Skunk Works Reveals SR-71 Successor Plan | Hacker News Reader

Skunk Works Reveals SR-71 Successor Plan

aviationweek.com

56 pointsstarpilot74 comments

If we cannot have manned moon missions anymore and no more space shuttles then I don't want the military to have SR71 successors or their own mini-shuttle.

Our priorities are all screwed up, we need to be making science exciting for the next generation.

We'll always have plenty of warmongering to go around.

Many of you around here are too young or not from the USA to have this experience but I remember when the first shuttle was being developed and tested and how exciting that was to schoolkids (it was the Enterprise! [1]) And I was fortunate enough to have someone from NASA visit our elementary school with moon rocks and gave us space photos and other presentations that were so interesting that I remember the experience to this day.

We need that again for school kids.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Star_Trek_cast...

But with this we could kill people all over the globe in record time!

Edit: Just to be clear, this is sarcasm.

Well it is more for spying. And with advances in gigapixel digital sensors, satellites and drones, a mach 6 manned plane is probably pointless for spying in comparison.

Let's fund things that can break earth orbit and inspire the world.

This would make awesome reusable first stage for orbital launches. Provided, of course, other air launch problems could be solved.

Going mach 6 at high altitude is not as much of a boost as it seems.

Consider that orbital velocity is ~mach 25, and energy = (1/2)mv^2. Launching a space vehicle from a carrier moving mach 6 would give you (6^2)/(25^2)= 5.76% of the energy required to reach orbit.

You do get some benefit from launching at high altitude, and reducing atmospheric drag, but that does not require a high speed launch. The high speed launch adds significant danger due to aerodynamic issues, along with requiring a massive fuel expenditure, and a much heavier, more complex, and expensive carrier.

At the height of the moon mission, we spent 4.4% of our GDP trying to get to the moon. We did it, and haven't been back in 40 years. What you're saying does not work.

How can you measure the return on investment for all we learned from trying to get to the moon? From inspiring so many people to go into science.

I don't think building better war machines inspires people to go into science.

You can't measure the ROI, and honestly the ROI argument is as rhetorical and handwavy as the "TSA makes us safer" argument. It only feels somewhat plausible, but is so utterly vague and unmeasurable that there's simply no way to make it not an empty statement.

Also, I'm as anti-warmongering as everyone else here, but it's a patently false claim to say that the industry of war doesn't drive massive leaps in science and technology. Silicon Valley itself was birthed out of massive military research funding post-WW2. The Internet started as a DARPA project. The foundational technology we built on top of to get the moon was reversed engineered in large part out of deadly German V2 rockets captured during the war.

Hell, one of the biggest chief architects of the US space program was Wernher von Braun, whose rocketry expertise came out of Nazi Germany. The Russians weren't exempt either - all of their early satellite and manned mission launch vehicles were derivatives of ICBMs - Sputnik, the first satellite in orbit, launched from a R-7 ICBM.

I wish it weren't the case, but there is tons of evidence, all around the world and all throughout history, that the waging of war drives a shitload of science.

I think you missed my point. We weren't inspired enough to continue once we reached the moon. We did not continue on to Mars, and we didn't want to increase NASA's budget. Most people here weren't even born when we went to the moon.

Consider that we need to import engineers in the US because many Americans don't want to do the job.

Why, because they quit spending it?

The US spends 4-5% of its GDP on defense every year, year after year, without end.

When you fund gigantic science projects and then kill the funding as soon as they show any success, well, surprise! They stop. So don't do that.

Maybe we could drop defense spending to a mere 3% of GDP (still more, in absolute terms, than any other country in the world, and a level seen as recently as 2001) and spend the leftovers on space and other science research.

Satellites have fixed orbits, which makes them relatively easy to hide from because you can figure out when they can see you.

Drones are good for spying because they're unpredictable, silent, and pretty much invisible, but their range isn't great. If you're not within range of a place where drones can be deployed, you're relatively safe from them.

A mach 6 manned plane can be anyplace, anytime. They can sit in their base in Nevada (or wherever) and be deployed to investigate anyplace in the world within a matter of hours. Drones and satellites just don't compare to that.

So, if you accept that the basic mission of these technologies is valid, then it makes sense to develop manned aircraft. It's just unfortunate that it takes so long for the technology that's developed to trickle out of the secret programs so everyone can get some benefit from it.

