NASA appears to be pulling its SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest production plane ever made, out of retirement as the Trump administration teases its new line of hypersonic surveillance jets — but doubt…
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.
Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an ‘interceptor’ maybe? – because it’s definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe ‘interceptor’ isn’t the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you’d never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.
Modern fighters don’t really do dogfights anymore.
Today’s air-to-air engagements are usually just a matter of launching a missile at the other plane, usually from so far away that they’re beyond the horizon. And in that kind of engagement, there are two things that determine which combatant is more effective: speed and range. SR-71 brings the ultimate in speed to the equation, now it just needs some good, long-range missiles.
It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.
Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an ‘interceptor’ maybe? – because it’s definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe ‘interceptor’ isn’t the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you’d never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.
It’s probably terrible at dogfights though.
Modern fighters don’t really do dogfights anymore.
Today’s air-to-air engagements are usually just a matter of launching a missile at the other plane, usually from so far away that they’re beyond the horizon. And in that kind of engagement, there are two things that determine which combatant is more effective: speed and range. SR-71 brings the ultimate in speed to the equation, now it just needs some good, long-range missiles.
Stealth and detection play a big part too. Can’t target what your sensors can’t see.