NASA appears to be pulling its SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest production plane ever made, out of retirement as the Trump administration teases its new line of hypersonic surveillance jets — but doubt…
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
Close but not quite, it stands for strategic reconnaissance. It’s not stealth. Stealth technology didn’t come into existence until the late 80s early 90s
It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.
Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an ‘interceptor’ maybe? – because it’s definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe ‘interceptor’ isn’t the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you’d never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.
I think the closest comparison to what it would be best for is basically air cavalry. Dive in at high speed for a devastating hit-and-run, and then do it again
Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.
When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn’t work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying … there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn’t be very high, so they probably wouldn’t do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.
But when at top speed, it’s already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don’t need a ‘gun’ anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.
Sure, if it had any payload capacity. But it doesn’t.
Getting a machine up to that speed is hard, real hard. The margins are extremely small. So the moment you start adding additional moving parts to it, opening payload bays, weapons release mechanisms, a few 400 lb missiles… And don’t forget, all those additional components also take up additional volume, higher volume means more air displacement, which means more drag. Higher volume also means the area of the airframe gets larger, that means additional mass.
All of a sudden, that plane can’t hit mach 3 anymore and you don’t actually have an untouchable weapons delivery system anymore.
This is probably why a combat version of the aircraft was abandoned, it doesn’t really make sense.
Modern fighters don’t really do dogfights anymore.
Today’s air-to-air engagements are usually just a matter of launching a missile at the other plane, usually from so far away that they’re beyond the horizon. And in that kind of engagement, there are two things that determine which combatant is more effective: speed and range. SR-71 brings the ultimate in speed to the equation, now it just needs some good, long-range missiles.
A bomber interceptor is the role that comes to mind for me, a Blackbird could climb to altitude and intercept any bomber aircraft heading to the USA. I suspect the invention of the ICBM put a stop to that though.
If NASA needs an extremely fast, high-altitude aircraft, it would be much cheaper to bring SR-71s out of retirement than to build completely new aircraft from scratch.
As for why they’d want it…
Maybe they want to experiment with using it as a space launch platform, getting it very high and up to speed and then launching a (relatively) small rocket from its back to launch that rocket into space.
Maybe they have a new engine design to operate at very high altitudes and speeds, and they want the SR-71 as a test platform to mount those engines on and test them in real world conditions.
Maybe they just want to do some upper atmosphere/ionosphere measurements, and the SR-71 is a handy way to get there.
Maybe they want to try operating a telescope from it, using it as a way to get most of Earth’s atmosphere out of the way and have less distortion/interference. (There already is such a telescope in operation, based on a commercial airliner, but the SR-71 could go higher and presumably do the job even better.)
Maybe now that they’re barred from running climate research satellites, they’re looking for an alternative, non-satellite based option they could mount instruments to and take the same measurements from.
Or, most likely, something else I haven’t even thought of.
Hm… Come to think of it, that could be a really cool application for this aircraft in a modern military setting. It was basically untouchable when flying high and fast, which was what made it a good recon aircraft. But in the modern day, it could be used as an equally untouchable drone bomber. During a high-altitude flyby, drop a drone package or two so that they’ll fall to earth and then deploy when a few hundred feet from the ground. Then you can use those drones to surgically strike at specific very high value targets, and by the time they hit, the ‘bomber’ is already long gone. Basically, it could be used as a substitute for spycraft and insurgency, giving a nearly unstoppable way to infiltrate combat drones far, far behind enemy lines.
The SR-71 can get up to 85k feet, so there are conceivable applications.
But this is a plane that already exists, largely for the purpose of surveillance. It’s only “military” in the sense that it was requisitioned by the air force. It’s not armed.
You’re right, but I was focusing more on how NASA isn’t exactly overflowing with funding. Even if they roll them out of mothballs fueling it alone is going to be pretty expensive.
Something something moon landing something area 51.
NASA, the famously underfunded organization that has to deal with that crap even today is pulling out military stealth fighters.
It’s not a fighter, the SR71 is totally unarmed. The SR stands for Stealth Reconnaissance.
Close but not quite, it stands for strategic reconnaissance. It’s not stealth. Stealth technology didn’t come into existence until the late 80s early 90s
It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.
Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an ‘interceptor’ maybe? – because it’s definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe ‘interceptor’ isn’t the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you’d never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.
