SR-72 Confirmed: Mach 6 Project Blackswift

F22's have been bought by several foreign nations, not many, but 2 or 3 here and there.
[\quote]

Can you cite that? Last time I checked, F-22 was banned for export.

thomas.loc.gov...:HZ00295:

Too much goodies on that for competitors to know.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THREAD?!?!?!

The OP is telling a very terrible story. I promise you it's all made up.

And those pictures? One is a lifting body design. The military experimented with these and scrapped them.
The other is another design alleged to be the new shuttle, Aurora, troop transport, and many many others.

The only thing substantiating this completely bogus story is the speculation of a journalist for the AF Times?

Blackswift reportedly doesn’t have the backing of the Air Force at this time, which will obviously be crucial to the project reaching maturity.

www.dailytech.com...

The OP's own sources contradict her claims. Not to mention 2007 does not qualify as recent.

So was this or was this not an Air Force project? The MOST recent article says no. Groom Lake is AF run. Nice try OP.

COME ON PEOPLE! YOU'RE KILLING ME!

Venture Star:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar

X-33 Here:
en.wikipedia.org...

X-38 Here:
en.wikipedia.org...

rods of god!

just guided chunks of steel.


at that speed and altitude wouldn't need too much explosives to make a big hole.

Originally posted by SpringHeeledJack


The OP's own sources contradict her claims. Not to mention 2007 does not qualify as recent.

check the date of the OP

reply to post by iforget


Oopsie. Nevertheless... My post stands

I think it's sad if the SR-72 turns out to be an UAV. Man can easily travel at these speeds and do a better job in in the cockpit with peripheral vision etc.. in combat situations.

I would prefer if they called this something else and saved the SR-72 moniker for a possible manned successor in the future.

Originally posted by bdn12
Bhadhidar, do you really think we would sell such a cutting edge piece of equipment to foreign countries? Some things are best left in the nations hands that builds it, and this is one of those things, just as the SR-71 was and the B-2 and F-22 are. Not everything that the US builds has to be sold to foreign countries.

Absolutely not, infact those countries can just wait for it to crash into their back yard or their neighbours back yard then get it free.

Being american technology, it won't exactly be safe nor reliable. Ask any chinook pilot (especially the dead ones).

reply to post by richdoe


A hypothetical SR-72 is not a combat system. What value does a human have? None. What risk does a human have? See Gary Powers. A live pilot is much better propaganda for Kim-Jong-Evil than pieces of carbon fiber.

Originally posted by intelgurl

Originally posted by northwolf
This is a real bomb, it's nice to have some real news for a change.

Any ideas on the payload and weapons mix for the attack version?

No such info at this time - this is a black project and we're lucky to get this much.

The picture of the "actual" craft looks a lot like combination lifting body that can with a MHD "sled" take off vertically and land the same way, though with it's own deployable landing gear. Also new advances in mixed propulsion that includes hybrid-"air breathers" as part of the propulsion mix allow for powered in atmosphere maneuverability. It also looks like it would have two complete but separate main power/propulsion systems. The air-breather may or may not be integrated with the "rocket" propulsion system. If so it would be much more complex. And complex means complicated and the more complicated, the more things break. A MHD sled that can get it moving on the ground could get this to very high speed before sled "break-away". It would stay on the ground, or even have an additional power source that would serve as a first stage, more or less and carry it up to higher altitude where air-breathers or non-air-dependent propulsion kicks in.

I must wonder if your source was given a "grey light" to talk about this but as so much has been in the media, including some very interesting anionic nuclear power systems that use thorium or other materials and are irradiated to generate power. This has also been mentioned in the area of "NASA, Fusion Power Options" as well as a power source for our very long duration UAV's though its in a different league as you need a huge specific impulse in newtons to get the needed thrust to take off from the Earth. Hence the use of a "sled"

No doubt we have some very cool stuff at various stages of development. Ben Rich said so much at his retirement party (also OS reported) that we have stuff in the desert 50-to-75 years ahead of anything people can now imagine. And that was in the 1990's. It would make sense to design this kind of vehicle first for military missions, possibly a "Sanger" like bomber, or a energy weapon equipped space plane. Both are of interest to say the least but don't know the status. I just hope we release this technology to get the rest of us into space faster, and a lot cheaper. Yeah I know, when hell freezes over. But when technology is introduced and become's more familiar to the masses, then the options do open up.

Perhaps those involved in private space projects can take a serious look at this. Though no way is any nation going to give up a significant advantage with any military potential, unless others also figure it out...

What kind of propulsion that plane will used? hydrocarbon fuel?

Originally posted by Militarywarfare
What kind of propulsion that plane will used? hydrocarbon fuel?

