You said “Got enough satellites in orbit that we can photograph whatever we want without the risk of detection.”
The SR-71 was retired at the beginning of 1990, thus it was not available to do recce flights over Iraq and especially Kuwait. After Saddam had the Kuwaiti oil fields set afire and along with the weather/sand storms there resulted in all of our satellites being “blind.” The only recce photo system available capable of penetrating that smoke/sand mixture were the cameras on the SR-71. Both the Army photo intelligence center (ITAC) and the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) requested (pleaded, I was told) to get a couple of the planes activated and deployed to that theater. DoD refused to authorize that reactivation. I was an intel analyst at ITAC when that happened.
See my post # 50 for a memory of my Army MI time.