I think the closest comparison to what it would be best for is basically air cavalry. Dive in at high speed for a devastating hit-and-run, and then do it again
It would probably be a missle platform.
Probably had the Phoenix missle or similar range weapon in mind for air to air.
Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn’t work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying … there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn’t be very high, so they probably wouldn’t do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.
But when at top speed, it’s already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don’t need a ‘gun’ anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.
Would have been funny to put in a tail gun.
Sure, if it had any payload capacity. But it doesn’t.
Getting a machine up to that speed is hard, real hard. The margins are extremely small. So the moment you start adding additional moving parts to it, opening payload bays, weapons release mechanisms, a few 400 lb missiles… And don’t forget, all those additional components also take up additional volume, higher volume means more air displacement, which means more drag. Higher volume also means the area of the airframe gets larger, that means additional mass.
All of a sudden, that plane can’t hit mach 3 anymore and you don’t actually have an untouchable weapons delivery system anymore.
This is probably why a combat version of the aircraft was abandoned, it doesn’t really make sense.
I was mostly going for a [email protected] thing tbh, because of exactly what you were saying
It’s probably terrible at dogfights though.
Modern fighters don’t really do dogfights anymore.
Today’s air-to-air engagements are usually just a matter of launching a missile at the other plane, usually from so far away that they’re beyond the horizon. And in that kind of engagement, there are two things that determine which combatant is more effective: speed and range. SR-71 brings the ultimate in speed to the equation, now it just needs some good, long-range missiles.
Stealth and detection play a big part too. Can’t target what your sensors can’t see.
A bomber interceptor is the role that comes to mind for me, a Blackbird could climb to altitude and intercept any bomber aircraft heading to the USA. I suspect the invention of the ICBM put a stop to that though.
But what if we repurposed it to stand for Scientific Research instead? 🤔
Why stop there? SR could stand for Shaky Rimjob.
This is the internet. Don’t be coming round here stating facts that aren’t true.
It was originally the RS-71, for “reconnaissance/strike”. (source)
Also, don’t forget about the closely-related YF-12 interceptor.
Yeah that’s the important part for sure. 🙄
If NASA needs an extremely fast, high-altitude aircraft, it would be much cheaper to bring SR-71s out of retirement than to build completely new aircraft from scratch.
As for why they’d want it…
Maybe they want to experiment with using it as a space launch platform, getting it very high and up to speed and then launching a (relatively) small rocket from its back to launch that rocket into space.
Maybe they have a new engine design to operate at very high altitudes and speeds, and they want the SR-71 as a test platform to mount those engines on and test them in real world conditions.
Maybe they just want to do some upper atmosphere/ionosphere measurements, and the SR-71 is a handy way to get there.
Maybe they want to try operating a telescope from it, using it as a way to get most of Earth’s atmosphere out of the way and have less distortion/interference. (There already is such a telescope in operation, based on a commercial airliner, but the SR-71 could go higher and presumably do the job even better.)
Maybe now that they’re barred from running climate research satellites, they’re looking for an alternative, non-satellite based option they could mount instruments to and take the same measurements from.
Or, most likely, something else I haven’t even thought of.
It had a drone that would attach to the top of it too. Way ahead of its time
Hm… Come to think of it, that could be a really cool application for this aircraft in a modern military setting. It was basically untouchable when flying high and fast, which was what made it a good recon aircraft. But in the modern day, it could be used as an equally untouchable drone bomber. During a high-altitude flyby, drop a drone package or two so that they’ll fall to earth and then deploy when a few hundred feet from the ground. Then you can use those drones to surgically strike at specific very high value targets, and by the time they hit, the ‘bomber’ is already long gone. Basically, it could be used as a substitute for spycraft and insurgency, giving a nearly unstoppable way to infiltrate combat drones far, far behind enemy lines.
The SR-71 can get up to 85k feet, so there are conceivable applications.
But this is a plane that already exists, largely for the purpose of surveillance. It’s only “military” in the sense that it was requisitioned by the air force. It’s not armed.
You’re right, but I was focusing more on how NASA isn’t exactly overflowing with funding. Even if they roll them out of mothballs fueling it alone is going to be pretty expensive.
What’s the alternative?
I don’t know what theyre don’t so I can’t answer that. My not knowing their goal doesn’t make fuel appear either though.
Do you know? Genuinely asking.