public relations approved photos of the Lockheed Martin Polecat.
There were a series of extremely public quotations from senior DoD officially recently about how they plan to aggressively retire the Global Hawk program (which is a mostly non stealth aircraft), reading between the lines it's because they have something much better.
I suspect everything comparable of late has been orbital, which begs the question what is it they’re worried about with orbital? Satellite warfare is already accelerating if the rumors are true, is it that this is untouchable still? Is there some new camera sensor where eliminating that extra atmospheric diffraction or slowing down (lol) is needed?
I am sure that the orbital capabilities are also vastly improved from what the public has ever seen. But I think there's likely a high degree of tactical value in having something that can keep station over a certain active conflict area (as an RQ180 can, maybe flying in a racetrack pattern at altitude, with sensors aimed down).
If you've ever seen the publicly released videos and audio of an RQ9 operator in communication with ground units watching the activity of a group of men/vehicles on the ground, in live real time, something like that.
As compared to periodic revisits by LEO orbit satellites that don't maintain persistent live coverage, or the extreme distance and data acquisition problem that aiming sensors in geostationary orbit at a 10x10km target area might pose.
There are satellites in geostationary orbit that have realtime live feed and agile pointing capability. However, besides the SAR, RGB style observations are limited by clouds, and also you can’t switch out the sensors on a whim. Airborne platforms are always more flexible and cheaper for certain missions.
Without leaking anything that's even remotely close to classified, WAMI (wide area multispectral imagery) sensor systems that can mount on even relatively medium sized group 3 UAV are really damn good these days. This is a pretty basic unit compared to the things that aren't publicly known:
This guy has been working on their own SAR drone for a while, just had another really nice blog post. Definitely looks like it weighs <10 lbs. He post-processes, but I doubt that's that hard to rework.
https://hforsten.com/interferometric-synthetic-aperture-rada...
It looks like a DIY implementation of some of the commercial land surveying SAR payloads that companies will sell you (for $60,000) to fly below a DJI M400 or similar size craft for tasks like monitoring open pit mines, etc. Also not realtime data return over RF data link, it's a download and post-process workflow.
It's not something I can cite with any public URL to a website that's an authoritative source, but if by 'spy' you include SIGINT satellites in that category, yes they absolutely do... Ever seen a diagram of a Boeing (Hughes) 702 series satellite bus and antenna system built for L/S-bands like frequency ranges similar to those used by Thuraya, Inmarsat and Iridium handhelds?
It's widely accepted in the commercial two way satellite telecom industry that the NSA has comparable things with big unfolding umbrella-like antennas in geostationary which serve a similar purpose for signals collection.
The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith. If they’re truly trying to relight these things, my heart goes out in advance to the neighborhood in the Southwest that burns down before they rethink it.
> The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith.
If you set partisan politics aside for 90 seconds, you might realize that regardless of the administration publicly in charge, the government is always doing stuff behind closed doors that your brain could not even begin to comprehend how they pull it off.
Stories like this hilariously implausible "grizzled old man casually leaks secret program to Aviation Week" is like throwing a cat a ball of yarn.
On the other hand our commander-in-chief (engineering expert that he is) has ordered the Navy to switch back to steam catapults on an already half-built carrier. That will also require bringing back 70 year old retirees. Pretty sure Trump would switch back to coal if he could find any living boilermakers.
Or something as mundane as cleaning up and fixing something that's been out in the weather for 20 years so it doesn't look shabby at the front gate of their base.
Or the whole "retired guy in his late 70s gives a quotation to aviation week" is a red herring intended for US adversaries, which seems like a fairly basic ruse, but might have been put together as a coordinated plan. It could have its own value of sending opposing nation state intelligence agencies and air defense people down a man-hour wasting dead end of investigating something that'll never happen.
If they were doing that they would say so. In fact if they were smart they would say that regardless of the true story. The fact they aren't saying that means they're either stupid or playing 4D chess. I know which I'd bet on.
Another theory is that some smart people already know better, and they know they're going to waste many millions of dollars investigating its feasibility, but they've been given an order from Whiskey Pete and have to at least go through the motions of writing a study/detailed report on why it's not possible to reactivate in a reasonable amount of time or budget. Never underestimate how often the US military will send a group of subordinate people to do what is effectively busy-work.
That serves a huge number of things both offense and defense: engagement, radar, missiles, trying to boost the speed capabilities of new planes & weapons. And it applies both to manned and unmanned planes.
