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Why America needs a hypersonic SPY PLANE
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ต.ค. 2023
- With conflicts raging the world over and a renewed focus on competition between global powers, the United States may need to harken back to a Cold War approach to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance by fielding a new generation of supremely capable, and optimally high-speed, spy planes.
But in this era of reusable rockets and advanced spy satellites, one of the biggest challenges that such a program could face, both among lawmakers and the general public, is the pervasive belief that high-flying reconnaissance aircraft are a thing of the past.
So, let's discuss it.
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Citations:
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Haha I literally thought “what about satellites?” as soon as I saw the title
Well, that is the same reason they say we haven't gone to the moon since the supposed first time...
@@calangel The reason we haven't sent men back to the Moon is because there was no point and no widespread support for doing so. Plenty of unmanned probes have gone there in the years since.
Same lol.
@@calangelbro there were 6 missions that landed on the moon
@@Doug_Dimmadome as in people setting foot on the moon...
Me at tech school in 1998 listening to an instructor:
Instructor: “we have satellites that can see carbonation bubbles in a can of soda from space”.
Me 6 months later looking at images: “ah no, just no”!
*spends 3 hours staring at blurry ass image trying to tell if its a new aircraft or if its just a badly damaged one on some Iranian runway* "damn, that soda bubble satellite would really come in handy right about now"
Soda bubbles not so much , reading newspapers in 70s yes
@@Oldman1600nah.
Google earth doesn't use the "good" satellites.
Hubble uses a spy satellite's mirror, and it's still considered a breach of national security for Nasa to point Hubble at earth. Because exactly how good the satellites can see is still secret.
@@Oldman1600not even close
Alex’s opinions hold more weight than you’d think and in places you’re not even considering. He knows why he dropped this timely nugget of gold out to us. 🙏🏼
He barely know anything or refuses to say a lot if is not American technology.
Why has he never mentioned MQ28A Ghost Bat most advanced AI drone in the world on here.
Because is Australian built and not almighty USA.
Why has he never mentioned Australia and USA hypersonic tests leading to what USA has now.
HAWC scramjet missile is a collaboration of Australia and USA through SCIFIRE joint tests and old HIFIRE joint tests.
Australian company Hypersonixs just won a USA HYCAT DUI contract to build USA hypersonic vehicles. winning it over 63 other companies and i bet including Hermeus Darkhorse he keeps going on about.
Hypersonixs has world fastest scramjet at Mach 12 and reached Mach 10 in HIFIRE 2006
But he will not tell you as is not American made.
1st flight of Hypersonixs drone is next year. called Dart AE and have few other designs being built also.
@@nedkelly9688that’s because he can’t tell you about the absolute cutting edge stuff we have But hey 🤷♂️. good job on the ghost bat “golf clap”👏 👏👏👏👏👏👏😂😊
@@nedkelly9688 Wow, I can’t argue with you there. I too, would love to know more about these weapon platforms. American or not, especially the way he breaks it down. Maybe hes’ handcuffed my Sandbox? I don’t know and I’m not hear to make excuses for Alex. If there’s an American slant to his videos, please forgive my naivety as I am an American. And as you know, we Americans often fall into the trap of thinking we’re the center of the universe with the best military technology on the planet. I know this isn’t the case and can definitely understand your frustrations.
@@nedkelly9688 Australia: first one to deploy them. Great!
@@GuyFromSC Good to hear mate as all some of us want is the truth on tech and not lies and propaganda. i know other countries also help USA. i have been told Norwegian and German etc work in Skunkworks the most secretive USA military developer in the world.
Also a Australian has worked there also and has returned to Australia starting his own company.
Alex does not hide tech. he just does not research it well enough actually.
Him and i talked about Hypersonixs the Australian company building scramjets and drones and the drone the Australian company is building they partnered with Kratos to help build the drone but using the Australian scramjet.
Alex said yes Kratos is buying the scramjet engine to fit it's drone.
I was like noo it is Australian designed drone they designed years ago and is Australian scramjet. Kratos just helping.
Australia did not have a machine to manufacture the materials needed for the drone body to withstand the heat at the time.
Now Australia bought a furnace from Germany and seem to be doing it without Kratos now.
