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Russia to field MiG-31 replacement by 2020 - Commander.
Rian ^
Posted on 04/13/2013 9:06:56 AM PDT by cunning_fish
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To: X-spurt
SR-71 retired because it was no longer needed as satellites were able to do a better job for lower cost.
Not true at all.
I know people who were involved in the SR-71 program leading into its first retirement. The issue was internal USAF politics. The USAF had a Chief of Staff (McPeak maybe?) who HATED the Blackbird, apparently because he hadn't been selected for the program.
On top of that, the SR-71 community was extremely elitist and pretty close to cloistered. They'd done a p*ss-poor job of positioning Habus (as SR-71 drivers were called) into positions of power within the USAF.
So when the USAF CoS decided to kill the program, there was no one in a position to fight it.
As it was, it turned out he also misled Congress on the retirement. One of the reasons why Senator Byrd (D-KKK) single handedly reinstated the Blackbird a few years later (only two aircraft were brought back into service, and only for a short time before Clinton killed the program again using his short-lived line-item veto) was because he'd felt the USAF had lied to him about a pending SR-71 successor platform that turned out to be vaporware.
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