Russia is less of a concern now, however China is coming on very fast in terms of leveling up their military capabilities. I'd be very surprised if the US military isn't looking to push its capabilities around increasing speed generally, just as it does any other aspect. There hasn't been a significant leveling up in US Air Force speed capabilities in many decades (since the F22 supercruise three decades ago?).
I know it's probably a forbidden topic around these parts, but the 'tic tac' thing that those FA18 pilots saw several years ago may be indicative of what Lockheed etc are flying up there. It's a hot topic in conspiracy circles but it wouldn't surprise me if a bulk load of ufo sightings were black projects being tested.
If those tic-tac videos were actually a classified aircraft, those airmen would have signed an NDA before they left the carrier. The fact that we know about it (and see the FLIR videos, regularly, released by the government) suggests that they are exactly what they claim to be; UFOs. It could be phenomena, it could be noumenon.
We've seen a lot of the stuff that used to be classified from Skunk Works, none of them are supersonic orb prototypes or flying tic-tacs. I'm not saying they can't develop that technology and hide it from the public, but it's unclear how all of the puzzle pieces we have fit together to support "Lockheed sends flying orb to Syria without telling CENTCOM" in any way.
The Tacit Blue is kinda tic-tac shaped (with wings sticking out the sides), but it's also a historical museum artifact now and, as far as I know, was quite slow and cumbersome.
NASA (Specifically, hotshot NASA administrator Jared Isaacman) is fixing to kill themselves some pilots.
Trivia, SR71 backseater Colonel Robert J. Roetcisender, RIP, on the right in the image below, was the designated pilot examiner who did my private pilot checkride many many years ago. It was pretty intimidating. All he asked is that I make the flight as boring as possible.
Generations of aviation enthusiasts will look back on the legendary risk management of NASA and wonder how it was entrusted to a MiG-29 aerobatics pilot.
This doesn't make much sense. NASA famously has killed two shuttle crews through bean-counter/suits mis-management. Why would having someone who has flown to space (twice) and both flies and manages the maintenance and restoration of fast jets be worse?
Kash Patel might have experience hiding his alcohol abuse and taxpayer-funded vacationing, but that doesn't qualify him as an espionage expert fit to lead the FBI. NASA's problems are funding-related, nobody ever looked at JPL and said that they needed a airshow pilot or astronaut in order to stop the layoffs.
Issacman is another in a long line of blatantly political appointments that were installed to prevent actual national progress. He doesn't hide his conflict of interests, regardless of how seriously he might take the position.
This feels like the steam catapault kerfuffle from earlier this year. Maybe I'm missing some vital reason these retired technologies must be revived, but it's not inspiring when our military doctrine is "let's go back to what worked 60 years ago"
Don't forget the new 'Battleship'. You should have seen the looks on the faces of some of the DoD people when they trotted out the big CGI rendered posterboard of the thing. They know it's a boondoggle and they're kicking the can down the road.
> The Air Force and NASA destroyed a $600 million supply of spare parts for the Blackbird fleet in 2007. The move came long after it seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that an SR-71A would return to operational service.
There's also the issue of converting a tanker back so it can carry the SR-71's unique fuel again. And for that matter, making a supply of JP-7 again. No other planes today use JP-7.
it looks like it would be much easier to get a powerful regular fighter jet engine (even old Mig-25 engines were fine for 2.8M), stick it to pilotless frame and just launch. Work a bit on intake shape, modern materials, CFD, and probably you can push it well into 3+.
I’m with the old guy on this, too long since it last flew.
It makes no sense to me, it would be an expensive and pointless vanity project. Sounds like there is a chain of people too afraid to say no, perhaps they’re hoping to drag their heels until priorities change again.
> or processes can be restarted if they were not preserved and actively practiced.
One of the reasons why the UK went vastly over budget and behind schedule when they built the first Astute class submarine, because almost everyone who had domestic UK based hands on experience building a nuclear sub had long since retired. There's certain technical things, both military or non military, where if you stop making them for a long period of time (at even a minimal rate of production), the institutional capacity to implement them dissolves away.
To give you an idea how ridiculous this is: to start each engine, they made a cart out of two Buick V8 engines tied together - so four V8 engines to start the plane. Those V8 engines were long since out of production, so at one point they went around the country, to every junkyard, buying up every one of those V8s they could find, so they would have spares to start planes up in different places. If an SR71 had an issue and landed at an unusual airport, they had to fly the start cart and other equipment to that airport to start the plane again. Everything about this plane is expensive and one-of-a-kind. It's a hot rod that goes to space.
