The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird operated by the United States Air Force
is famous for its Mach 3+ speed and strategic reconnaissance capability.
In 2013, Lockheed executive Robert Weiss generated a lot of excitement when he seemingly
indicated to 'Aviation Week' that the defense manufacturer was developing a
hypersonic aircraft—and invoked the legendary SR-71 Blackbird spy plane by dubbing it the SR-72.
The high-speed SR-72 aircraft is thought to be the successor to Lockheed Martin’s SR-71 Blackbird.
Since then SR-72 is colloquially referred to as "Son of Blackbird".
The SR-72 is essentially new hypersonic demonstrator aircraft to be developed by
Lockheed Martin under its Skunk Works or Advanced Development Programs,
to meet the requirements of the United States Air Force (USAF).
In this video Defense Updates analyses how the hypersonic Lockheed SR-72 touted to be "Son of
Blackbird" SR-71 could change the rules of aerial engagement in the coming days?
Let's get into the details.
This video is sponsored by War Thunder. If you are, like us, fascinated by military vehicles
and technology, I recommend you give War Thunder a try. It's a military vehicle
combat game which you can download and play for free on PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox One - with
cross-platform support. It has a huge variety of more than 1200 playable aircraft, tanks,
helicopters and ships from the 1930s to the 1990s, which you can take to battle on land, in the air
and at sea on more than 80 theaters of war. War Thunder has been kind enough to offer all
Defense Updates viewers a special bonus, which will grant you a free premium tank or aircraft
or ship and three days of premium account time for registering using our link in the description
below. So, take the plunge and join the more than 20 million players from all over the world!
The SR-71 was designed for flight at over Mach 3 and gather intelligence.
The Blackbird’s unique “SR” designation stood for “Strategic Reconnaissance"
The SR-71 had 3 unique features that made it almost invulnerable:
1. The SR-71 was designed to minimize its radar cross-section. The design was an early attempt at
achieving a ‘stealth' profile. It was painted dark blue, almost black, to increase the emission of
internal heat and to act as camouflage against the night sky. The dark color led to the aircraft
being nicknamed "Blackbird”. In most situations, the radar stations were too late to detect it.
2. The capability to fly at a sustained speed of Mach 3.2.
This enabled it to outrun SAM (Surface to Air) missiles of that era. The speed is
also faster than the Soviet Union's fastest interceptor the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25.
3. SR-71 could reach extremely high altitudes. It had a Service Ceiling of 85,000 ft
(26,000 m). Because of this service ceiling, SAMs were not able to follow it
as they will be out of thrust. MiG-25 was also not able to reach this kind of altitude.
The combination of these 3 factors made sure that no SR-71 was ever shot down by an enemy
through it had flown inside the enemy territories repeatedly and penetrated deep inside.
The Blackbird was retired as spy satellites
and stealthy long-endurance drones like the RQ-170 came to the fore.
These were more suited for discretely monitoring the area of interest.
In 2018 at a science convention, Lockheed vice president Jack O’Banion stated “Without the
digital transformation [of three-dimension design technology], the aircraft you see
there could not have been made. In fact, five years ago, it could not have been made.”
Since then lot of isolated new reports point to the fact Lockheed Martin might be up to something.
Later Executive Vice President Orlando Carvalho
clarified and said to Flight Global “I can tell you unequivocally that it [the SR-72]
has not been built”, claiming O’Banions quotes had been taken “out of context.”
It is unclear what to make out of these statements but deep down we all know that the
most impressive military techs are the best-kept secret and these techs don’t come in news.
Countries like Russia, China have been developing sophisticated layered air defense.
These systems are difficult for traditional aircraft & missiles to penetrate.
It is also clear that current long range drones are
'sitting ducks' for decent air defense systems.
For example, on June 20, 2019, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's (IRGC)
shot down a United States RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone with a surface-to-air missile.
This is where the hypersonic platform comes in.
Their extreme speed and ability to fly in unpredictable paths give them a high
probability of penetrating the air defenses. They will be very hard to track, let alone intercept.
So, technically hypersonic platforms are the answer to
Anti Access Area Denial (A2AD) capability being fielded by near-peer rivals.
An object is said to be hypersonic once they exceed
speeds of Mach 5 that is 5 times the speed of sound.
This is about 1,715 meters per second or 3,836 mph or 6,174 km/h.
The SR-71 was powered by two Pratt & Whitney J58 axial-flow turbojet engines.
It was capable of producing a static thrust of 32,500 lbf or 145 kN.
The innovative part was that at lower speeds, the turbojet provided most of the power while
at higher speeds, the engine largely ceased to provide thrust and the afterburner did the work.
Orland Carvalho, the Executive Vice President of Aeronautics at Lockheed Martin during an
aerospace exhibition in Fort Worth stated, “Although I can't go into specifics, let us just
say the Skunk Works team in Palmdale, California, is doubling down on our commitment to speed.”
He continued, saying "hypersonics is like stealth. It is a disruptive technology and
will enable various platforms to operate at two to three times the speed of the Blackbird...
Security classification guidance will only allow us to say the speed is greater than Mach 5.”
As per some reports coming out recently, Lockheed and the firm
Aerojet Rocketdyne made a breakthrough by developing a Combined Cycle engine.
The engine includes a turbine for speeds below Mach 3 and a scramjet for hypersonic cruising.
The scramjet is an innovation on the Ramjet. Ramjet engine can power flight to supersonic
speeds but scramjet can enable the craft to reach hypersonic speeds.
These engines have no moving parts and rely on the huge
pressures created by fast airflow into the engine to ignite the fuel and generate thrust.
The development world on the SR-72 hypersonic aircraft
in demonstrator form is thought to have commenced in 2018.
It will be an optionally piloted flight research vehicle (FRV) with a length of approximately 60ft.
It will be equipped with a single, full-scale engine
to maneuver for several minutes at a speed of Mach 6.
In final form, SR-72 aircraft will have the capability to perform
high-speed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as strike operations.
The first flight of the SR-72 demonstrator is anticipated in
2023, while the full-scale aircraft is expected to enter into service by 2030.
The important part to note is that while SR-71 was deployed 'only' for reconnaissance,
SR-72 will go one step further with the ability to strike an enemy.
So, it will have a dual role and there are some reports that state
that it will be armed with Hypersonic weapons.
SR-72’s proponents argue that the survivability of an aircraft will depend on speed as improved
layered networked sensors will eventually catch up with current stealth technologies.
The thought process again brings 'speed' to the center stage as a means of defense
Hypersonic missiles have not been mastered yet and
there is still some time when they will become mainstream.
Hypersonic concept aircraft like SR-72 will be much harder to design.
Even if designed, there are other factors. These will be very costly to build & operate.
Also, it is to be noted that a hypersonic aircraft
like SR-72 will require an entirely new crop of weapons that can be at launch at such high speeds.
But if fielded, SR-72 will be a game-changer
and provide U.S Air Force an unprecedented edge over rivals.