Very likely yes. Polymerized hydrogen and a hydrocarbon fuel "cage" (picture a bee hive) would make sense. The hydrocarbon component would increase the range by a factor of 6 at least, and polymerized hydrogen can be much denser then liquid H hence much greater range. Another thing to look at is solid hydrogen (heard we had some problems with that, as did the Russians) and it would be converted pre-burn with a MHD frequency converter, similar to a VASIMER space propulsion system that in space at least would really kick ass, get you to Mar's in 39 days.

But in this case would be used more as a spark plug. (a crude term but the best I can come up with at the moment)

Blackswift really isn't anything new. It's been discussed for years now. I'm sure some of the technology used in regards to the propulsion system came from the "Aurora". I use that name loosely because it has never been confirmed that it was in fact the actual name of the project itself. Some say Aurora was a generalized term used for a group of high-speed programs and not just one single airframe. I think it's pretty clear that here, in 2012, we're moving towards UAV's more than ever. So it makes sense that Blackswift, if being revived, would be unmanned. Back in the mid 80's Hangar 18 was built at Groom Lake and it was shortly thereafter that the hypersonic vehicle rumors began to spread. In the early 90's new fuel tanks were added at the south end of the facility that reportedly stored the exotic fuel used for the high-speed aircraft in question. But, of course, none of that has ever been confirmed. When the new hangar started going up at Groom in 2007 I too wondered what it would be used for. My initial thought was an unmanned, high-speed replacement for the B-2. That could still be a possibility. I hate the use of the term "reliable source" because in this world who's really reliable? And what can truly be confirmed? I'm not saying your sources are bogus, as I'm sure you believe them to be legit. The only thing is that with a hypersonic vehicle comes unavoidable drawbacks. One being sound. When the Aurora was at the height of it's popularity in the early 90's people were not only hearing, but feeling the effects of it's flight over downtown Los Angeles. These "skyquakes" have been discussed many times by Dr. Jim Mori. I frequent another board that is native to the area of Nevada where Groom Lake is located, and none of them are talking about hearing anything out of the ordinary now, or in the past few years. Surely that doesn't mean or prove anything, but it's food for thought. Blackswift was also reportedly canceled back in 2008 if I remember correctly. But there could be variations of the technology used within that program in the testing phases of another aircraft today

Originally posted by arbiture

Originally posted by Militarywarfare
What kind of propulsion that plane will used? hydrocarbon fuel?

Very likely yes. Polymerized hydrogen and a hydrocarbon fuel "cage" (picture a bee hive) would make sense. The hydrocarbon component would increase the range by a factor of 6 at least, and polymerized hydrogen can be much denser then liquid H hence much greater range.

How do you polymerize hydrogen? Seems as though the densest "polymerized" hydrogen feasible is well, RP1 (kerosene).

Oh, yeah. Sure. "Welcome to our new 'black project,' here are a few details about it (to keep your minds off other, more exciting craft that we have operational)."

You guys are looking at this the wrong way. If a project like aurora exists, it would need to be refueled right? Where do the tankers that refuel top secret black project aircraft come from? Well, they send a KC-10 from Travis into the range a lot but the majority of the black project refuelings came from Edwards AFB and the crews that were TDY there. Now there are only around 5-600 active duty boom operators in the KC-135 world. Take away all booms that aren't at least instructors. Your left with about 200 or so people who may have seen something a little crazy out there . Hell some may even be on ATS...

about all the x craft we have getting tested at edwards air force base and the so called are 51.

Most likely such a programm doesn`t exist, or if it does it is very unlikely anything more than a scale demonstrator, a tiny toy they usually have been testing for decades. I don`t believe US has engineering capacity to build that many full scale aircraft in secrecy. If they can`t build modern trucks, bikes, TV sets, consumer electronics , car platforms,civil aircraft, I also doubt their ability to execute similar precision engineering tasks. And SR-72 nomenclature would be highly unlikely kept. What I rather believe that it is a publicity stunt, to fake black programms in order to suck more funding for black projects, as it was done for A-12 by MDD, when the first prototype was quickly sent to scrapyard in order to hide the real money spent versus the claimed. Yah, we build these all exotic aircraft, but sorry, we just can`t show it to you. Did Kodak also secretly build hi-end cameras to compete with Nikon, or Boeing accounted only 35% of its only new civil aircraft in decades, and outsourced almost everything, so they could rush top notch engineers to their Phantom Works? Right, who are you kidding?

reply to post by princeofpeace


Ohh you bet this is some old junk they are throwing out there. "Some" of this tech has been around since 1944.. Dont even ask who built it. Dont even go down that rabbit hole...

Is there really a place for such an aircraft in the modern world with the cold war over?

It sure looks like the aircraft on this patch though which would make a lot of sense,

Originally posted by CyberCholo
Is there really a place for such an aircraft in the modern world with the cold war over?

It sure looks like the aircraft on this patch though which would make a lot of sense,

na, just the X-37B....