Those interested in the A-12-Sr-71 might like to look at this article, very interesti

[lazarus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsnkmpJhzlo

Sort of on, but more off topic, but an illustration of A) the aerothermal loads involved in hypersonic flight using 'conventional' technologies;and
B) the difficulties involved in producing a system that might be able to zap a high altitude hypersonic target- Technical;as well as political considerations scuppered SAFEGUARD- the radars were limited in the number of targets that could be illuminated at once, and the missiles had a tough time countering maneovering targets. Still, Sprint to this day remains the highest performance missile ever made-an astonishing technical achievement-note, at the end of the clip, the missile is glowing white hot! 100G's acceleration. 100ft over the silo, it was moving at mach1. 11seconds later,
MACH10.

 

[warchild]

Dont shut up.. If i'm asked to move it I will, but until then, its in a good place.. And too, we havent accomplished our goal of getting someone to model KingFish for us yet :;lol::

Lets face it. The more we discuss this the more interesting, intriguing and compelling it becomes.. Ad yes, I agree about immediate intel but i was asking my questions from the point of view of a washington bean counter.. Still, perhaps i should continue playing devils advocate??

 

[lazarus]

Fair enough, Pam
Play this while your reading, though, and...Trust No One!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDZBgHBHQT8
The Beltway bean counter angle. As always, that end is about empire building- the Holiest of holy relics in DC. Lets just do a quick tally of agencies that all do roughly the same thing....State Department( intel gatherer), Treasury Department(intel gatherer), Central Intelligence Agency, Defence Intelligence Agency, Naval Intelligence Office, National Recconaisance Office , Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, DOD, HSS, DOE, ect,ect... Then the shadowy-quasi-national-semi private agencies like
TRW, SANDIA, RAND, EG&G (Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc), Haliburton, GD Defence, Lock-Mart, Northrop-Grumman, and the other players in the defence-industrial-entertainment complex(a Mulderisim...)... Hmmm. One can hide a giant empire, and a great deal of money in all that. On the up side, we do get some cool hardware out of it, the conspiracy theorists have grist for the mill( that would be myself!) and It employs a heck of a lot of people. The down side is a State exsisting inside a State, with too much influence and money, adverse socio-ecomonic impact (too many guns, the whole 'end of the world' thing) Or is it something Really sinister... and who is going to model KINGFISH. Lionheart hasn't done anything really weird lately...Bill?....

 

[dharris]

Cmon lazarus, let's be fair and not forget to mention the irs, after all they have all the personal intel to use as leverage. And as an aside to flitsim building, BILLY,BILLY, BILLY, build us a kingfish, paallleeezzzee!

 

[warchild]

So far, in this thread we've covered enough detail for someone to create a true Tom Clancy-ish type mission and the models that go with it.. From the King Fish, to the Fish and its descendants, to the venerable sr-71. And we havent even scratched the surface.. Well, maybe we've scratched it, but i dont think we've broken through it yet.. If we had, we would have all had a little visit payed to us by the men in the black sedans.. yup, these would make some fantastic models, and even more fantastic missions..
Pam


PS.. I definitely take Mulders POV..

 

[warchild]

you mean that to this day, nothing is PUBLICLY known that outperforms Sprint..
Well, gee, I wonder what could be used to counter maneuvering missiles??

::chuckles::

Sort of on, but more off topic, but an illustration of A) the aerothermal loads involved in hypersonic flight using 'conventional' technologies;and
B) the difficulties involved in producing a system that might be able to zap a high altitude hypersonic target- Technical;as well as political considerations scuppered SAFEGUARD- the radars were limited in the number of targets that could be illuminated at once, and the missiles had a tough time countering maneovering targets. Still, Sprint to this day remains the highest performance missile ever made-an astonishing technical achievement-note, at the end of the clip, the missile is glowing white hot! 100G's acceleration. 100ft over the silo, it was moving at mach1. 11seconds later,
MACH10.

 

[lazarus]

