Raise Shields! Stealth Satellites Decloaking!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

  1. So it’s okay to have a combat situation when information is time critical, and just wait til one can get enough drones through to get the data that the troops on the ground need to make decisions? I still disagree. I didn’t say that the SR-71 is needed for every mission. I simply meant to point out that military situations often find themselves in corner cases where seemingly rare combinations of potential events become critically important.

  2. Capabilities noted. However, data stored isn’t very useful unless the platform has general instructions after X hours of jamming to return to base for ‘debriefing.’ I’d hope that’s true, however, I have great faith in the ability of any human to forget ‘obvious’ precautions.

  3. Agreed there may well be platforms already that meet my concerns being kept quiet. Again, AIUI, those Marine, and Army, unit portable, short range UAV’s are usually based on a civilian hobby RC chassis. Certainly not without great tactical use in the battlefield, but damned awkward to operate from a sub. And, yes, designing and manufacturing drones to use cruise missle tubes is no technical challenge. But a platform now that works is still better than one that can be produced next fiscal year.

  4. I don’t really disagree with this. Honest. But, it doesn’t change that no remote or autonomous platform currently available is as flexible and responsive as an actual live human in the same situation.

And all this is secondary to the point I’d meant to make: I’m not supporting the SR-71 over UAV’s, really. I think it has advantages compared to UAV’s, but the thing that really irks me is keeping the U-2 in service while ditching the SR-71. I got focused on details in my previous post, and again, now. I like details. They’re fun. But the real comparison I started my previous post with had been the SR-71 compared to the U-2.

22

Geez… you know something? I invented this about ten years ago for a roleplaying game. It’s a pretty simple concept, when you get down to it, once you realize how stealth works.

Neat that someone implemented it.

23

Provided, of course, we have drones in the area. The SR-71 can reach places on the globe where we don’t have drones to deploy, in less time than it would take to get a drone in the area. A scramjet TAV could be there even faster.

24

last for convenience in addition to agreeing

A sub based launch platform for UAVs would have to be designed from scratch, and would be less efficient than sending a U2 or Global Hawk (which is slower than the U2 iirc), now this isnt a bad idea if you are talking about UCAVs like the Predator which are designed primarily for C.A.S. for ground troops.

The SR71 is still the most efficient route for recon.
A Scramjet version of the Global Hawk would be better although controlling it would be a bastard.

A new SR71 designed using Stealth Tech and Active Camoflauge would be effectively invisible to the ground (thus you’d only have a problem with pilot error) and would dominate quick recon missions, and have no problem escaping from enemy Aircraft.

Now if only I could go work for SkunkWorks… sighs

25

I think you’re way to high and fast for that to be a problem.

26

Uh, just about the only place in the world where it would take a “long” time to get UAV or satellite coverage is the South Pole. You highly underestimate the worldwide presence of the United States.

Look, the SR-71 was a great plane for its time, when other intel collection assets were not in the state they are today. It was great at quickly getting into a high threat environment, taking a few pictures, collecting a couple signals, and quickly heading back to the US.

But times have changed. Even with its high speed, the SR-71 was becoming increasingly vulnerable to various threats. References to its invulernability are wrong and based on a 20 year old understanding of what a high-threat envirnoment constitutes. If it is no longer invulnerable in the highest threat environments, its a goddamn expensive and inefficient piece of equipment to keep around for moderate threat environments where other assets can operate.

The initial attraction of the SR-71 also had to do with the resolution of photos it could collect. Satellites and UAVs now have excellent capabilities in that area, and they can report back in realtime – a key upgrade where the SR-71 had been coming up short. If the SR-71 were to be sent back into service, to compete with other platforms, we’d likely have to spend gobs of black money to take sensors from the U-2s (which have been upgraded over the years) and Global Hawk and the like and stick 'em in the 71.

Finally, the emphasis on sneak and peak intelligence collection is increasingly of a bygone era. But this was the key attraction of the SR-71. What the military wants more than ever these days are assets that have long loiter capabilities, so that they can have more than a snapshot of what was going on at some place at some time – they want a continuing stream of data on what is going on NOW. The SR-71 was never intended to loiter. Other platforms, especially the Global Hawk, were designed just for these new types of missions.

Finally, the SR-71 is now an incredibly ineffecient asset. The capabilities that it uniquely possessed decades ago are now available elsewhere, except for the speed of the aircraft. But it has unique requirements – fuel, maintenence, etc – that mean that it has a poor tail to tooth ratio. Bringing it back into service now means diverting a lot of manpower to a program that would have comparitively limited returns. Bosda is right, it is a cool plane, but the military should do better than just buy and operate cool stuff.

27

Actually, I’m pretty well informed about the world wide presence of the US. We have military forces in nearly every country on the planet. Many of them, however, are merely embassy guards. We still fly the U 2, so it’s pretty obvious that UAVs and sats can’t do everything.

28

Spoil sport.