Rather than re-engineer the cart to use a different block? I mean, I guess when a part reaches end-of-life, your first move is to buy as many as you can, before you try to re-engineer things so it isn't needed, but... horsepower is horsepower. Torque is torque. It shouldn't be that hard to replace...
Granted there are likely many obstacles to getting this airframe flying again, but the V8s probably isn't one of them. All those V8s did (and I've seen them in action) was turn a shaft. There's an infinite number of alternate options available to turn the same shaft.
As time goes on, Warhammer 40k will become a better and better guide to current events, apparently. Only one question: after recovering this lost standard template constructor pattern, how will the rites be learned to appease such a venerated machine spirit?
The SR-71 is cool, but this article is not at all confidence inspiring on many fronts.
Guy being interviewed by a reporter about a secret project. A secret project that is trying to resurrect an antique plane that has been subject to weather and on display as a museum piece for many years.
It sounds like a clown-show staged around a cool looking plane that's older than 90+% of HN readers.
It’s almost certainly being done by clowns on the orders of one of the clowns in chief. Note that quote, “I would drop everything to work on that” said guy who did not in fact drop anything to work on that. Reading between the lines I can hear old Mr loaf belting out “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that!”
There was something special about the 60s in the US. Your comment implies you might not appreciate how absurd the SR-71 was. The F-35 is our latest fighter jet. It has a top speed of 1200 mph, the SR-71 had a top speed of 2200 mph. The F-35 is capable of operating at around 50,000 ft, the SR-71 was capable of operating at 85,000 ft. The F-35 has a self fueled range of about 1350 miles, the SR-71 had a self fueled range of 2,900 miles.
Look up aviation records and you'll find the SR-71. It even still holds the #1 spot for the fastest airflight (by a plane) ever. Basically, the SR-71 is old, but old doesn't mean antiquated. The 60s was the era that we went from knowing basically nothing about space, to putting a man on the Moon in 7 years (Kennedy gave his 'to the Moon' speech in 1962, first landing 1969), while we currently flail about trying to recreate it with a program lasting into the decades already. The SR-71 was another product of this era.
The US also had two superlative poles of engineering excellence, Kelly Johnson's Skunkworks and Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarines. They've been since replaced by bureaucrats without an ounce of talent.
Back when the SR-71 was active, this magazine was nicknamed "Aviation Leak and Space Mythology" - them doing an article after the other rumours and Isaacman quotes reduces the credibility of the story, at least among Old Folk :-)
The guy interviewed is actually the gentleman that was in charge of destroying all the spare parts at the end of the SR-71 program So he knows what he is talking about and is well known. Old interview here:
https://youtu.be/mQse_XLxcWM?is=JASvQNI_bVn_bAr7
The remaining members of the quickly dwindling Blackbird community ( maintainers and flight crews) are very skeptical that it can be done but it does not mean that Isaacman is not trying.
Well, the President wants to redesign the Navy to look "cool" - battleships, carriers with steam catapults again and center islands. Why not the Air Force too?
I gather they serve mostly as aggressors and test aircraft - certainly one wouldn't fly that plane into combat. They were never ruinously expensive to operate. The SR-71 on the other hand...
The F117 is in active use as a stand-in/simulator for opposing force semi-stealthy subsonic cruise missiles for radar range testing. People see them flying all the time.
Clown show is my guess too. There's no utility for it other than rattling windows and other airshow shenanigans for bragging press releases.
There are faster (X-43 is mach 9.6 but unmanned) and higher and stealthier ships. But unless you're going to dip into the classified catalog, a rusty SR-71 is faster than the next fastest two ships which are both MiGs.
What? The SR-71 was a strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was not, and never was, an interceptor. And the F-35 was never tasked with replacing an interceptor, but is a slow-ish multirole aircraft with a heavy emphasis on strike capability. And the USAF hasn't had an "interceptor" in decades (single mission, short range, high speed, point defense aircraft).
Makes sense, the SR-71 has never intersected with any interceptor program. And the F-35 is perfect for its role (whatever it is) which is very much relevant for the current theaters. There is no embarrassment whatsoever.
Not a trick to make an old plane fly again. The trick is holding it together and landing it.
