Posted on 10/18/2001 7:12:38 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
A movement to reactivate the SR-71 Blackbird is gaining traction in Congress, as service officials look for ways to enhance U.S. intelligence collection in the ongoing war against terrorism.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) recently sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking him to consider employing the Blackbird, an Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset first flown in 1964. The aircraft was retired in the late 1990s.
Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) urged the same. In a separate Oct. 3 letter to Rumsfeld, Smith says a Pentagon review of the resources needed to fight global terrorism has uncovered a shortage of available intelligence and surveillance platforms, a problem widely reported in the press. He also notes that much of the emergency spending approved for combating terrorism is earmarked for efforts to improve intelligence capabilities as the nation's "first line of defense."
"I urge you, in light of this publicized dearth of intelligence collectors, to consider reactivation of the SR-71 Blackbird," the letter states.
With a top speed of Mach 3, the Blackbird is the world's fastest aircraft. It was designed a few years after a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960. Up until that time, U.S. officials believed Soviet missiles could not hit the U-2. The SR-71's speed and ability to photograph wide swaths of land from 85,000 feet helped protect it from similar threats. The Air Force bought 32 SR-71s.
The platform was used effectively in a number of Cold War missions, as well as operations in Libya, Grenada and in Iran.
Citing high operating costs for the Blackbird, Pentagon officials first retired the aircraft in 1990, as they realigned forces for the post-Cold War world. It was reactivated in 1995 and retired a second time two years later.
In 1997, President Clinton used now defunct line-item veto authority to eliminate funding for the SR-71 program, a move criticized by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and other lawmakers. That same year, Byrd and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) called on Defense Secretary William Cohen to maintain the SR-71 aircraft for emergency situations.
Today, only 20 Blackbirds are available for potential military use. Seventeen are kept in museums across the country, and the other three are used by NASA for scientific missions.
Sister publication Inside the Air Force reported earlier this month that the Defense Department could reactivate the Blackbird for under $50 million, according to an Air Force cost estimate. The move would require about $44 million in operations and maintenance funding and a few million for research and development to activate two SR-71s for one year, flying as many as 13 sorties a month. The aircraft could be outfitted with an advanced synthetic aperture radar system and "false color" electro-optical and infrared sensors, the service document states.
Critics say it would be difficult to find trained Blackbird pilots and mechanics, as well as spare parts. In addition, some of them question the effectiveness of the aircraft in bad weather.
Smith, though, maintains that the SR-71 is capable of taking high-resolution photographs "at any time of day in any type of weather."
The program, he writes, was shelved because of "parochial conflicts within the services," as the Defense Department began to rely more heavily on space-based assets for intelligence.
A problem with satellite surveillance is it does not offer the kind of "broad area reconnaissance necessary in wartime," according to the senator.
Other airborne ISR assets, including the Global Hawk and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as the U-2, are "vulnerable to being shot down, plagued by stove-piped architecture, deficient in quantity, and lack multi-intelligence capabilities," Smith writes.
Moreover, only the SR-71 can handle the threat posed by surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) like the SA-10 and SA-12, he adds.
"Few in the intelligence community have much confidence" in the electronic countermeasures and defensive systems employed by the U-2, the senator writes. "If the 'new' U-2 is as invulnerable as the higher, faster-flying SR-71, the U-2 would not be required to fly out of range of SAM missile batteries over Iraq, nor would it need fighter escorts."
To Smith, the SR-71 is "the only cost-effective stopgap to fill the void in battlefield intelligence, which will not be met by current UAVs." The yearly cost of activating two Blackbirds, as projected in the Air Force cost estimate, makes use of the aircraft "an intelligence bargain."
