Posted on 12/05/2013 5:28:31 AM PST by C19fan
Until Lockheed Martin finally builds the SR-72 Mach-6 spy plane it announced in November, the iconic SR-71 Blackbird, capable of flying three times the speed of sound, remains the fastest warplane ever flown operationally.
So fast that no missiles fired at it had a chance of hitting.
When the U-2 spy plane was built in the 1950s, its designer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson already knew that it would be vulnerable to enemy defenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
It is quite clear the SR-71 flew much faster than the publicly acknowledged Mach 3.
There are clear accounts of it exceeding 2400 mph.
The SR-72 will be unmanned, so what fun is that?
I know a retired flight traffic controller who clocked it at 3500kts. Go figure.
Awesome aircraft. Knew a pilot that flew them but he sure wouldn’t say much to avoid having to eliminate me. My youngest daughter and I were at the beach near Patrick AFB in Cocoa Beach one day in the late 90’s and an SR had made a stop there for some technical issue. We were on the beach when it left and once it got over the ocean, it went full afterburner and WOW did that thing move. Awesome. Kind of brought a tear to my eye. What a country this used to be.
Mrs. JimRed’s cousin was a career USAF pilot who was a Blackbird driver. They are serious about security- no war stories at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas cocktail gathering.
Wow!! How much more roar does the SR-71 make with full afterburner than compared to say one of the standard AF or Navy jets?
What is kts? Do you mean kps?
This is 1960’s tech and it they brought it back into service today, it would still be the baddest boy on the block and it would still give the enemy fits.
knots...
knots
1,000 kts = 1,151 mph
You don’t have to be faster than a missile to out run it. At 90k+ feet they had enough head start that even a missile significantly faster might not catch up.
Aircraft airspeed is measure in knots. One knot is one nautical mile per hour. A speed of 3500 knots is 3500 nautical miles per hour. I was taught a nautical mile is 6076.11548 feet but there are other values for a nautical mile.
I figure like this:
3500 knots X 0.60 = 2100 mph
should be close.
To say the SR-71 “outran” missiles is incorrect. It would be more accurate to say that it was too high and too fast for the SAM systems of the day.
Think of shooting at geese with arrows. I can shoot at a goose 80 yards away horizontally, or at a goose 100’ up, but I cannot shoot at a goose that is 100’ above a spot 80 yards away. In fact, there is a very small vertical cone that I can shoot at geese flying at 100’. If I’m also not able to see outside of that cone, then I might not even be able to get an arrow to 100’ before the goose it out of range. That is how a Mach 3+ aircraft was immune to Mach 5 missiles.
With modern SAM systems, the SR-71 would not be safe relying on kinematics alone. Not because the missiles are faster, but because the guidance is better and allows predicted intercepts, e.g. AEGIS.
Not close at all.
3,500 knot = 4,027.7 mile/hour (mph)
I get a different number.
3500 * (6076/5280) = 4027 mph
“Wow!! How much more roar does the SR-71 make with full afterburner than compared to say one of the standard AF or Navy jets?”
Very loud... However, you would be suprised. Not as much as you might think. I was very fortunate to witness a test runup of an SR-71 engine. Unlike an F-16 they require a start cart. Which is an external APU (Auxiliary Power Unit). The start cart for the SR-71 is basically a Buick V8 401.
They start the start cart and it rumbles to life. Then when everything is ready they floor the start cart. It is fairly loud itself. Just running like crazy its all you can hear. But after about 2 minutes you start to hear something else. Its like a deep whine. It gets louder and louder. Then after a bit you can no longer hear the start cart the whine is so loud. Then they inject TEB into the kerosene running through the engine. There is a very loud POP and then the whine dissapears and you hear a really deep bass roar. Then the engine kind of settles down in to an operating mode and its not as loud as during the start. AWESOME to watch though. I would have LOVED to have been a Sled driver. My favorite airplane. Here is a little known fact. The temperatures inside of the SR71’s engines are so hot they would melt any metal engine components. The inside of the combustion chambers where the explosion takes place are lined in ceramic. That is the only thing they could use to contain the heat in the engine.
Just a sound observation:
B2 - crazy quiet. You almost cant hear it. It is almost like a UFO.
P51 and F4U - Awesome sounding engines
F16 and F15 - Louder still
F4 Phantom - getting pretty loud
SR71 - loud
B52 yep now your loud!
F111 - Ouch
B1-B - HOLY MOTHER what happened to my ears! Feels like a freaking earth quake.
knots > miles > kilometers
Methinks you calculated for kilometers.
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