I would imagine the problem they have with the 70 year olds they’re trying to recruit is that there are old pilots and bold pilots but well, you know the rest.
More like Mission: Impossible. Replete with a mini-doco about how Tom Cruise literally for reals skydove out of the Blackbird without a chute and landed on the enemy rocket in one take.
I'd be more astonished if there isn't something superior to the SR71 (likely unmanned) that has been flying around at night from facilities like Groom Lake for years. Look at how long the RQ180 was flying around in semi-public and known about before it became seen in daylight by plane spotters in Greece. And a long time before that there were public relations approved photos of the Lockheed Martin Polecat.
There were a series of extremely public quotations from senior DoD officially recently about how they plan to aggressively retire the Global Hawk program (which is a mostly non stealth aircraft), reading between the lines it's because they have something much better.
edit: for those who haven't seen the RQ180: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=RQ180+gre...
edit 2 (apologies for the X link): https://x.com/MechDesignxyz/status/2041281689838584193
I suspect everything comparable of late has been orbital, which begs the question what is it they’re worried about with orbital? Satellite warfare is already accelerating if the rumors are true, is it that this is untouchable still? Is there some new camera sensor where eliminating that extra atmospheric diffraction or slowing down (lol) is needed?
I am sure that the orbital capabilities are also vastly improved from what the public has ever seen. But I think there's likely a high degree of tactical value in having something that can keep station over a certain active conflict area (as an RQ180 can, maybe flying in a racetrack pattern at altitude, with sensors aimed down).
If you've ever seen the publicly released videos and audio of an RQ9 operator in communication with ground units watching the activity of a group of men/vehicles on the ground, in live real time, something like that.
As compared to periodic revisits by LEO orbit satellites that don't maintain persistent live coverage, or the extreme distance and data acquisition problem that aiming sensors in geostationary orbit at a 10x10km target area might pose.
There are satellites in geostationary orbit that have realtime live feed and agile pointing capability. However, besides the SAR, RGB style observations are limited by clouds, and also you can’t switch out the sensors on a whim. Airborne platforms are always more flexible and cheaper for certain missions.
Without leaking anything that's even remotely close to classified, WAMI (wide area multispectral imagery) sensor systems that can mount on even relatively medium sized group 3 UAV are really damn good these days. This is a pretty basic unit compared to the things that aren't publicly known:
https://www.logostech.net/products/redkite/
https://www.logostech.net/products/blackkite-i/
This guy has been working on their own SAR drone for a while, just had another really nice blog post. Definitely looks like it weighs <10 lbs. He post-processes, but I doubt that's that hard to rework. https://hforsten.com/interferometric-synthetic-aperture-rada...
It looks like a DIY implementation of some of the commercial land surveying SAR payloads that companies will sell you (for $60,000) to fly below a DJI M400 or similar size craft for tasks like monitoring open pit mines, etc. Also not realtime data return over RF data link, it's a download and post-process workflow.
I think you are confused. Spy satellites do not use geostationary orbits.
It's not something I can cite with any public URL to a website that's an authoritative source, but if by 'spy' you include SIGINT satellites in that category, yes they absolutely do... Ever seen a diagram of a Boeing (Hughes) 702 series satellite bus and antenna system built for L/S-bands like frequency ranges similar to those used by Thuraya, Inmarsat and Iridium handhelds?
It's widely accepted in the commercial two way satellite telecom industry that the NSA has comparable things with big unfolding umbrella-like antennas in geostationary which serve a similar purpose for signals collection.
Didn’t satellites with superior optics and realtime video streaming … kill the need for an SR71 update?
For visual and SAR, sure, but there are other missions like electronic warfare and signals intelligence that are still well served by aircraft.
Not by a mach 3+ aircraft. Good luck getting signals through the plasma of your own wake!
Plasma is electrically conductive. Modulate it as needed, in realtime.
Enjoy the dynamically phased plasmarray.
This has got to be a trump thing. "Big beautiful ramjets!" And so on
Yeah it seems most likely it's because someone connected to the administration just thinks they're cool.
Trying to find reason behind so much of this shit is a fools errand. Vibes based presidency.
> I'd be more astonished if there isn't something superior to the SR71
Makes me wonder if this whole operation is just public cover for something like that.
The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith. If they’re truly trying to relight these things, my heart goes out in advance to the neighborhood in the Southwest that burns down before they rethink it.
