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What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

popularmechanics.com

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Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#121

Post by josephcooney »

Terr_ wrote: post #55
ProAm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are interested in how the Pentagon, Air Force and Navy decides to fund and build aircraft, I highly recommend reading this book [1]. It's about the father of the A-10, F15 (sort of), F-16 and FA-18. Fascinating read about how the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics. (it's about the life of John Boyd, not just how aircraft a chosen but its covered quite a bit in th…

> the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

This is hilarious.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#122

Post by zip1234 »

Gargoyle wrote: post #51
strictnein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U-2 was developed in 18 months with COTS goods and requires a finesse to fly that I think would be tough to replicate with computers. And Russian SAMs can easily take out a U-2, so I'm not sure what the author is trying to say there, to be honest with you.

The U-2 is so difficult to fly that it requires external sensors to land. AKA another pilot racing down the runway in a chase car radioing instructions to the pilot in the plane. https://jalopnik.com/5537629/the-140-mph-chase-cars-of-the-u...

It has only two landing wheels--one in the front and one in the back (called bicycle landing gear). The chase car tells the pilot what to do to keep the plane balanced on two wheels as it goes down the runway. At the end, as it slows down, it reallly wants to tip over. Before it can, ground crews run up and put wingtip stanchions with wheels on them under the wingtips to complete the landing gear so it can taxi. Really amazing

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#124

Post by [deleted] »

eesmith wrote: post #111
ethbro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before intelligence needs could be solved by satellite imagery, violating airspace for military purposes wasn't exactly rare. Everyone largely agreed it wasn't in anyone's best interest to talk about it publicly though.

I do think it's odd that the Soviet government knew we were sending planes through their airspace for surveillance purposes, and the US government knew that the Soviet government knew, but the US government decided that the US population shouldn't know. When Powers was shot down, the US started with the cover story that it was a weather research aircraft. Then Khrushchev was able to embarrass the US by revealing that…

[deleted]

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#125

Post by [deleted] »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #82
onesun wrote: post #2

I didn't make it past the first lovely sentence. "With a sleek needle nose and a swept double-delta wing with two prominent nacelles, the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend." SR-1? "Stuff aviation legend"? I'd expect a little better editing from Popular Mechanics.

I didn't notice those typos the first time I read the article. Maybe it's really easy to misread letter-number combinations like that if you're already expecting it to be a certain number.

[deleted]

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#126

Post by Fnoord »

eesmith wrote: post #111
ethbro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before intelligence needs could be solved by satellite imagery, violating airspace for military purposes wasn't exactly rare. Everyone largely agreed it wasn't in anyone's best interest to talk about it publicly though.

I do think it's odd that the Soviet government knew we were sending planes through their airspace for surveillance purposes, and the US government knew that the Soviet government knew, but the US government decided that the US population shouldn't know. When Powers was shot down, the US started with the cover story that it was a weather research aircraft. Then Khrushchev was able to embarrass the US by revealing that…

(I assume NATO knew about this.)

There's no such thing as telling your own people. Once you inform your own population about it, the enemy knows about it as well. The same as is true with regards secret service such as CIA and NSA. As you say, that doesn't fly here, since the Soviet government knew, and the US government knew the Soviet government knew.

Why you don't want to talk about that could be because its an elephant in a room which could cause escalation because of public discussion. That escalation could be internal as well as external.

Another reason could be that it shows that the US government knew a lot about the Soviets which due to this increased knowledge decreases fear for the Soviets. Which wasn't in the interest of the US government; it was in the interest of both the US and the Soviet government to see each other as the enemy.

A third reason could be, in addendum to #2, that the leadership saw no benefit to it, in terms of propaganda. It might seem the same as #2 but its less nefarious or ill intent.

We may never know the truth about this. Could FOIA requests shed some light?