-- Keith J. Costa and Amy Butler
Senator Byrd has been out in la-la land lately.
| This article was written by The Wall Street Journal's staff reporter Roy J. Harris, Jr. and was printed in the December 4, 1992 edition of the newspaper: |
| Magazine Suggests Aircraft Has Flown Mach 8 for Years New evidence suggests that the U.S. is operating secret spy planes, possibly cruising as fast as eight times the speed of sound, and that such aircraft may have been flying for over three years. An article prepared for Jane's Defence Weekly, a British military-affairs journal, suggests strongly that a $1 billion plane capable of far greater speed than the current world record-holding SR-71 spy plane is indeed in service globally. The speculation is based in part on a trained aircraft observer's recently reported 1989 sighting of a mysterious wedge-shaped aircraft, flying over the North Sea in a formation with two U.S.-built F-111 bombers and a KC-135 tanker. The description of the plane given by British oil-drilling engineer and trained aircraft spotter Chris Gibson is sketchy--little more, in fact, than an unfamiliar aircraft shape he says he watched from his remote North Sea oil rig for about 90 seconds one hazy August day three years ago. But in an intriguing analysis for Jane's, made available to The Wall Street Journal in advance of next week's scheduled publication, the stealth technology expert who wrote the article uses the sighting as the missing link in a chain of events he believes may explain a number of U.S. military mysteries. Citing other experts in so-called hypersonic aviation, author Bill Sweetman paints a picture of the hush-hush reconnaissance plane that he believes replaced Lockheed Corp.'s SR-71 Blackbird when the U.S. took it out of service in early 1990. That jet, which holds the official speed record of 2,193 mph, about Mach 3.3, would be a slow-poke compared to the Mach 8 aircraft (5,280 mph) that Mr. Sweetman suggests flew over Mr. Gibson that day in the North Sea. The Pieces Fall Into Place His article proposes that the new plane -- rumored for years to be called Aurora because that name mysteriously popped up as an unexplained defense budget line item in 1984 next to the SR-71 -- is also built by Lockheed, with engines by Rockwell International Corp.'s Rocketdyne division. The Jane's report suggests: The planes cost about $1 billion each; they first flew in about 1985; and they have been the source of a series of strange earthquake-like rumbles still occurring in Southern California and other areas of the world. With "this last piece" of information, Mr. Sweetman says in an interview, "there are so many things that fall into place." The most important, he says, may be the mystery of why the U.S. retired its last SR-71 spy plane in 1990 with the explanation that it would rely instead on satellites to meet the reconnaissance needs once satisfied by the aircraft, believed capable of operations well above 100,000 feet. The Jane's article, echoing others' suggestions that the statement about satellites was intended as a cover for development of a new spy plane, notes that aircraft have a certain reconnaissance usefulness that orbiting cameras can't match. "The satellite system is believed to be capable of producing imagery within 24 hours of a request: at Mach 8, however, the flight time to any point on Earth is under three hours," the article says. "Unlike a satellite, the aircraft can be scheduled to pass over a target at any desired time of the day," and flies closer to the target. The 'Skunk Works' Legacy Lockheed won't comment on any secret programs it has going, and refers questions about reconnaissance to the Air Force. But Lockheed Advanced Development Co., the unit popularly known as the "Skunk Works," long has been considered the shop likely to be producing any future spy planes because it developed the last two generations of U-2 and SR-71 planes in the 1950s and 1960s. Both planes flew spy missions in total secrecy for years before being acknowledged -- in the U-2's case only after pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in one in 1960. The California Skunk Works also produced the F-117 Stealth fighter, which also flew secretly before its existence was acknowledged. The explanation of what he'd seen didn't become clear to Mr. Gibson, a veteran of the now-disbanded Royal Observer Corps ot volunteer aircraft spotters, until he recently saw a drawing in an aircraft magazine of a putative hypersonic aircraft design that matched the perfect triangle shape with its 75-degree nose. "I nearly spat my coffee out all over the floor," says the 30-year-old Mr. Gibson of his reaction to finally seeing a design that seemed to explain what he'd seen three years earlier. In a telephone interview from Houston, where he is attending an engineering training program, Mr. Gibson says that while he couldn't make out much detail of the mystery plane's underside, he easily eliminated all other aircraft shapes that might explain planes of the same size, including F-111s with wings in a swept-back position. According to the Jane's report, the "perfect 75-degree swept triangle" described by Mr. Gibson corresponded "almost exactly" to designs of Mach 5, or hypersonic, aircraft designed but not built over the past 25 years. Mr. Sweetman took his collected data about the size and shape