[HN Gopher] SR-72 'Son Of Blackbird'
___________________________________________________________________
SR-72 'Son Of Blackbird'
Author : graderjs
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-09-23 09:37 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.19fortyfive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.19fortyfive.com)
| aj7 wrote:
| If it can carry armaments, who will tolerate it as an
| intelligence gathering plane? And how can one know what its
| mission is in real time?
| Arainach wrote:
| To not tolerate it, you need something fast enough to shoot it
| down.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Incorrect, you shoot down something else afterwards.
| Arainach wrote:
| That's generally not how these things work. Shooting down a
| plane that you feel invaded your territory is one thing;
| shooting down something else makes you the aggressor.
|
| This was well established with U-2 and SR-71 flights in the
| cold war.
| Youden wrote:
| Sending the U-2 or SR-71 is like sending spies. Something
| most countries do and so expect and tolerate of others.
|
| The SR-72 has strike capability. It's more like sending
| an assassin or rolling a tank into a foreign country.
| That's an act of war.
| Arainach wrote:
| Unless it _actually_ strikes, no country is going to
| escalate an overflight to a different hot strike. Air
| powers regularly fly along the borders and intrude and
| have for the last 70 years. Overflights were deemed acts
| of war during the cold war as well - that 's why the USSR
| tried to shoot down all of the U-2 planes they could
| (ultimately succeeding on Gary Powers' flight) and any
| other things they considered spy flights (such as the
| KAL-007 crisis). At no point did they escalate in other
| areas. War is hell, and countries go to great lengths to
| avoid it - even when they're angry.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Which many countries have. S-400 is designed to hit targets
| going at Mach 14.
| tyingq wrote:
| Unmanned, 98 feet long, and mach 6 sounds like a lot could go
| wrong. Lot of kinetic energy there. I know we already have (close
| to) this with missiles, but they tend to have A->B missions.
| cdolan wrote:
| I thought the true top speed of the SR-71 is either highly
| classified or truly "unknown".
|
| How does the article justify saying the 72 will be roughly 2x the
| speed of the 71?
| numpad0 wrote:
| There was a declassified manuals for one of Blackbird models
| from few years ago, and it wasn't inconsistent with Mach 3.75
| top speeds. Maybe they do 3.6669999 or 3.78925 but can't be
| like it could go all the way to 22 flat out in a straight line.
| Arnt wrote:
| It was seen by Soviet pilots and radar (it was poorly visible
| but not invisible). As to top speed, from what I've heard
| that's a matter of how much wear and tear you're willing to
| incur.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| You don't have to know the actual speed to say, "whatever the
| (classified) speed was, we will double it".
| HPsquared wrote:
| It depends on your definition of "top speed": on the Blackbird
| and other supersonic aircraft, higher speeds mean higher
| temperatures. It's possible to sprint for a short time and
| absorb some of the excess heat, but have a lower limit for
| continuous operation. The shorter the duration, the higher the
| speed.
| baybal2 wrote:
| There is very big, fundamental problem of flying at mach 4+
| anywhere in the atmosphere: heat from aerodynamic friction >
| heat dissipated.
|
| All, and everything that flew so fast before relied on
| evaporative cooling, and under the evaporate, I mean the solid
| parts of the spacecraft/airplane/missile.
|
| For a reusable craft, it will mean big disposable heat shields.
| mdorazio wrote:
| You seem to be ignoring the space shuttle entirely, which
| handled the heat of re-entry at 17,000 mph and was still
| reusable. You have to make trade-offs on weight and materials
| (like heat tiles), but it's not impossible.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Space Shuttle used expendable ablation, thermal barrier
| materials, and thermal mass of its structure.
|
| All of that was only to last for a few minutes of re-entry,
| not constant flight in such conditions.
| nradov wrote:
| The Space Shuttle wasn't reusable in any meaningful sense.
| It required a complete overhaul after every mission,
| including replacement of many damaged ceramic heat shield
| tiles. And it only flew at hypersonic speeds for a few
| minutes during re-entry.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The Blackbird used fuel as a heat sink. This sounds like
| something affected by scaling laws, such that a larger craft
| would have more mass available for heat absorption.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Yes, fuel as coolant worked at around mach 3, but at mach
| 4+ the kerosene itself may not not be energetic enough to
| both sink heat, and produce more energy than the energy of
| incoming airflow.
|
| Supercooling the fuel may work to some extend.