> The problem is the people in charge now have not earned that kind of faith.
If you set partisan politics aside for 90 seconds, you might realize that regardless of the administration publicly in charge, the government is always doing stuff behind closed doors that your brain could not even begin to comprehend how they pull it off.
Stories like this hilariously implausible "grizzled old man casually leaks secret program to Aviation Week" is like throwing a cat a ball of yarn.
On the other hand our commander-in-chief (engineering expert that he is) has ordered the Navy to switch back to steam catapults on an already half-built carrier. That will also require bringing back 70 year old retirees. Pretty sure Trump would switch back to coal if he could find any living boilermakers.
Sometimes bad ideas are just stupidity.
This is Isaacman we're talking about. He is about as good faith as they get (low bar, I know, but for real this time).
Or something as mundane as cleaning up and fixing something that's been out in the weather for 20 years so it doesn't look shabby at the front gate of their base.
I don’t know anything but I can’t imagine they need specialists if it’s just a cosmetics job for a monument.
Or the whole "retired guy in his late 70s gives a quotation to aviation week" is a red herring intended for US adversaries, which seems like a fairly basic ruse, but might have been put together as a coordinated plan. It could have its own value of sending opposing nation state intelligence agencies and air defense people down a man-hour wasting dead end of investigating something that'll never happen.
If they were doing that they would say so. In fact if they were smart they would say that regardless of the true story. The fact they aren't saying that means they're either stupid or playing 4D chess. I know which I'd bet on.
Another theory is that some smart people already know better, and they know they're going to waste many millions of dollars investigating its feasibility, but they've been given an order from Whiskey Pete and have to at least go through the motions of writing a study/detailed report on why it's not possible to reactivate in a reasonable amount of time or budget. Never underestimate how often the US military will send a group of subordinate people to do what is effectively busy-work.
The SR-71 is because they need to test for speed.
That serves a huge number of things both offense and defense: engagement, radar, missiles, trying to boost the speed capabilities of new planes & weapons. And it applies both to manned and unmanned planes.
Russia is less of a concern now, however China is coming on very fast in terms of leveling up their military capabilities. I'd be very surprised if the US military isn't looking to push its capabilities around increasing speed generally, just as it does any other aspect. There hasn't been a significant leveling up in US Air Force speed capabilities in many decades (since the F22 supercruise three decades ago?).
I know it's probably a forbidden topic around these parts, but the 'tic tac' thing that those FA18 pilots saw several years ago may be indicative of what Lockheed etc are flying up there. It's a hot topic in conspiracy circles but it wouldn't surprise me if a bulk load of ufo sightings were black projects being tested.
If those tic-tac videos were actually a classified aircraft, those airmen would have signed an NDA before they left the carrier. The fact that we know about it (and see the FLIR videos, regularly, released by the government) suggests that they are exactly what they claim to be; UFOs. It could be phenomena, it could be noumenon.
We've seen a lot of the stuff that used to be classified from Skunk Works, none of them are supersonic orb prototypes or flying tic-tacs. I'm not saying they can't develop that technology and hide it from the public, but it's unclear how all of the puzzle pieces we have fit together to support "Lockheed sends flying orb to Syria without telling CENTCOM" in any way.
The Tacit Blue is kinda tic-tac shaped (with wings sticking out the sides), but it's also a historical museum artifact now and, as far as I know, was quite slow and cumbersome.
NASA (Specifically, hotshot NASA administrator Jared Isaacman) is fixing to kill themselves some pilots.
Trivia, SR71 backseater Colonel Robert J. Roetcisender, RIP, on the right in the image below, was the designated pilot examiner who did my private pilot checkride many many years ago. It was pretty intimidating. All he asked is that I make the flight as boring as possible.
https://www.blackbirds.net/sr71/sr-crew-photos/SR71-crews/da...
Generations of aviation enthusiasts will look back on the legendary risk management of NASA and wonder how it was entrusted to a MiG-29 aerobatics pilot.
This doesn't make much sense. NASA famously has killed two shuttle crews through bean-counter/suits mis-management. Why would having someone who has flown to space (twice) and both flies and manages the maintenance and restoration of fast jets be worse?
Kash Patel might have experience hiding his alcohol abuse and taxpayer-funded vacationing, but that doesn't qualify him as an espionage expert fit to lead the FBI. NASA's problems are funding-related, nobody ever looked at JPL and said that they needed a airshow pilot or astronaut in order to stop the layoffs.
