SR-72
lockheedmartin.com
lockheedmartin.com
Oh oh.
Complexity isn't your friend.
Cause it sounds a bit like:
The SR-71 was built with solid engineering and hard work, this on the other hand is a pice of shit.
Look at the history of the development of the AGC as an example. And which part of the LEM gave Armstrong and Aldrin trouble during the descent? And that is a success story, in the end it mostly worked.
Also if you're really enamored with them you should definitely check out the national airforce museum in Dayton, OH: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/ You can see one up close, along with all kinds of other planes, jets, and missiles. Admission is free, and expect to spend at least a full day walking around the place.
It's also a beautiful machine.
I'd love to see the X-15 progress into the X-20 and onwards.
One of my favourites (ignore the patriotic stuff in the beginning): http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/press_suit001.html
A hypersonic plane does not have to be an expensive, distant possibility. In fact, an SR-72 could be operational by 2030.
Trying to build one plane for everyone was probably not the wisest thing to do.
Proponents of hypersonic aircraft research have been fighting an uphill battle for this very reason.
The whole concept of using the "Blackbird" family of planes as interceptors was an experimental offshoot that was quickly cancelled, the SR-71 certainly wasn't developed as some byproduct of an interceptor, it it was the other way around, the interceptor was a failed offshoot of the reconnaissance aircraft.
The main point was that interceptor is the other role for very fast plane, including the active service MiG-31 (around Mach 2.8).
Errr, replacing slide rules with millions of lines of software is not always progress. HN is probably the most fertile ground for finding counter examples around
I get there are political problems on putting conventional precision warheads on top of ICBMs (a conventional attack would look exactly like a nuclear one) but I can't see what this drone brings to the table compared to a missile launch. An adversary would still have little to no time to react before being hit. The only difference is that with an ICBM, if you know about the launch, you know about the arrival time and, with this plane, you'll have to see its IR signature (shouldn't be hard if you can already detect an ICBM launch) and guess it's about to attack (which isn't hard either because I doubt the SR-72 can maintain Mach 6 for long periods).
It would, perhaps, be smarter to use B-52's to launch sub-orbital missiles with precision conventional warheads. They should be far less conspicuous than a drone doing Mach 6.
“Hypersonic aircraft, coupled with hypersonic missiles, could penetrate denied airspace and strike at nearly any location across a continent in less than an hour”
… sounds lovely.
I wonder if satellites and newer weapons wouldn't be able to intercept its flight path by then.
You probably wouldn't have to match its speed to bring it down, just throw up a cloud of junk in its way.
A laser defense weapon, coupled with the black titanium skin, likely already close to its thermal limits, might produce results of interest to a defender.
Unlikely though. Pegasus benefits from the exceptional payload capacity of the B-52 and L-1011 airframe and power plant.