Spy aircraft and over flights.

Hello everybody


As i was reading about the Air Force looking for a new open sky treaty aircraft it got me thinking.

Everyone knows back in the early days of the cold war the US utilized the U-2 and later the A-12/SR-71 for surveillance all over the place and even used it as a psychological weapons when they boomed over a collection of political heavy weights. The SR-71 flew the border of the USSR to get some great photos and other information and satellites filled the gap.

i find it hard to believe we stayed outside the official borders of the USSR with our high speed aircraft.

Today all we hear about is satellite recon, granted we have some amazing capabilities in our satellites but as some of us have seen with our own eyes a few very high speed aircraft exist and more than likely are the replacement for other black high speed craft.

My reason for making this post is i have heard very few stories of Soviet and now Russian analoges to US high speed aircraft. I would be very shocked if the Russians relied on satellites alone for their aerial recognizance.

I have seen mock ups for their Ajax hypersonic aircraft but who knows if that ever was made.

I bet we(the US) use our black projects for on demand overflights of Russia(or anywhere else) to take pictures or clandestine nuclear monitoring etc.

i would love any suggestions or stories anyone has of Russian aircraft that might have the ability to fly over or on the border of the US. Even with our open sky agreements only a fool would rely on one and only one method of verification, even more so now with Russia's apparent revival of their cold war style nuclear weapon system developments.

Russia is known for their SAM systems lethality so if we can sneak peaks at them without getting shot down i would think the russians would have a similar ability.

it fascinates me that there is a ton of info of US high performance aircraft and almost zero on Russia's own programs

Not that I've heard.

And it seems that it took Russia a while to come up with an airplane, MIG-31, in the 80's to intercept the SR-71.

theaviationist.com...

And out of curiosity. If Russia did have something like the SR-71. Wouldn't they be showing it off at every airshow they had?

a reply to: grey580

In the UK we often get pics of Russian aircraft 'testing' our airspace.

If the Russians had an aircraft to out fly anything the West had what would they gain by saying what the Western Military already knew?

Equally why would the West admit it?

originally posted by: grey580
Not that I've heard.

And it seems that it took Russia a while to come up with an airplane, MIG-31, in the 80's to intercept the SR-71.

theaviationist.com...

And out of curiosity. If Russia did have something like the SR-71. Wouldn't they be showing it off at every airshow they had?

That would defeat the purpose of having a secret spyplane.

I would dare say that both have something that may out perform the blackbird, these projects could stay in the dark for decades. Hell the F-117 was in development before I was born and made its debut in the gulf war.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
Hell the F-117 was in development before I was born and made its debut in the gulf war.

The F-117 made its combat debut a few years earlier in 1989 over Panama.

F-117 Panama

I’ve thought that the Soviets/Russians might have been capable of producing an enlarged/lengthened MiG-31 derrivitave optimized for high-speed and high-altitude performance with limited planform alignment. Think a 90 foot long black Mig-31 with enhanced air intakes. If it could cruise at Mach 2.8 to 3 range at 70K feet you could run it up and down the eastern and western seaboards without having to worry about F-18s and F-15s intercepting it. Might explain a few rumored radar returns of aircraft in that flight regime. I wouldn’t expect they’d have any more than a 3-5 airframes or they did.

Double post...

a reply to: penroc3
Refueling the aircraft would have been an interesting challenge.

a reply to: mightmight

the russians had their own version of Dyna Soar and other manned military space vehicles, i can picture them strapping someone in something like that and launching it. It would have to be launched from different location depending where they wanted it to pass over. back then they didn't have the fly by wire we do today, a manned suborbital platform with a camera doesn't seem super crazy.

on the other hand if it was an airbreather a tanker could fly along with it to the west coast and then the spy aircraft could dash over the us and be meet off the east coast by another tanker refuel and fly to a russian base and land.

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: mightmight

the russians had their own version of Dyna Soar and other manned military space vehicles, i can picture them strapping someone in something like that and launching it. It would have to be launched from different location depending where they wanted it to pass over. back then they didn't have the fly by wire we do today, a manned suborbital platform with a camera doesn't seem super crazy.

on the other hand if it was an airbreather a tanker could fly along with it to the west coast and then the spy aircraft could dash over the us and be meet off the east coast by another tanker refuel and fly to a russian base and land.

Even if they had the aircraft, they would have to have the balls to fly it over the US. Thats some of the best defended air space in the world.

a reply to: Nickn3

i would imagine the powers that be would rather a fly over than a major poop storm or WWIII