SR-71 replacement
 

Hmm, I suspect the engine design may be challenging for that! A Mach 6 airframe is not outside the realms of possibility (it has been done before), but an air-breathing Mach 6 capable engine with a reasonable in-service life and sensible time between overhauls? Not so sure.

For Mach 6 cruise the jet efflux needs to exceed Mach 6, so you are looking at either very clever ramjets, scramjets or rockets, unless the US have managed to design and make an engine similar to the Uk Sabre air-breathing rocket engine concept. It will be interesting to see if this ever comes to pass...

Lockheed Aurora.
Methane fuelled piggy back plane. Pulse detonation engine. Mach 5. Now retired. Ran out of RAF Machrihanish.

In planform, it looks like the orbital shuttle in 2001.

I was under the impression that improved capability satellites had meant a Blackbird successor was unnecessary. :confused:

Now that satellites are obtainable targets on a scale not seen in the early 90's when the SR-71 was retired, I would think a bit of diversification is wise.

Who knows, perhaps the reasoning of sat coverage as a reason for the SR-71's retirement was a bit of disinformation.

Long rumoured electic, but never proven.
Is there now any more solid evidence, aside from sightings of a few odd contrails, weird aircraft escorted by F111s and strange calls to air traffic controllers?

Purely by co-incidence I have just this evening finished reading Rich Grahams 1996 book. We had Rich over for our first lecture of the season at the Cambs RAeS in September.

At the end of our lecture the obvious question was asked about the existence of the follow on projects. Now for someone as passionate about the SR71 programme he kept a straight face in dispelling the myth.

Lets hope the aerodynamicists and technologists have solved the unstart issue.

According to the book. the UAVs Global Hawk and Darkstar were the successors to the SR and U2 recognising the deficiencies of the satellites available at the time.

Rocketdyne are revealing a little more information.
Lockheed and Aerojet Rocketdyne have developed a proprietary method to use an off the shelf F100 or F110 fighter engine, and accelerate it for short periods beyond M2.2 at which point the Scramjet lights (not surprisingly they won't reveal the ignition speed). They say they're ready to go, and all they have to counter now is the perception that hypersonics are unfeasibly expensive or too technically hard.
My boy met Rich Graham at Duxford next to the SR71 when he launched his book. It's still a spooky, alien looking jet in the flesh, even now.
Have devoured Ben Rich's and Bill Sweetman's books and followed hypersonic efforts for years, this is a very significant announcement.
Optionally manned, and optionally armed.
Imagine the challenges of weapon release travelling at 2kms a second.

Yes of course they did. Black project teams are forever releasing details to magazines detailing what they're working on. Cue rolly eyes smiley.

Mate - have a look at Lockheed Martin's website if you don't believe it.
Lockheed Martin · Speed is the New Stealth
Much in the same way that the SR71 and B2 were revealed - when the Company knew that a few reporters had found out - and decided to reveal the projects :rolleyes:

MQ-1, MQ-9 and RQ-170 provide some of the lost capability...and some...

http://www.uavglobal.com/wp-content/...inel/beast.jpg

The rest is probably picked up by X37...

http://www.uavglobal.com/wp-content/...ing_x-37bl.jpg

Oh I do believe you that they've released something, I just don't believe they released anything more significant than some low, low level reasearch. This isn't an aircraft project at this stage, it's a concept and these get talked about all the time. If it were an aircraft project it wouldn't be released to a magazine.

I vaguely remember many moons ago reading in Flight that Aurora inadvertently got a mention in one edition of the US's Soviet Military Power journal, and that when the mistake was spotted the copies were hastily withdrawn from circulation.

Can't find any references to this little-known incident on the 'net, but then maybe these have been redacted too.

Interesting.
Electic's suggestion it was piggy backed aka the D-21 is the first time I've heard that.
Maybe that North Sea oil rig worker who saw the F111's escorting something very strange all those years ago wasn't imagining things.
I have a copy of Bill Sweetman's Aurora book.
And the planform of Aurora he sketches out is almost exactly the same as the SR-72.
A waverider with 70 degree sweepback, chines, sharp wingtips.
Intriguing.

My strong memory (as an interested member of the non-US public) is that the existence of the Advanced Technology Bomber programme was well known a some time around the downselect between Northrop and Boeing competing designs was made in the early 80s.

The security was more around the detail of the designs themselves, not the programme or that an aircraft was being built.

Thyere is an often repeated story that the 1988 public unveiling of the B-2 at Palmdale went to some lengths to hide the planform because it was super-secret, except that those sneaky AvLeak jouros hired a Cessna and flew over the top because the dumb Guvmint had forgotten to close the airspace to civil traffic.

To me, that story doesn't stand up to lot lot of scrutiny, given that the following picture was taken from the public area on the day:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...emony_1988.jpg

Note the star.

It's often difficult to differentiate between deliberate disinformation, genuine misunderstandings/mis-rememberings and active re-writing of history on this subject!

Hmm, I'm more sceptical of his claim of an F111 being used as a chase plane/escort. Dodgy a/c recce if you ask me...



Posted from Pprune.org App for Android

Yes, Aviation Week did have a photograph of the B2 from above. Described this way in Wikipedia:
I was a subscriber in those days, and saw the pix.

And yet MarcK, those pics aren't available, despite the planform of the B2 and the engine exhausts being far from secret for about what, 20 or more years now?

No secrets any more
 

http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/B2Spr09.pdf

Sun.