|
| Having the entire aircraft being a flying liquid hydrogen
| tank is another least improbable option.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Yes, fuel as coolant worked at around mach 3, but at
| mach 4+ the kerosene itself may not not be energetic
| enough to both sink heat, and produce more energy than
| the energy of incoming airflow.
|
| The blackbird did not use kerosene, it used JP7,
| specially designed for high range of operation as well as
| being usable for cooling and hydraulics.
|
| > JP-7 is unusual in that it is not a conventional
| distillate fuel, but is created from special blending
| stocks in order to have very low (<3%) concentration of
| highly volatile components like benzene or toluene, and
| almost no sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen impurities.
|
| JP-7 is famously hard to ignite, the blackbird needed TEB
| shots to start ignition, and was initially started by
| driving the engines with a starter cart composed of
| paired V8s (later replaced with a smaller and simpler
| compressed-air starter).
|
| The Waverider used the same fuel, and fuel-cooling, and
| reached Mach 5.1.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The Waverider used the same fuel, and fuel-cooling, and
| reached Mach 5.1.
|
| Not so much as coolant, but as a thermal mass reservoir,
| and only for a few minutes.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I suppose heat _flux_ is still a limiting factor that 's
| independent of scale. Though things like liquid
| evaporative cooling (by "sweating") also become more
| practical with larger scale (more mass available). Not
| sure how big it would have to be though...
| fmajid wrote:
| It also had body panels that had gaps at ordinary
| temperature (and leaked fuel), and the gap closed as the
| metal expanded with heat. Also, the US did not have enough
| titanium production capacity so bought it from the USSR
| using shell companies...
| masklinn wrote:
| Not the body panels, the _fuel piping_.
| VLM wrote:
| A couple comments on supersonic aircraft:
|
| There are no jet engines ever made that I'm aware of that can
| run at supersonic speeds. The fastest mass air flow rate I've
| ever personally heard of was some Soviet thing that didn't
| immediately self destruct around mach 0.98. The way supersonic
| aircraft generate thrust while supersonic is the inlet geometry
| does WEIRD things to turn supersonic cold low pressure air into
| low subsonic hot higher pressure air. Most jet engines are
| happiest with inlet air flowing around 200 to 400 mph. If you
| run a jet engine above some critical subsonic speed
| occasionally shock waves will impact the compressor and every
| time the compressor rotates the blades will hit those
| shockwaves, and they rotate pretty fast... So the MTBF for a
| SR71 compressor blade might be 100000 hours at a nice subsonic
| mach 3.25 but whack it with supersonic shock waves every
| rotation and at mach 3.5 the MTBF for a compressor blade might
| be one hour. The nozzles in front of the engine fully retract
| at mach 3.25 and I'd interpret that as the inlet system is not
| designed to run "much above mach 3.25". There's a story about a
| flight over Libya where the pilot pushed a SR71 to mach 3.5 and
| that engine was likely pulled and sent to scrap yard after that
| stunt.
|
| The other side of the problem with inlet geometry is the inlet
| temp gets very hot so you have to go ramjet to get most of the
| thrust because trying to generate significant thrust will melt
| the turbine blades off. So hypothetically if you got 10K pounds
| of thrust by increasing the temp of the air by 1500 degrees and
| the inlet was dumping 800 degree air at mach 3.25 into the
| engine, the combined exhaust temp would be 800+1500=2300
| degrees which is getting hot for turbine blades (all numbers
| made up). So the second engineering limit on why the SR71 never
| flew at mach 9 or whatever is based on public engine designs
| and the temperature of mach 9 air when slowed to subsonic,
| there are no metals you can make a turbine out of. In fact at
| mach 6 or whatever its kinda mysterious how they keep the
| ramjet from melting itself. Must look like a rocket engine with
| cooling passages for fuel everywhere. So based on the published
| engine design (and is the published data trustworthy?) there's
| no way to bypass enough air to not melt the blades off the
| turbine above mach 3.something because nobody has high enough
| melting point metals. As with the compressor situation I'm sure
| a 3.25 rated turbine blade that has a MTBF of 100000 hours
| might survive an hour or two at 3.5, but the engine is scrap
| after that flight.
