Based on Lockheed’s quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, that places the total Lockheed losses associated with this single shadow program up to some $335 million since 2022.
Between February 2018, when the SR-72 went dark and September 2023, Lockheed Martin increased the size of the advanced development programs unit by 75 percent. They hired more than 2,300 new employees over five years.
Lockheed Martin began development on a hypersonic successor to the SR-71 Blackbird in 2006. The program continued in secret for seven years, before being formally announced to the public in 2013.
The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane had a reported top speed of mach 3.2 but there was unofficial speeds of Mach 3.5. The veteran SR-71 pilots indicated that the SR-71 could regularly fly at mach 3.3.
Lockheed has been working ob the turbine-based combined cycle, or TBCC, engine. Lockheed Martin was leading the design effort on the aircraft and Aerojet Rocketdyne was tasked with engine development.
Th SR72 is believed to be a Mach 6+ aircraft, this new platform was slated from the start as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) asset with strike capabilities. This meant the aircraft would be capable of carrying a variety of payloads, including munitions to engage ground targets.
A startup, Hermeus, has over $100 million in funding and is rapidly developing a hypersonic drone.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I’m pretty sure this is already operational. And up to Mach 10.3. And it looks just like these pictures. Hollywood had Tom Cruise flying it. No longer a secret…….but one question… how to eject at Mach 10 and still keep your helmet on and be able to walk into a coffee shop in Podunk, CA?
Full speed ahead on production ofSR72. My opinion is that we cannot let any country, Russia, China, India or anyone else get ahead of this technology. This may be a huge deterrent to save having another world war, and that will be the end of earth as we know it.
I grew up two blocks from what was then Lockheed Airport in Burbank. At the time, Lockheed’s Skunkworks had their plant on site. Completed F-117 fighters were flown out in the darkness of the night. With the works move to the high desert by Edwards Air Force base, they’ve simply moved the location for manufacturing of these projects to that location. I’m sure it’s being built there.
It is amazing to me that for YEARS, the F-117 was actually BUILT in that 3-story deep(?) hangar at Burbank airport. They were covered with a tarp, and put into a C-5 in the middle of the night and taken out to that (no longer) secret base in the dessert. That went on for years! And nobody knew….right under our noses..👍👍good job!!
Since we’ve had manned hypersonic vehicles, going back to the late 1950’s/early1960’s, I think we’ve long since passed the label “SR-72”. Then again, the X-15 was rocket powered. Todays hypersonic vehicles are (far as I know) air breathers. This is REALY difficult. About 2180mph (give or take, w/some change) sucking air into a jet engine becomes problematic. Our SR-71 Blackbird could go (according to open source press) 2150mph. Air defense radars of target countries, like USSR/Russia, and their vassal minions, were designed to take out our bombers and fighters, that flew a lot slower. They didn’t have the computer flexibility to adapt their air defense to adapt to anything moving a lot faster then our fighters and bombers. Those they were worried about, with good reason…
To the best of my knowledge, no SR-71 was ever shot down by a ground to air missel, or an air-to-air missel fired by a fighter/interceptor. (Believe me, they tried MANY times). We did loose several SR-71’s due to “accidents”. Details of which, I don’t know. Hypersonic speeds, (roughly above 2890mph, and change) present a truly unique problem for air breathing engines. Air at those speeds becomes more like a paste or gel, Sucking THAT into a jet engine, becomes to be polite, problematic.
I hear we (and others) have made progress in this area. Not to be confused with “hypersonic glide vehicles” These are warheads with wings, and thrusters launched by rockets that “deploy” several thousand miles from their target. I know we have this technology, as do several of our potential enemies. (sorry if I ruined your day). I’d love to know how air breathing hypersonic vehicles can “manipulate” air, turn it into a working fluid using it as a part of the fuel. I really want to know.
To my understanding, the way they manipulate the air is with the design inside the RAM/SCRAM jet. Different designs and applications can manipulate the airwaves inside the RAM/SCRAM jet, in order to get the most efficient performance out of them. I’ve read many articles, as well as watched many videos regarding this subject and design. It’s quite interesting and very complex. There’s a very fine line between success and failure.
So the SR-72 project is real and under development. But they are having issues and delays, not dissimilar to those at Boeing with both the space system and the 777X. One possibility is that the really good engineers prefer to work for SpaceX and this Mermeus because the increased financial rewards for either of these panning out as compared to Boeing and Lockmart. The other possibility is that the management and company culture is better at these startups compared to the traditional contractors such as Boeing and Lockmart. We know that management (from McDonnell Douglas) is a problem at Boeing. [NBF – unneeded triggering about HR] Of course these will not exist at start-ups like SpaceX and Hermeus because they are start-ups that have to run high speed and low drag in order to be successful.
In any case, engineers who like to develop stuff and do real work prefer high speed and no drag environments in order to excel in their work.
Stick to merit, performance, and results and you won’t have to call anybody a bigot.
So, it’s not a SCRAMJET, it only has a RAMJET engine (subsonic combustion). With subsonic combustion, it’s difficult to exceed Mach 5 because the air heats too much and you cannot add energy by combustion. Unless I’m missing something (standing wave combustion etc.) this is not very impressive.