of the plane and descriptions of unidentified aircraft noise reported from such places as Edwards and Beale Air Force bases in California, where secret planes are often held, and presented them to Paul Czysz, an aerospace-engineering professor at St. Louis University for an opinion. Prof. Czysz is quoted as speculating that such a plane could be powered by liquid methane, which could take it to a maximum cruise speed of Mach 8. As for selecting Lockheed and Rockwell as the likely makers, the Jane's article notes that "Lockheed's financial figures have indicated a continuing, large flow of income for 'classified' and 'special mission' aircraft." The engine responsible for the strange noises that have been heard in California "is closer to a rocket than to a turbojet," the article says. Lockheed and Rockwell worked together on a losing bid to build the bomber that eventually became Northrop Corp.'s B-2, the Jane's article says. And while it isn't noted there, one industry official earlier this year confirmed that the two companies had been involved in a classified project for years. Figuring that the aircraft would likely be in very low production -- only 50 SR-71s or predecessor aircraft were made, beginning in the early 1960s -- the article says that "each reconnaissance aircraft could easily cost as much as $1 billion." Lockheed reported sales of aeronautical systems totaling $2.2 billion in 1991, an amount that has steadily fallen from the $4.2 billion recorded in 1987. Lockheed Aeronautical Systems spokesman Richard Stadler, a veteran of having to decline comment on past classified programs, says the company won't discuss revenues of any classified programs, but adds that at the Skunk Works, "supporting the F-117 is the largest program we've got now, as far as active programs go." A spokesman for the Rockwell Rocketdyne division says the company doesn't build engines for any reconnaissance aircraft, although he adds that Rocketdyne does have some classified programs that it can't discuss. The speculation about hypersonic aircraft flying over California has special interest for that state's residents, many of whom have felt what they thought were small rumbling earthquakes for nearly a year and a half -- only to be told by representatives of the U.S. Geological Survey that some peculiar, unreported aircraft were probably responsible. Scientists have referred to the phenomena as "airquakes," and even described the speed and size of aircraft that might cause them. The Jane's article suggests that the speed and size correspond to those of the mystery spy plane. As an author, Mr. Sweetman has had considerable experience studying secret aircraft, having written extensively on the Stealth fighter before the Air Force disclosed the existence of that program. He has since written a book on the program. His magazine article engages in heavy speculation, of course, calling its findings "a tentative analysis." When asked about the sightings, a public affairs officer at the Air Force, which for years denied the existence of the plane now known as the F-117, says, "As far as the Air Force is concerned, there is no such program," and satellites are doing all reconnaissance work. Copyright 1992 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. |
A quiet letter would have been ok. Perhaps the Blackbird could temporarilly fill the intelligence gap, one could suggest. But trying to stir up public debate is only needed if you know there will be opposition to the idea. Oh wait. He wants credit when the soldiers praise the idea. LOL.
It's like, no one in congress has yet picked up on this, even though with the examples of the sr 71, the f-117, and the b-2 as a 'guide" to what is public, and what ain't. I mean, how dumb can these congress people be, they approve the black budget items, then there's the real black,black budget items, like the famous quote from judd hersch to the president in independence day "do you really think they pay 600$ for a hammer?"
All three of those craft were in operation for years before it was officially admitted to. Brilliant buzzard has intercontinental range, and goes faster than mach 3, and can get to near-space altitudes. That's my guess and belief at this time, anyway.
It took >$100MIL in 1995 to get just three SR-71 activiated. Then Clinton shut it down 2 years later. We do have to spend wisely for qualified assets.
Others have speculated that the fuel is atomic hydrogen.
"In the early 1970s Gerald Rosen, a professor of physics at Philadelphia's Drexel University and one of the highest paid theoretical physicists in the United States, was contracted by NASA to determine whether it would be possible to store hydrogen as individual atoms rather than as molecules. His calculations predicted it was not only possible, but that so much fuel could be stored in a small space that the Apollo astronauts could have traveled to the moon in a rocket the size of a pickup truck."
Jim Wilson, "Skunk Works Magic", Popular Mechanics, Sep. 1999
FReegards,
But they still sound a bit . . . something. . .
The SR71 is vividly real and understandable. And there's a kind of vigorous energy that it seems to give off just sitting there looking like it's flying while dead still.
I'd say--go for it--It seems like we need all the help we can get.
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