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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
Interestingly they were already experimenting with drones back when they were flying the Blackbird - I wonder how good they are now?
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.
So moving things out of the way {of the lens|of the bomb} doesn't look like that much of a difference .
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.
http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promise...