Ah, nothing better than hearing "hello valued viewers" early on a Saturday morning. Got my mug of Jamaican Blue Mountain, (best coffee on the planet) 10" of snow and 30+ MPH winds howling. Got my feet in an electric foot warmer and absolutely nothing to do today. Life is good
Aaaacutally... ...the SR-71 used a fuel specification called JP-7. It was a fuel designed to have a very low boiling point, which means that it does not evaporate despite the low pressure regime the SR-71 used to fly in and despite the tempertures of the aircraft and inside the tanks once the aircraft had been at speed for a while. It wasn´t a mixture of two components however, but I have an idea, where this idea comes from: in order to ignite this special type of fuel, a spark plug was not strong enough. This made for an acceptable risk when the fuel leaked from a cold plane, but the engineers at Lockheed had to use some other means of inition: triethylborane (TEB for short), a compound that spontaneously ignites when it comes into contact with air. This stuff was used to ignite the fuel on engine startup as when as for each time the afterburners were lit. Since the tanks for the TEB were rather small, this was the actual limiting factor for the range of the blackbirds: the number of times, the afterburners could be relit, was limited to ~20 per engine. Another interesting additive to the fuel was a compound containing caesium (the non radiactive type, but still: a heavy metal with negative effects on organisms). This was used to recude the radar reflection of the huge flame beind the aircraft: the air in the afterburner was so hot, it got ionized and the ions were a magnificent radar reflector, which made some of the low observabilty aspects of the blackbird rather pointless. The additon fof caesium to the fuel mitigated the effect to a certain amount.
@@honeyforce996 A jet on full burner can easily destroy an airfield, especially if its comercial and not a AF built for High thrust jets doing high AOA rotations
SR71's would typically take off with an extremely light fuel load. Just enough to get to mid altitude and get to a tanker. That's where they pick up the full mission load. They did this because they lost a few planes at takeoff in the early days.
@@matthewkern3619 It would not burn holes in the runway unless it was somehow magically floating upright right above the runway. The heat and force from the engines is dissipated a few dozen feet away from the plane for the most part.
1:09 “Best interceptor ever built” Debatable… the YF-23 was _slightly_ less maneuverable than the YF-22, but IIRC it was faster, stealthier, had a higher service ceiling, and perhaps most relevant to this competition (well, aside from speed) it had a much longer range than the YF-22. I think we should’ve built them both.
Even the maneuverability is debatable due to how much younger the yf-23 program was compared to the yf-22 It was a supermenuverable aircraft even without thrust vectoring
Yes The AIM-260 is built to integrate with The Raptor big part of both programs-- The AIM-260 JATM and The "Super Raptor" the ongoing upgrading of The F-22 through NGAD being used as a stop gap solution so to speak😁✌
Hey Cap. Re: AIM-260 and Raptor. Yes, the AIM-260 is designed to fit inside the Raptor and F-35 bays, as the predicted 260 design will be larger in circumference (and therefore require more width within the bays compared to AIM-120D), but the length is to remain essentially the same due to the limitations of the bay designs. As it is designed to fit in the F-35 and the F-22 bays are larger than F-35. For any future US weapon, one must consider their ultimate procurement targets: the USAF is ~1,763 A-variant airframes, and 350x B and 350x C variant airframes for the USMC and USN on top of that. If you take all of the USAF/USN/USMC fighter/air-superiority/fighter-attack aircraft across services, the F-35 currently accounts for approximately 19% of the force. If you were to freeze the total number of F-16/F-18/F-15/F-22 numbers at current levels (not reducing them as they're retired for the incoming F-35 models), then the F-35 at 100% procurement goals would hit approximately 50% of the entire force. However, in reality, the number of F-16 (replaced by F-35A in the USAF) and F-18C/D models (replaced by F-35B/C in the USMC) will result in the proportion of F-35s growing significantly over the next decade, probably approaching ~75% of the total airframes within the US inventory. So, if the AIM-260 didn't fit in the stealth models, it would be of extremely limited value. This is also why one of the heavily rumored missiles in-development by the US is the "Peregrine" radar-guided missiles, with the design target being 50% the size of the AIM-120D, yet actually outperforming the 120D in range and speed. The goal of the project is to literally double the F-35 loadout with AIM-120D equivalent capability.
If Peregrine is successful, I will reassess my long standing opinion on the F-35 as a fighter. For well over a decade I've complained to people (who couldn't care less) about its futility as an F-16\F-18 replacement. Having a useful weapons loadout is a game changer. That does nothing for the disaster that is the F-35 procurement/production nonsense.. and many, many airplanes already built that'll never be combat worthy because they were made before things were finalized. $21 billion dollars worth iirc. That doesn't scratch the surface of the programs problems.
@@ur_quainmaster7901 While F-35 wasn't an absolute slam dunk of a program, I feel you may be a bit overcritical of it (not an insult, I'm saying this in a friendly manner). 1. Huge costs and going over-budget projections received a lot of attention during the first several years before and after the jets started being delivered. However, what's often lost in the overall conversation is just how much they've gone down in price as they got better at manufacturing them and as sales came in from many countries. Per a recent article, 20 Eurofighters were just sold to Spain for an average of $107.5m. Per an article on 11/18, the last contract on record averaged $78m per F-35A, although the article noted that cost will be riding due to more recent COVID-19/supply chain issues globally. But we're not talking about an increase back up to $100m or anything like that. 2. Speaking of sales, the F-35 is now one of the most successful export programs in US/NATO history. The F-16 is still the most popular military jet in the skies internationally with the US having about 900 of them in active service alone (and more in reserve), the F-35 may ultimately get pretty close as the F-16 retires. Per Wiki right now: export sales to 13 countries (one sale denied to Turkey) for a total of 615 airframes (on top of the US's planned 2,468). For comparison, about 4,500 F-16s have been delivered to 26 countries over the past four decades. 3. Besides the sales and the cost, many of the F-35s features simply remain classified from the public. Most of the capabilities involve data links, electronic warfare, radar/sensors, and stealth. This contrasts with the more apparent features like the F-16’s turn rate, the F-15 air/ground strike capability, the F-22 Raptor’s amazing at the surface level showing off its speed and agility, and the EU 4th-gen fighters also showing off some great speed and agility of their own (like the Eurofighter). Meanwhile, the F-35 is like the smart quiet kid in the corner of the room who gets the work down and scores an A consistently without drawing attention (until he/she flies into the back of a supercarrier and sinks their plane). Granted, no person without classified info really knows how good the jet is, but every little indication we have from the smirk of pilots when they talk about the jet, to the confidence US military leadership has in its future performance, and the fact so many countries are buying it in bundles (the Eurofighter only has about 30 airframes sold to countries outside of the development partnership countries, who have ordered a bit less than 600 airframes). Overall, I think the F-35 will turn out to be a real difference maker, especially when it ends up flying with the unmanned solutions that will be joining it (stealthy unmanned fighters/missile carriers/ISR for data link), the 4th-gen missile trucks who should be able to lob missiles in without getting in danger of enemy missile range, the B-21 Raider infiltrating air space adding to the data link/ISR capability of everyone in the air, and the NGAD/FA-XX programs developing 6th gen long-range fighter/attack jets that should have a bay full of missiles in their belly.
the blackbird did leak fuel because it didn't have sealing tanks but the reason they refueled after take off was to make sure the tanks were completely filled without any combustible air in them. As the plane used fuel the space was taken up by nitrogen gas. Without this the plane was limited to mach 2.6. During a mach 3 cruise the JP7 temp increased to 300C which wasn't good if there was oxygen about.
I was actually about to come here to mention this. While I seem to remember reading that it evidently was possible to prep and fill the tanks before takeoff while purging standard atmospheric air (pretty much any air with oxygen in it) from them, it was a time-consuming process and also often wasn't done due to the runways being too short, the landing gear potentially failing due to the excess weight and the overall poor performance of the aircraft at low speed. But the fuel leaks themselves were not severe enough to require refueling. The refueling, as you mentioned, was due to a matter of safety
The JP7 was rather thick at room temp. and was used as hydraulic fluid as well as the skin coolant before going to the engines. It wouldn't ignite below about 300c for safety reasons. The speed limit of 3.1M was to prevent cooking off parts of the air-frame, the engines could push it significantly faster. (The crew doing BDA after the Libyan raid overflew all those SAM sites that activated when the bombers went through, took the pictures, and opened the throttles out into the Med. [They only admit to seeing Mach numbers that they had never seen before.] thereby outrunning the SAMs.) The ones I watched taking off from Kadena cleared architecture and nature before leaning back onto their engines and climbing to meet up with the KC-135 that took off a half-hour earlier. EVERYTHING about the air-frame expanded at cruise - engine parts included.
The F-22’s top speed is not limited by its engines but the intakes. These are set to limit the top speed to Mach 2.2 to prevent damage to the stealth coating. But the US have developed a New Stealth ceramic coating that can with stand a temp of 650 C and is better at blocking radar return.
