On December 22nd, 1964, the Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” made its first flight. It was a Mach 3+ long-range and advanced strategic reconnaissance aircraft that had a unique mechanism to outrun threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, standard procedure was to just speed up and outrun the threat. Since the Blackbird was ultimately retired in 1998, most of us have wondered if the folks at Lockheed Skunk Works are ever going to work on a successor. Turns out, they have been working on a successor, dubbed the SR-72. It is described as an “affordable hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and strike platform, one that can be developed in demonstrator form by 2018.
SR-72, The BlackBird Successor Designed For Mach 6 Cruise original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Aviation Week’s Guy Norris has an exclusive article