Drones can be anyplace in the world within a matter of hours too, if you keep a bunch of them on station all over the place. And while that sounds expensive, drones are so cheap (relatively) to build and operate that it's still going to be far more cost effective than a mach 6 anything.

Drones are not as cheap as you would think (, and I used to believe). Global hawks cost as much as U2s to operate, and much more to acquire;[1] predators and reapers are not cheap either, once you include the whole control system.[2]

[1] http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130624/C4ISR01/30701001... [2] http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2012/the-us-and-its-...

If the satellite imaging is good enough, it's probably cheaper to just have complete coverage. GPS was like 20 billion? a billion in ongoing costs?

If i understand correctly, a new jet is a trillion dollars.

Perhaps the imaging isn't good enough, cloud cover or whatever, but a whole bunch of satellites seems like a far simpler solution.

Or...

You could monitor sub-atomic particles(WIMPs) in real-time.

Is there a standard answer when someone complains about the "war machine" and incorrect priorities? It's kind of common in this crowd, and probably not the proper way to look at it. To me, it's a Frequently Mentioned Complaint.

Certainly many of us here wish there was more money spent on big science. For example, if the US built Super Collider 20 years ago, what we are discovering in physics today, would have been discovered almost 2 decades ago:

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

Anyway, the US spends a fortune on its military. The cost was something like 20 billion for air conditioning in the Iraq war? (that's one supercollider). Until we have that ever elusive world peace, we're probably going to continue to spend a fortune. Having the military spend some of its money on new SR71's, robotic vehicles, the Internet, drones, etc isn't going to be cheapest research but fewer people question it, and the research does get done.

Consider that if we didn't need national defense, people would probably just want lower taxes and you still couldn't convince them to go to the moon. There's nothing there, after all.

>Until we have that ever elusive world peace, we're probably going to continue to spend a fortune.

We spend 10x what China does. We don't have to spend as much.

>people would probably just want lower taxes

Heaven forbid I have more cash in my wallet. More for me to invest to help fund companies that do interesting things, perhaps even go to the moon with. I personally don't mind my tax load if it gave us things like universal healthcare and cheaper higher education and better infrastructure. I do mind it when it just powers the various killing machines at our disposal and wars based on clear lies like "yellowcake" and "WMDs." How many Mars missions did Iraq cost us?

>and the research does get done.

Locked away as classified or patent encumbered via Lockheed or whoever is developing $expensive_weapons_system? Yeah, we can do better.

edit: The list linked on spending doesn't include all the special spending bills that paid for the Iraq and Afghani wars. Yes, we are close to spending 10x what Russia spends and probably closer to 5 or 6x what China spends. I mixed up my countries, but we are GREATLY overspending. NASA's annual budget is about a month in Afghanistan.

We've spend at LEAST 2 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan. 4 is you count actual expenditures and future commitments like medical and disability.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/iraq-war-cost-more-...

You are incorrect on what China spends. They are closing the gap, and I imagine their equipment actually costs them less per unit.

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

However, we don't have to worry just about China. We have to worry about Iran, NK, China, Russia, etc. So just looking at what China spends isn't that useful.

Because Iran and North Korea are a threat to the US in what fantasy world exactly? China and Russia matter. Iran and North Korea are just diversions.

Military planning doesn't really think in terms of threats as much as capabilities. Despite the last 60 years, friends often turn into competitors/enemies when you least expect it.

I wasn't suggesting Iran and North Korea were friends. I was suggesting they lack capabilities.

If you think NK lacks the capabilities to affect the US, you're misguided. Or you don't care about US troops stationed in South Korea, Okinawa, etc. Same with Iran. It doesn't take much to cause trouble. Ask the dead Marines killed by Iranian backed terror groups in Lebanon in the 1980's.

You only have to worry about everybody if you fight with everybody.

By your logic, China should have to worry about the USA, Russia, etc, Russia about the USA, China, etc.

Let's write that in equation form:

  U >= C + R
  C >= R + U
  R >= U + C

I don't see a solution with either of these larger than zero :-)

The US also has considerably more expensive defense requirements than any other country. We're required to defend at least half the world and with much more of a requirement to minimize friendly and civilian casualties. If anything our defense spending is inadequate to meet our obligations. So don't just say we can reduce defense spending without also outlining exactly which obligations you're willing to abandon alongside it, just as you wouldn't let a client insist on completing a software project any faster without reducing the scope.

We certainly should not be under obligation to maintain bases in Europe. Those are relics of the Cold War and should be dropped.