@@brianwright9514 You did read Michael Ernst's comment, right? So did I and I took his two statements to imply that the engines are potentially faster and the limit was the durability of the stealth coating? He might be wrong but he seems very clear that the engines are (were) limited by the stealth coating and there has now been an improvement in same? I don't claim to be an expert, just applying straight logic, pretty sure it's a complicated subject but if I'm presented with a scenario' that this is the limiting factor for the engines and it has just been improved', it seems logical therefore that more performance can be gained? Don't tell me the intakes 'are fixed', what are they fixed at and why if they could be better? Sorry mate, I don't mean to sound 'shitty', I understand how little I know and I do understand that mach 2.2 is almost UNREAL except after a long climb to high altitude. Thanks for the reply. Pax
@@conmcgrath7174 Older aircraft had variable geometry intakes that allowed them to operate at very high speeds while still maintaining proper intake airflow and preventing the shock from entering the engines. F-22 has a fixed geometry intake, which was designed to allow the aircraft to operate at very high speeds without having the maintenance and weight of variable geometry intakes, however they are not capable of the same speeds as variable intakes. This was an acceptable trade-off since Mach 2+ operation is almost never required and the RAM would burn off anyway.
Hey Cap here are a few facts for you regarding the SR-71, did you know that the engineers building the plane at Lockheed were not allowed to use chrome-plated tools? Tiny fragments of chrome would come off and during repeated heating and cooling cycles it would rapidly cause dissimilar metal corrosion and break the components. Anyone found using chrome plated tools once they had been banned were dismissed. Did you know that the chap who designed the shock inlets was born to a British father and French mother? Ben Rich also went on to take over from the legendary Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson and championed the F-117 Nighthawk. In fact his little 'party' trick to show people how small the RCS of the F-117 was, was to roll a marble down a table at them and say 'it is as small as that'. Apparently he was told to stop! While the SR-71 never flew over the USSR it repeatedly flew over Vietnam during that war and while it was shot at it never got shot down. The reason for the SR-71 never flying over Russia wasn't just down to Gary Powers being shot down. Both the US and the UK had been flying over the USSR many times and the Soviets had rightly become very pissed off at this. Anyway this is a whole other story.
They had to make it like that at top speed the metal heats up an expands so they had to make it with loose tolerances so at speed it would tighten up an stop leaking
The F22 Raptor speed is limited to 2.25 so it doesn't burn its stealth coating off. The paint on the f22 is fundamentally different than the f35. The F35 is limited to Mach 1.6, so it doesn't burn its coating off. Keep up the great work!!
F-35 maxes out at Mach 1.6-ish, but that's NBD. An F-18 or F-16 that's carrying drop tanks, missiles, bombs, targeting pods, etc. struggle to make it past Mach 1. Only way a Viper can hit Mach 2.2 is if it's totally clean, but even then that's going to be a short run because it'll run out of gas pretty quickly.
The fuel is not only the source of energy but is also used in the engine hydraulic system. During high Mach flight, the fuel is also a heat sink for the various aircraft and engine accessories which would otherwise overheat at the high temperatures encountered.
Actually it is technically a RAM type engine, the cone provides the majority of the compression at Mach 3. The bypass valves directly to the afterburner section completes the cycle for a RAM jet.
As a kid growing up in Sacramento, California, USA, I watched SR71s flying overhead after launch from Beale AFB, not to mention the B52s launched from SAC base Mather AFB. Wonder why I joined as an adult, hmmmm. I also saw the first harrier jet takeoff from an airshow at Moffat field, USA early 70's. I was amazed at its vertical takeoff, magic!
Some Blackbird facts..... The SR71 family used a special fluid (Triethylborane) to actually light the JP7, and carried only about a dozen shots of it on each flight .. so if an engine had an unstart ( a stall of airflow through the engine due to supersonic air and compression) they only had so many chances to re-ignite. Also if an engine had an unstart, it was often necessary to unstart the other engine on purpose because of the asymmetric issue, and the aircraft has a terrible glide ratio ..... so it must of been an experience. Further to that some parts of the edges of the airframe skin were actually a composite plastic, which helped reduce the radar cross section..... and the specially made camera window was of quartz , first time it was ever done, normal type glass would distort at the temperatures (400-800°F) the airframe experienced making photography impossible and it was ultrasonically fused to the titanium frame as no glue would hold it in..... Finally the tanks were never full on take off for several reasons, only one of which was the leaking issue.... another was that the tires could fail on the take off roll if the plane was fully loaded!
The plane and to zoom up supersonic on takeoff just to close up the fuel tank leaks, then top off with air refuel before going on mission. Not exactly a great virtue for a scramble
@@egberthigglewonk4520 and they used specifically designated tankers as no other plane used JP7. The tankers had to fly at almost full speed, while the SR71 was only just a little above minimum while refueling!
@@egberthigglewonk4520as shown in a scramble situation even the standard 50% take off fuel load provided for greater range than a fighter with drop tanks, so entirely a non-issue. And if a longer range intercept was required then all interceptor types would require in-flight refueling, so no difference there. Granted, the F-12 would take longer to fuel up, but its higher speed of Mach 3.2 vs Mach 2.2 for the F-22 would more than make up for that, meaning in all cases the F-12 would be the fastest interceptor with the greatest effective range.
@@msytdc1577 but that only works IF you have a tanker already on station. If not your mach3 interceptor has to wait for the tankers to lumber into position before they can scramble!
@@Decrepit_biker I don't think you got the point at all. An F-12 interceptor with half a fuel load and no tanker can take off and fly to an intercept target both faster and father away than can an F-15 or F-22 that is both fully fueled and carrying drop tanks as well.
The F-15 pictured has conformal fuel tanks, it doesn't need to have two additional fuel tanks and should hit at least Mach 1.8 to Mach 2 with missiles and conformal tanks. You should have punched off the tanks as soon as you got up to altitude. Also, IRL the targeting and LANTRIN pods could be removed before the mission. If the Eagle has the right engines, she can super cruise, just like the test aircraft did in the 90"s.
There were >26,000 successful in-flight refuelings. Though, I guess they were not as 'risky' as commonly believed. That's from a SpyCast podcast from 2016, titled, "Higher, Faster, Stealthier: An Interview with SR-71 Pilot Buz Carpenter" which I think is absolutely worth a listen. @the 32:00 mark they begin talking about refueling, and flight instruction. Still available on google podcasts, and apple podcasts. In an hour you could film 100,000 square miles of earth.
The name of the fuel is JP-7 BUTit was less flammable than diesel you could pour a 5 gallon bucket on a bonfire it would Extinguush it. The fuel was use as a heat sink and for it to be able to be lit it needed to be around 400+⁰ to light the afterburners a special chemical it reacted to was squirted into the combustion area its name was Triethyl Borane and it started the engines and started the afterburners!!! Gonna try DCS I play WAR THUNDER now but I have been hankering to get on DCS for quite some time now
The YF12A never took off with full fuel load and immediately went for tanker fuel . However, the climb rate was tremendous despite its weaker ( for the time) engines. Need to add that time to sim. Technically, and the real Habu pilots will confirm, that the top speed of Mach 3.3 was limited by temperature and not power. In other words,it would go faster if not for temps.
>What I assume is America's premium fourth gen interceptor, the F-15 I would argue that title belongs to the F-14D Super Tomcat, but I'm a forgiving valued viewer, and I'll let this one slide... because I love ya.
Hell yeah Cap you used my idea!!😁👍👍 Lol Yo Cap The F-15EX is 4+ gen fighter ;) I thought The New Grinnelli F-22 was Thrust Vectoring..?? Please use Blue tinted smoke for U.S. missiles!🙏
Saw all the greats at the Dayton International Air Show in the late eighties early nineties. F-104, F-4, A-7, A-4, F-15, T-38, F-14, A-6, B-52, B-1, Harrier, F-18, P-3, Vulcan, A-10, Spitfire, Mustang, Warhawk and the SR-71 twice, including when it was retired into the museum here. It actually landed on the runway directly adjacent to the museum complex-which was the only time I’ve seen it done.
You can still see it through the Windows at Evergreen... I see it each time I drive past McMinnville. For a while they had it under the wing of the Spruce Goose, like some sort of AIM-SR71. I saw a B- at the Hillsboro Air Show around 1990-ish ... it did a wingstand/pivot over the field and I've never heard anything so loud.
Air refueling the SR-17 was the most difficult thing I ever did in an airplane! At the end of the track you were burning as much as you were taking from the tanker. A common misconception is that the SR took off with a low fuel load because of leaking. The truth was the SR only leaked about 50 gal from the time it was refueled on the ground until takeoff. The reason the SR took off with a low fuel load was for improved takeoff or abort distance called balanced field length. If you lost an engine and you were too heavy you had no choice but to take off because you could not stop in the remaining runway. The takeoff fuel load was tailored to make the distance you could stop or takeoff after loosing an engine the same. (simplified). Also the fuel was not binary but did require TEB (Triethylborane) to start. When going through check out, to demonstration of how safe JP-7 was, an instructor threw a lit match into a pan of JP-7... the match went out. The ducts on the side of the engine are called "bypass ducts" The tip of the "Spike" (cones that move in and out in the intake) was titanium and was very sharp. It's main job was to insure a shockwave formed and the cone moved to capture the shockwave in the intake.