|
| The third supersonic comment is mach number is not constant
| with altitude so a pessimist person could say a mach 6 that
| flys high enough could very well indeed have a slower
| groundspeed than a sr-71 or even a 747. If the speed of sound
| at 120Kft is like 190 knots, then mach 6 at 120Kft would be a
| ground speed of merely 1140 knots. Famously the SR-71 could
| achieve ground speeds of 1800+ knots (supposedly...). So its
| simultaneously true that a SR72 might run twice the mach number
| but if it runs at a high enough altitude like my 120Kft
| example, its possibly only 2/3 the ground speed of a SR-71. The
| flight envelope of the SR-71 from the declassified manual is
| available; note it could not run supersonic below 20Kfeet or
| so. This also comes up in discussion of interceptor missiles;
| there's a huge difference in speed between a plane that can't
| go supersonic below 20Kft and a SA missile that can go mach 5
| or whatever at ground level right off the rail. So its not as
| simple as "a mach 4 surface to air missile can never hit a mach
| 6 airplane" because mach 6 at 120Kft is much slower than mach 4
| at ground level.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Scramjet engines can combust the air at supersonic speeds.
| Rumors are that the Chinese and Russians flew scramjet
| aircraft multiple times.
| geocrasher wrote:
| It's accepted that the top speed of the SR-71 was likely around
| Mach 3.5. The Mach 3 records were just for show, and pilots
| have said that even at Mach 3 when they pushed the throttle
| forward, it just went.
|
| This article also says that the SR-72 will use "a dual-mode
| engine that combines turbine and ramjet technologies." The
| SR-71 already did that.
| masklinn wrote:
| > It's accepted that the top speed of the SR-71 was likely
| around Mach 3.5. The Mach 3 records were just for show, and
| pilots have said that even at Mach 3 when they pushed the
| throttle forward, it just went.
|
| FWIW the official record is Mach 3.3, Air & Space/Smithsonian
| reported that it'd been clocked at 3.4 by USAF, and Brian
| Schul claimed to have exceeded 3.5 during evasive manoeuvres.
| Mach 3 was never claimed to be anywhere its limits. Hell, the
| design / cruise speed was 3.2.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I was generalizing, but your point backs mine up all the
| same. Thanks :)
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| How do the intelligence gathering capabilities of the SR-72
| compare against that or the various reconnaissance satellites?
| Why do they need this plane, if they can get comparable
| information from space?
| _3u10 wrote:
| One of the main advantages of the plane is ease of refueling.
| You either have to wait for a satellite pass or maneuver the
| satellite which eats into its very limited fuel.
|
| The information may be comparable but the latency is not.
|
| Think of it like playing CoD on satellite internet vs fibre.
| [deleted]
| joshAg wrote:
| The sr72 has 2 advantages over satellites.
|
| 1) satellites are very predictable, so it's possible to hide
| things from them.
|
| 2) satellites are very very far away, so the sr72 can get
| better pictures by dint of being closer.
|
| This article touches on both examples where satellites were
| predicted and planned around and some discussion of satellite
| imagery limitations:
| https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/758038714/can-president-trump...
| This one has a bit more focus on resolution and capbilities:
| https://www.universetoday.com/143298/thanks-to-trump-weve-go...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Maybe someone here happens to have a link to the video by the US
| pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and severely injured, told he
| would never fly again, and yet became a Blackbird pilot. Fun
| stories about flying it.
|
| It's long, but well worth it, I promise. I'm not sure if this [1]
| is the one I'm thinking of, but it's the same guy anyway.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndamj_Ewod8
| goshx wrote:
| Off-topic: what a terrible mobile experience. You have to dig for
| the content between all the BS ads.
| bloopernova wrote:
| On Android, I highly recommend Firefox with the ublock origin
| extension.
|
| On apple mobile devices, I bought "Adguard pro" which seems to
| work pretty well.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| The question is, of course, for which mission profile you even
| need a manned and/or large plane like this.
|
| Will this be autonomous? Will it be superseded by loitering
| munitions, drones and super fast rockets?
|
| Another nitpick: > similar size and range as the SR-71 and will
| likely engage in the same missions.
|
| The SR-71 was an espionage plane, not an armed one as far as I
| know.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You missed the opening:
|
| _The Lockheed Martin SR-72, also known as the "Son of
| Blackbird," is a hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle_
|
| btw, the Blackbirds are in lots of museums. I've visited one in
| Tucson and another in Seattle.
| Arrath wrote:
| > The SR-71 was an espionage plane, not an armed one as far as
| I know.
|
| That would be the YF-12, a prototype interceptor built off of
| the A-12, the A-12 being the base from which SR-71 was also
| derived.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Having family and friends deep in the industry, and a dad,
| grandfather, uncle and grandmother who worked at Lockheed and
| specifically the Skunk Works - this is not real. This stuff
| gets made up all the time.