A few years ago there was a proposal to use small single use satellites launched within 48 hours. If I remember correctly rocket lab is on standby right now to test rapid launch capacity. While not equivalent capability it likely would help deal with some of the issues with satellite surveillance
In the 1960s they used to keep a rocket with a Corona satellite on 24hr alert in case of an unexpected failure or emergency that needed extra coverage. It would make a lot of sense to build a bunch of mid-sized satellites that could be kept on alert then launch at minutes notice on a solid propellant rocket like Minotaur (most regular launch vehicles can't be kept on standby like this). Putting them in very low orbit would give high quality imagery even from modest-sized optics and they'd still have an operating life of weeks or a few months. It would be like going back to how spy sats used to be launched and operated when they used film instead of electronic imagers - the last high-res KH-8 Gambit3 launched by the US was in 1984 and they routinely produced imagery with a resolution as good as today's best.
strap some cameras to the starlink system 100s of low orbiting sats cannot be destroyed without causing a bad time for everyone
There are like two or three of them that have got contracts for it.
there have been rumors circulating for years about a minuteman-compatible vehicle which would replace the nuclear warhead with a number of communication microsats, the idea being that an attack on the communications network could do just as much damage to the us as nukes could, but not for whatever reason elicit a nuclear response. Now, as far as if that vehicle would be supposed to have the ability to accelerate the microsats to a temporary LEO, if the microsats would do it themselves, or if a minuteman is capable of getting enough lateral velocity to do it on its own 🤷♂
@trolleriffic I can also see many issues with that....
The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs.
Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.
I saw a comment recently that the SR-71 skin temperature at Mach 3 was around 600 degC (and therefore quite a challenge to insulate the pilot from) but that a move up to say Mach 5 would raise this to an estimate 2000 degC. So, apart from that fact alone steering us towards drones, have we really solved the problem of such surface temperatures in a practical unmanned aircraft yet outside of missile technology?
I feel another video from you Sandboxx!
Leading "edge" temps were around 400-500C. But substantially less across the skin in general.
Basically heat from speed is often described as caused by 'drag' but I think it would be more precise to say it's caused by compression ...and... by forcing air to move aside at faster than the speed of sound, which air very much does not consent to. Now if you have a 45 degree wedge, you can move it at Mach 1.9999 and the air can move aside at mach 1, a speed air 'consents' to. But the very edge of your wedge... I mean it's not perfectly sharp under a microscope... so, there's a thin line down the edge where your wedge is making air do things it's not willing to do. So it turns into plasma, air's version of hulking out, and it's really hot.
Mach 5 or 6... adds more energy to the molecular violence at the edge, more and hotter plasma, but just as important, it also means that you need an increasingly needle-shaped craft to keep the violence limited to just the edge, and not the entire skin of the craft. But there's gonna be some convection heat transfer coming back from the edge. The plasma itself will tuck into the supersonic cone and lift away from the skin as soon as the skin isn't forcing air to move to the side at more than mach 1.
Anyway, that's why the canopy on the 71 has a titanium ridge splitting the wedge-shaped front of the canopy. That's really the part which applies heat to the pilot. It's a leading edge 'on' the cockpit. The Concorde had a novel alternative solution for letting the pilot see the runway, without having a leading edge on the cockpit. Concorde pilots couldn't cook their lunch by holding it up to the windshield. But now-days you don't necessarily need a pilot to be able to personally see the runway, first hand.
Missiles and such can go still faster, because they only have to do it "once", and you just design some allowances for the front melting away. Or something like the space shuttle, which is covered in tiles which need frequent replacement. Also why the shuttle isn't needle-shaped.. it hits the air at like mach 20+ so it would have to be so needle shaped there wouldn't be any room inside it. Instead, its whole frontal area is 'leading edge' and making plasma, at crazy temperatures ...but only for about a minute.
The temperature at mach 5 or 6 for the SR-72? Hard to say. Depends a lot on the geometry. I'd be willing to bet it's nose-tip, and wing leading edge extensions are "bolt on" parts, which can be replaced as needed though. Wouldn't have to be much, just the very edge. And they'd have to be a material which can stand up to an arc welder. Based on the angles on the 72, it looks like it's made for mach 6, maybe slightly over. Those chunky leading edge extensions... they're definitely made to cut through the plasma-laiden shockwave coming back from the nose. While the main body of the wing is just trying to be razor sharp and very swept back to avoid making much trouble.
Air rape requires lots of maths
@@kathrynck Wouldn't the temperature correlation with speed be dependent on altitude? Not just for air density, but cooling (albeit small).
Why does a hypersonic spy plane have to be manned?
