Monitoring Desk
NEW YORK: The world’s fastest ever plane is set to hit the skies in 2025 as it promises to fly past staggering speeds of over 4,000mph.
Dubbed the “Son of Blackbird” the SR-72 plane is part of a top-secret mission by the US Air Force to improve their aviation abilities and rule the skies.
The SR-72 is thought to be the potential answer to a near perfect plane as its set up to be a super-fast, hypersonic high-altitude surveillance aircraft.
It is reportedly going to be able to fire projectiles such as hypersonic weapons at a more impressive rate than anything before it and reach hypersonic speeds in a flash but more importantly stay at these speeds for a longer period of time.
Despite the plane’s plans not technically having anything to do with the Pentagon at the moment they are thought to be keeping a close eye on Lockheed Martin’s futuristic aircraft.
Lockheed Martin are famous for their ambitious efforts when it comes to planes and the SR-72 is no different.
It is part of their Advanced Development Programs, also known as “Skunk Works” and is a hypersonic demonstrator aircraft set to first take flight in the mid-2020s.
Reportedly designed to not need a human in the cockpit the plane could be revolutionary in the way the military use their aircrafts.
The previous fastest ever aircraft is the Mach 6 – with hardly anything else coming close outside of spaceships.
Mach 6 can hit speeds of over 4,100mph and the SR-72 is reportedly aiming for speeds around that number.
This speed is crucial for the military if they need to get somewhere in a extraordinarily quick time and with a top speed of over 4,000mph that could mean getting from the US to Europe in an hour and a half.
The reason why it’s called the Son of Blackbird is because beforehand the SR-71 Blackbird ruled the skies.
Being such a legendary plane, the SR-71 Blackbird took to the skies in the mid-1960s and took part in some highly dangerous missions over Soviet airspace.
Most of these missions involved taking pictures of Soviet nuclear missile sites and military bases to send back to the US.
Flying at whopping heights of between 80,000ft-85,000ft the original model flew an impressive 50,000ft higher than any commercial plane and so will the SR-72.
It was seen as simply untouchable by any enemy aircraft and was able to evade almost all weapon systems that other militaries had in place.
In a staggering set of statistics, by the time the SR-71 Blackbird retired in 1998, 4,000 missiles had been fired at it to shoot it down.
But the spy plane was simply too fast and too smart for anything to catch it.
So with the next model being almost twice as fast, the SR-72 could be almost invincible.
The new plane will be a similar size to its predecessor coming in at 100ft long.
But the SR-71 had a major drawback compared to its newer and fresher model – It needed a pilot and they needed to wear spacesuits.
When flying at such high altitudes when a pilot is actually closer to space than earth, you need to be ultra careful and so protective clothing was essential, but this isn’t needed in the self-flying SR-72 model.
However despite all the clear improvements to the new plane, the enemy have also improved their weapons.
The SR-72 will have to contend with new dangers such as directed-energy weapons like lasers, and hypersonic munitions.
Rob Weiss, Lockheed Martin’s executive vice president and general manager for Advanced Development Programs, spoke to Aviation Week about the aircraft and its impressive ability.
