NASA appears to be pulling its SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest production plane ever made, out of retirement as the Trump administration teases its new line of hypersonic surveillance jets — but doubt…
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.
When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn’t work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying … there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn’t be very high, so they probably wouldn’t do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.
But when at top speed, it’s already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don’t need a ‘gun’ anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.
It would probably be a missle platform.
Probably had the Phoenix missle or similar range weapon in mind for air to air.
Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn’t work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying … there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn’t be very high, so they probably wouldn’t do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.
But when at top speed, it’s already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don’t need a ‘gun’ anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.
Would have been funny to put in a tail gun.