Thread

1. walrus01 · 1790727565 · focus · HN ↗

   I'd be more astonished if there isn't something superior to the SR71 (likely unmanned) that has been flying around at night from facilities like Groom Lake for years. Look at how long the RQ180 was flying around in semi-public and known about before it became seen in daylight by plane spotters in Greece. And a long time before that there were public relations approved photos of the Lockheed Martin Polecat.

   There were a series of extremely public quotations from senior DoD officially recently about how they plan to aggressively retire the Global Hawk program (which is a mostly non stealth aircraft), reading between the lines it's because they have something much better.

   edit: for those who haven&#x27;t seen the RQ180: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?client=firefox-b-d&amp;q=RQ180+greece" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?client=firefox-b-d&amp;q=RQ180+gre...

   edit 2 (apologies for the X link): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MechDesignxyz&#x2F;status&#x2F;2041281689838584193" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MechDesignxyz&#x2F;status&#x2F;2041281689838584193

   1. stickfigure · 1790728108 · focus · HN ↗

      &gt; I&#x27;d be more astonished if there isn&#x27;t something superior to the SR71

      Makes me wonder if this whole operation is just public cover for something like that.

      1. walrus01 · 1790728166 · focus · HN ↗

         Or something as mundane as cleaning up and fixing something that&#x27;s been out in the weather for 20 years so it doesn&#x27;t look shabby at the front gate of their base.

         1. Waterluvian · 1790728281 · focus · HN ↗

            I don’t know anything but I can’t imagine they need specialists if it’s just a cosmetics job for a monument.

            1. walrus01 · 1790728549 · focus · HN ↗

               Or the whole &quot;retired guy in his late 70s gives a quotation to aviation week&quot; is a red herring intended for US adversaries, which seems like a fairly basic ruse, but might have been put together as a coordinated plan. It could have its own value of sending opposing nation state intelligence agencies and air defense people down a man-hour wasting dead end of investigating something that&#x27;ll never happen.

               1. HelloNurse · 1790761616 · focus · HN ↗

                  There might be a side dish of catching foreign spies by waving a carefully prepared objective in front of them, not only confusing them.

                  A less generic strategic possibility: hiding something new and useful in the middle of crazy engineering, supply chains and training for the useless SR-71 restoration.

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