Then comes the precious carrier fleets. Damn big targets and essentially sitting ducks should we have an encounter with either of the supposed big baddies left, Russia or China. We have spent over three billion on just one new Destroyer class ship! I won't even touch the F35, an aircraft so compromised by committee it doesn't do what it needs to do.

So suggestions, leave Europe, leave Japan, and seriously give consideration to leaving Korea. The start dropping the surface Navy to something realistic, both in size and ability to defend it. In a world of UAVs and drones Carriers are merely a romantic throw back, like the Battleships before them.

As for what to do with the savings, entitlements need to be reigned in because none of the savings taken from the military are going to amount to squat until we reign in the welfare state. There too many support programs going on that fraud is rampant people are not being served. Worse many functions are also done at state levels again duplicating Federal work.

The Federal government should dole out money to states, not run the programs.

>We're required to defend at least half the world

No we're not. That's your opinion. Pretty sure the constitution doesnt say "Defend Europe and Korea."

Those would be the North Atlantic Treaty and the Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea, respectively. Renegotiating or reneging on these treaties would be a means of reducing American military obligations, but you could at least be honest enough to come out and say we should do that instead of pretending these treaties don't exist.

My point is that just looking at the defense budget doesn't give you the whole picture. You also have to consider what benefit is provided by that budget before you decide what you're willing to give up to save money. Did you even read my comment all the way through?

The American public wasn't going to want to allocate that 2 trillion dollars for NASA, if we never had the wars. Yes, wars are very expensive, but it's naive to think we were going to Mars instead.

By the way, the US consumer spends as much on pet food as we spend on NASA.

http://www.petfoodinstitute.org/?page=PetfoodSales

We have a $15 trillion dollar economy. Rather than spending all day doing some wishful thinking (if there weren't any wars), dream up a way to fund more research.

> Until we have that ever elusive world peace, we're probably going to continue to spend a fortune.

Perhaps it can be a smaller fortune, like half, or a third.

Nobody on the planet except the US can cross an ocean to fight a war. Nobody is withing decades, maybe more than a century of being able to do that. Every weapon the US has will be a museum piece by then.

With the end of the Soviet Union, the "come as you are" war is also obsolete. Any emerging threat will emerge slowly enough that a military build-up can take years, if needed.

>> Consider that if we didn't need national defense, people would probably just want lower taxes and you still couldn't convince them to go to the moon.

We have 1.5 million active military personnel and almost 1 million in reserves. Then you've got at least another million employed by contractors like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grunman, etc.

You'd devastate the economy by getting rid of the military. It's a huge jobs program.

In the short term you're right. But if the cuts were done responsibly over time the economy would adapt and the capital we currently spend on the military would be reallocated to more productive areas. Claiming that we can never cut military spending because it would hurt the economy is an example of the broken window fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Bringing up the SSC should be done carefully. It's true that Congress killed the project after a lot of money had been spent, land acquired, facilities built, and people relocated. On the flip side, the management of the project was far from perfect, and it was expected to go far over budget.

If you want to further particle physics these days, campaign for funding the ILC [1]. The Japanese are very interested in hosting and supporting the effort. While the energy is smaller (500 GeV - 1 TeV), the energy per particle (protons are made of three quarks; most collisions at LHC are between gluons) is comparable or greater. Lepton-antilepton colliders are what you really want to do precision science; protons are only used because they're energetically advantageous.

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

Ever elusive peace... America has had a big role in many post WW2 conflicts and not in a good way. Perhaps recognizing that America isn't necessarily the good guy would lead to less voter acceptance of the military budget.

Agreed. We're spending 1.2 trillion on the lifetime of the F-35 project, yet NASA begs for scraps. I hate my country's priorities. We're military first, people second, and science last. Not sure why we think this is a winning formula, especially as we watch Asia rise.

So "yes" to every pork-barrel weapons system designed for enemies we don't have and for a conflict we'll never have (another WWII-style drawn out war with everyone pretending they dont have nukes). "No" to anything that doesn't make the military industrialists wealthy.

Heck, when we do let NASA do something, we give it parameters that destroy any chance of success like giving Republican Senator with ties to $x_company_in_his_district to bring jobs to his district instead of going with a efficient vendor.

> We're military first, people second, and science last.