@@jum5238 A bit ya. SR-71 flies in air that's around -70 ;)
Making the air "thinner" (by going higher) would help more though.
Air gets colder, up to like 18,000ft, then warms back up up to like 50,000 ft. then colder again up to like 85,000 ft, then it rapidly gets surprisingly hot above 100,000ft. 85-90,000ft is the coldest air.
The very very high atmosphere is amazingly hot. Molecules flung out of the sun bump into it. Most get pushed away by earth's magnetic field. But a solar flare (more incoming "stuff") or any fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field, can let a lot more ions in, and really fry the super high-up air. Plays utter havoc with long term global weather math.
__
Geometry is pretty important though. Push a billboard flat-on through the air at mach 1.1 and you can technically make plasma by forcing the air to move over mach 1 to get out of the way. And there's lower & higher energy states for plasma, how hot it is varies.
"In principal" anyway... There's some fuzzy math around the edges of the concept, cuz some air gets accelerated forward and travels with the aircraft, creating a bit of a blunt streamlined sheath... but you need a wind tunnel or a very fancy computer to predict exactly how that will work out. So you might need mach 1.2 or 1.3 or something to get plasma, due to a dome of compressed air in front of your billboard. But in principal, if your billboard had infinite structural integrity, you could get it shockingly hot at a very modest mach number.
In the early 90's, one day we all where outside at night. We looked up and there was this bright light in the sky at a very high altitude. Which went from one side of the sky to the other in just minutes. I've never seen something fly so fast.
For something to fly over Mach 5. One needs to be over 130,000 ft. Prime example, the X-15.
To understand the aircraft in the early 90's capable of hypersonic speeds. One first needs to go back to the development of the X-15 and Edwards Air Force Base.
To start the story of Groom Lake. One needs to start with Burbank, CA, Palmdale, CA, and Edwards Air Force Base,
You would also need to dive into Phantom Works (Boeing) and Skunk Works (Lockheed).
That slo-mo footage of the Raptor @3:40 never gets old. I feel like I can always rely on Alex to make sure it finds it's way into every video!
You’re not wrong 😂 but this time it was Hector! Great minds and all.
Great video, Alex Hollings! Your knowledge and experience is appreciated by me. God bless you 🙏 and go in peace ✌️
Alex Hollins, the SR-91 Aurora is the only answer for this problem. It's old tech but it's constantly being upgraded, so it's beter to reveal and use it than to use the TR series crafts as they are just way more extremely advanced than said Aurora.
Think a point to throw out is that theres already a real world issue that space is already pretty congested such that once every few months some satelites do indeed burn propellant to maintain a safe distance from other objects that may come close to colliding with them
Amazing how hard it is to convince the general public that a fast plane could be useful. Thank you for making it clear that spy sats are very useful but just one component of full situational awareness. There are also some undisclosed technologies that are likely to exist in some capacity such as stealth sats and manned subsonic stealth spy planes but obviously there are benefits to having a mix of manned/unmanned, supersonic/subsonic, stealth/non-stealth, and space/air technologies for intel gathering.
why would you ever have a manned subsonic stealth ISR asset? the unmanned versions already exist in the 170/180 series and i don't quite see how a man in the loop is needed for that particular mission.
@@jonathanpfeffer3716 I mean back in the 80s or possibly earlier when stealth was new but unmanned aircraft were unheard of. I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't make at least a limited run of manned subsonic stealth spy planes at some point. And if they did exist, then they might still be in service. Not saying they'd build a new manned stealth spy plane today but if they have them then it might make sense to still use them, similar to how U-2 still gets used. Odds of being detected in a dedicated stealth ISR aircraft are pretty low and having a pilot is helpful for very important missions where you need someone assessing and making decisions in situ and in realtime, plus it means less communications that can be detected and ruin the stealth. I think there are specialty missions where manned stealth ISR still makes sense to this day.
@@traincation5715 guess you’re entitled to your opinion there. don’t really see a niche for it, especially around the 80s, though. too many better alternatives.
Back when they said the shut down the SR71 because they said that satellites could do the job, I really didn't believe it. Looking back at October 1973 I was stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB. During that time we received 2 SRs, one stayed for 2 or 3 days and the other for about a week. As I have gotten older I've become willing to bet they were for the Yom Kippur War. I worked graveyards at that time, so I got to see one take off a couple of time, WHAT A SIGHT!!!
I’ve often thought, what about suborbital spaceplanes? There is so much to overcome for hypersonic atmospheric flight, why not build on what exists today technologically for reusable platforms like the X-30? Lots of research went into that SSTO system.
