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They did have a replacement, it's called a satellite, so my Lockheed friends have told me...Twitch said:It's really, really, really obvious that they had "something," call it the Aurora, who cares, because they retired the SR-71s. They never ever retire anything unless they have a replacement.
Because at the time there was a problem positioning satellites within the allotted time requirement. That's still a problem but its not cost effective to continue to operate the SR-71.Twitch said:Why were the SRs reactivated? Surley not because the satellite imaging was too poor. If it was they'd never have put the Blackbirds out to pasture before orbiters could do the job in the 1st place.
Tacit Blue was a proof of concept aircraft similar to have blue, it was used in the RCS development of the B-2.Twitch said:They had a big official public retirement of a ship that no one ever admitted existing, the Tacit Blue stealth spy plane! It flew from 1982-85 but wasn't publicly acknowledged until 1996.
I figure the smartest thing is a UAV or UCAV for doing the SR-71's duties but we'll see.....eventually
Twitch said:Why were the SRs reactivated? Surley not because the satellite imaging was too poor. If it was they'd never have put the Blackbirds out to pasture before orbiters could do the job in the 1st place.
They had a big official public retirement of a ship that no one ever admitted existing, the Tacit Blue stealth spy plane! It flew from 1982-85 but wasn't publicly acknowledged until 1996.
I figure the smartest thing is a UAV or UCAV for doing the SR-71's duties but we'll see.....eventually
Very few...johnbr said:Remember Lockheed has said most of the aircraft it has made are still top secret.
I worked there for over 10 years and I was in the Skunk Works - there aren't a lot of proof of concept aircraft built because many times its done at company expense. Someday you may see a "few" items pop up that were kept secret for many years (the Have Blue prototype and the D-21 drone) but don't hold you're breath, I doubt you'll see much more than that...HealzDevo said:What do you mean very few? If as someone said they are that skilled at keeping black projects, the Lockheed comment does make sense. In producing aircraft to new designs for a different type of warfare there has to be a lot of prototype concept aircraft along the way and there just don't seem to really be that many in the case of some of the modern Stealth Aircraft so could these be kept secret at the Area 51 Airbase? We are talking in reality a massive leap in design and yet there don't seem to be that many failed designs. I know there are computer simulations etc, but still there has to be data gained from actual models, etc. to fuel that computer simulation properly.