The reason for the high temp fuel was because of the skin temp ranged from 400-600 degrees F, and the fuel tanks were the skin of the aircraft. The fuel was also used as a heat sink. And there were only 32 SR-71s built, 12 of which were lost to accidents. Oh, another thing, they created an additive that was burned in the afterburners that would make the exhaust plume radar absorbent. Also, while it did have a variety of cameras, the primary method of reconnaissance was the ASAR, a synthetic aperture array radar That seriously put all optical systems to shame!
So a big part of the reason they took off at 50% fuel or less was as much to cut weight and help with climb and acceleration too. Also jp7 has a really high flash/ignition temp. The fuel had to operate in environments that might ignite normal jet fuel before it got to the engine. Not good. They had the second chemical on board to actually ignite the fuel when they mixed to get it burning. They also used the fuel to cool various parts of the plane and engines kind of like a rocket.
I wonder if theres a way to model in a 'fractional orbital bombardment system' into DCS, something that moves through the map at 100,000 feet and travels at mach 10+
I used to work on the BB when they brought it out of retirement for Desert Storm. When they re-retired it, I believe mine ended up in the Evergreen Museum in Oregon. Fantastic aircraft, but not very crew chief friendly. Had to air-start it every time, leaked like a sieve when cooling, had to assist the pilot into the aircraft (SR-71 and U-2/TR-1 pilots wear a spacesuit), and required several days of maintenance after each sortie. Beautiful and fast, but a PITA. When he showed pics of the J58, I literally shuttered at the thought of working on that again.
What it is that makes the engine more efficient at higher altitudes is exhaust velocity. If you ever play with the rocket equation, you'll note that the exhaust velocity has a _huge_ impact on the rocket's performance across the board. In airbreathing engines, air density affects exhaust velocity because more dense air has higher drag whilst inside the engine. Ramjets especially have very few moving parts, which is less drag yet again, which boosts the exhaust velocity on top of the effect from thinner air. That's also why scramjets are more efficient (for a given value of the word "efficient") than ramjets: the air never goes below supersonic speed through a scramjet, allowing the engine to produce higher exhaust velocities, at least relative to the airframe. The reason the bypass tubes on the stripped-down museum engines help with efficiencies is, yet again, exhaust velocities. The fresh air going around the compressor doesn't need to be slowed as much as the air going through the compressor. That fresh air also contains much higher oxygen densities, which in turn allows more fuel to burn more efficiently in the afterburner, which makes the exhaust hotter, which increases exhaust velocity yet again. On top of the increased speed from not going through the compressor, of course. I think. I could be full of hot air, but it makes sense to me.
I think the fact that the blackbirds had less than half their fuel for this test might compromise the results when it comes to its viability at bomber intercept, or anything else requiring rapid deployment. While the f 15 and 22 were pushed close to their fuel limit without requiring mid air refueling to return, i feel like reducing the blackbird's fuel (while increasing its intercept speed) takes away the considerable range increase it has along with the intercept taking place within a range where the f15 and 22 could return. Assuming the bombers were detected at long enough range, the blackbird could intercept at a considerably greater distance than the others if it was fully fueled, or at least more fueled than in the test. It's also hard to think of why a high speed long range interceptor would be kept on rapid response duty with less than half its fuel, making it have similar distance to other interceptors, and negating the advantage in round-trip intercept range. I am aware that blackbirds had a habit of constantly sweating out fuel whenever it was fueled on the ground (which is probably a reason not to use it as an interceptor) but this is all hypothetical anyway.
Raptor can carry AIM-260 under the Raptor Agile Capability Release (RACR) update program but had to be upgraded to have Link-16, it started receiving the hardware in 2019 but the phase 1 software implementation allowing the aircraft to talk to the missile using Link-16 didn't occur until Autumn 2021, it needs the phase 2 software update to communicate with the missile after launch rather than just point and shoot and provide advanced targeting data, RACR phase 2 started flight testing in April 2021 and wasnt due to be rolled out until the end of 2022. There is a further phase 3 of RACR due in 2023 which allows network sharing targeting data with US allies and upgrades the Raptor with Passive infrared detection and tracking (IRST) via the addition of two fixed underwing pods however it wont receive the full visual spectrum capability of the F-35's EOTS.
My brother a retired USAF Master Sargent flat out said I can confirm the Aurora does exist but it will never be declassified for 50 years. He told us that in 1992 after spending 6 months TDY in Vegas but not being allowed to tell us where he was. He would call us from a Vegas area phone number but all his mail was routed to an fpo or Foreign exchange to be examined first but no customs declaration needed unlike his packages during Desert Shield/Storm.
back in 1997 we went on a California, Nevada, Arizona road trip and on the way to LA we went into Edwards AFB....we saw 3 fuelled SR71's in a hanger (with their drip trays).
Capt, Three of my grandkids are here, they have had pizza, cheese straws, jam doughnuts, copious sweets, fizzy pop and crisps. I am a broken man atm, I need your content to sooth me.
I found a link from a sundries post on August 13 2022 (I posted it but it got deleted). Essentially the F-22 will get them but needs to be upgraded and it will be the most expensive upgrade to any plane ever 5:08 but it couldn't take off with a full fuel load and weapons because it leaks until the skin of the aircraft heated up to like 200C. So, it had to take off with half fuel and then immediately refill from a tanker that was speically modified to take jp-7. So, no without a tanker you do not have enough fuel to finish the mission and if you run it half full you would barely make it to crusing altitude. 35:28 Sorry boys, but i'm here to tell you Damp and Cap are wrong on this one. How do i know? boxing day 2016, having xmas dinner (don't ask), I look out the patio windows in my parents house in gloucester, UK, to see a contrail that looked like donuts on a rope. I pointed it out for every else to see (so like 6 other pepole). Suddenly my dad disappears. He's gone for like 10 minutes. He comes back and won't answer questions on where he went (no one could find him in the house). Now, at the time, for reasons i can not go into, i had very high clearance in the UK. My dad at the time had highest possible clearance in the US, UK and france. So later that day, when noone else was around I asked him where he went. Turns out the contrail was made an aurora, that flew straight over my parents house at angels 20 as a xmas gift from one of my dads US colleagues. Fun fact: the engine(s) sound like a doodlebug but much quieter. To the point where its barely audiable and i was the only person that could hear it. Also, as a note, because of where my parents live, over the years (should i admit it's 4 decades worth of years?) i have seen that contrail like 5 times, but the most recent was the only time i had other witnesses. every previous time it was east of gloucester in the general direction of bristol. I can't confirm it, but i have a suspicion that where my parents live is on a general transit path for that plane. Maybe because an hour west is brize norton, fairford is not too far away (had a b-2 basically skim the roof the house, at like 10pm, mid 90's-ish on approach to fairford). So, aroura is real. You can dimiss me if you want but i have seen it with my own eyes and i wasn't alone when it happened and i have had confirmation from people that have had physical contact with it.
I once took a tour of Edwards Air Force base and got to see an SR71 parked inside a hangar. Very sexy beast. I have a picture of it from it's nose probe looking down it's body. Frickin awesome!
I don't know how often military aircraft use bags and just drops them, but if it's feasible, make bags that are drone's. You release them and the fly back to base.
If i remember right the frist two planes that are going to get AIM-260 will be F-22A and F/A-18E/F and then if i remember correct next will be F-15EX and F-35A/B/C and possibly B-21.
Prediction at the Four Minute mark... assuming it's one plane being sent up per test, I predict F-22 first, F-15 second, with the YF-12A coming in last. Reason: Only 3 missiles, probably no gun, and even if it does have a gun that thing will have terrible maneuverability. If there's multiple planes sent up per test, then the YF-12A will come in first, F-22 second, F-15 last. YF-12A gets in range first, launches first, kills the enemy first, goes home first, hits the bar first and gets the girl first.
In 1987 I was in Civil air patrol and went on a flight in a KC-135 and got to sit in the refuler bay when a SR-71 tanked up ofer eastern Washington state. Good times.
"Never put a German in a Raptor"....or a Starfighter.....GF's father (USAF) flew the F-104 and he laments to this day (he's 90) on how many German's died in that airplane. He's quite proud of his "Mach 2 Club" plaque. And speaking of SR-71 airshows. Way back in the day, about '85 or so, I rode my bike to Paine Field (Everett Washington, where the widebody Boeing plant is) on Friday for the press day for the airshow put on by (kinda forget...the local Rotary? as a fundraiser) and they had the SR-71 fly in. I recall it coming in over the Boeing factory from the north....all you could see was the landing light.....then you could see the fuselage....then the engines....so 3 closely spaced black dots. Then the plume of smoke from the engines. When it flew by, it turned right (west) and as it did, lit off the afterburners. My goodness.....spectacular for a teenage airplane nut. In re the "ramp" or cone "preconditioning" the air - what you're thinking of is a variable geometry inlet. The other day, you had a vid with the F-16 going Mach 2...which is utter bullshit-ish (since by the time it gets to that speed, it'll more or less be out of fuel). With the fixed inlet, it'll develop such a strong normal shock in the inlet, there will be a lot of pressure loss on the inlet air going to the engine. Recall why a diesel is more efficient than a gas engine - it's all about compression. Ditto airplane engines. More compression (aka better pressure recovery in the inlet) = more power per unit of fuel. The beauty of a variable inlet (cone on the SR, ramp on something like a F15 or 14) is that the one or series of oblique shocks from the ramp or cone plus a weak normal shock at the inlet lip on those inlets result in a lower pressure loss vs a single strong normal shock at the inlet lip of a fixed inlet like the F-16. More pressure recovery = more thrust.