|
| The real stuff being done at the Skunk Works is not stuff you
| will ever _ever_ hear about.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Congratulations on an interesting family then!
|
| I guess the public will eventually learn some things.
| Personally, I'm not so much concerned about technology that I
| don't see as much as about technology that is cheap and
| effective enough to be out there: remote controlled sniper
| rifles, bomb-dropping drones, chemical weapons.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I don't know the good stuff either. I know stuff that's
| been unclassified but everything else is a mystery to me as
| well. My family has great stories but they are also
| committed to the integrity of the mission.
| atonse wrote:
| Have you read the article about how Israel remotely
| assassinated an Iranian nuclear scientist? [1]
|
| Not a sniper rifle but remotely controlled and AI assisted.
| It was right out of a movie.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-
| nuc...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| That's what I would say too if in fact all I had was an
| Iranian cooperative, or Israelis on the ground.
| [deleted]
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Yes that's what I was referring to.
|
| It seems we are catching up to some scifi fast. Let's
| hope it's not the Daniel Suarez version.
| poisonarena wrote:
| my uncle works at nintendo and he confirms its real
| robotresearcher wrote:
| We've heard of at least:
|
| P-38, P-80, U-2, SR-71 (etc), F-117, F-22, and F-35
|
| have they stopped making things we will hear about?
| enkid wrote:
| We know the US is working on hypersonic weapons. It makes a
| lot of sense to put that same technology in a reusable UAS.
| This doesn't seem like such a stretch as to be instantly
| dismissed. I would take reports about it with a grain of
| salt, and the SR-72 designation is there to grab headlines,
| either from the news source or Lockheed Martin, but it's very
| feasible for them to be building the thing described in the
| article.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You are correct. Hypersonic, autonomous aircraft and
| weapons? Yes. Will it be the SR-72? No.
| enkid wrote:
| So is your problem the designation, or the actual concept
| that is being developed? Because, frankly, who cares what
| it's called. The important thing is what it can do.
| whalesalad wrote:
| My problem is with neither - it's with the way the
| aviation community will jump on theories and build them
| up into big snowballs that are usually not even remotely
| close to reality or might even be talking about an
| aircraft that simply doesn't exist.
|
| So I don't get stoked about news headlines like this
| because generally it's just fun masturbatory stuff that
| doesn't hold a lot of truth in the real world.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| A release like this has to be a chess move or entirely
| made up. You don't just share weapons platform plans for
| no reason. You underpromise, overpromise, lie, brag, or
| misdirect in order to achieve some outcome.
|
| You see it and ask yourself "why?" and "how much is BS?"
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| By hypersonic weapons, do you mean missiles? Are they even
| useful? To follow the curvature of the earth, they have fly
| higher than a subsonic cruise missile, making them fairly
| easy to spot. Not sure how hard they are to shoot down.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Flying very high and very fast poses timing challenges,
| in order to shoot it down you have to see it, make the
| decision to shoot it down, and then have an interceptor
| which is fast enough to make up for the detection lag,
| get to altitude, and get to location.
|
| For something that could cross the continental US in a
| half hour or less, you can imagine there is not a lot of
| room for delay.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Modern SAM systems are made to launch in less than 15
| seconds after detection. Their missiles go 2km/s+, and
| they are made to detect targets from 400km+ away. The
| SR-72 would not be the most difficult target they are
| built to engage.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Not sure how hard they are to shoot down.
|
| Judging from anti-ballistic missile efforts, quite hard.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Are they even useful?_
|
| Potentially, yes. For example, for the same reasons you
| list, they are capable of being used in space-defense,
| like anti-satellite or ballistic defense.
| enkid wrote:
| Something going mach 5+ is going to be extremely
| difficult to shoot down. Typically, they boost up to high
| altitudes then come back down to lower altitudes to
| actually strike the target (boost glide). Looks like the
| air force is also developing a cruise missile which would
| fly at lower altitudes.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not that hard to hit something going Mach 5 or so at
| high altitude. That translates to speeds of just over
| 5000km/h.
|
| The really hard thing is to hit targets that go close to
| orbital velocity (for example when trying to hit a
| hypersonic missile going 11 000km/h+ or a ballistic
| missile going 20 000km/h.
| lumost wrote:
| The yf-12 was a fighter version of the SR-71 cancelled during
| the Vietnam war.
