The X-37b unmanned space plane seems to have something to do with the future of orbital reconnaissance. It’s exact payload is secret, but we know that it’s carrying something for the Air Force. It has very substantial orbital maneuvering capacity, and on its first mission it changed orbits several times. After each change, it took amateur satellite watchers a few weeks to find the new orbit. Each orbit seemed to be the right kind for a spy satellite, flying over the same ground track every 2, 3, or 4 days. Since it can land and be re-used, it could carry different sensors as needed.
In total, it could provide a lot of flexibility and unpredictability that’s lacking in the current spy satellite fleet.
Global Hawk is not an alternative to the SR-71, because it’s slow and non-stealthy. It’s an alternative to more conventional manned surveillance aircraft.
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The SR-71 and A-12 program got its big setback very early on when congress ordered the tooling destroyed.
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As far as blaming politicians goes, the story I see repeated is that everybody’s favorite Cold War villain, then-Defense-Secretary Robert McNamara, ordered the tooling destroyed. His specific concern had nothing to do with the perceived effectiveness or vulnerabilities of the Blackbird (the story goes); it was his fear that the program would outcompete the FB-111 for funding. Since the FB-111 would deliver nuclear ordnance (and was expected to be better able to penetrate then-modern air defenses than heavy bombers), it seemed more important to McNamara.
Sure, but each time it lands, it requires an Atlas-V rocket to get it back into orbit. That’s a conventional (expendable) rocket, and one of the largest currently made. At >$200 million per launch, I doubt they intend this to be a viable operational scenario.
I will point out that there is a substantial difference in the deniability of a satellite and a manned aircraft: A satellite is going to pass, inevitably, over a target area. You can claim it was just passing through. But an airplane? You have to task, plan, and navigate a mission. There’s no “just passing through”, especially for an overflight or a mission profile hugging a border. Its intent is explicit and undeniable in its behavior.
Maybe not viable for swapping in sensor packages every few months for the national-security-threat-du-jure. But it’s only designed to operate for ~9 months, so whenever it comes down it could get a sensor upgrade (improved version of primary sensors, prototype secondary sensors, etc).
If the concept does become some sort of operational program, I could imagine a small fleet of reusable spacecraft that are designed to operate for a few years each. One or two launches a year for this hypothetical program isn’t crazy compared to other military/NRO programs. Remember that the US government already buys about ten heavy lift launchers per year from ULA, some of which use the even more expensive Delta IV medium or heavy for reconaissance satellites
Of course this is all wild and barely informed speculation on my part. The simpler explanation of the X-37 is that it’s just a test bed for sensors and systems that will eventually be used in more conventional satellites.
It seems like the RQ-170 (the stealth drone Iran brought down a while back) might be more comparable.
With the SR-71, the need for such an extreme-performing surveillance aircraft was because (as the U-2 incidents in Russian and Cuba showed) a pilot ending up in unfriendly hands is likely to provide confirmation of exactly what you were doing as well a major diplomatic bargaining chip for whoever you were spying on. With drones, though, losing one every now and again is a lot less of an issue. If lower-performing stealth drones can evade air defenses most of the time, that’s generally good enough. Even with some losses, you’re still talking about a vastly cheaper program than something like the Blackbird.
I agree completely with everything you’ve said here.
But I don’t see how what you’re saying here has any relevance to what I said that you quoted me on. Nor does it seem to me to have any relevance to my quote of Duckster telling us what his SR-71 enthusiast website said.
Care to connect the dots for me? I’m kinda obtuse sometimes.
I wish I could. Although I think I made valid points in my comment, I agree it makes no sense as a response to your post. And I cannot at all recall why I thought it should be.
shrug. Let’s just pretend my post wasn’t a reply to you. Because, in effect, there’d be no rational reason for it to be, and I don’t wish to pursue irrational reasons. (I’d rather be wrong than try to justify myself with nonsense.)
Could you provide more educated guesses about the multi-spectral sensors?
I presume synthetic aperture is often used. Any other likely refining techniques?
By “spoof”, you mean camouflage real stuff and show decoys? Anything else? Do I understand correctly that jamming still ought to be easy for land bases and perhaps some ships?
Do countries often mess with each other’s satellites? Only when they’re thought to be spying on the jammer? Outright destroying another country’s satellite would be a declaration of war but jamming seems to be in a grey area. I guess that means it’s commonly done.
Given flat-ish terrain, how far could the best/highest flying SAR aircraft provide useable data on land installations or fleets?
SR-71 being too good for its own preservation:
Wouldn’t a proper counterintelligence effort presume that whatever can be observed from satellites has been observed? Would US denials of knowledge have any effect?
I mean, how is the conversation about intel and denying it supposed to go down?
Ivan: “The US satellite flew over our base when the T-800 tank prototype was being tested!”
Boris: “But, there were clouds above when the satellite flew over it. Maybe they didn’t see it because of the clouds.”
What’s Ivan likely to say here?
What if the US comes in and says:
US: “It’s true. We deny any knowledge of whatever it is we don’t know about because of the clouds at the time the satellite flew over what we don’t know about.”
Will Ivan and Boris be influenced by that?
That, and the bit Congress and officers nixing the SR-71 because it was a mature program (more mature than the CH-47, C-130 and B-52?) suggest it’s another one of those ill-thought-out conspiracy theories that something was suppressed because it was too good. Just like Big Pharma and doctors suppress homeopathy and Big Oil, Big Car and engineers suppress perpetual motion machines because they’d lose too much money, power and their jobs if this Too Good Thing weren’t suppressed.
I think you may have made a reasonable misinterpretation of the context of LSL’s reply. LSL was, I believe, replying as to whether or not knowledge about an area can be more easily denied with a satellite overflight of an area than a spy plane overflight of an area. It cannot.
You made the point that interest in an area can be more easily denied with a satellite than a spy plane. That is quite true and could be quite important to intel and geopolitics. However, it is orthogonal to the point the newsletter was making.
Praise be! Somebody give that man a free membership!
