I was a stroke of brilliance to retire the SR-71, wasn’t it?
The best aircraft that will ever be developed and we mothballed it and now get harassed by Chinese mosquitoes...
Those Chinese jets probably aren’t much more advance than 70’s era fighters. They never throw anything away.
Yeah, I know, sadly!
The Blackbird was the most awesome aircraft I ever saw!
“I was a stroke of brilliance to retire the SR-71, wasn’t it?”
The Aurora is much faster.
***I was a stroke of brilliance to retire the SR-71, wasn’t it?***
I’m no stroke of design expert but the SR-71 and the U-2, my opinion, is soviet era and likely targeted against Warsaw Pack movements hence not suitable for post Soviet era Asia Pacific intelligence gathering operations. This job, my opinion, is now covertly assigned to the long since been speculated Aurora or even stealthier program.
*** and now get harassed by Chinese mosquitoes ***
Little do we know it but these close encounters of the 6th kind (Chinese mosquitoes verses US ships or air crafts) are rather routine though never ever been publicized.
Example: During the last Taiwan Straight incident where Clinton dispatched the Nimitz and a sister ship to the region to psychologically intimidate the ChiComs, the ChiComs [claimed] that the then Deng Xiao-Ping ordered the Nimitz and her sister ship shadowed.
J-7E’s (China’s latest then), it was suggested, were dispatched to shadow the Nimitz and her sister ship. The claim however went as far as to have suggested that three of the J-7’s actually buzzed/zipped across the mast of the Nimitz and her sister ship but cools heads persisted.
MY speculation of what likely happened is his: throughout the incident, the two opposing forces likely stared one another squarely in the eye ball quite for real for a time. Nothing much happened of course because none the parties involved wanted a real deal Sino-US international incident. The missile tests ran its course, so did the stand off.