OW OW OW .... the IRS is our friend...OW OW OW.....not so rough guys!
But really. One of the great things about the IRS...well, the only great thing, and most insidious, is that data base. That one , the Office of budget and Management and access to information laws , are one way to 'follow the money trail'
Men in Black...thats a been a very strange, and very long running disinformation program. By the way, if you've not seen the X-files episode 'Jose Chung's from OuterSpace" you've missed out on one of the finest crafted 60 minutes of television in the last 20 years...
Back to fs modeling... I've been smacking My noggin againt GMAX,BLENDER, FSDS, Sketch-up for donkey's years... I must have a blind spot when it comes to 3D modeling programs, never been able to come to grips with 'em. Some Day. Now, would a model like a KINGFISH be a somewhat easier project because of the flat plane aspect? Maneouvering missiles. AAMS do, but once you want to push them up to Mach4+, they've got to end up flying ballistic profiles at high altitude, and be aimed a point in space where the target is going to show up, you hope! Big SAMS(long range), ABMS, and ICBMS are pretty much stuck following a ballistic path, they can maneouver a bit, but it tends to be a matter of a few degrees, done well ahead of time. The tactic to defeat SAMS, if you see it, is to keep turning into it, forcing the SAM to increase its rate of turn untill the the flight control system exceeds its maximum rate, or the airframe over stresses. The catch is seeing the SAM early enough. ECM is crucial- either jamming the uplink(long range), or(terminal phase) feeding off-sync signals that reset the range gate so the warhead does not detonate at the right time, or presenting 2 different radar centroids, which force the tracker wander from centroid to centroid, either causing the tracker to exceed maximum rate and 'tumble' or, usualy, split the difference between the radar centroids and fly through the middle, (hopefully) well outside its warhead blast radius. The catch is, you have to be able to see, that is detect the firecontroll ahead of time. Sprint and Spartan compensated by using a nuclear warhead that killed its target with high energy radiation- fried the warhead's electronics.

 

[warchild]

For some perhaps, for others like myself with limited skills, a nightmare waiting to devour the timid...

 

[lazarus]

3D modeling? Yah. For me right now, the best part of GMAX or FSDS is it feels sooo good when I stop!

 

[RKinkor]

I was thinking that Mr. Piglet would be a good choice but he had that computer crash and now he is working on a PT-19.

 

[dharris]

Pam, lasarus did you ever read the book "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford? Interesting to say the least. Here is the synopsis about the Liberty attack and coverup including the Ec121 elint overhead most likely VQ-2......http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.bodyofsecrets.7.htm

 

[warchild]

I had personally not read it before this.. Those were some very dark years for me and the names mentioned in the article became household names listened too over and over and over again every night as the news bludgeoned us with the middle east crisis ( at least one of them. there seem to have been several ). If it werent for having lived through it, i would most likely find that period very interesting, but i must ask, what does it have to do with the SR-71 Fish or KingFish?? Perhaps i'm being an idiot and just not seeing the obvious here, but i'm not seeing a connection, and we do need to ensure that we stay at least somewhat on topic..

Pam

 

[dharris]

The connection as I see it is that even back in the late 50's and 60's we were alot more advanced electronically than most folks realize. On January 26, three days after the Pueblo's capture, an aircraft as black as a moonless night slowly emerged from its steel hangar at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. With stiletto-sharp edges, windscreens like menacing eyes, a skin of rare titanium, and engines pointed like shotgun barrels, the CIA's secret A-12 was at once threatening and otherworldly. Beneath the cockpit canopy, dressed in moon boots and space helmet, Frank Murray pushed forward the throttles to the mid-afterburner position. Fuel shot into the engines at the rate of 80,000 pounds per hour and fireballs exploded from the rear of the shotgun barrels. In the distance, a flock of birds flapped for safety. Looking at his control panel, Murray saw that he had reached decision speed and all was go. Ten seconds later he pulled gently back on the stick and the A-12's long nose rose ten degrees above the horizon. Murray was on his way to find the Pueblo.

By January 1968, CIA pilot Frank Murray was a veteran of numerous overflights of North Vietnam. But following the capture of the Pueblo, he was ordered to make the first A-12 overflight of North Korea. An attempt had been made the day before but a malfunction on the aircraft had forced him to abort shortly after takeoff. Following takeoff on January 25, Murray air-refueled over the Sea of Japan and then pointed the plane's sharp titanium nose at the North Korean coast."My first pass started off near Vladivostok," he recalled. "Then with the camera on I flew down the east coast of North Korea where we thought the boat was. As I approached Wausau I could see the Pueblo through my view sight. The harbor was all iced up except at the very entrance and there she was, sitting off to the right of the main entrance. I continued to the border with South Korea, completed a 180-degree turn, and flew back over North Korea. I made four passes, photographing the whole of North Korea from the DMZ to the Yalu border. As far as I knew, I was undetected throughout the flight." (Actually, NSA Sigint reports indicated that Chinese radar did detect the A-12 and passed the intelligence to North Korea. No action was taken, no doubt because of the plane's speed, over Mach 3, and its altitude, 80,000 feet.) [1] On May 8, while the Pueblo crew was imprisoned near Pyongyang, CIA pilot Jack Layton flew another A-12 mission over North Korea. (Although he did not know it, this was to be the last operational flight of the CIA's prize A-12. The fleet of the spy planes was to be scrapped for a newer, two-seat version being built for the Air Force, the SR-71.)​

Murray's film was quickly flown to Yokota Air Base in Japan, where analysts determined that North Korea was not building up its forces for any further attacks. Also it was an aside to the nsa talk. Will limit my replies to keep it more on topic