When the American SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft made its last flight in 1998, the US Air Force lost one of its most high-tech aircraft ever built. In addition, the SR-71 was simply one of the most beautiful aircraft in the world. However, the SR-71 will not be left without an heir. At the end of 2013, it was reported that a new aircraft, designated SR-72, would be replacing the "Blackbird"; it is being developed by a division of the aircraft building corporation Lockheed Martin. It is reported that the main difference between the aircraft will be a completely new engine, which will combine a turbine and ramjet thrust. Thanks to such an engine, the aircraft will be able to fly at a speed of approximately Mach 6, which is immediately 2 times the maximum speed of its predecessor.
One of the symbols of the Cold War, the Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird may receive a receiver in the next decade. It is reported that the new SR-72, capable of flying at twice the speed, will be able to fly without a pilot. After the US Air Force abandoned the "Blackbird", they showed a serious shortage of such machines. The SR-72, which is being developed by Lockheed Skunk Works design engineers, is set to return the Air Force to a supersonic reconnaissance flight. If work on the project ends as planned, the plane will be able to fly at 6 times the speed of sound.
The SR-71 spy plane made its first flight back in 1964, the last time the car took off in 1998. All this time "Blackbird" remained the main reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force. The machine could be in the air for a long time at an altitude of about 24 kilometers, flying at supersonic speed. When the SR-71 was retired, for a while the role of high-altitude observers shifted to the orbital constellation.
However, the use of reconnaissance satellites is not the most ideal of all possible solutions. Modern reconnaissance satellites are able to receive very detailed photographs of various ground objects in high quality, but they take a significant amount of time to re-target the device, transferring it to a different orbit. For example, the movement of mobile missile systems is more efficient and reliable to track using a hypersonic aircraft. Unlike satellites, the new SR-72 hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft, according to the developers, will be able to appear above the target so quickly that a potential enemy simply cannot react to his appearance and hide from his equipment.
It is worth noting that back in 1990, the Blackbird set a flight speed record. He flew from Los Angeles to Washington in just over an hour, flying at Mach 3.3. In order to fly at an even higher speed, the new SR-72 aircraft is planned to be equipped with a scramjet - a hypersonic ramjet engine that uses a special mixture of super-compressed air and fuel. Combustion of this mixture will allow the aircraft to fly at or near hypersonic speed.
But first, you will have to overcome a number of technical difficulties associated with the project. Since the scramjet uses super-compressed air, it is not suitable for flying at low speeds. In order to solve this problem, Lockheed designers are going to use 2 engines at once, equipped with a common air intake. The first of these is a completely ordinary jet engine that will be used from the moment the aircraft takes off until the moment it climbs to Mach 3. Starting from this flight speed, the aircraft will switch to the scramjet flight.
Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird
However, the biggest difference from its predecessor will not be this, but the fact that the SR-72 reconnaissance aircraft can be used without a pilot. Currently, 2 options for the aircraft are being considered - unmanned and manned. At the same time, the aircraft will be able to carry a complex of offensive weapons. It is reported that the weapon, which can be used from the SR-72 aircraft, may be shown by Lockheed Martin in 2018. We are mainly talking about new lightweight rockets, since when they are launched at a flight speed of Mach 6, they will not need an accelerating, and, therefore, weighting filling.
One of the tasks of the new SR-72 hypersonic aircraft will be not only to provide the United States with the necessary intelligence information, but also to increase the military strength of the state. According to the head of the Hypersonics program, Brad Leland, hypersonic aircraft armed with hypersonic missiles will be able to penetrate the closed airspace of a potential enemy and launch missile strikes anywhere on the continent, reaching their destination in less than 1 hour. According to the specialist, it is speed that should become the next key indicator in the entire world of new generation aviation. Speed will remain a priority for the next several decades. Leland believes that these technologies will become the same turning point requiring a change in the "rules of the game", which was the mass introduction of technologies like "stealth" in due time.
According to Brad Leland, the SR-72 at a flight speed of Mach 6 will be able to leave potential US adversaries not only a minimum of time to respond, but also surprise them with high performance indicators when using hypersonic missiles. Since their launch does not require a carrier rocket, the speed of such missiles will be 6 times the speed of sound, and the design of the missiles will be much lighter. And not only in terms of weight, but also in terms of the very structure of the rocket.
The heart of the new aircraft should be what Lockheed calls it, a combined cycle turbine. It will combine the technology of the HTV-2 "hypersonic aircraft" engine, which could reach a flight speed of Mach 20 (about 24,500 km / h) during testing. At the same time, it is reported that the SR-72 will receive 2 engines, each of which, in fact, will be double. Each engine will use a rather complex integrated design, consisting of a nozzle, air intakes connected to two different power sources, which will achieve a significant reduction in air drag. Lockheed and Aerojet Rocketdyne spent 7 years working together to develop the design of future engines and their appearance. As part of the work on this project, the engineers of the two companies racked their brains many times over finding a suitable solution.
In an interview with the famous weekly Aviation Week, Brad Leland explained that the retirement of the Blackbird left a rather impressive gap in the development of satellite technology (we are not talking about television technology, but about hardware), as well as subsonic unmanned and manned systems. The creation of the new SR-72 hypersonic aircraft is intended to close this gap. The journal article reports that one of the conditions for the creation of the SR-72 is to take into account the requirements of the US Department of Defense in the framework of weapons development and research programs. These requirements largely dictate to Lockheed engineers various aspects of the project and its timing.
According to Leland, the construction of the SR-72 will not require the creation of fundamentally new technologies, so the flight of the demonstrator aircraft could occur as early as 2018. At the same time, the arrival of the multipurpose aircraft into service is scheduled for 2030.