|
| Missile launch platforms greatly benefit from high speed and
| high altitude. A hypothetical Mach 6 aircraft at 100k feet will
| likely have at least double the A2A missile range of an F-16 at
| 30k ft launching the same missile . Given that most long range
| A2A missiles peak at Mach 5 it would be extremely difficult to
| engage such a platform.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Not just A2A. There were studies done on arming SR-71s with
| SRAMs in the chines -- both downrange and crossrange
| performance was massively improved.
|
| https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/EmV9xz0SUL1NW08RDs3Z.
| ..
| chinathrow wrote:
| > The SR-71 was an espionage plane, not an armed one as far as
| I know.
|
| And a very fast one.
|
| https://theaviationgeekclub.com/sr-71-blackbird-pilot-tells-...
| numpad0 wrote:
| Probably be used to deal with nuclear TELs and people on
| backseats in sedans? YF-12 and M-21 variants of A-12 had bays
| and launchers but none of Blackbirds had necessary cameras for
| air to ground weapons.
| [deleted]
| jhgb wrote:
| Technically the YF-12 was armed.
| sambe wrote:
| The article states that it's unmanned and emphasises
| intelligence capabilities.
|
| I thought SR-71 had some strike capabilities, but I could be
| mistaken.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Thanks, you're right.
|
| That raises the interesting question of how large, hypersonic
| UAVs are expected to be used.
|
| What kind of intelligence mission benefits from a fast flyby
| but cannot be performed by a satellite?
|
| What kind of attack is fast but cannot be from a guided
| weapon?
| goodcanadian wrote:
| _What kind of intelligence mission benefits from a fast
| flyby but cannot be performed by a satellite?_
|
| The orbits of satellites are known. The target can arrange
| activities to occur when there is not a satellite overhead.
| A fast flyby can occur at any time with little or no
| warning.
| pge wrote:
| Satellites were great during the cold war when the targets
| were consistent, and the satellites could be put in orbits
| with good coverage of those areas (eg Russian military
| bases). Spy planes like the SR71 and U2 that fly high and
| fast to evade detection or destruction are essential for
| getting immediate photos of an area that may not have
| regular satellite coverage.
| 7952 wrote:
| Maybe geolocating cell phones or WiFi?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " What kind of intelligence mission benefits from a fast
| flyby but cannot be performed by a satellite?"
|
| Perhaps they expect the spy satellites to be immediately
| blown up in this conflict.
| VLM wrote:
| All you have to do is lase them.
|
| Like handling security cameras... you can fire an
| artillery shell at a security camera, but most of the
| time security cameras are mission ineffective if you just
| shine a bright enough flashlight (or laser) at them.
|
| There's no need to cause an international incident by
| blowing something up when all you need is a bright light
| for a couple easily predictable minutes.
|
| On the other hand a stealthy hypersonic flyby is probably
| invisible.
|
| Another military aspect civilians never want to talk
| about is photo analysis depends on illumination and rando
| satellite passes can't see into valleys and get messed up
| if the shadows are weird enough. Just because technically
| a satellite passed within range of Afghanistan as a whole
| country, doesn't mean you can see what's happening on the
| wrong side of a mountain with bad illumination and bad
| view angle. There's a lot of satellites but not THAT
| many. Afghanistan used to have boots on ground to launch
| UAVs but not so much anymore.
| knute wrote:
| There are a limited number of spy satellites, and their
| orbits are fairly fixed. If you need to look at a site you
| have to wait until a satellite passes it (and the people at
| the site will be able to know quite far in advance when a
| satellite is coming). And there's no way to delay the pass
| until the cloud cover clears.
| sterlind wrote:
| You could potentially hide a satellite from radar
| observation the same way you can for planes. That's
| apparently what the Misty program [1] did. Synthetic
| aperture radar could take care of clouds, though you lose
| color. Agreed about maneuverability I think.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_(satellite)
| numpad0 wrote:
| They probably won't send in U-2 or MQ-9 to stick ninja
| swords through the roof of a luxury sedan past rings of
| S-300 SAM batteries few hundred miles from shores.
| fmajid wrote:
| Are you referring to the Hellfire R9X "flying ginsu"?
