Doesn’t the release of a concept sketch mean the prototype is working well?
One of the biggest blunders was decommissioning the SR-71...IMHO. Perfectly good aircraft with years left in service life and it was ditched with the preposterous excuse that it was “Too expensive to operate”.
Why even speculate about this? Under the current regime it would not be fair for the US to have a superior military aircraft. The only thing Obama would do with this file is to hand it over to the Chinese, or even the Saudis.
Speaking from professional experience, it is much more likely that such program would have a quite different name.
I remember buying an "F-19" model as a teen (the aircraft also showed up in a wargame that I bought). But the real program at Tenopah turned out to be the F-117--which looks entirely different. And frankly, the F-117 should have been called "A-117" given its actual combat role.
In June 1986, the Soviets were finally able to mount a successful SR-71 intercept using their new MiG-31 Foxhounds. In a coordinated intercept over the Barents Sea, six Mig-31s subjected a lone SR-71 to an all-angle air-to-air missile intercept. Fortunately for the American crew, they were over international waters, but the Soviets had proven their point. I’m guessing that once the Blackbird lost its aura of invincibility, the Air Force decided to phase it out and look for something hypersonic rather than supersonic.
Ol Kelly Johnson was a man way ahead of his time. I knew some of his family. He was a man of few words. If Kelly made aircraft like the SR71 way back then, what could he have designed that we know nothing of?
He was a thinker, something we have few of today. Ishpeming Mich has a lot of thinkers, being a mining town. They had to come up with solutions on site because there was no other.
If it’s from bho’s administration it’ll be solar powered and not get off the ground and be someone elses fault.
It’s scheduled for delivery 17 years from now.
Funny, people talk like they’re testflighting it now.