Could you do a video about upcoming (or returning) vehicle types?
Laser trucks/tanks seem to be coming soon, the anti air cannon is back from the grave (Gepard is back, SkyRanger will come soon), drone carrier trucks or tanks will add to howitzers, artillery and mortar launchers, drone command center tanks seem plausible as well, EW/jamming trucks will probably become a lot more common, and is the future of the MBT to become a nible sub 50 ton racing tank while IFVs get up to 50 tons as well?
Great update on the real world of intelligence.
An excellent presentation, Alex. Thanks !
Keep them coming Alex. Look forward to them.
Don't worry about placing a pilot in the things, and it becomes a lot easier to build them. Removes a LOT of parasitic weight, and removes several constraints on maneuverability.
IIRC, there was a novel written in Tom Clancy's universe where the Kessler effect was a major plot point.
The US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has selected Australian aerospace company Hypersonix Launch Systems to deliver hypersonic test vehicles.
The new award is part of Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities (HyCAT1) programme.
The DIU is executing this programme in collaboration with the US Air Force (USAF) and the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (USD R&E).
Hypersonix has been selected for this programme after a competitive process, in which a total of 63 international aerospace companies participated to offer their solutions for the DIU’s HyCAT project.
The first hypersonics solicitation under this programme was issued by DIU and USD R&E’s Director of Hypersonics and the Test Resource Management Center in September last year.
In response, Hypersonix proposed its ‘DART Additive Engineering (AE)’ vehicle, which is expected to have a modular payload bay of nearly 20lb.
AH is one of the best.
His passion is infectious
Another fantastic episode Alex!
I'd love to hear what you think RDEs (rotating detonation engines) will do for military capabilities. Will they have any surprising applications?
As usual exceptionally good coverage
One of the SR-71's great strengths was it's unpredictability compared to sats.
Actually, my first question was how do you know we don't have one?
I worked for a government defense company for a bit, and their unofficial motto was “yesterdays technology, tomorrow”
know the one lol
I'm literally just now hearing about a jet made in the 90s. Damn that thing is wild, gets me wondering wtf they have now
Alex, you raise a lot of important points but I'd argue that a subsonic stealth platform and/or a large constellation of smaller and cheaper recon sats would do the job better and possibly cheaper than a hypersonic aircraft and the reason is because of the myriad problems with very high speed aircraft, namely:
1. Hypersonic planes can't be stealthy. They might be hard to shoot down, but you still lose a huge advantage of the target not knowing they're being spied on because of their IR signature and radar-reflecting exhaust trail.
2. Manoeuvrability or lack thereof is a real killer. The SR-71 never flew over the USSR (or China, I think) and flights had to be very carefully planned to avoid entering Soviet airspace. This problem only gets far worse with a hypersonic plane because its turn radius is so enormous that performing a mission without intruding into someone's airspace where it would cause political fallout becomes almost impossible in many parts of the world.
3. High speed aircraft aren't easy or simple to operate or maintain. The SR-71 required its own fuel and tankers to be put in place in advance, and if the hypersonic aircraft requires cryofuel then it'll need entirely new infrastructure and tankers to be built. It took a minimum of 19 hours to prepare an SR-71 for flight once it was in-place at its operating base and it could only fly once a week due to damage sustained on each flight. A subsonic aircraft that required less prep work could easily be faster at getting on station than a hypersonic plane.
4. Spy sats can be stealthy - the Misty series demonstrated very good directional stealth and effectively disappeared from ground tracking.
5. Satellite sensors being relatively old is less of a problem than you think. Sensitivity, spectral range and noise of the latest sensors isn't dramatically better than what was being built 10 years ago.
6 Satellites don't need to fly overhead to obtain high-quality imaging. A satellite passing directly over Pittsburg could image anything from Indianapolis to New York and nobody on the ground would know what it was looking at. It's not practical to cover up everything any time a satellite gets within a few hundred miles because it happens too often.
7. Spying on allies and "friendly" nations is out of the question for a hypersonic aircraft, but satellites can do it routinely. There's also no issue with airspace violations or giving an enemy an opportunity or reason to target the recon platform - unlike shooting at an aircraft flying over your country, shooting at a satellite would be an unprovoked act of war.