2013 United States Federal Budget Outlays[1]

  Agency                                   Billions
  -------------------------------------    --------
  Department of HHS (Medicare+Medicaid)    940.9
  Social Security Administration           882.7
  Department of Defense, including wars    672.9
  Interest on Debt                         246.0
  ...
  NASA                                     17.8
  ... 
  National Science Foundation              7.5

To me it looks like spending on people is more than 2x spending on military (including wars).

But you're right about putting science last, as far as federal spending goes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...

In terms of absolute dollar-outlay amounts, perhaps. But in terms of discretionary spending — the things on which we can choose to spend money — blowing shit up accounts for more than half of it. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are monies the government is obligated to spend, and so in terms of a discussion of our priorities, aren't exactly relevant.

Source: the same Wikipedia article you used.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending are all within the discretion of congress to change or eliminate; the only difference between "discretionary" and "non-discretionary" is that the latter do not require annual appropriations. The "discretionary" v. "non-discretionary" divide is a fiction created for the convenience of the congress.

First off, that includes running the current winding-down war today (thanks obama), many years after its peak. Those wars cost us 2t already and 4t when you consider our long term committments of taking care of our veterans.

Social security isn't discretionary spending or an entitlement. Its a fucking national retirenment buy-in program thats helped eliminate much senior poverty. Medicare is the healthcare end of this. I pay in so I get something back in the future.

We'd have less interest debt if we could pay for our wars, but can't thus that huge interest debt, or at least a large part of it. Bush walked in with little debt and left us a shit-pile of war debt.

Wars and all these wargames are discretionary and massive. Its the obvious cut for a sane society. Problem is, this isn't a sane society.

"defense" spending is sneakily broken up across many departments far further down that list - it exceeds social security, easily

Homeland Security is not in the Department of Defense either, neither is the VA, NSA or other stuff they sneakily break up.

Well over a trillion. For war.

This comment is great. Social spending is lumped together - look how much it is! But military spending is broken up, hidden, obfuscated and fudged. And where does the cost of treating the hundreds of thousands of conflict veterans come from? The military budget? Or so called social benefits?

But, but... terrorists!!

> I don't want the military to have SR71 successors

This is probably a PR stunt. You never, ever, under no circumstances, pre-announce military technology.

Having said that, it's really a shame humans never flew to the moon since I was a kid. I'm not particularly sad about the shuttles - they were engineered by marketing - but I'd like to see some more cool space technology.

This is Lockheed Martin we are talking about.

The same Lockheed Martin that pretty much built (and is) the NSA, the same Lockheed Martin that processes the census, the same Lockheed Martin that processes the tax returns, the same Lockheed Martin that can test your DNA, the same Lockheed Martin that makes the Trident nukes, the same Lockheed Martin that builds the spy satellites, the same Lockheed Martin that can supply 'interrogators' to Guantanamo, the same Lockheed Martin that supplied the planes that went in first in Iraq, the same Lockheed Martin that owns Afghanistan (to all intents and purposes) and the same Lockheed Martin that owns all the politicians in Washington.

If they want this then they can get you to pay for it.

>the same Lockheed Martin that processes the tax returns

I don't understand this one. Are they behind the IRS's systems or something?

Yes. It seems like they've been involved since at least 1996 or so (probably way earlier than that).

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-02-04/business/36862...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lockheed-martin-wins...

It's just FUD. In 2007, LM was awarded a minor contract to help update the IRS' technology systems: (1)to modernize the notice system (referring to notices received by taxpayers under audit or for penalty assessments) and the publication system (the pdf's available on the IRS website. (See http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2007/oc...)

Lockheed Martin was not involved in helping the IRS design or update its return processing system (including e-file). A contract of that magnitude would be worth billions, not the $36 million LM was paid for the work above.

Apparently, yes.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lockheed-martin-wins...

But is that also the same Lockheed Martin that's destroying the future US airpower with that stupid JSF idea?

Why would Skunk Work make something like that public? Do I miss something or wouldn't that be really weird? I thought normally such military related technological projects are only released to the public after they cannot longer hide it (e.g. like 'Beast of Kandahar' etc.).

I figure to gain much-needed political capital somehow. It's probably a dead-in-the-water project, and they need some mil-industry complex saber rattling to give it a much needed (desperate) jump start. Because it sounds pretty useless to me.

The article claims there's a growing intel gap, and yet what's changed since the original was retired (other than satellite coverage getting better, + unmanned drones)? It's probably still going to be ridiculously expensive to operate, and provides what advantages? Who are we going to use this on? The only nations that can probably deny us satellite coverage, at least politically, are China and Russia, and are we really going to start flying hypersonic jets over their airspace anyway? This whole thing just makes me laugh.

