sr 72 lockheed

Sr 72 Lockheed - Artist's rendering of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works' Son of Blackbird concept SR-72. Photo by Lockheed Martin

Could Lockheed Martin Skunk Works' SR-72 hypersonic concept design meet the Pentagon's need for a sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft? The answer may be yes.

Sr 72 Lockheed

However, footage of the aircraft surfaced on Flightglobal's DEW Line blog in July, when the company released a video celebrating Skunk Works' achievements over the past few decades.

Top Gun: Maverick Lockheed Martin Sr 72 Dark Star By Bagera3005 On Deviantart

While the SR-72 concept is impressive, one question that immediately arises: Does the Department of Defense have any requirements for this type of aircraft?

Earlier this year in July, US Strategic Command chief Robert Kehler told reporters that the US military needs an active infiltration ISR.

Kehler in Washington DC. "What that looks like, and how much of it, remains to be seen," to the Defense Writers Group.

The SR-72, which is in many ways a reimagining of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's BlackSwift demonstration program, could fit the bill.

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If the SR-72, which is planned to travel at speeds in excess of Mach 6, is eventually developed as an operational aircraft, it will be capable of crossing areas that are off limits to supersonic stealth aircraft. are out of

According to Aviation Week, "The SR-72 is designed to fill a growing gap in rapid response intelligence coverage provided by the multitude of satellite, subsonic manned and unmanned platforms that defense planners seek to replace the SR-71. are."

This means that if the Pentagon—in this case the US Air Force—can somehow manage to find the money to pay for the SR-72, Kehler could have its own penetrating ISR platform.

That platform can be used to collect ISR data inside enemy territory, with impunity fed back to a distributed common ground system station analyzer. It can also hit heavily defended targets before they have a chance to react. If the concept works, it could be very important in the Defense Department's Air Sea Battle concept.

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But before that happens, the SR-72 has a long way to go both technically and to secure a portion of the Pentagon's dwindling cash supply. The US has begun development of a new hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) vehicle. , is seen by some analysts as the successor to the famous SR-71 Blackbird spy plane of Cold War fame.

Last week, The Warzone reported that the US Air Force awarded Leidos "$334 million to provide a large-scale hypersonic air-breathing system capable of providing a standard multi-mission payload interface, and to provide a major tech. awarded a contract with a price limit of . progress and future capacity”, as stated in the contract mentioned in the report.

Additionally, Leidos will operate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and other potential test sites and is expected to be completed by October 2028 as part of the Classified Mayhem program.

The report mentions that the aircraft will be capable of various missions, including area effect, unit payload or ISR missions. It also says that the hypersonic vehicle will be powered by a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) powerplant scheme.

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In a TBCC design, scramjets are used for supersonic or hypersonic flight. However, these only operate at high speeds, and traditionally require an initial rocket thrust to achieve the airspeed required for operation. The use of jet engines to provide initial thrust would allow such an aircraft to take off from conventional runways and achieve the airspeed required to launch its scramjet.

However, Warzone mentioned that there is still a lot unknown about Project Mayhem. For example, it is not known whether the vehicle type will be expendable or reusable, as it is said to be somewhere between a hypersonic missile and a full hypersonic aircraft.

Despite this ambiguity, it is believed that Project Mayhem is intended to provide a successor to the Cold War SR-71 spy plane.

In a January 2022 article on 19fortyfive.com, Ethan Leiser mentions that Lockheed Martin has provided guidance on the development of the SR-72 spy plane to conduct ISR operations in enemy territory ahead of their air defenses. Expected to fly at Mach 6 to enable. . It can also react.

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"The SR-72 is envisioned as an unmanned, reusable hypersonic ISR capable of Mach 6 flights, or nearly twice the speed of its predecessor, the SR-71 Blackbird. NASA An earlier Lockheed study, is funding the validation of the Mach 7-. Speeds up to can be achieved with a dual-mode engine combining turbine and ramjet technology,” the 1945 article stated.

Although satellites and drones have largely replaced spy planes since the end of the Cold War, the rise of anti-satellite and cyber warfare capabilities may renew interest in stealthy supersonic manned spy planes.

In a July 2013 Foreign Policy article, John Reid noted that threats to space assets have forced the US to reevaluate the need for manned airborne ISR spy planes.

He then wrote that while the U.S. has fielded many new spy planes in the Middle East over the decades against terrorism and counterinsurgency, the planes are slow, propeller-driven, not stealthy and incapable of entering heavily defended airspace.

Lockheed Sr 72 Darkstar

Therefore, there may be a new American appreciation of spy planes in the current international environment characterized by great power competition. Well, the US defense branches apparently disagree about the role of spy planes.

In an August 2020 Forbes article, David X mentions that the US Navy and Air Force are clashing over the utility of spy planes in a major power struggle.

According to X. is behind Process to remove all stealth spy planes due to concerns of vulnerability in peer-to-peer conflict.

Artemis, while its ground-detection radar may be powerful, is limited to flying over friendly or submissive airspace, scanning the perimeters of Chinese and Russian territories, and lacks the ability to penetrate vast land masses. which gives them strategic depth.

Lockheed's Sr 72 Could Fill Crucial Pentagon Need

This may still require a supersonic high-altitude spy plane that can fly in and out of heavily defended airspace, which can be dangerous even for the latest stealth aircraft.

In a July 2022 Sandbox article, Alex Hollings mentioned that most nations use radar systems that can detect stealth aircraft, such as the F-22 and F-35, and that such aircraft have previously been targeted. There is a lack of resources to create. In simple terms, this means that dated air defense radars can detect stealth aircraft, but killing them is another matter.

Similarly, Dave Majumdar wrote in a July 2014 USNI News article that Chinese and Russian radars are on the way to detect the F-22 and F-35 and that the proliferation of these radars raises serious questions about the stealth aircraft's survivability. stands up Hence the need for a supersonic spy plane like the SR-71 may arise again.

In a July 2020 CNN article, Jacopo Prisco stated that the driving philosophy behind the Mach 3+ SR-71 is to be a spy plane that can fly faster than a missile at the edge of the atmosphere, beyond Soviet air defenses. and has been almost invisible to radar.

Lockheed Sr 71a > National Museum Of The United States Air Force™ > Display

Prisco warns that by the time an adversary detects a plane and launches a missile, it's already out of range. He also noted that no aircraft were lost to enemy fire due to the unique capabilities of the SR-71.

Prisco says that the SR-71 was designed before the invention of real-time data links, so it had to take pictures on film and then return them to base so the pictures could be developed and processed. can be analyzed. Although the SR-71 was retired in 1999 due to the advent of drones and spy satellites, the global war on terror provided a brief impetus for the aircraft's revival.

In a July 2022 article for The Warzone, Stephen Walker argued that upgrading the L-52M data link to the SR-71 could be important, but lack of support from US Air Force leadership, high operating costs, spy satellites Competition from and the U-2 spy plane, and the eventual retirement of the SR-71 trainer aircraft in 2003, permanently ended this type of service.

However, the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia as its closest competitor underscored the need for a reconnaissance aircraft along the lines of an improved SR-71 capable of flying high enough to evade enemy defenses for ISR missions. More depends on speed.

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This site, like many others, uses small files called cookies to help improve and personalize your experience. Learn more about how we use cookies in our Cookie Policy., Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell takes his need for speed into a new realm: the hypersonic realm, that is. 36 years after the release of the first film, Mitchell is a test pilot stationed aboard the SR-72 "Darkstar" aircraft. Although fictional,

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