8. Spy satellites can't loiter unless they're in geostationary orbit, but neither can hypersonic planes.
Put all those sensors on a subsonic very stealthy platform and you'd have something that could operate anywhere, run on regular fuel and refuel from any old tanker, would be simpler and cheaper to maintain and operate, could loiter for many hours over its targets, could spy on its targets without anyone knowing (very valuable when trying to avoid escalation or when spying on allies and friendly nations) and without the risk of causing a political storm if it was flying over nations without their agreement.
Best comment I've seen but you're missing the point that there's a lot of incentive for the US (and private companies like Hermeus) to create a reusable hypersonic platform. Other countries are getting hypersonic capabilities and the US needs to keep pace so it can deliver and counter hypersonic weapons if nothing else. But that means there will already be a hypersonic platform that can be easily adapted for ISR. You're right about satellites and they're only going to get better with lower launch costs but a hypersonic spy plane makes sense if a reusable hypersonic platform comes to fruition, which is pretty much a guarantee in order for US to stay competitive.
I think a lot of people have a major disconnect between spy & recon. One can argue the semantics of the two, but at the very least there is a lot of overlap. Yet people seem to associate spy with either archaic tech like the Blackbird, or outright James Bond stuff. Thus lots of people don't really think about the spying aspect in words like those used near the beginning of the video, even if they are envisioning exactly that.
"Thus" the quasi-intellect word to add an aire of me smart.
Love your content Alex, the way break down information its cool to learn about this stuff 👍 thx
Everyone needs to realize that you can get app’s for smart phones that will show you satellites before they come over. Stealth tech is not the answer anymore. Sure the SR’s and A-12’s were the start of stealth but as soon as they came over the horizon you could see the heat radiating off the jets. Speed is the answer now or speed is the new type of stealth. We spend a fortune on stealth coating repair on the B-2, F-22 and F-35. Get rid of the expensive coatings and start building for speed. Alex is spot on regarding a new jet.
Theoretically micro/cub recon sats launched in large constellation to observe an area could give near 24 coverage. Plus being micro/cube sats they could lanuched rather quickly by a Falcon 9 in few hours.
Still takes time to deploy - transit & more then 1 launch to gain that uninterrupted coverage
Excellent! Thank you once more, Alex! ❤🤍💙
I always thought taking the SR-71 out of service was a big mistake. There is no substitute for air recon in real time. Satellites take too long especially with today's tech.
These are probably going to operate at extremely high altitude, where the air is thin and causes less air resistance.
War is a game of Chess in real life and it's all about how many moves you can stay ahead of your opponent, The Further ahead you are and can remain the more likely you are to win. It's could to see that the US is trying to think outside the box in attempting apply these types of principles in military strategy. It does fit quite nicely with moving to Multiple Domain Warfare from Combined Arms.
Just had a thought- Habitual Linecrosser made a skit where the plane 'characters' said "oh no, it's a spy plane, said no enemy ever"
So, would our enemies fear our spy-plane, as it were?
Loved seeing "Enemy" pop up on your video. My partner and I did computer screens for that movie. The research
Opportunities that were given to me leading up to the film we're amazing. Blast to work on. Good to see Chris's face again. I do miss Tony.
In terms of "miles-per-gallon" hypersonics still lose out to subsonic platforms generally, as far as I know. Thus in the usual case, highly stealthy subsonic jets will remain king. The use-case for hypersonic ISR is the reactivity.
This is precisely why retiring the SR-71 before a replacement was available was an unforced error.
We already have Iron Man AND Tom Cruise flying around in a supersonic hang-glider.
forced error if you saw the state of the window glass....
In the early 90's, at Groom Lake, my biological father worked on an aircraft that the workers nicknamed Grease Lightning due to its speed. This aircraft was faster than the SR-71.
What speed did it fly at? Was it manned aircraft?
Kevin Bowcutt, the lead hypersonics researcher at Boeing, was hinting that they had mastered dual-cycle scramjet years ago, so I would imagine the US is already in possession of advanced hypersonic drones.
The Aurora program from Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks.
@@AURORAREVEALNOWabsolutely !
@@thomasblankinship98 You have someone that works at Lockheed?
A video about the AAS / FARA (armed scout helicopter) program would be cool. Sikorsky has the S-97 Raider compete with the Bell+Textron 360 Invictus.
The Raider has troop capacity while the Invictus does not, but that gives the Invictus better stealth properties, just like the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche had. Not sure why Sikorsky abandoned that design, as they first came up with it. Just to push a common scout and transport design when they already lost the Blackhawk transport replacement to the Bell V280 Valor?