Hello, just found this channel last week and I really enjoy your content. I would like to suggest a simulation of a U.S. air strike on Cuba during the missile crisis, as was being considered at the time. Keep up the good work GR!
Keep in mind that the whole family based on the A-12 had fuel leakage on the ground, so they took off with a light fuel load and immediately refueled in the air. The higher speed would cause the material to expand, eliminating the fuel leakage above Mach .7 or so Edit: Lol they mention this towards the end, my bad I commented before finishing the video
Surely - practically/realistically - the YF-12A would need to decelerate to deploy weapons, else Mach 3+ airflow would a: rip the hatch doors off b: cause so much turbulent airflow around the bay that flight / attitude would be dangerously compromised ...especially considering that the other aircraft have reduced performance* when "loaded for bear" so to not have weapons ripped off midflight? * as the lower speeds tend to be calculated constraints that "this stuff will rip off over Mach x"; they can likely still push through to the clean maximums, but dangerously or by writing off the aircraft.
I think the yf designation was largely used as a cover fir the sr designation. Johnson anniunced it, i think as a yf 11 at some point and that allowed flights to take place overtly. There were yfs, they had a slightly different nosecone forcthe radar.
The real SR-71 had a system using engine bleed air piped to the rudders, if one engine had a unstart as they called it, it would auto kick in rudders, pilots reported if it happen they could not tell which engine stalled untill they looked at the dials. Then it was a restart, throttle back then forward until the system gave a shot of TEB, (triethylaluminium-triethylborane) to relite the engine and afterburner.
Every time the sr71 flew the metal was retempred. It uses jp7 and they could fix the fuel tank, but it was to expensive. If you through jp7 on a fire, it will extinguish the fire.
FYI the fuel tank was the plane. It had no dedicated fuel storage. It leaked because at mach 3 the expansion of the metal would have caused the plane to disintegrate if it did not have gaps between the panels on the ground. The panels would have just pushed themselves off the plane
The limiting factor for the speed of the f22 isn't the Engines, it's the stealth coating. The plane's speed is limited because any faster and you burn the stealth costing off.
Very interesting video! It would be fascinating to me if you could do the same scenario using F-106s using their AIM-4 Falcon series missiles and F-4Es using their AIM-7 Sparrow series missiles against the same in-coming bombers
20:41 "we need a fuel burn rate meter". If only the engine instruments included a measurement of the rate that fuel is flowing to each engine. It could be called "fuel flow" and abbreviated as FF on the MFD....
I saw Blackbirds take off from Newark in 1990 and 1991 during the first Gulf War. Cover of night they would take off and go near vertical and disappear in seconds. Awe inspiring sight.
The F-12 would've been was a totally impractical interceptor. The pilot had to breathe pure oxygen for an hour and wear a pressure suit, so he'd just have to sit alert in that thing. Meanwhile, the airplane would be leaking fuel all over the tarmac. Then, it'd only be able to take off with a half full fuel tank. It also had these massively powerful start carts that would have to be sitting at idle 24/7, and you'd have to keep the hydraulic fluid pre-heated.
all are air to air refuel capable so no need to calculate a full return trip. Another factor that if you had to sacrifice one or two planes or your whole base, most commanders would choose the former.
Hi, I got a video idea :) I would like to see a race between all of the jet trainers in game. (L-39C vs L-39ZA vs MB-339 vs C-101EB vs C-101CC) + any modded subsonic jet trainer if there are any.
The J-58 is a Mach 2.2 engine. All the rest of the thrust is produced by the cone. The engineering in the cone itself is a great feat. We've accomplished more back then than we've done since. Why? Because the people back then did their job. They made it so the people today wouldn't have to live through the world they did.
Then again, when the options are "kill the enemy bombers" and "everyone you know and love dies in a nuclear fireball," fuel for RTB is a luxury expense.
The fuel was JP-5 by the way, not JP-8. I've never heard of JP-7 which was mentioned. I noticed they were doing Mach 3+ at only FL 650 instead of FL 850. That is an enormous fuel expense.
Also, I noticed why he they all had so much trouble climbing and getting up to speed. They need to do their research on the climb profile of a SR-71. They don't just accelerate and climb all the way to cruising altitude. They used a "stair step" method. They would get to around FL 350, level off and build up speed before climbing again. Then they would do the same thing at FL 550, FL 700, FL 800, and finally FL 850. Do that, and you get to 85,000 ft and Mach 3+ much faster, without burning so much fuel.
As for the JP7, it was extremely safe, you couldn't even light it, you are thinking about the TEB (Triethylborane) that violently ignites with exposure to atmosphere, that they had to use to get the JP7 to ignite.
Raptor should fit Aim-260, but how many is another question. I might try an explain what's going on with Blackbird as, With altitude drag is reducing faster than power, and so excess power is increasing until the limits of the airframe are reached.
Oh, Cap, did you know there was another anned variant of the SR-71? It was being developed as a paper exercise in collaboration with a company based in Newcastle. They called it the YI-12 . . .
The f-15E is not a pure interceptor though. It’s a strike aircraft. Yes it can and is still good at air to air, however the plane was designed with ground strike in mind. It’s not going to be used in a intercept role though. This info comes from my neighbor that flew both single seat f-15’s and the strike eagle.
Hi , Question for Cap. What happened to the Cortana with the attitude? I remember seeing some vids where Cortana was giving you attitude when you would ask for something. And what episodes were they?
Ah, nothing better than hearing "hello valued viewers" early on a Saturday morning. Got my mug of Jamaican Blue Mountain, (best coffee on the planet) 10" of snow and 30+ MPH winds howling. Got my feet in an electric foot warmer and absolutely nothing to do today. Life is good
you got a like from me, sipping on a cup JBM oneself
At least there are others who enjoy this as much as I do…lol!
@@andrewmitchell402 Ah, an enlightened soul! Its a bit pricey, but damn if it's not the best.
@@valuedhumanoid6574ahhh I see you’re a man of culture as well.
Got a breezy warm 71 today. Keep that snow friend!
Aaaacutally...
...the SR-71 used a fuel specification called JP-7. It was a fuel designed to have a very low boiling point, which means that it does not evaporate despite the low pressure regime the SR-71 used to fly in and despite the tempertures of the aircraft and inside the tanks once the aircraft had been at speed for a while. It wasn´t a mixture of two components however, but I have an idea, where this idea comes from: in order to ignite this special type of fuel, a spark plug was not strong enough. This made for an acceptable risk when the fuel leaked from a cold plane, but the engineers at Lockheed had to use some other means of inition: triethylborane (TEB for short), a compound that spontaneously ignites when it comes into contact with air. This stuff was used to ignite the fuel on engine startup as when as for each time the afterburners were lit. Since the tanks for the TEB were rather small, this was the actual limiting factor for the range of the blackbirds: the number of times, the afterburners could be relit, was limited to ~20 per engine.
Another interesting additive to the fuel was a compound containing caesium (the non radiactive type, but still: a heavy metal with negative effects on organisms). This was used to recude the radar reflection of the huge flame beind the aircraft: the air in the afterburner was so hot, it got ionized and the ions were a magnificent radar reflector, which made some of the low observabilty aspects of the blackbird rather pointless. The additon fof caesium to the fuel mitigated the effect to a certain amount.
JP-7 has high boiling point/low volatility/high ignition point - details at Wikipedia
In the mid-80s, I saw an SR-71 take off from Andersen and it seemed to go vertical upon leaving the ground
@@matthewkern3619 "Holes burned in the runway"
Literally? Sounds like bs
@@honeyforce996 A jet on full burner can easily destroy an airfield, especially if its comercial and not a AF built for High thrust jets doing high AOA rotations
@@matthewkern3619 Ty, will keep my ears open. It's hard to imagine the power/physics involved with numbers like >30,000lbs thrust
SR71's would typically take off with an extremely light fuel load. Just enough to get to mid altitude and get to a tanker. That's where they pick up the full mission load.
They did this because they lost a few planes at takeoff in the early days.
@@matthewkern3619 It would not burn holes in the runway unless it was somehow magically floating upright right above the runway. The heat and force from the engines is dissipated a few dozen feet away from the plane for the most part.
1:09 “Best interceptor ever built” Debatable… the YF-23 was _slightly_ less maneuverable than the YF-22, but IIRC it was faster, stealthier, had a higher service ceiling, and perhaps most relevant to this competition (well, aside from speed) it had a much longer range than the YF-22.
