In the midst of the cold war two MIG-25s race to intercept the threat along the soviet border they're the fastest interceptors ever built and if they really push their engines they can reach an incredible Mach 3.2, but it's not enough because what they're chasing can outrun and out-climb any threat, a plane engineered to be invulnerable. The cold war locked the united states and soviet union into a tense struggle for global influence, and control. Both sides poured enormous resources into military technologies, but getting an upper hand means knowing your opponent's next move, and in the 1950s little was known about facilities.
Deep within the soviet union an extensive network of radar stations surface-to-air missile sits, and interceptor air bases kept the Americans away until 1956 when U2 spy planes began flying over the soviet union neither fast nor stealthy. U2s had one critical advantage at 70,000 ft. They could fly above soviet air defenses, US president Eisenhower was even assured soviet radars couldn't detect the U2 at such high altitudes but it turns out the Americans were wrong the soviets had tracked the U2 since day one, and it was only a matter of time before they'd be able to shoot one down.
Simply flying high wasn't enough even before the U2 began its surveillance missions, there were already plans underway to replace it, because true impunity over soviet airspace would need a combination of incredible speed altitude and stealth, and this led the Americans to explore some pretty radical spy plane concepts like a ramjet powered aircraft that would be deployed from the bottom of a supersonic B-58, but in 1959 the CIA chose Lockheed to develop the next generation of spy plane, meanwhile the U2 continued to fly over the soviet union, but not for very long because in the spring of 1960 a soviet surface-to-air missile finally managed to bring one down, The captured pilot and wreckage were paraded around the soviet union used as proof of western aggression.
As, tensions rose now more than ever U.S needed a replacement for the U2, and what Lockheed developed would be unlike any aircraft ever built, a plane that nearly 60 years after its first flight remains the fastest air-breathing jet to ever fly Lockheed's highly classified spy plane would be known as the A12 originally used by the CIA for reconnaissance. The A12 was also developed into an interceptor prototype armed with air-to-air missiles, along with a variant that could launch an unmanned reconnaissance drone. But it was the SR-71 blackbird a variant developed for the air force that would go on to serve for decades while earlier versions were quickly retired. The blackbird could cruise at Mach 3.2 Right near the edge of space, and do it for hours, on end to achieve this lockheed's engineers had to innovate pretty much everything from scratch to sustain such incredible speeds.
The SR-71 and its predecessors were powered by engines often described as turbo ramjets, below Mach 2 they functioned like conventional after burning jet engines, but above that, they behaved more like ramjets, as an inlet cone adjusted to bypass air around the engine and directly into the afterburner. At mach 3.2 the SR-71's exterior would heat up to beyond 500 degrees fahrenheit easily hot enough to soften aircraft aluminum. The lockheed engineers used titanium for 92% of the aircraft, and in the 1960s this required inventing entirely new fabrication technologies. Its unusual shape did more than just spook UFO enthusiasts, it helped reduce its radar signature as did its special black paint which earned the SR-71 its blackbird name. The A12 and SR-71 were first deployed over North Korea and Vietnam where they were unsuccessfully targeted by over 800 surface-to-air missiles, but the spy plane never flew into soviet airspace at least not officially, because another shoot down over the soviet union would be catastrophic, so instead of the SR-71 flew along its borders using its powerful side looking radars and cameras to appear hundreds of miles into soviet territory, and that frustrated the soviets. In 1976 victor belenko defected to the west by escaping the soviet union in his MIG-25 he, described the frustration of trying to intercept blackbirds.
The MIG's were Mach 3 capable, but only for a few minutes at a time not for hours like the blackbird nor could they climb to reach the SR-71's incredible altitude. Even their enormous R-40 missiles lacked the guidance needed to strike the SR-71 head-on. For years the blackbirds were practically invulnerable they could out-fly and out-climb any threat, but by the 1980s MIG-31s were roaming the skies equipped with sophisticated radar and long-range R33 missiles. They posed a legitimate threat as did a new generation of soviet surface-to-air missiles, but the greatest threat to the blackbird wasn't an enemy missile or jet it was itself, no blackbird was ever lost on a mission, but more than a third of the 50 built were destroyed in accidents, one literally disintegrated around its pilots, they were also enormously expensive to operate, each one siphoning about 300 million dollars a year. out of America's defense budget a fleet of special aerial refuellers and a small army of support and maintenance staff were needed just to keep these planes mission-ready and advances in spy satellites, aerial drones, and the SR-71's inability to deliver surveillance data in real-time diminished.
R-33 source: intenet
Some of the plane's utility add to that politics and in fighting for defense budgets and by the late 1980s the SR-71's days were numbered they were officially retired in 1998, with two sent to NASA for testing the technology behind. The A12 and SR-71 is now well over 50 years old yet somehow these incredible planes still speak to us not about the past but the future leaving us with a sense of wonder unlike any other in aviation history.
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