Keep up the awesome content!
One thing I believe they were testing with the X-37B was the ability to quickly change its orbit to make them less predictable when they came around by using the upper atmosphere, which could be employed for some of those LEO satellites especially in a conflict scenario (depending on propellant availability of course)
Yeah, but why would you bring a whole airplane/reentry body with you instead of just bringing more fuel? As he said- it's $200M per launch, and the payload is relatively small. Just leave the airframe on the ground and carry more fuel.
"propellant availability" there's ideas out there to make electric thrusters run on some really unconventional propellants. Like, oxygen and nitrogen. The same oxygen and nitrogen that make up most of the atmosphere.
So it's really more a question of "power" than it is of "propellant", because with the right setup, a satellite could scoop up the extremely rarefied atmosphere in LEO (yes it exists there, that's why the ISS needs boosting every now and again), and run that thru electric thrusters, to keep it's orbit exactly where it wants to be (and recover orbital energy after doing things like that aerodynamic orbital plane change maneuver you're referencing).
@@blurglide
Instead of bringing more fuel, bring more efficient engines so the same mass of fuel lasts longer. That basically means switching to ion engines of some sort. Yes, tiny thrust, but the thrust is only tiny because the available power is tiny. If you were to make a satellite with a functioning nuclear reactor, you could have a lot more power, and use that for ion engines, and that means more available thrust. Combine that with an aerodynamic outer shell, and you would have a satellite that is potentially very unpredictable indeed in where exactly its orbit is.
And then you can add on the idea of running those ion engines on unconventional gases like nitrogen and oxygen, both of which are still present in relative abundance even at the altitude of the ISS. Just a matter of making what's basically an electric SCRAMjet, in that the harvested oxygen and nitrogen and other gases would ideally not be slowed down or appreciably compressed by the oncoming satellite's travel, instead only pushed backwards relative to the satellite at a velocity higher than the satellite's orbital velocity, something that ion engines are already very good at doing.
Is it untested tech? Of course it is. Is it useful for a lot of other things besides just spy satellites? Very much so.
@@blurglide Well one advantage would be being able to update the equipment onboard rather than sending up a new satellite, especially if the mission requirements change quickly. And its still a test vehicle, there could be future versions able to be armed (I know that's against current laws but things could change), especially with all the research into reentry vehicles like the darpa HTV-2
@@44R0Ndin Yep I've read some of that research about collecting its own propellant, that'll be hugely beneficial for commercial programs too once they get it working. There's also developments using lasers to transfer power to other satellites which could potentially help in this scenario
So much great content! Thx!
Great work! Another wonderful video. Thank you 😎.!
Of note is also that these advanced engines for hypersonic aircraft could be a large part of the equation of a greatly reduced cost of the access to space, potentially allowing for the human race to clean up after itself after a kessler-syndrome type event takes place (there are of course other ground based methods as well, such as the NASA idea of a "orbital laser broom" which basically deorbits the junk by pointing a laser at it and vaporizing part of the junk to push the junk the other way using Newton's Third Law).
After all, mach 10 or higher is already a little less than half way to the velocity required to maintain a circular orbit over the earth, meaning that you could practically use such a hypersonic craft as the first stage of a rocket designed to get to orbit.
Imagine being able to launch a Vulcan Centaur without the Vulcan part, only needing the Centaur upper stage, potentially with a much much smaller solid rocket motor being needed solely to bring it to an altitude sufficient for ignition of the vacuum-rated engines of the Centaur upper stage.
A whole video about counter measures against satellites? Yes please!
TRUTH, TRUTH, TRUTH
Facts vs Feelings..!
Great job bringing us the TRUTH...
8:30 😂 I used to make those corner cube prisms.
I'm willing to bet it will be an optionally manned vehicle like the B21 or perhaps fully autonomous. It will also be interesting what its low speed loiter capability may be if it's really to be a long term observation platform.
Maybe research a Australian company called Hypersonixs who has world's fastest scramjet at mach 12. reached Mach 10 in 2006 HIFIRE test and helped USA as DARPA and Raytheon were involved.
This company has won a USA HYCAT DUI contract to build USA hypersonic vehicles and won it over 63 other competitors including Hermeus Darkhorse Alex go on about.
First flight of a scramjet drone they have been designing for last 4 years will have it's first test flight next year.
DART AE will do around Mach 7. then later they have several bigger drones they plan building and one has 4 scramjet engines.
