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Come ON .... what’s the survival rate for Russian made junk up against USA aircraft and tanks?

SR-71 retired because it was no longer needed as satellites were able to do a better job for lower cost.

No one except civilians are fearful of Russian made arms (because that is exactly what their design and purpose is). As said, they do not stand the test of real combat against a peer.

>>>No one except civilians are fearful of Russian made arms (because that is exactly what their design and purpose is). As said, they do not stand the test of real combat against a peer.<<<

Liberal lies. Ask Iran and Pakistan. US-made armor and aircraft made some nice smoking wrecks and lawn darts against Soviet gear in Iraqi and Indian hands. Is it a proof of domestic gear’s inferiority?

What you mean as a ‘pear’? A 2000-strong AWACS-backed coalition airforce against a few dozen Iraqi fighters back in 1991? LOL.

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.