SR-72 Confirmed: Mach 6 Project Blackswift

a reply to: Blackfinger

Nope. Almost all the Russian stuff is reworked Soviet tech. The Russians have not nearly enough money (sanctions have actually hurt) and have been suffering a serious brain drain.

China has several generations of US trained scientists and engineers now. Many of whom have returned to China for their careers. They have even crossed the threshold where their universities are approaching American ones for quality, so they can train their own STEM types. Chinese AI work, frex, is second only to the US. Europe doesn't even compare.
China has plenty of dinero. As noted, China's economy is larger than the US if you go by PPP (what you can buy with a given amount of money). They are perfectly willing to burn money to get the tech/science they want. Plenty of base knowledge plus money equals they can figure the rest out.

The laws of physics don't care what color your flag.

People are stuck with a 1990s vision of what China is. 1999 was 20 years ago! People need to get over their assumptions.

There are still a lot of smart Russians at work though.

a reply to: Blackfinger

Not nearly as many as there used to be. And money often trumps smarts.

Experimental and numerical study of solid rocket scramjet combustor equipped with combined cavity and strut device

Authors:

Li et al

Abstract:

In this paper, a new solid rocket scramjet equipped with two combined cavity and strut device was studied by experimental and numerical approaches. The experiment simulated a flight Mach number 5.5 at 23 km. Hydrocarbon type fuel was used as the solid fuel-rich propellant. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations coupled with shear stress transport turbulence model are employed to simulate the flow field in the solid rocket scramjet combustor. The numerical method was validated by experimental data. The experimental results show that the combined cavity and strut device can play a role as ignition and flame holding in the solid rocket scramjet combustor. Additionally, the numerical results show that the combustion of gas and particle phase is conducted sequentially rather than simultaneously. And the total combustion efficiency mainly depends on the particle combustion. The total combustion efficiency is about 0.7 and the total pressure recovery is about 0.25 in this test. The combined cavity and strut device do improve the combustion efficiency in the solid rocket scramjet. However, the total pressure recovery is a rather low. Aerodynamic configuration optimization of the combined cavity and strut device will be carried out in the next step.

www.sciencedirect.com...

a reply to: anzha

India test fired their first purely local hypersonic weapon/vehicle.

pib.nic.in...#

Flowfield structures of pylon-aided fuel injection into a supersonic crossflow

Authors:

Li et al

Abstract:

Flowfield structures of pylon-aided fuel injection of a sonic jet into a supersonic crossflow with Ma = 2.95 have been investigated by Nanoparticle-based Planar Laser Scattering (NPLS) technique and oil flow technique, seperately. Two experimental cases have been done for jet-to-crossflow momentum flux ratios (J) of 7.7 and 20.6, respectively, and the results are compared with those obtained by normal injection of a single jet from a flat plate without a pylon. Experimental results indicate that the flow structures of pylon-aided injection cases are very similar to those found in the normal injection cases in the downstream region of the jet. Upstream of the jet orifice, the detached shock generated at the leading edge of the pylon is identified by inserting with the separation shock. For lower injection pressure case there is always larger influences of the pylon in the flow structures in terms of jet plums’ position and the shock intensity. Besides, the mechanism of mixing enhancement resulting from the pylon is also elaborated in the present work.

www.sciencedirect.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

So zaphod, what do you think out of the black aircraft that are likely operating , realistically what kind of match speed could they be reaching present day?

a reply to: Rhombus101

The real question there is manned or unmanned? Because I'm sure that makes a big difference with current tech.

I'm betting we have some very fast, very small unmanned (remotely piloted or preprogrammed piloted) craft that made the Blackbird obsolete.

As far as small recon assets I think this would have problems due to the fact that small size means small range generally.

Blackbird was retired ostensibly due to expense and the capability and ubiquity of satellites allegedly making it obsolete. The cost per hour of the Blackbird in 1990 was reported as being something like $85,000 per hour.

But they've spent more on ridiculous things that came to naught so I think they were using this as a retirement justification.

There's long been discussions on there being a small force of modern replacements that came in the time period sometime after 1986 with the skyquakes becoming noted in the 1988-1989 timeframe. These tapered off by 1991-1992.

I've heard all of the arguments for/against aurora yet something was going on that may have been mothballed later or simply put into storage.

But later there were several sightings including radio intercepts of a manned high flying fast craft in the late 1990s timeframe but again these apparently came in bits here and there.

Then reports of other craft that came later.

The jury is still out. The SR-72 I believe is a completely different thing, almost a gray world item because for a top secret aircraft it has a pretty high profile.



a reply to: Gazrok

a reply to: Rhombus101
Mach 4 to Mach 5 maybe?Just a Green guess.

Guess where it came from and what you are seeing:

a reply to: anzha

Nice!

a reply to: Zaphod58

www.thedrive.com...

They're watching. Always watching.

a reply to: anzha

I would have gone for the payload to be under the mothership but looks cool.

on a side note i'm going to be in scotland in a few weeks i wonder if ill see any american/uk stuff flying around.

a reply to: penroc3
Separation looks about as sketchy as with the M21/D21.

a reply to: mightmight

i know right. one thing goes wrong and you know what hits the fan, also note the date of the test in this video




RIP


here is a fun video on the NASA bird




its funny you never hear about the electron beam generators in the inlet cones

its funny you never hear about the electron beam generators in the inlet cones

Took Ben Rich over a year to get the inlet Spikes to work properly.

a reply to: Blackfinger






wonder if it has anything to do with that high flying yellow light

Ooooohhh thank you..