@@nedkelly9688 who would have guessed, the clown can't help himself, he must keep spamming his ridiculous pride
I just love this guy! Great reporting! Somehow I feel better about paying my taxes (LOL).
Great job as usual Alex!
Missouri to China in one hour....
It's hard to comprehend a plane that doesn't turn into a molten ball of exotic material after just a few minutes at that speed
I'm pretty sure the pilot's eyes would be lit on fire if they ever were in the pilot seat, they won't be able to comprehend the sheer speed alone wtf
Personally, I find it really difficult to believe we don’t already possess these aircraft.
If the Cold War went on for longer or if it turned hot, who knows what kinds of crazy technology we would have now (or not if the world ended in a nuclear war)
cheers
Or they are at the very least in development
Hahaha. We are not telling you John. 👍
Of course we do
Pumping out videos left and right now!
Since everything is targeted by means of gps which is satellite driven and will be one of our first assets targeted by China and or Russia what will we be using to replace it? Thank you and great work Alex.
Speaking of the predictability of satellites, I have seen imagery over both land and sea on the EU Copernicus platform with artifacts that look like they are using countermeasures to disrupt the sensors
The russians have laser installations to dazzle sattelite sensors.
I remember news stories from the early 2000s, about using satellites to try and gather intel on Al Qaeda. They discovered, after changing the tasking on a couple of satellites, that Al Qaeda groups had figured out approximately when satellites were going to be overhead, and concealing equipment during the satellite passes. The retasked satellites caught the activity of concealing and uncovering equipment.
Satellites are incredible...but they're also not very flexible. That was a big point in the arguments against retiring the Blackbird.
Almost any inband counter measure on a imaging sensor is going to damage the detector because of the huge magnification.
Image artefacts are fairly common in satellite imagery. They're caused by cosmic rays hitting the sensor.
@@mrbaab5932 Good point, i destroyed countless MFT-Sensors filming events with laser shows. Yet, dazzle tech could take that into account and lower the yield accordingly.
Thanks for the Irregular Warfare Podcast recommendation; I have been looking for something like this and I have now added it to my "follows"!
It’s really well worth your time!
In regards to space-based cameras, where I've learned recently, the hard way, that gamma radiation can seriously burn camera sensors 😂
I put my Canon 90d too close to a piece of pitch blend uranium ore I know the sensor has permanent defects 😮
I haven't watched the whole video yet so this question may get answered; but when thinking about the satellite conundrum I thought, "Are there any 'micro-satellites' out there that they could make swarms of?" Perhaps enough relatively cheap satellites that can be launched on relatively cheap launch vehicles that could simply overwhelm an enemy's air/space defense?
I have no idea if this is even remotely feasible or practical but I imagine someone has thought of this before and studied the problem to see if it could be done.
The hangers on the flight line at Groom Lake are called scoot and shoots.
Any aircraft, like a commercial airplane or satellite above will force these aircraft to duck and cover.
Love the u2 just a cool design.
Bro. Hear me out: combine the powers of fast and slow. Hypersonic plane that ejects little pods that then inflate into stationary ISR balloons and just float over the target area. They'd last long enough for the enemy to have to scramble something that could intercept something at like 100k ft.
So an observation bomb?
Enemy air defense would just shoot it down no And since air defense has proven very capable of shooting at hypersonic speeds. I don't see how it wouldn't just shoot down the plane.
Small correction, regarding satellites being useless once they run out of fuel:
While technically correct, there _are_ "space tug" satellites now, that can dock with 'dead' satellites (due to an empty gas tank) and revive them by performing their station keeping duties! (or, to ferry them into the graveyard orbit)
They are a proven technology now, not an "idea on paper". 🤘
There's also work on being able to refuel satellites, but it's pretty unlikely they'll be able to service any *currently* up there. Future ones would be (plausibly) given that ability, though.
However, there's an idea that they MAY be able to, for some satellites, by perhaps being able to refuel them directly through their thruster port... a colonic, of sorts... lol
_(currently, most of the tugs dock through a similar means, with an expansion-clamp pushed into the thruster nozzle opening)_
The Soviets arguably made better use of the the knowledge when and where satellites would pass over head. They would then move their bomber fleet around to make it look as if they had more. They also had the same group of bombers over fly parades over and over.