I think we should’ve built them both.
Even the maneuverability is debatable due to how much younger the yf-23 program was compared to the yf-22
It was a supermenuverable aircraft even without thrust vectoring
Yes The AIM-260 is built to integrate with The Raptor big part of both programs-- The AIM-260 JATM and The "Super Raptor" the ongoing upgrading of The F-22 through NGAD being used as a stop gap solution so to speak😁✌
Public available information speed for The AIM-260 JATM is Mach 5 c'mon Cap lol it's one of the first things that pops up when you search AIM-260!😅
@@Anarchy_420 that might not be supported by enough data to allow them to put in such an update.
I feel like they know what they’re doing.
Hey Cap. Re: AIM-260 and Raptor. Yes, the AIM-260 is designed to fit inside the Raptor and F-35 bays, as the predicted 260 design will be larger in circumference (and therefore require more width within the bays compared to AIM-120D), but the length is to remain essentially the same due to the limitations of the bay designs. As it is designed to fit in the F-35 and the F-22 bays are larger than F-35. For any future US weapon, one must consider their ultimate procurement targets: the USAF is ~1,763 A-variant airframes, and 350x B and 350x C variant airframes for the USMC and USN on top of that.
If you take all of the USAF/USN/USMC fighter/air-superiority/fighter-attack aircraft across services, the F-35 currently accounts for approximately 19% of the force. If you were to freeze the total number of F-16/F-18/F-15/F-22 numbers at current levels (not reducing them as they're retired for the incoming F-35 models), then the F-35 at 100% procurement goals would hit approximately 50% of the entire force. However, in reality, the number of F-16 (replaced by F-35A in the USAF) and F-18C/D models (replaced by F-35B/C in the USMC) will result in the proportion of F-35s growing significantly over the next decade, probably approaching ~75% of the total airframes within the US inventory. So, if the AIM-260 didn't fit in the stealth models, it would be of extremely limited value.
This is also why one of the heavily rumored missiles in-development by the US is the "Peregrine" radar-guided missiles, with the design target being 50% the size of the AIM-120D, yet actually outperforming the 120D in range and speed. The goal of the project is to literally double the F-35 loadout with AIM-120D equivalent capability.
If Peregrine is successful, I will reassess my long standing opinion on the F-35 as a fighter. For well over a decade I've complained to people (who couldn't care less) about its futility as an F-16\F-18 replacement. Having a useful weapons loadout is a game changer.
That does nothing for the disaster that is the F-35 procurement/production nonsense.. and many, many airplanes already built that'll never be combat worthy because they were made before things were finalized. $21 billion dollars worth iirc. That doesn't scratch the surface of the programs problems.
@@ur_quainmaster7901 While F-35 wasn't an absolute slam dunk of a program, I feel you may be a bit overcritical of it (not an insult, I'm saying this in a friendly manner).
1. Huge costs and going over-budget projections received a lot of attention during the first several years before and after the jets started being delivered. However, what's often lost in the overall conversation is just how much they've gone down in price as they got better at manufacturing them and as sales came in from many countries. Per a recent article, 20 Eurofighters were just sold to Spain for an average of $107.5m. Per an article on 11/18, the last contract on record averaged $78m per F-35A, although the article noted that cost will be riding due to more recent COVID-19/supply chain issues globally. But we're not talking about an increase back up to $100m or anything like that.
2. Speaking of sales, the F-35 is now one of the most successful export programs in US/NATO history. The F-16 is still the most popular military jet in the skies internationally with the US having about 900 of them in active service alone (and more in reserve), the F-35 may ultimately get pretty close as the F-16 retires. Per Wiki right now: export sales to 13 countries (one sale denied to Turkey) for a total of 615 airframes (on top of the US's planned 2,468). For comparison, about 4,500 F-16s have been delivered to 26 countries over the past four decades.
3. Besides the sales and the cost, many of the F-35s features simply remain classified from the public. Most of the capabilities involve data links, electronic warfare, radar/sensors, and stealth. This contrasts with the more apparent features like the F-16’s turn rate, the F-15 air/ground strike capability, the F-22 Raptor’s amazing at the surface level showing off its speed and agility, and the EU 4th-gen fighters also showing off some great speed and agility of their own (like the Eurofighter). Meanwhile, the F-35 is like the smart quiet kid in the corner of the room who gets the work down and scores an A consistently without drawing attention (until he/she flies into the back of a supercarrier and sinks their plane). Granted, no person without classified info really knows how good the jet is, but every little indication we have from the smirk of pilots when they talk about the jet, to the confidence US military leadership has in its future performance, and the fact so many countries are buying it in bundles (the Eurofighter only has about 30 airframes sold to countries outside of the development partnership countries, who have ordered a bit less than 600 airframes).
Overall, I think the F-35 will turn out to be a real difference maker, especially when it ends up flying with the unmanned solutions that will be joining it (stealthy unmanned fighters/missile carriers/ISR for data link), the 4th-gen missile trucks who should be able to lob missiles in without getting in danger of enemy missile range, the B-21 Raider infiltrating air space adding to the data link/ISR capability of everyone in the air, and the NGAD/FA-XX programs developing 6th gen long-range fighter/attack jets that should have a bay full of missiles in their belly.
Thanks
@@ur_quainmaster7901 I think the early versions get overhauled to the new standards, they should all end up able to go fight.
the blackbird did leak fuel because it didn't have sealing tanks but the reason they refueled after take off was to make sure the tanks were completely filled without any combustible air in them. As the plane used fuel the space was taken up by nitrogen gas. Without this the plane was limited to mach 2.6. During a mach 3 cruise the JP7 temp increased to 300C which wasn't good if there was oxygen about.
I was actually about to come here to mention this. While I seem to remember reading that it evidently was possible to prep and fill the tanks before takeoff while purging standard atmospheric air (pretty much any air with oxygen in it) from them, it was a time-consuming process and also often wasn't done due to the runways being too short, the landing gear potentially failing due to the excess weight and the overall poor performance of the aircraft at low speed. But the fuel leaks themselves were not severe enough to require refueling. The refueling, as you mentioned, was due to a matter of safety
It leaked fuel because the skin of the aircraft _was_ the fuel tanks and maintaining the seals was deemed too maintenance intensive.
The JP7 was rather thick at room temp. and was used as hydraulic fluid as well as the skin coolant before going to the engines. It wouldn't ignite below about 300c for safety reasons. The speed limit of 3.1M was to prevent cooking off parts of the air-frame, the engines could push it significantly faster. (The crew doing BDA after the Libyan raid overflew all those SAM sites that activated when the bombers went through, took the pictures, and opened the throttles out into the Med. [They only admit to seeing Mach numbers that they had never seen before.] thereby outrunning the SAMs.)
The ones I watched taking off from Kadena cleared architecture and nature before leaning back onto their engines and climbing to meet up with the KC-135 that took off a half-hour earlier.
EVERYTHING about the air-frame expanded at cruise - engine parts included.
The F-22’s top speed is not limited by its engines but the intakes. These are set to limit the top speed to Mach 2.2 to prevent damage to the stealth coating. But the US have developed a New Stealth ceramic coating that can with stand a temp of 650 C and is better at blocking radar return.
Very interesting, I wonder how much more speed vs efficiency they can 'coax out' now?
Pax
@@conmcgrath7174 none. The intakes are fixed, so the engines will be damaged above that speed.
@@brianwright9514 You did read Michael Ernst's comment, right? So did I and I took his two statements to imply that the engines are potentially faster and the limit was the durability of the stealth coating? He might be wrong but he seems very clear that the engines are (were) limited by the stealth coating and there has now been an improvement in same?
I don't claim to be an expert, just applying straight logic, pretty sure it's a complicated subject but if I'm presented with a scenario' that this is the limiting factor for the engines and it has just been improved', it seems logical therefore that more performance can be gained?
Don't tell me the intakes 'are fixed', what are they fixed at and why if they could be better?
Sorry mate, I don't mean to sound 'shitty', I understand how little I know and I do understand that mach 2.2 is almost UNREAL except after a long climb to high altitude. Thanks for the reply.
Pax
@@conmcgrath7174 Older aircraft had variable geometry intakes that allowed them to operate at very high speeds while still maintaining proper intake airflow and preventing the shock from entering the engines. F-22 has a fixed geometry intake, which was designed to allow the aircraft to operate at very high speeds without having the maintenance and weight of variable geometry intakes, however they are not capable of the same speeds as variable intakes. This was an acceptable trade-off since Mach 2+ operation is almost never required and the RAM would burn off anyway.
@@brianwright9514 Cheers matey.
Hey Cap here are a few facts for you regarding the SR-71, did you know that the engineers building the plane at Lockheed were not allowed to use chrome-plated tools? Tiny fragments of chrome would come off and during repeated heating and cooling cycles it would rapidly cause dissimilar metal corrosion and break the components. Anyone found using chrome plated tools once they had been banned were dismissed. Did you know that the chap who designed the shock inlets was born to a British father and French mother? Ben Rich also went on to take over from the legendary Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson and championed the F-117 Nighthawk. In fact his little 'party' trick to show people how small the RCS of the F-117 was, was to roll a marble down a table at them and say 'it is as small as that'. Apparently he was told to stop! While the SR-71 never flew over the USSR it repeatedly flew over Vietnam during that war and while it was shot at it never got shot down.
