www.area51zone.com/aircraft/sr71.shtml
Main Propulsion: 2 Pratt and Whitney J-58 axial-flow turbojets with af terburners Take-off Thrust: 32,500 lbs. total) Maximum Speed: Mach 35 (2,500 mph) Maximum Altitude: 100,000+ ft. Anyway, it was designed by C larence "Kelly" Johnson, at that time vice president of the Skunk Works. The SR-71/RS-71 was built to be a s trategic reconnaissance aircraft. The SR-71/RS-71 is the "true" successor to the U-2 in every way. The SR-7 1 took a huge leap over the U-2 instead of just a normal small step. As Kelly Johnson says, "It makes no sense to just take this one or two st eps ahead, because we'd be buying only couple of years before the Russia ns would be able to nail us again. No, I want us to come up with an airp lane that can rule the skies for a decade or more." Basically, he wanted a plane that wouldn't be obsolete in a couple of sec onds (sort of like computers nowdays:). Unlike experimenta l rocket engines, the SR-71 can cruise at Mach 3, and fly from New York to Las Angles in less than an hour, on one tank of gas. It can also surv ey more than 100,000 square miles of the Earth's surface in one hour.
At least two of those reasons don't hold up: 1 Maintaining: The Blackbird was in good shape. There were more than en ough of many components (including engines) in storage to last as far out as you wanted to project. In fact, there are still hundreds of millions of dollars of parts, already paid for, in stock. The cost of running the SR-71 fleet in the 1980s was $260 million annually. ABC News has stated that the cost of a single reconnaissance satellite is about $1 billion. It costs $50,000 an hour to fly the SR on a routine basis.
SAC, though, didn't really see the pla ne as contributing to SAC's mission (dropping bombs) or image, and it had always been somewhat of an awkward fit. Further, unlike its various C-135 modes and the U-2, the SR-71 couldn't loiter, nor did anyone ever promise that it could (although with some of its planned upgrades it could perform more functions than it was then doing). The Navy had for years operated what was essentially a Mach 2, shorter legged SR-71, the RA-5C. When it retired, the Navy suffered a severe loss of reconnaissance capability. Although the F-14 provides reconnaissance capability with its TARPS system, that system has been held back while there are repeated attempts to give the Navy's Designated Wonderplane, the F/A-18, to take over the reconnaissance mission. As a result, the Navy has been an enthusiastic proponent of the SR-71 for reconnaissance as well as defense exercises. It is quite familiar with what a rapidly responding asset like the SR-71 could do, even when you had to go very high up to get the aircraft. USAF didn't choose to use most of the kind of intelligence the SR-71 could gather. However, funding for the SR-71 came out of USAF's budget, where it competed with other programs USAF wanted more. There had been proposals to treat the SR -71as a national asset and fund it accordingly, but these moves were blocked at various levels. There was also limited talk of the USN funding the program, but this also went nowhere. If you're the Navy are you going to fund an aircraft that isn't yours? If you're USAF, you may not want the plane, but there's no way you're going to let anyone paint "Navy" on the side of the fastest airplane in the world. They considered the SR-71 to be a competitive, rather than complementary system. By their very nature, satellite successes (and failures) tended to be very hush-hush and here was the SR-71 getting the "glory". Further there was the oft stated opinion by many that satellites could do anything needed better than anything else. While they are marvelous devices, this has never been true. The SR-71 flying around tended to gainsay the omnipotent image of satellites. Already planned sensor and maintainability upgrades were cancelled, and then because the SR couldn't perform the function an upgrade was supposed to do, this was given as a reason why the SR wasn't capable enough. Personnel rotation policies also were used against the SR. Because of its unique nature, the SR required service personnel that had a higher level of experience than other aircraft. USAF recognized this for many years and didn't rotate support personnel as often. In the 1980s, this policy changed and maintenance personnel went on the normal USAF rotation, lowering the experience level and increasing the mmh/fh ratio, which was then trumpeted as "proof" that the SR was becoming less maintainable. There were also options explored to further reduce the annual cost of the SR fleet, down to around $150 million annually. These would have involved greater use of contractor personnel, feasible on such a specialized, limited quantity aircraft, but were turned down as was the plan to permanently base (instead of operating as a Detachment) two SR-71s in England. General Jerry O' Malley was aboar d, on his way to an official speaking engagement. He understood the nature of the SR-71 and its unique requirements and benefits. He was likely to become the Air Force Chief of Staff in 1986, and possibly even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs after that. When he was killed, General Welch went on to become chairman, and he was known as being hostile to the SR-71. This was when the SR-71's fate was sealed, although it took three more years to die. Usually, when a major aircraft goes out of service, there are very high ranking officials present and numerous tributes are offered to the aircraft. At the retirement of the SR-71, many observers noted the absence of the usual highest rank of military and government officials at the ceremony. It's well known that the SR-71 delivered to the Smithsonian established new speed records, as the Smithsonian requested. What isn't well known is that the Air Force initially refused the request for a record flight, and in fact kept trying to block it up until the last minute. Even then, the crew was instructed to fly a conservative by-the-book profile, which was unnecessary considering that this was to be the aircraft's last flight ever. After the arrival of 17972 at Dulles, USAF made no effort to help the Smithsonian in its preservation and it was left to deteriorate in the DC weather. The bird is now in a climate-controlled hangar, but that hangar was donated by the hangar manufacturer. One would expect that USAF would have pushed the PR value of this flight for all it was worth, but if you review the publicity of the time, you'll find it didn't come from there.
Why it was re-activated 1 Blackbird supporters said this all was a big mistake, but really no o ne listened to them 2 Less than a year after the record flight it became apparent that it w as a big mistake. Schwarzkopf was reported to have asked for the SR-71 very early on. It is known that very soon after Saddam moved into Kuwait, USAF approached Lockheed and asked how long it would take to restore SR-71 operations. Lockheed's response was that depending on the priority and if USAF could supply the sensor packages (USAF had them and even Lockheed didn't know where they were), the first one could be operational in 14 days and the next one around thirty days after that (remember, they hadn't been out of service that long at this point). There was no response for a number of weeks and then Lockheed was directed to forget the whole thing. Basically, it could have done a lot better at tracking the ever-moving Scuds than sattelites would have. As it is, the best locating of Scuds was not done by airborne intel, but by special ops forces placed in Iraq. So, there it is, a basic view of why the SR-71 retired and then was re-ac tivated.
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