Hacker News Reader

Comment by moogleii | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

"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.

> 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.

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.

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?

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.

>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 .

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com