The reason for the SR-71 never flying over Russia wasn't just down to Gary Powers being shot down. Both the US and the UK had been flying over the USSR many times and the Soviets had rightly become very pissed off at this. Anyway this is a whole other story.
Thanks Tinder
About the SR-71 leaking fuel cap; it was also a checklist item to measure how many drops per period of time would leak out of each section
Wow!
The timer was started at so much time before the time for engine start and it was measured in drops per minute.
They had to make it like that at top speed the metal heats up an expands so they had to make it with loose tolerances so at speed it would tighten up an stop leaking
Violet: (casually) "I'm at 80000."
I love the Blackbird.
Flying in space is the best part
@@jacobchandler2083 still a lot below "space"
The F22 Raptor speed is limited to 2.25 so it doesn't burn its stealth coating off. The paint on the f22 is fundamentally different than the f35. The F35 is limited to Mach 1.6, so it doesn't burn its coating off. Keep up the great work!!
Raptor is speed limited by the heat tolerances of the canopy.
F-35 maxes out at Mach 1.6-ish, but that's NBD. An F-18 or F-16 that's carrying drop tanks, missiles, bombs, targeting pods, etc. struggle to make it past Mach 1. Only way a Viper can hit Mach 2.2 is if it's totally clean, but even then that's going to be a short run because it'll run out of gas pretty quickly.
38:29 "Who is firing a PL-10?"
🤣 What!??! That came out of nowhere!!!
Aww man that was a good laugh. Great video guys!!
The fuel is not only the source of energy but is also used in the engine hydraulic system. During high Mach flight, the fuel is also a heat sink for the various aircraft and engine accessories which would otherwise overheat at the high temperatures encountered.
Do some cool b-21 stuff
Please!
Is it in the game already?
@@bearcatracing007 no probably not but I hope they can just reskin the B-2 and lower its cross-section
Actually it is technically a RAM type engine, the cone provides the majority of the compression at Mach 3. The bypass valves directly to the afterburner section completes the cycle for a RAM jet.
They kinda showed that.
Also it is still mixed.
allegedly they conducted test on the aim-260 JATM, on the F-22, last september
As a kid growing up in Sacramento, California, USA, I watched SR71s flying overhead after launch from Beale AFB, not to mention the B52s launched from SAC base Mather AFB. Wonder why I joined as an adult, hmmmm. I also saw the first harrier jet takeoff from an airshow at Moffat field, USA early 70's. I was amazed at its vertical takeoff, magic!
Thank you for all you and your team do
Some Blackbird facts.....
The SR71 family used a special fluid (Triethylborane) to actually light the JP7, and carried only about a dozen shots of it on each flight .. so if an engine had an unstart ( a stall of airflow through the engine due to supersonic air and compression) they only had so many chances to re-ignite. Also if an engine had an unstart, it was often necessary to unstart the other engine on purpose because of the asymmetric issue, and the aircraft has a terrible glide ratio ..... so it must of been an experience.
Further to that some parts of the edges of the airframe skin were actually a composite plastic, which helped reduce the radar cross section..... and the specially made camera window was of quartz , first time it was ever done, normal type glass would distort at the temperatures (400-800°F) the airframe experienced making photography impossible and it was ultrasonically fused to the titanium frame as no glue would hold it in.....
Finally the tanks were never full on take off for several reasons, only one of which was the leaking issue.... another was that the tires could fail on the take off roll if the plane was fully loaded!
The plane and to zoom up supersonic on takeoff just to close up the fuel tank leaks, then top off with air refuel before going on mission. Not exactly a great virtue for a scramble
@@egberthigglewonk4520 and they used specifically designated tankers as no other plane used JP7. The tankers had to fly at almost full speed, while the SR71 was only just a little above minimum while refueling!
@@egberthigglewonk4520as shown in a scramble situation even the standard 50% take off fuel load provided for greater range than a fighter with drop tanks, so entirely a non-issue. And if a longer range intercept was required then all interceptor types would require in-flight refueling, so no difference there. Granted, the F-12 would take longer to fuel up, but its higher speed of Mach 3.2 vs Mach 2.2 for the F-22 would more than make up for that, meaning in all cases the F-12 would be the fastest interceptor with the greatest effective range.
@@msytdc1577 but that only works IF you have a tanker already on station. If not your mach3 interceptor has to wait for the tankers to lumber into position before they can scramble!
@@Decrepit_biker I don't think you got the point at all. An F-12 interceptor with half a fuel load and no tanker can take off and fly to an intercept target both faster and father away than can an F-15 or F-22 that is both fully fueled and carrying drop tanks as well.
The F-15 pictured has conformal fuel tanks, it doesn't need to have two additional fuel tanks and should hit at least Mach 1.8 to Mach 2 with missiles and conformal tanks. You should have punched off the tanks as soon as you got up to altitude. Also, IRL the targeting and LANTRIN pods could be removed before the mission. If the Eagle has the right engines, she can super cruise, just like the test aircraft did in the 90"s.
The blackbird could only take off with 6000 lbs of fuel due to undersized landing gear. It had to immediately A/A refuel after takeoff.
"Recently promoted to Violet Wiolet". I love these moments.
I believe the SR71 used a special fuel (JP5???) which also meant it had its own fleet of bespoke AR Tankers! imagine the logistics of that!
There were >26,000 successful in-flight refuelings. Though, I guess they were not as 'risky' as commonly believed.
That's from a SpyCast podcast from 2016, titled, "Higher, Faster, Stealthier: An Interview with SR-71 Pilot Buz Carpenter" which I think is absolutely worth a listen. @the 32:00 mark they begin talking about refueling, and flight instruction. Still available on google podcasts, and apple podcasts.
In an hour you could film 100,000 square miles of earth.
Definitely not JP-5 ... that's a naval fuel. When I was on the Ike, we not only put it into Tomcats, it also went into destroyers.
Jp7
The name of the fuel is JP-7 BUTit was less flammable than diesel you could pour a 5 gallon bucket on a bonfire it would Extinguush it. The fuel was use as a heat sink and for it to be able to be lit it needed to be around 400+⁰ to light the afterburners a special chemical it reacted to was squirted into the combustion area its name was Triethyl Borane and it started the engines and started the afterburners!!! Gonna try DCS I play WAR THUNDER now but I have been hankering to get on DCS for quite some time now
The YF12A never took off with full fuel load and immediately went for tanker fuel . However, the climb rate was tremendous despite its weaker ( for the time) engines. Need to add that time to sim. Technically, and the real Habu pilots will confirm, that the top speed of Mach 3.3 was limited by temperature and not power. In other words,it would go faster if not for temps.
>What I assume is America's premium fourth gen interceptor, the F-15
I would argue that title belongs to the F-14D Super Tomcat, but I'm a forgiving valued viewer, and I'll let this one slide... because I love ya.
Hell yeah Cap you used my idea!!😁👍👍
Lol Yo Cap The F-15EX is 4+ gen fighter ;) I thought The New Grinnelli F-22 was Thrust Vectoring..?? Please use Blue tinted smoke for U.S. missiles!🙏
Please keep in mind The F-15EX is faster and more fuel efficient than The F-15C and F-15E! Among other improvements ;)
Watching Dryden NASA from Edwards Air Force Base fly their SR at the airshows growing up just made my year.
Saw all the greats at the Dayton International Air Show in the late eighties early nineties. F-104, F-4, A-7, A-4, F-15, T-38, F-14, A-6, B-52, B-1, Harrier, F-18, P-3, Vulcan, A-10, Spitfire, Mustang, Warhawk and the SR-71 twice, including when it was retired into the museum here. It actually landed on the runway directly adjacent to the museum complex-which was the only time I’ve seen it done.
Never got to see a Blackbird at an airshow, but seen one at the Evergreen Air Museum. I think the best plane I seen at an airshow was the B-1B.
You can still see it through the Windows at Evergreen... I see it each time I drive past McMinnville. For a while they had it under the wing of the Spruce Goose, like some sort of AIM-SR71.
I saw a B- at the Hillsboro Air Show around 1990-ish ... it did a wingstand/pivot over the field and I've never heard anything so loud.
Loved the info about the SR-71 (titanium, engine and fuel) - super interesting! Great knowledge guys 😃
Got a Blackbird living just a few blocks from my house - and on campus at the college I work at. Beautiful bird.
Air refueling the SR-17 was the most difficult thing I ever did in an airplane! At the end of the track you were burning as much as you were taking from the tanker. A common misconception is that the SR took off with a low fuel load because of leaking. The truth was the SR only leaked about 50 gal from the time it was refueled on the ground until takeoff. The reason the SR took off with a low fuel load was for improved takeoff or abort distance called balanced field length. If you lost an engine and you were too heavy you had no choice but to take off because you could not stop in the remaining runway. The takeoff fuel load was tailored to make the distance you could stop or takeoff after loosing an engine the same. (simplified). Also the fuel was not binary but did require TEB (Triethylborane) to start. When going through check out, to demonstration of how safe JP-7 was, an instructor threw a lit match into a pan of JP-7... the match went out. The ducts on the side of the engine are called "bypass ducts" The tip of the "Spike" (cones that move in and out in the intake) was titanium and was very sharp. It's main job was to insure a shockwave formed and the cone moved to capture the shockwave in the intake.
