UK Defence Forum

Interesting vid with technical details:

My spidey-sense was going ape-shit!!!

Well done to the presenter for owning up. Learnt a few new things, too.

Haven't seen an SR71 since the air show in the late 80's at RAF Mildenhall

Any news on the next one; supposedly doing Mach 7?

Good Video never seen one for real and learned a lot from the presenter. Have been up close to the F117 and U2 during the Gulf War.

Turn radius! (only now had the time to watch the vid)
- cant do recce without violating just about everyone's airspace

arfah wrote: Haven't seen an SR71 since the air show in the late 80's at RAF Mildenhall

Jealous! I've only seen one the late 90's across the tarmac in a restricted ANG area.

Quite impressive design from the slide-rule generation. Interesting about the G loading.

ArmChairCivvy wrote:Turn radius! (only now had the time to watch the vid)
- cant do recce without violating just about everyone's airspace

Agreed. Imagine Mach 6-7 "turning". We need a bigger planet

GastonGlocker wrote:Interesting about the G loading

It was about what they could carry (over and above the structure of the airplane and the quite evenly distributed fuel)... and it wasnt much (missed the exact metrics).

GastonGlocker wrote:We need a bigger planet

Sea-basing will have expanded into moon basing by then?

They've got one at Duxford, it's one of many plane's I could just spend the whole day standing and looking at.

Finally got to see one up close at the Pima Air & Space museum in AZ. Very interesting to say the least. If you can get up close, it puts things into perspective rather nicely.

More interesting info from a driver:


If you are ever in AZ - check this place out and prepare for several hours/couple days to view everything in detail:
http://www.pimaair.org/

There was something between U-2 and SR-71, not widely known:

For anyone interested in the sr71 it’s worth a listen to Brian Shul in one of his videos he quite an interesting character and story in his own right he released the book sled driver but it’s quite expensive.

SW1 wrote:For anyone interested in the sr71 it’s worth a listen to Brian

Definitely worth a listen, amazing story he tells.

When an SR-71 was presented to Duxford, a guest speaker was a pilot who flew that particular one. He recalled an incident while flying over Russia. They could see jets coming up to try to intercept them, but of course they were safe. So safe that he decided to dump fuel, light the burners, and leave a very obvious and impressive trail across the sky.

Saw an A-12 parked on the bow of USS Intrepid, Sea Air and Space Museum in the Hudson River NYC. It was back in the early noughties but I believe it's still there.