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#127

Post by Fnoord »

badosu wrote: post #44
strictnein wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good one (although some may dislike it): On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing. The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirag…

America, f\ \ k yeah! ... Sarcasm aside, wouldn't this be a severe case of violation of sovereignity? I find it hard to believe such a stupid act could have been performed without making news or retaliations. (By stupid act I mean entering unpermitted airspace, the pilot's actions are irrelevant)

> (By stupid act I mean entering unpermitted airspace, the pilot's actions are irrelevant)

> America, f\\k yeah!

(I'm European, not French, but was pro-US during the Cold War.)

Yeah, my response was the same, until I read the context which the original quote lacks [1]. These 2 quotes are to me the most relevant from the story for the context of the original quote. Feel free to read the story in its entirety.

"The French refused to allow us overfly, so our mission profile was to refuel off the south coast of England, a Mach 3 cruise leg down the coast of Portugal and Spain, left turn through the Straits of Gibraltar, refuel in the Western Mediterranean, right turn into Lebanon and fly right down main street Beirut, exit along the southern Mediterranean with another refueling over Malta, supersonic back out the straits, and return to England."

Furthermore,

"We completed our pass over Beirut and turned toward Malta, when I got a warning low-oil-pressure light on my right engine. Even though the engine was running fine I slowed down and lowered our altitude and made a direct line for England. We decided to cross France without clearance instead of going the roundabout way."

The earlier quoted story lacks these nuances. Sure, you might still find it rude but for me it made a big difference that they weren't just invading French aerospace for no valid reason.

Its just typical that they opted to increase speed during the encounter with the Mirage while previously they decided to lower speed due to low oil pressure on the right engine. Although at that point they were much closer to home which was at the south of England. At some point, I just gotta stop being skeptic and trust these guys know what they're doing with their super expensive toy^H^H^Haircraft. Its easy to judge on others, claiming you wouldn't resort to this behaviour. But would we? Really?

[1] https://hipandthigh.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/blackbird/

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#128

Post by doctorRetro »

sdfjkl wrote: post #116

> the supersonic SR-1 Blackbird spy plane is the stuff aviation legend. Does nobody proofread these articles anymore? A missing word in the first sentence. This sort of sloppy publishing really doesn't leave a good first impression with the reader.

Oh good, I'm not the only one who gets really bothered by this! I hate seeing these kinds of errors. It happens to everyone, I understand that. But when you're an internationally read journal, you should really be holding yourself to a higher standard than, say, the twice-a-week village newspaper or your aunt's emails.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#129

Post by vlehto »

sytelus wrote: post #118

One of the most amazing fact I'd learned was that invisibility to radars was not mostly due to the absorbing material but rather a specific geometry of the plane! The materials certainly enhanced it but it was still like 25% or so contribution. Even more amazing fact was that this possibility was first discussed in a Russian research paper but that was never followed through because it was too complex to compute such…

>because it was too complex to compute such shape and no one believed it would actually work

I don't want to put down your enthusiasm, but this is not very exact info. Stealth design never makes the plane invisible, it just increases the detection distance or the power requirement of the radar.

You get relatively long way by simply avoiding corner reflectors. There are rumors that Avro Vulcan used to disappear from friendly radars accidentally just because of that.

One of the features that increases stealth is the radar. Because radars tend to show on radar. SR-71 had "side looking radar" which might have been optimized not to show the array towards any hostile ground stations.

Re: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane (2015)

#130

Post by autokad »

strictnein wrote: post #10
mikeokner wrote: post #3

My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-107912704...

A good one (although some may dislike it): On the way back from a mission to the middle east, they ended up flying over France, even though France had refused them clearance. They were flying low and slow (relative terms obviously), and the pilot looked to his left and saw a French Mirage just off his left wing. The Mirage pilot called over and requested their diplomatic clearance code. The SR-71 pilot told the Mirag…

has anyone been in the airforce in the late 70s? My dad died on active duty in the airforce, and I heard second hand stories and was wondering how common they were.

in particular, he said they kept notes on everyone and turned them in (not sure to whom), in order to prevent russian espianage. For example, if you saw someone order something from a vending machine, it was up to you to write down who, what item they selected, etc. presumably these were checked for patterns.

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