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a301754
| 25/...
| runjake wrote:
| You may be thinking of the YF-12, which was based off the
| closely-related-but-not-the-same-at-all A-12 precursor to the
| SR-71.
|
| Brag: I've actually seen a YF-12, up close, at Edwards AFB.
| NASA used them for testing for many years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Related? https://twitter.com/rubenhofs/status/1440594839481946129
| https://twitter.com/TheDEWLine/status/1440806852560707587
| runjake wrote:
| That airframe, while super super intriguing, isn't a hypersonic
| airframe style.
|
| It's most likely something for NGAD [1] purposes.
|
| 1.
| https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/9/21/a...
| bloopernova wrote:
| Somewhat on-topic, have there been any updates from Skylon or
| SABRE engines lately? Single stage to orbit seems so sci-fi I
| wonder if we'll ever get close.
| tclancy wrote:
| Given satellite technology and ICBMs, can someone explain why my
| tax dollars are going to this science fair project for adults?
| JanSolo wrote:
| ICBMs are a large, blunt weapon. Their value is primarily in
| their deterrence. The concequences of actually using them are
| so unthinkable, that we don't really consider it unless it's a
| very-last-resort kind of situation. Most of the time you want a
| precision, guided munition that can destroy a house or a truck
| or something small without causing too much collateral damage.
| Until now, that has meant an airbase or a carrier nearby to
| launch aircraft to carry these munitions.
|
| However, with the XR-72, we can do away with those and just
| launch our precision strikes from the US mainland. It's
| cheaper, just as effective and hopefully will give emerging
| superpowers (like China) pause when planning their defence
| scenarios.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| How is China supposed to know if one of these is carrying
| cameras, conventional bombs, or a warhead?
| lmm wrote:
| They aren't. But the trajectory means they can see it isn't
| aimed at Beijing.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| ICBM go up and down in a predictable arc. Sometimes they have
| the capability to shift their path actively but not by much.
| Hypersonic controlled flight vehicles have the ability to be
| unpredictable and therefore offer more protection from
| countermeasures.
| arethuza wrote:
| FOBS does allow you to at least change that arc so you can
| effectively come at a target from any direction:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment.
| ..
| me_me_me wrote:
| Well we need to feed the beast because we love freedom and if
| you don;t you are free to go to gulag... or something along
| those lines.
| nnq wrote:
| Bc there's some treaty prohibiting space-based weapons smth
| smth... hence your satelite will not be able to carry missiles
| (or use them without admitting it carried them).
|
| ...and bc ICBMs are not weapons you'd want to EVER see used :)
|
| You'd probably use this to hit a bad guy's
| house/hospital/school inside airspace protected by another
| superpower (hence drones and other stuff won't work) based on
| ground based humint whose information will likely be stale
| after a couple hours. It could mean way less victims than
| conventional warfare, so ugly as it is, it's better than
| destroyed cities and waves of refugees.
|
| All in all cool to see superpowers doing dick measuring
| contests with these kinds of stuff, compared to other horrible
| stuff they could be competing at militarily...
| dsr_ wrote:
| I'm going to attempt to answer your question.
|
| First, it's unlikely that this is a real project. War companies
| produce lots of random ideas for presentations hoping that one
| of them will catch on and get an initial program funded. A few
| years ago there were animations of a V22 mashed up with a C130
| to get a tandem winged VTOL cargo plane. The warporn gets
| buyers in the mood, but what they actually buy are things like
| the F35 program and "palletized strike missions", which is a
| mid-air launch system for cruise missiles. Every cargo plane
| with an in-air openable ramp becomes a cruise-missile launching
| bomber.
|
| Second, some prototype projects provide cover for other, more
| secret projects. If everyone knows that a lot of engineers are
| being hired for the SR-72 project, the fact that 25% of them
| are actually working on something else in the same facility is
| easy to disguise. Test flights of one hypersonic vehicle look
| pretty much the same as test flights of a different hypersonic
| vehicle.
|
| Third, war companies provide a lot of skilled through
| professional level employment in the areas where they operate,
| and politicians find it acceptable to run employment programs
| that way.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Hypersonics is like fusion, everyone needs to be doing it.
| They've been trying for decades and so far it's been a bust.
|
| Queue news stories about Chinese or Russian hypersonics with
| zero real data and calls by the MIC to close the "hypersonic
| gap"
|
| In the pantheon of weapon systems it is simply the most
| expensive way to do something.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Given satellite technology and ICBMs
|
| I see an SR-72 being a hedge against losing both of the above,
| or having them rendered ineffective.
|
| Putting a nuclear munition on this thing makes sense to kind of
| get ICBM like capability in a ditch, and ensures you have
| something against the enemy who can reliably intercept ICBMs.
|
| Same for the case spy sats get taken down. The chance of the
| enemy having something that can intercept high speed
| aerodynamic targets, as well as satellites at the same time is
| minimal.
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