The SR-71 Blackbird remains the world’s fastest military aircraft to this day, more than 20 years after its discontinuation. A record that will soon be broken? The successor to this legendary aircraft would be on the launch pad with the upcoming arrival of the SR-72 “Son of Blackbird” demonstrator (son of the Blackbird). This new aircraft was featured in the film. hipster top gun under the name of Darkstar (the black star).
There is still no official announcement, no official date -we are talking about 2025-, but for several weeks on social networks, Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the device, has cleverly launched a buzz that brings this program back to reality. A hashtag embodies this communication operation, making it almost a code name: #RealTopGun.
In this series of posts published on the aircraft manufacturer’s Twitter account, we can discover the design of the SR-72 and even the helmet that the pilots could use. This equipment would provide a 360° view.
Since this message, aeronautical experts from around the world have brought to light all the information disseminated in recent years about this mysterious aircraft. Surely it would not have the benefits of the plane piloted by Tom Cruise -which in the film reaches a speed of Mach 10- but it could be declined in a version of a remotely piloted drone.
Mach 6 and more than 36,000 meters above sea level
However, the “Son of Blackbird” could reach a speed of at least Mach 6 and an altitude of more than 36,000 meters. Its performance would thus make it the fastest device in the world and the one capable of ascending the highest. This aircraft would have jet engines for supersonic speeds (greater than Mach 1 or 1,000 km/h) and an ultralight ramjet, like those found in missiles and drones, for hypersonic speeds (greater than Mach 5).
Equipped with stealth technologies, it would be virtually undetectable by radar. It would thus be a response to the hypersonic missiles developed by China, Russia or North Korea to threaten the aircraft carriers of the US Navy, the main objective of these weapons.
The SR-72 is designed to attack anywhere on the planet with hypersonic missiles. It will also allow intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions to be carried out without being detected.
From fiction to reality
Are the announced performances real? This is the question that to date has no official answer. To find out more, Beijing would not have hesitated to spy on the filming of the film hipster top gun as revealed by Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the producers of the two plays.
And for good reason, Darkstar wasn’t just a movie prop. Its design was created with the help of the Skunk Works, the division of Lockheed Martin responsible for so-called “special” aeronautical programs.
Source: BFM TV