The reason for the high temp fuel was because of the skin temp ranged from 400-600 degrees F, and the fuel tanks were the skin of the aircraft. The fuel was also used as a heat sink. And there were only 32 SR-71s built, 12 of which were lost to accidents. Oh, another thing, they created an additive that was burned in the afterburners that would make the exhaust plume radar absorbent. Also, while it did have a variety of cameras, the primary method of reconnaissance was the ASAR, a synthetic aperture array radar That seriously put all optical systems to shame!
So a big part of the reason they took off at 50% fuel or less was as much to cut weight and help with climb and acceleration too. Also jp7 has a really high flash/ignition temp. The fuel had to operate in environments that might ignite normal jet fuel before it got to the engine. Not good. They had the second chemical on board to actually ignite the fuel when they mixed to get it burning. They also used the fuel to cool various parts of the plane and engines kind of like a rocket.
I wonder if theres a way to model in a 'fractional orbital bombardment system' into DCS, something that moves through the map at 100,000 feet and travels at mach 10+
I used to work on the BB when they brought it out of retirement for Desert Storm. When they re-retired it, I believe mine ended up in the Evergreen Museum in Oregon. Fantastic aircraft, but not very crew chief friendly. Had to air-start it every time, leaked like a sieve when cooling, had to assist the pilot into the aircraft (SR-71 and U-2/TR-1 pilots wear a spacesuit), and required several days of maintenance after each sortie. Beautiful and fast, but a PITA. When he showed pics of the J58, I literally shuttered at the thought of working on that again.
I was there too in the eighties at mildenhall. I was a crew chief on the victor k2 tanker at Mariam at the time
* marham
Now this is a Whatif worthy of the Reapers!
Everyone, help me start the "Drop the Y" petition, we shall make the YF-12 the F-12 together.
What it is that makes the engine more efficient at higher altitudes is exhaust velocity. If you ever play with the rocket equation, you'll note that the exhaust velocity has a _huge_ impact on the rocket's performance across the board. In airbreathing engines, air density affects exhaust velocity because more dense air has higher drag whilst inside the engine. Ramjets especially have very few moving parts, which is less drag yet again, which boosts the exhaust velocity on top of the effect from thinner air. That's also why scramjets are more efficient (for a given value of the word "efficient") than ramjets: the air never goes below supersonic speed through a scramjet, allowing the engine to produce higher exhaust velocities, at least relative to the airframe.
The reason the bypass tubes on the stripped-down museum engines help with efficiencies is, yet again, exhaust velocities. The fresh air going around the compressor doesn't need to be slowed as much as the air going through the compressor. That fresh air also contains much higher oxygen densities, which in turn allows more fuel to burn more efficiently in the afterburner, which makes the exhaust hotter, which increases exhaust velocity yet again. On top of the increased speed from not going through the compressor, of course.
I think. I could be full of hot air, but it makes sense to me.
The Official Simba Fan Club maintains our people's hero is always authorized a pass for his profession. Bless him. Great video cap!
FYI people born in Guam are American citizens as well as citizens of Guam
I think the fact that the blackbirds had less than half their fuel for this test might compromise the results when it comes to its viability at bomber intercept, or anything else requiring rapid deployment. While the f 15 and 22 were pushed close to their fuel limit without requiring mid air refueling to return, i feel like reducing the blackbird's fuel (while increasing its intercept speed) takes away the considerable range increase it has along with the intercept taking place within a range where the f15 and 22 could return. Assuming the bombers were detected at long enough range, the blackbird could intercept at a considerably greater distance than the others if it was fully fueled, or at least more fueled than in the test. It's also hard to think of why a high speed long range interceptor would be kept on rapid response duty with less than half its fuel, making it have similar distance to other interceptors, and negating the advantage in round-trip intercept range. I am aware that blackbirds had a habit of constantly sweating out fuel whenever it was fueled on the ground (which is probably a reason not to use it as an interceptor) but this is all hypothetical anyway.
Raptor can carry AIM-260 under the Raptor Agile Capability Release (RACR) update program but had to be upgraded to have Link-16, it started receiving the hardware in 2019 but the phase 1 software implementation allowing the aircraft to talk to the missile using Link-16 didn't occur until Autumn 2021, it needs the phase 2 software update to communicate with the missile after launch rather than just point and shoot and provide advanced targeting data, RACR phase 2 started flight testing in April 2021 and wasnt due to be rolled out until the end of 2022. There is a further phase 3 of RACR due in 2023 which allows network sharing targeting data with US allies and upgrades the Raptor with Passive infrared detection and tracking (IRST) via the addition of two fixed underwing pods however it wont receive the full visual spectrum capability of the F-35's EOTS.
thx
My brother a retired USAF Master Sargent flat out said I can confirm the Aurora does exist but it will never be declassified for 50 years. He told us that in 1992 after spending 6 months TDY in Vegas but not being allowed to tell us where he was. He would call us from a Vegas area phone number but all his mail was routed to an fpo or Foreign exchange to be examined first but no customs declaration needed unlike his packages during Desert Shield/Storm.
back in 1997 we went on a California, Nevada, Arizona road trip and on the way to LA we went into Edwards AFB....we saw 3 fuelled SR71's in a hanger (with their drip trays).
Imagine a yf-12 with modern anti radar skin coatings like what they put on modern stealth fighters or EWS/SEAD fighters
Fuckin scary missile truck
Sr71 engine grew 6 inches when hot!
Capt, Three of my grandkids are here, they have had pizza, cheese straws, jam doughnuts, copious sweets, fizzy pop and crisps.
I am a broken man atm, I need your content to sooth me.
The newest version of "what if Spartacus had a Piper Cub". Thanks, valued provider.
I found a link from a sundries post on August 13 2022 (I posted it but it got deleted). Essentially the F-22 will get them but needs to be upgraded and it will be the most expensive upgrade to any plane ever
5:08 but it couldn't take off with a full fuel load and weapons because it leaks until the skin of the aircraft heated up to like 200C. So, it had to take off with half fuel and then immediately refill from a tanker that was speically modified to take jp-7. So, no without a tanker you do not have enough fuel to finish the mission and if you run it half full you would barely make it to crusing altitude.
35:28 Sorry boys, but i'm here to tell you Damp and Cap are wrong on this one. How do i know? boxing day 2016, having xmas dinner (don't ask), I look out the patio windows in my parents house in gloucester, UK, to see a contrail that looked like donuts on a rope. I pointed it out for every else to see (so like 6 other pepole). Suddenly my dad disappears. He's gone for like 10 minutes. He comes back and won't answer questions on where he went (no one could find him in the house). Now, at the time, for reasons i can not go into, i had very high clearance in the UK. My dad at the time had highest possible clearance in the US, UK and france. So later that day, when noone else was around I asked him where he went. Turns out the contrail was made an aurora, that flew straight over my parents house at angels 20 as a xmas gift from one of my dads US colleagues. Fun fact: the engine(s) sound like a doodlebug but much quieter. To the point where its barely audiable and i was the only person that could hear it. Also, as a note, because of where my parents live, over the years (should i admit it's 4 decades worth of years?) i have seen that contrail like 5 times, but the most recent was the only time i had other witnesses. every previous time it was east of gloucester in the general direction of bristol. I can't confirm it, but i have a suspicion that where my parents live is on a general transit path for that plane. Maybe because an hour west is brize norton, fairford is not too far away (had a b-2 basically skim the roof the house, at like 10pm, mid 90's-ish on approach to fairford). So, aroura is real. You can dimiss me if you want but i have seen it with my own eyes and i wasn't alone when it happened and i have had confirmation from people that have had physical contact with it.
I once took a tour of Edwards Air Force base and got to see an SR71 parked inside a hangar. Very sexy beast. I have a picture of it from it's nose probe looking down it's body. Frickin awesome!
I don't know how often military aircraft use bags and just drops them, but if it's feasible, make bags that are drone's. You release them and the fly back to base.
They can call them gass babies.
If i remember right the frist two planes that are going to get AIM-260 will be F-22A and F/A-18E/F and then if i remember correct next will be F-15EX and F-35A/B/C and possibly B-21.
Prediction at the Four Minute mark... assuming it's one plane being sent up per test, I predict F-22 first, F-15 second, with the YF-12A coming in last. Reason: Only 3 missiles, probably no gun, and even if it does have a gun that thing will have terrible maneuverability.
If there's multiple planes sent up per test, then the YF-12A will come in first, F-22 second, F-15 last. YF-12A gets in range first, launches first, kills the enemy first, goes home first, hits the bar first and gets the girl first.