"Skunk Works has revealed exclusively to AW&ST details of long-running plans for what it describes as an affordable hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike platform that could enter development in demonstrator form as soon as 2018."

Here's a translation in line with your suspicion:

"Lockheed-Martin really wants a new contract. High-technology projects can only be purchased by the government, so political pressure on (and rewards to) members of Congress is an effective tool. Nobody bought the super-sensor-blimp project, the heavily-armed-and-armored blimp project, or the flying jeep project, so maybe we can get traction for something sexy. Speed sells, and everybody has good memories of the Blackbird... let's make some pretty drawings and get our name mentioned a lot. Since it's only a drawing right now, we can propose it as a recon plane and a strike bomber and an interceptor and an anti-satellite launcher and a dessert and a floor wax, too!"

I got a chuckle out of that. "Affordable" just means something different to LM. It will only cost 20x the space shuttle.

> The only nations that can probably deny us satellite coverage, at least politically, are China and Russia

It's pretty easy to deny satellite coverage. It's trivial to track satellite locations, and they pass over on a very regular schedule (they can't just up and change orbit on a whim). All you have to do is cover everything sensitive with a tarp at the time they fly over. Anyone can do this, and it was one of the main tactics used by the USSR and China against spy satellites during the cold war.

> and are we really going to start flying hypersonic jets over their airspace anyway?

If you can make it stealthy enough they won't even know ;) And you can also collect a lot of useful intel by flying a plane just outside the border (you can scan inside the border with radar, you can learn about their radar systems by recording all radar frequencies you see, you can record all radio chatter, and so on).

Atmospheric flights definitely still have a role to play in espionage.

Atmospheric? Sure. Hypersonic? Why?

The SR-71's high speed and altitude was useful, and worth its high cost, for two reasons:

1. It was impossible to shoot down.

2. You could go check something out on short notice.

#1 doesn't really matter with drones, especially if you're not going to overfly the target country. #2 is easily solved by keeping a bunch of slow drones in the air all over the place at all times, rather than keeping fast aircraft ready to fly.

>Atmospheric? Sure. Hypersonic? Why?

These are to augment current capabilities, especially if there's escalation of hostilities. If there's a conflict in the Pacific, we cant rely on having our forward air bases. Most likely these will be launched from domestic locations and ingress/egress time will have a large impact on total coverage time.

I agree completely, I didn't intend to argue that this particular plane or one like it is necessary (especially as I haven't managed to read the linked article yet!), but that satellites alone are not sufficient and some form of atmospheric craft still has value at the moment.

Interestingly they were already experimenting with drones back when they were flying the Blackbird - I wonder how good they are now?

Hypersonic aircraft serve only one purpose now that drones and satellites exist: highly mobile weapons platform.

>Atmospheric? Sure. Hypersonic? Why?

From the fine article: at Mach 3, the target can still be notified, at Mach 6 it's unavoidable.

Don't know if that's true, but it does answer the question.

That's for use as a weapon, while I'm discussing its merits as a reconnaissance platform compared to drones and satellites.

Sure, I saw that, but it seemed to apply pretty much the same to photography. After all, that's one of the reasons satellites don't work with a reasonably smart target.

So moving things out of the way {of the lens|of the bomb} doesn't look like that much of a difference .

> If you can make it stealthy enough

Unless it flies at a very high altitude with engines off, making it stealthy is next to impossible. The thermal output of the engines is enough to make it stand out from the background from half a planet away.

Does stealth just not work anymore?

Detection mechanisms are evolving fast. Being stealth no longer means being invisible - you are just harder to target from long range than a 20+ year older aircraft, but that's it.

LM just announced a Skunkworks practical fusion power project--would that be for the same reason? I hope that one isn't dead in the water.

http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promise...

Given the secrecy normally surrounding Skunk Works I suppose this is some sort of PR exercise.

or it's reaching the end of life so they can let this one go public so they can keep its successor quiet - Or Snowden leaked it so they might as well go public

Mirror since the original link is unavailable

http://pastebin.com/HqmzuAZ4

It's the Aurora, resurrected!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft)

an incredible story related to the SR71: http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/weaver_sr71_bailout.htm...

This can fly around Earth at the equator in 5 hours.

It'll be another F-35 nightmare.

HN killed aviationweek.com...

tl;dr;didntload: they talk about a scramjet design

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