Issacman is another in a long line of blatantly political appointments that were installed to prevent actual national progress. He doesn't hide his conflict of interests, regardless of how seriously he might take the position.
This feels like the steam catapault kerfuffle from earlier this year. Maybe I'm missing some vital reason these retired technologies must be revived, but it's not inspiring when our military doctrine is "let's go back to what worked 60 years ago"
Don't forget the new 'Battleship'. You should have seen the looks on the faces of some of the DoD people when they trotted out the big CGI rendered posterboard of the thing. They know it's a boondoggle and they're kicking the can down the road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump-class_battleship
> The Air Force and NASA destroyed a $600 million supply of spare parts for the Blackbird fleet in 2007. The move came long after it seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that an SR-71A would return to operational service.
There's also the issue of converting a tanker back so it can carry the SR-71's unique fuel again. And for that matter, making a supply of JP-7 again. No other planes today use JP-7.
"It's not my money!"
it looks like it would be much easier to get a powerful regular fighter jet engine (even old Mig-25 engines were fine for 2.8M), stick it to pilotless frame and just launch. Work a bit on intake shape, modern materials, CFD, and probably you can push it well into 3+.
This is essentially the thought process behind the Hermeus Quarterhorse which is already a thing that exists and is in active development:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hermeus+q...
Fun fact: the US could not produce enough titanium to manufacture them, so the CIA set up shell companies to buy some from the Soviets.
I’m with the old guy on this, too long since it last flew.
It makes no sense to me, it would be an expensive and pointless vanity project. Sounds like there is a chain of people too afraid to say no, perhaps they’re hoping to drag their heels until priorities change again.
people behave like engineers grow on trees.
or processes can be restarted if they were not preserved and actively practiced.
> or processes can be restarted if they were not preserved and actively practiced.
One of the reasons why the UK went vastly over budget and behind schedule when they built the first Astute class submarine, because almost everyone who had domestic UK based hands on experience building a nuclear sub had long since retired. There's certain technical things, both military or non military, where if you stop making them for a long period of time (at even a minimal rate of production), the institutional capacity to implement them dissolves away.
Nasa reported they're not restarting the actual plane, it would cost too much money, they're making a new one based on the SR-71
Why would they do this?
> And Lockheed’s operational manuals for the SR-71A still exist—and are superb...
I appreciate this level of documentation.
While they're at it they should try re-flying the Valkyrie...
A-12 (Oxcart) pilots say that the SR-71 was the station wagon version :)
To give you an idea how ridiculous this is: to start each engine, they made a cart out of two Buick V8 engines tied together - so four V8 engines to start the plane. Those V8 engines were long since out of production, so at one point they went around the country, to every junkyard, buying up every one of those V8s they could find, so they would have spares to start planes up in different places. If an SR71 had an issue and landed at an unusual airport, they had to fly the start cart and other equipment to that airport to start the plane again. Everything about this plane is expensive and one-of-a-kind. It's a hot rod that goes to space.
Rather than re-engineer the cart to use a different block? I mean, I guess when a part reaches end-of-life, your first move is to buy as many as you can, before you try to re-engineer things so it isn't needed, but... horsepower is horsepower. Torque is torque. It shouldn't be that hard to replace...
Granted there are likely many obstacles to getting this airframe flying again, but the V8s probably isn't one of them. All those V8s did (and I've seen them in action) was turn a shaft. There's an infinite number of alternate options available to turn the same shaft.
As time goes on, Warhammer 40k will become a better and better guide to current events, apparently. Only one question: after recovering this lost standard template constructor pattern, how will the rites be learned to appease such a venerated machine spirit?
There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71000...
The SR-71 is cool, but this article is not at all confidence inspiring on many fronts.
Guy being interviewed by a reporter about a secret project. A secret project that is trying to resurrect an antique plane that has been subject to weather and on display as a museum piece for many years.
It sounds like a clown-show staged around a cool looking plane that's older than 90+% of HN readers.
It’s almost certainly being done by clowns on the orders of one of the clowns in chief. Note that quote, “I would drop everything to work on that” said guy who did not in fact drop anything to work on that. Reading between the lines I can hear old Mr loaf belting out “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that!”