In 1987 I was in Civil air patrol and went on a flight in a KC-135 and got to sit in the refuler bay when a SR-71 tanked up ofer eastern Washington state. Good times.
"Never put a German in a Raptor"....or a Starfighter.....GF's father (USAF) flew the F-104 and he laments to this day (he's 90) on how many German's died in that airplane. He's quite proud of his "Mach 2 Club" plaque.
And speaking of SR-71 airshows. Way back in the day, about '85 or so, I rode my bike to Paine Field (Everett Washington, where the widebody Boeing plant is) on Friday for the press day for the airshow put on by (kinda forget...the local Rotary? as a fundraiser) and they had the SR-71 fly in. I recall it coming in over the Boeing factory from the north....all you could see was the landing light.....then you could see the fuselage....then the engines....so 3 closely spaced black dots. Then the plume of smoke from the engines. When it flew by, it turned right (west) and as it did, lit off the afterburners. My goodness.....spectacular for a teenage airplane nut.
In re the "ramp" or cone "preconditioning" the air - what you're thinking of is a variable geometry inlet. The other day, you had a vid with the F-16 going Mach 2...which is utter bullshit-ish (since by the time it gets to that speed, it'll more or less be out of fuel). With the fixed inlet, it'll develop such a strong normal shock in the inlet, there will be a lot of pressure loss on the inlet air going to the engine. Recall why a diesel is more efficient than a gas engine - it's all about compression. Ditto airplane engines. More compression (aka better pressure recovery in the inlet) = more power per unit of fuel. The beauty of a variable inlet (cone on the SR, ramp on something like a F15 or 14) is that the one or series of oblique shocks from the ramp or cone plus a weak normal shock at the inlet lip on those inlets result in a lower pressure loss vs a single strong normal shock at the inlet lip of a fixed inlet like the F-16. More pressure recovery = more thrust.
Hello, just found this channel last week and I really enjoy your content. I would like to suggest a simulation of a U.S. air strike on Cuba during the missile crisis, as was being considered at the time. Keep up the good work GR!
YF-12 is interesting, buy why not modernized F-106?
Keep in mind that the whole family based on the A-12 had fuel leakage on the ground, so they took off with a light fuel load and immediately refueled in the air. The higher speed would cause the material to expand, eliminating the fuel leakage above Mach .7 or so
Edit: Lol they mention this towards the end, my bad I commented before finishing the video
you should try doing WWII interceptors
Surely - practically/realistically - the YF-12A would need to decelerate to deploy weapons, else Mach 3+ airflow would
a: rip the hatch doors off
b: cause so much turbulent airflow around the bay that flight / attitude would be dangerously compromised
...especially considering that the other aircraft have reduced performance* when "loaded for bear" so to not have weapons ripped off midflight?
* as the lower speeds tend to be calculated constraints that "this stuff will rip off over Mach x"; they can likely still push through to the clean maximums, but dangerously or by writing off the aircraft.
36:58 space balls, my well educated friend
Giamanian? How about saving Chamorro lives, Capt. The Chamorro people are native to Guam.
After finding the PL-10 shot: "I'm not even mad; I'm just impressed"
I nearly shot coffee out of my nose while laughing after hearing that
I think the yf designation was largely used as a cover fir the sr designation. Johnson anniunced it, i think as a yf 11 at some point and that allowed flights to take place overtly. There were yfs, they had a slightly different nosecone forcthe radar.
The real SR-71 had a system using engine bleed air piped to the rudders, if one engine had a unstart as they called it, it would auto kick in rudders, pilots reported if it happen they could not tell which engine stalled untill they looked at the dials. Then it was a restart, throttle back then forward until the system gave a shot of TEB, (triethylaluminium-triethylborane) to relite the engine and afterburner.
Every time the sr71 flew the metal was retempred. It uses jp7 and they could fix the fuel tank, but it was to expensive. If you through jp7 on a fire, it will extinguish the fire.
FYI the fuel tank was the plane. It had no dedicated fuel storage. It leaked because at mach 3 the expansion of the metal would have caused the plane to disintegrate if it did not have gaps between the panels on the ground. The panels would have just pushed themselves off the plane
@@M3PH11 yes but they developed a way to stop the leaking
I was at the
Cleveland airshow in 1974 when the sr-71 did a fly-by.
I’ve been to Wyoming I went to Yellowstone for vacation this past July.
The limiting factor for the speed of the f22 isn't the Engines, it's the stealth coating. The plane's speed is limited because any faster and you burn the stealth costing off.
We have an SR71 at hill afb’s air museum it’s badass. I also saw it fly when they brought it in.
It's always fun to see the SR-71 / YA-12 being flown.
Especially when it has no need for in-flight refuelling.
Never got too see asr71 flying but we have one at hilll Air Force base i visit and love ❤️
Very interesting video! It would be fascinating to me if you could do the same scenario using F-106s using their AIM-4 Falcon series missiles and F-4Es using their AIM-7 Sparrow series missiles against the same in-coming bombers
20:41 "we need a fuel burn rate meter". If only the engine instruments included a measurement of the rate that fuel is flowing to each engine. It could be called "fuel flow" and abbreviated as FF on the MFD....
I saw Blackbirds take off from Newark in 1990 and 1991 during the first Gulf War. Cover of night they would take off and go near vertical and disappear in seconds. Awe inspiring sight.
The F-12 would've been was a totally impractical interceptor. The pilot had to breathe pure oxygen for an hour and wear a pressure suit, so he'd just have to sit alert in that thing. Meanwhile, the airplane would be leaking fuel all over the tarmac. Then, it'd only be able to take off with a half full fuel tank. It also had these massively powerful start carts that would have to be sitting at idle 24/7, and you'd have to keep the hydraulic fluid pre-heated.
Impressive! I saw a 71 coming into Ramstein in the mid/late 80s
all are air to air refuel capable so no need to calculate a full return trip. Another factor that if you had to sacrifice one or two planes or your whole base, most commanders would choose the former.
Is the "Wow" clip the new GR sponsor?
yup
Hi, I got a video idea :)
I would like to see a race between all of the jet trainers in game. (L-39C vs L-39ZA vs MB-339 vs C-101EB vs C-101CC) + any modded subsonic jet trainer if there are any.
The J-58 is a Mach 2.2 engine. All the rest of the thrust is produced by the cone. The engineering in the cone itself is a great feat. We've accomplished more back then than we've done since. Why? Because the people back then did their job. They made it so the people today wouldn't have to live through the world they did.
Then again, when the options are "kill the enemy bombers" and "everyone you know and love dies in a nuclear fireball," fuel for RTB is a luxury expense.
Go, go, Grim Reapers, splat the bombers!
F-14 tomcat could go that 2.4 with stores
The fuel was JP-5 by the way, not JP-8. I've never heard of JP-7 which was mentioned. I noticed they were doing Mach 3+ at only FL 650 instead of FL 850. That is an enormous fuel expense.
Also, I noticed why he they all had so much trouble climbing and getting up to speed. They need to do their research on the climb profile of a SR-71. They don't just accelerate and climb all the way to cruising altitude. They used a "stair step" method. They would get to around FL 350, level off and build up speed before climbing again. Then they would do the same thing at FL 550, FL 700, FL 800, and finally FL 850. Do that, and you get to 85,000 ft and Mach 3+ much faster, without burning so much fuel.
"Target 2 is about to be jammed. Raspberry!"
Spaceballs.
As for the JP7, it was extremely safe, you couldn't even light it, you are thinking about the TEB (Triethylborane) that violently ignites with exposure to atmosphere, that they had to use to get the JP7 to ignite.
Raptor should fit Aim-260, but how many is another question. I might try an explain what's going on with Blackbird as, With altitude drag is reducing faster than power, and so excess power is increasing until the limits of the airframe are reached.
Oh, Cap, did you know there was another anned variant of the SR-71? It was being developed as a paper exercise in collaboration with a company based in Newcastle. They called it the YI-12 . . .
* planned
What about using conformal fuel tanks for f15's. I know they are out there but have no idea how common.
The f-15E is not a pure interceptor though. It’s a strike aircraft. Yes it can and is still good at air to air, however the plane was designed with ground strike in mind. It’s not going to be used in a intercept role though. This info comes from my neighbor that flew both single seat f-15’s and the strike eagle.
Nice Spaceballs joke there, Lonestar.
Why did you use Strike Eagles instead of regular eagles? I assume the CFTs produce less drag?
great video today you guys, you rock ❤❤
Next they'll have the YF-12 with variable cycle engines.
Hi , Question for Cap. What happened to the Cortana with the attitude? I remember seeing some vids where Cortana was giving you attitude when you would ask for something. And what episodes were they?
I have no idea but everyone gives me attitude so could be most of them TBH.
@@grimreapers I think he means the voice autopilot you used to use, not Kortana :)
@@grimreapers no noo it wasn't a teammate, it was your onboard computer. When you would ask something it would reply with sarcasm.
@@airflyerflyvids7875 He named his Voice Attack program Amy. Amy would give him attitude. Just look for the videos where Cap was flying the MiG-19.
@@WyvernFalken that's it! yes i knew it was something like that