it’s nonsense that you think it’s nonsense. it was completely unnecessary, it served ZERO national security purposes, and the only thing it accomplished was to give a pilot a chubby.
we don’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense annually just to give pilots happy pants. period. end of chapter.
After 20+ years of regular training flights over half the country, which probably didn’t hit max altitude or speed, this was not giving away a national secret. Hell, I had a book on military aircraft in high school in the mid seventies, that listed the 71 and the “published” specs and the speed in the story was nowhere near the published number.