Finally! US Air Force Declared SR-72 DARKSTAR Is REAL!

The fact that SR-72 looks very much like the famous SR-71 tells a lot of how far ahead of time the SR-71 was. It even had a low radar signature!

So because there is speculation and rumour of the SR-72 existing, that means the USAF publically stated it's in service? Click bait title.

Click bait title

In 1964 while in high school and a member of the "Air Scouts", an offshoot of the boy scouts, we took a special tour of Edwards AFB. While riding on a bus between stops at a couple of gigantic hangars, I caught a view of an SR-71, on the ground between two smaller hangars. What a sight !

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in the 80s and 90s , always put on an awesome flying display at USAFE airshows in the UK. I saw it flying at RAF Mildenhall, RAF Alconbury and Farnborough. You really can't imagine how it felt, standing right right there by the runway looking at the SR-71 getting ready to roll. Just to say the experience was completely out of this world, and when it finally did get rolling, the actual physical effect you got from the power of those huge afterburning J-79 engines, was simply mind blowing! My ears took some battering, but hey, what a great sound that sure was! The USAFE always put on some great airshows in the UK back then, they were fabulous times as I remember!

The SR-71 does not “literally fly under the radar”. Nor is it in any way “similar” to the U-2.

The SR71 Blackbird will always be my favorite aircraft of al time. She is so fast and so elegant. Such a oeaky mess on the ground but she wasn't built to be wheels down. She was built for ripping the sound barrier! We built that monster in the 50s and 60s! It really makes you wonder what they are building as we speak.

Calling the SR-71 and U2 as "similar" is like calling a Corvette and VW Van similar.

While in private pilot training at the U of I, I loved the stories about the pilot of the SR-71 asking for landing instructions in California while flying over New York.

It's funny to think that the SR72 is a descendant of a plane which first flew 60 years ago! Especially when realizing that 60 years before the SR71, the only plane around was the Wright brothers'...

Some years ago I worked at Grumman Aerospace building F-14 Tomcats, A-6 Intruders, and the lunar modules. Back then Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine was only available to people in the industry, no on-line versions or newsstand copies were sold. They had nearly an entire issue dedicated to the SR-71's successor, complete with specs and photos. Rather than "Darkstar", the code name they were using at the time was "Aurora". Kelly Johnson and the whole Skunk Works team were visionaries. They did all that design work with slide rules, no CAD/CAM involved. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

The SR-71 Black Bird will ALWAYS be one of my favorite aircraft of all time!

While being stationed in the United States Air Force, I was stationed at Mt. Home AFB from 1969-1971 The SR-71 landed at our base, you couldn't get within 100 yards of it but it was an incredible flight when it landed and took off. before you know it was gone and the speed was so incredible it took off and went straight up in the air like a rocket and it was gone before your eyes.. I believe we as Americans should always stay ahead of the Chinese and Russian in technology... We are still doing it. today.

Saw the SR-71 in the late 1980s when it "Displayed" at Farnborough Airshow UK... It just landed and then after a short stop-over took off again..... Huge red braking parachute was used on landiing.. . and on take-off the engine note was amazing... Overwhelming powerful and crackly.

What is absolutely incredible is the fact that the SR71 was designed and built WITHOUT the use of computers!

Just because there are no windows does not mean that it’s pilotless. There are currently cameras in use that allow pilots to actually look thru their aircraft by the use of their helmets. This does seem to be the natural progression of things to come. Don’t ever be surprised by skunkworks and what they are able to achieve. The numbers given by Skunkworks are really short in comparison to the actual capabilities of that aircraft, after all why would we want to tell our adversaries the truth ?

The SR-71 didn't 'literally fly under the radar', it flew incredibly high up.

The "Darkstar" thing came from back in the early 1990s someone monitoring military communications in, I think, Nevada but could have been California, recorded communication between either Edwards AFB or Nellis AFB and 2 planes with call-signs "Darkstar Mike" and "Darkstar November" and the rumor was that these were the "Aurora" spy planes. I remember art Bell talking about it back in the '90s on Coast to Coast AM lol.

The SR-72 was on the Lockeed website and in presentations until Russia announced the (now debunked) "hypersonic" Kinzhal. There is one teaser of an SR-72 prototype in a hanger in an US Air Force video. It's very dark, but if you adjust lighting settings, you see SR-72 on the aircraft. The engine has been in tests since 2013, 2017 a single engine technology demonstrator was spotted multiple times over Palmdale California. Skunkworks has promised speeds of 2-3 times of the SR-71. A Lockeed VP talks about it like it already exists = how the engine was partially 3D printed to manage cooling or that the craft is "agile" at hypersonic speeds. *Shout out to Alex Hollings for all this amazing research!

SR 71 was a masterpiece