At several points in time, the Pentagon proposed mothballing the SR-71 and relying on sat-recon. And each time, the aircraft-recon imagery people screamed bloody murder and insisted they needed the aircraft imagery. And then one day the Pentagon announced that they were shutting down the SR-71 ... ... and there was a thundering silence from the aircraft-recon intel people. Almost as though there was already a replacement for the SR-71 but nobody could talk about it.