There was something special about the 60s in the US. Your comment implies you might not appreciate how absurd the SR-71 was. The F-35 is our latest fighter jet. It has a top speed of 1200 mph, the SR-71 had a top speed of 2200 mph. The F-35 is capable of operating at around 50,000 ft, the SR-71 was capable of operating at 85,000 ft. The F-35 has a self fueled range of about 1350 miles, the SR-71 had a self fueled range of 2,900 miles.
Look up aviation records and you'll find the SR-71. It even still holds the #1 spot for the fastest airflight (by a plane) ever. Basically, the SR-71 is old, but old doesn't mean antiquated. The 60s was the era that we went from knowing basically nothing about space, to putting a man on the Moon in 7 years (Kennedy gave his 'to the Moon' speech in 1962, first landing 1969), while we currently flail about trying to recreate it with a program lasting into the decades already. The SR-71 was another product of this era.
The US also had two superlative poles of engineering excellence, Kelly Johnson's Skunkworks and Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarines. They've been since replaced by bureaucrats without an ounce of talent.
No one questions the technical achievements of the SR-71. It doesn't make any sense to try to resurrect them though.
Back when the SR-71 was active, this magazine was nicknamed "Aviation Leak and Space Mythology" - them doing an article after the other rumours and Isaacman quotes reduces the credibility of the story, at least among Old Folk :-)
The guy interviewed is actually the gentleman that was in charge of destroying all the spare parts at the end of the SR-71 program So he knows what he is talking about and is well known. Old interview here: https://youtu.be/mQse_XLxcWM?is=JASvQNI_bVn_bAr7
The remaining members of the quickly dwindling Blackbird community ( maintainers and flight crews) are very skeptical that it can be done but it does not mean that Isaacman is not trying.
The story is almost certainly a leak. The amateur hour reporting can be ignored.
> It sounds like a clown-show…
Well, the President wants to redesign the Navy to look "cool" - battleships, carriers with steam catapults again and center islands. Why not the Air Force too?
I wish this were the case; if it were for cool points the F-117 would be back!
Little known fact (but not a secret): the F-117 is still flown today, even though they were "retired" in 2008.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZFwOGfhRZ8
I gather they serve mostly as aggressors and test aircraft - certainly one wouldn't fly that plane into combat. They were never ruinously expensive to operate. The SR-71 on the other hand...
The F117 is in active use as a stand-in/simulator for opposing force semi-stealthy subsonic cruise missiles for radar range testing. People see them flying all the time.
If you’re gonna have an Air Farce we’ll have to tariff you guys, eh?
Clown show is my guess too. There's no utility for it other than rattling windows and other airshow shenanigans for bragging press releases.
There are faster (X-43 is mach 9.6 but unmanned) and higher and stealthier ships. But unless you're going to dip into the classified catalog, a rusty SR-71 is faster than the next fastest two ships which are both MiGs.
Reading the article, this does seem ill-advised.
Wtf is with that sites do not track!?!! It’s hidden behind an unstyled link to turn off extra trackers…
The new planes (F-35) were supposed to supersede interceptors like the SR-71 (that's their multirole goal). If it can't, this is an embarrassment.
What? The SR-71 was a strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was not, and never was, an interceptor. And the F-35 was never tasked with replacing an interceptor, but is a slow-ish multirole aircraft with a heavy emphasis on strike capability. And the USAF hasn't had an "interceptor" in decades (single mission, short range, high speed, point defense aircraft).
There was a YF-12 interceptor prototype that was a variant of the SR-71 prototype (A-12).
Makes sense, the SR-71 has never intersected with any interceptor program. And the F-35 is perfect for its role (whatever it is) which is very much relevant for the current theaters. There is no embarrassment whatsoever.
Bet Tom Cruise will be offering to allow him to use it for an upcoming movie thrilla
I wouldn’t mind, as long as the plane flies again.
It’s a true marvel of engineering.
Not a trick to make an old plane fly again. The trick is holding it together and landing it.
I would imagine the problem they have with the 70 year olds they’re trying to recruit is that there are old pilots and bold pilots but well, you know the rest.
Top Gun: Blackbird?
More like Mission: Impossible. Replete with a mini-doco about how Tom Cruise literally for reals skydove out of the Blackbird without a chute and landed on the enemy rocket in one take.
It's for a new Pepsi promotion
They finally going to make good?
That's a lotta Pepsi points esp. in this economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico%2C_Inc.
It'd be incredible to have an SR-71 flying again, just simply __because__!