Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "I pulled the throttles to idle just south of Sicily, but we still overran the refueling tanker awaiting us over Gibraltar."

During the first Gulf War, I recall Gen, Horner breifing the press with Sat. Photos. He explained that the satillites passed over at such and such intervals, and they could alter the orbit to get a different path if need and how cloud cover effected things. A reporter asked:

"General, would you like to have the SR-71 in service right now?"

Horner smiled as he paused for effect.

"That sounds like a politcal question, not a military question."

Kinda summed up the state of affairs for me on why they were mothballed.

In truth, though, it was horrendously expensive to fly and maintain. There was nothing standard or off the shelf in it, including the hydraulic fluid and wiring.

It probably cost many millions for every flight, if you include maintenance costs.

Tweaking satellite orbits is something you don't do a whim, either. There's only so much propellant aboard, and making one significant orbital change could well reduce the satellite's expected on-orbit life by years. Gambling that against the chances of clouds is way above my pay grade, brother!

If memory serves me right, the SRs were brought out of semi retirement for the Gulf War. Today with all the unmanned UAVs and improved imagery, Photo-recon is no longer the best option. Oh well, there went another way to earn Air Medals! =:0 jorge

Yes, they were for a few years after DS. There is nothing during peacetime that we can't replicate with non air breathers and UAV's. My concern has always been if the shyt hits the fan with Russia or China, we won't have any non air breathers providing imagery or for use with GPS guided munitions either, then what?

That's not to say we should have kept the poor old Blackbird limping along and costing 6+ figures a mission but I think we should have gone through with a successor.

As to General Horner's comments, well, let's just say those particular issues were changing right about the time he made them.

I have to assume that you mean a replica of the "B" flyer:


and not a replica of the original Flyer:



Regards,
Scott

At the time of the quote, U2's were operating, but not the Blackbird. The Blackbird did appear in skies after that particular quote. you could tell by the look on Horner's face that he wanted them operational.

As I recall, the military had to ask NASA to re-qualify SR-71 pilots since they had (at the begining of the first Gulf War) the only operational SR's and flight crews (they flew 3 SR's for research purposes).

When I was in training in 02 - I hung out with an AF e-6. At that time we were talking about weird military experiences - he claimed to have seen an Aurora flight path on radar. It freaked him out - he asked a question and was told not to. Guy next to him whispered it's name. I totally forgot about it until this thread mentioned it.

True or not I do not know - probably not as I can't see a linguist being in a position to be around that project.

Yes, the "B" Flyer, thank you, Scott. Great photo, too!

Living here in Utah, we occasionally see a very weird contrail in the sky, very very high and very very fast. One such contrail had the appearance of widely-spaced beads on a string. Clearly a plane and not a satellite track. Tonopah and the infamous Area 51 are only a few hundred miles away.

I ain't even gonna speculate.

Gives me hope.