This is the amazing Lockheed Martin SR-72—the space Blackbird

reply to post by Zaphod58


Thanks for the warm welcome! This is my favorite forum. Tons of interesting reading and good info. Looking forward to participating.

ok welcome so what do you think on this topic sr-72 do you think its manned,unmanned where it will be based or launched from and its sole purpose.

reply to post by chrismg


Probably unmanned, it's mission will be ISR and it could have a strike capability aswell. Zaph mentioned Beale as a possible base but if you look at the bases that the SR-71 flew from and take out the ones that aren't in use anymore then that should give you a better idea. Also look at ones that already have operational recon squadrons but that may not be a necessity.

It's hard to say exactly as it's mainly just speculation and the people that do know won't be able to tell you exactly either, it would be more along the lines of just giving clues as to where the project may/may not be.

but we were looking at the possibility of it being a experimental orbital aircraft.

reply to post by chrismg


No we weren't. There's no way this is orbital.

reply to post by chrismg


Thanks for the welcome! No special insight. But, my gut says unmanned since this seems to be the up and coming technology.

SonofaSkunk
New here, so, hope I'm not butting in to the conversation too much. But, could Beale or Tonopah be candidates for this?

Operational wise, its an anti shipping asset in my opinion. Hence why the other arm is anti access area high speed missile. China is the beast. It has to be countered and a slow flying high stealth airframe needs rapid eyes and ears to search vast areas. My thoughts are we will see this in 6 to 8 years operational.

Fast and high finds the ships and steers in a salvo of missiles from a loitering unmanned platform that's sat for a day over the ocean.

reply to post by chrismg


There's no chance of this being an orbital craft, they wouldn't really need another one anyway because they have the X-37B.

I don't think you really understand the difference between flying 100,000 feet and obtaining an orbit.

Escape velocity is around 11.2 km's per second. You need rockets to achieve that speed and when you launch a rocket other countries know about it. That's not the mission of the SR-72, they want something they can launch in secret and fly over a target area.

SR 72 missions equal SR 71 missions on steroids.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Man you got to quit using my replies. I said almost the same thing a couple pages ago.

reply to post by Zaphod58


No doubt you would of said it with a lot more detail than me

ok so we have decided it an unmanned stealth twice supersonic reconnaissance super sr-71 upgrade on steroids .is there anything i left out?

reply to post by chrismg


Stealthy, Mach 5+ , High Altitude, ISR/strike aircraft. There's probably a few more but it hasn't exactly been declassified yet so we won't know yet.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Don't forget "Super Duper Cool" with added "Keeping the thread going" ability.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


yes and it might not even be put into active service along the way it may be cancelled to save on extra funds on inadequate over expensive (paper) plane. you see how long it took other classified aircraft to appear some just be rumor destroyed in the construction or development progress.

reply to post by chrismg


Yeah but there's one thing the USA doesn't mind spending on and that's spying. If you knew how much money has gone into satellites over the time you'd understand that compared to them it's just a piss in the ocean monetarily.

I don't know why they would have decommissioned the SR-71 if they didn't already have a replacement. I bet this has been flying since then. 2018 my a**. Why would they tell us about it if it was the new hotness? Most likely old news. Wasn't the F-117 flying forever before they let us know about it?

Also, why don't most of you think this is the Aurora? Wasn't it supposed to look something like this, and essentially do the same thing?


Pretty cool though. Gives some insight as to what's been in those hangars at Area 51, lol.

Have Blue first flew in late 1977. F-117 operational in the early 80s. Went public in 1988. Retired 2008.

reply to post by JohnnySasaki


Officially it was retired because it was too expensive and spy satellite could do the same job. Although spy satellites are predictable.

The LA sky-quakes started happening in the 90's and the SR-71 was retired in 1998. There's also the fact that the T model KC-135's are still in use and were used for a project out of Edwards around the same timeframe as this. This leads me to believe that they were working on a replacement before retiring the SR-71.

Stealthbomber
reply to post by JohnnySasaki

 

. There's also the fact that the T model KC-135's are still in use and were used for a project out of Edwards around the same timeframe as this. This leads me to believe that they were working on a replacement before retiring the SR-71.

That's not really important tho - the T's were perfectly capable of refueling anything - their difference was that they could keep fuel in the wing and body tanks separate - thus isolating the SR-71 fuel from their own fuel supply when required.

With the demise of the SR71 they can simply fuel up both with JP4/8 and operated as "normal" KC-135's, presumably with some minor operational differences due to retaining the dual systems.

should there be a requirement to refuel a/c with different fuel then the T's could still do that.