A return to the Air Force for the sleek Blackbird?

reply to post by crazyewok


Yeah that's true, I do believe there is another secret high speed stealth plane. Could this be Blackswift coming out of the black world?

reply to post by crazyewok


The Blackbird was tracked every flight. That's one reason they made it so fast, it just out ran everything they threw at her.

Zaphod58
reply to post by boomer135

 

Geosynchronous orbit keeps the satellite at the same spot 24/7, but its so high that imaging becomes a problem.

Oh i agree. I wasn't even getting into the optics that it would take!

The UK Government has censored documents given to the UK public under declassification rules to hide two airbreathing platforms seen over the UK skies, and photographed (hence the photos being in the document) that could be confused with a wedged shaped high speed 'UFO'. EDIT# The censoring was done to spare the US blushes, not UK airframes.

Two.

The UK Gov. knows full well the NSA has a high speed air breathing recon capability. That articles bull#.

edit on 14-8-2013 by Astr0 because: (no reason given)

The UK doesn't have it, just is the refueller stop over location (both air and ground stop off). Two of these separate platforms have been photographed and two outta two are still classified TS by the UK government on behalf of the Americans.

Who ever flies them, has kept them hidden. For reasons only they know. My guess is high speed high mach 4-5 regime airframes are still a touchy subject.

Do you have any links for this information? I'm curious to know if they in fact do exist in the UK or not. And if they are American or English built?

I'd love to look into that too, if you can point us the right way?

Slightly related to this, does anyone know why the US is still flying F-117's long after they were supposed to be retired?

reply to post by waynos


Testing stuff out. Things they won't tell us about.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Ah yes, that makes sense

Wasn't there a press conference a little while ago when a member of the Air Force was talking about ISR platforms and he said he couldn't talk about it unless it was in a classified manner? I think Zaphod posted it, ill have a look for it.

www.mod.uk... .pdf" target="_blank" class="postlink">UK MOD DECLASSIFIED

www.mod.uk... .pdf" target="_blank" class="postlink">UK MOD DECLASSIFIED 2

Both of the above are live download links for PDF files from the UK MOD archives.

Research and development on hypersonic technology is expanding, principally in the USA. The projected (USAF) priority plan is to produce unpiloted air-breathing aircraft with a Mach 8-12 capability and trans atmospheric vehicles which can operate between the upper air-breathing and sub-orbital flight regimes, as well as highly supersonic vehicles at Mach 4 to 6.

two redacted photos of two separate platforms that originate from the USA but seen over the UK and our government kindly spared the US some blushes.

I'm convinced the Aurora program was very real, but failed with at least one crashing during operational duties.

I'm also fairly sure the only Blackbirds fit for service would be the NASA ones (I stand to be corrected) - I believe they only had two airframes?

reply to post by neformore


Those 2 blackbirds are in museums but all the tooling for the SR-71 has been destroyed, as much as I'd like to see it fly again, I doubt it will.

Originally posted by neformore
I'm convinced the Aurora program was very real, but failed with at least one crashing during operational duties.

Well there are 3 options:

1) It never existed (unlikley )
2) It existed as a couple of prototypes but the project cancelled due to cold war ending (most likley)
3) The project still exists but under a diffrent name (Maybe)

reply to post by crazyewok


It never existed. Not one of my sources (which are quite good, and quite reliable), has found even a sniff of Aurora. There may be a high speed aircraft out there, but it's not Aurora.

reply to post by crazyewok


The codename Aurora was supposed to be line item funding for something to do with the B-2 stealth bomber. I'd say any high flying high speed aircraft that comes out of the black world would be dubbed the Aurora if it comes out anyway.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by crazyewok

 

It never existed. Not one of my sources (which are quite good, and quite reliable), has found even a sniff of Aurora. There may be a high speed aircraft out there, but it's not Aurora.

It seems hard to beleive that in the 1980's the airforce was not looking into a replacement for the ageing blackbird?

Even if not named Aurora or anthing to do with the Aurora legends is it possible they were looking into a replacement?

I do rember a few months back you mentioned that there was a project developed along side the F117 and B2?

reply to post by crazyewok


I suspect they came up with a replacement later, but in the 80s, it was all about the satellite. They were the wave of the future, and able to do everything a manned platform could do, but better was the attitude, until they found they weren't able to get what they needed from them.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Hey Zaph,

Do you remember that press conference I was talking about a few posts back? I can't seem to find it on here.

reply to post by Stealthbomber


Yeah I do. I should have some time later to dig it up and post it here.

They need to fix the SR-71 first... Something around 15 or so pilots have died flying it because many things can go wrong.

Gs

reply to post by GermanShep


No Germanshep, of the 50 Blackbirds built (A-12, YF-12, M-21, SR-71), a total of 20 crashed with only four crewmember fatalities. There was no inherent design problem, just a lot of small issues resulting from the development of cutting edge technology that had to survive an extremely hostile environment while performing a challenging mission.