I hope he reads this. A Lockheed Martin executive/high level employee was giving a presentation on the concept SR-72 back in 2016-2018 and he straight up said they were "hoping to present it the public by 2020". There were articles written by legitimate news sources when it happened that were easily googleable. I've tried to find them on google recently and can't find them anymore. Can someone help me find the articles??
If I remember correctly it was a "lowkey" small presentation to about 500 people. I believe LM made a statement after saying the employee wasn't speaking in a realistic manner, or something along those lines. Again I want to stress that these articles were written by American news sources.
Aircraft like these have been "in development" since the early-1960s. Check out "Project Isinglass" and "Project Rheinberry" - some of the design concepts were targeting Mach 20 top speed.
As I remember, everything about sr-72 was taken down quickly after Putin's speech of Russian hypersonic weapons; that was in 2018. I remember I saw this information somewhere but don't remember where exactly
@@Ruthless_entertainment - Dude thank you. I remember looking it up before and showing my friends that work for GD and they were also shocked. But now I can't find them! That makes sense about them taking them down.
I covered those statements and the SR-72 program at the time (circa 2018) and more recently on this channel! The program went dark within days of Putin announcing Russia’s first hypersonic weapons (March 2018).
I discuss it a bit in a few videos - one about the Darkstar’s real-world counterparts, another about the race to field hypersonic aircraft.
@@SandboxxApp Oh awesome, I'll look for those vids and watch them! Thank you replying
Put in commercial security terms, a spy satellite is a fixed security camera, or an alarm sensor and a spy plane is a security guard in an automobile. Something shows up on the monitor--usually that something requires further investigation. If a spy satellite spotted an unidentified submarine off the coast of New Jersey, another platform would be sent into the last known location to gather more information. When a door alarm sounds, and the security camera shows that the door is open (it was closed a while ago) a security guard is sent to investigate and report back what happened. It's possible that the door was unsecure and just got blown open by the wind. Just because spy satellites show "something" doesn't end the matter.
Timely intelligence requires enough time to make the report, then deliver it, have the decision makers hold a meeting and come up with a plan using that information, the orders go out and people have to haul out equipment, sent people to the right places, "When seconds count, the police are minutes away." A smoke detector sets off an alarm in a monitoring station, followed by a sprinkler system activation alarm. The fire department must be notified of the fire and its location. Then the fighters drop everything, put their gear on, hop aboard their transport and equipment carriers, and rush to the location. The longer the lag between sensing the fire and telling the firefighters "There's a fire here, go put it out," the more time the fire has to grow. Then there's the actual "wake up and move" or leaving a meal on the table or dropping a video game controller to get dressed for action and get on the trucks. The drive may take only minutes, or it may take longer. Rushing in 82nd Airborne or a Marine Expeditionary Force takes days from notification to boots on the ground.
Absent being able to instantly teleport appropriate sensor platforms anywhere on Earth, hypersonic spy planes kept on alert are the next best thing. I don't know the mission cycle but in the old days of World War Two a "rush job" was 72 hours. Usually, the spy plane operation had been planned for weeks and prepared for World War Two missions several days prior to the mission. This would make a great video--demonstrating how long it would take to dispatch a Forest Service plane to check on a wildfire and radio back imagery, digital data and a verbal report. I prefer to think of spy platform response times in minutes and time them from tasking the spy platform--though that leaves out the boss developing a spy platform tasking order. This mission cycle is for a force in being. Having to design and build the spy platform and train the operators takes years and decades!
Looks like the RF-4C Phantom II wasn't as obsolete as they told us and was retired too soon. Same with the EF-111A.
I would love to see you do a deep dive on what we actually know about Area 51 and the X planes that were tested there. Awesome video as always.
Even better, let's just stop fighting. I know I know. But it's still a nice thought.
The problem with a hypersonic plane is that there is no such thing as a STEALTH hypersonic plane. The immense thermal signature radiating from anything traveling mach 5+ would show up like a meteorite on thermal sensors, essentially screaming
"HERE I AM, COME DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT"
And I wouldn't bet that missile interceptor technology in peer nations would fail to advance and meet that threat if we overflew them like Gary Powers did.
My favorite story was when U.S. heated the tarmac to produce exotic spoof planes to fool U.S.S.R.
I love that one!
Hiding assets from satellites is bad enough during peace time but on the brink of war or during one it is worse to show you artificial bases or equipment. Can easily see how fooling your enemy on where your forces are can be used both tactically and strategically. Thou personally I feel there already is such a craft maybe not fully operational on a tactical level but already working out the bugs.
"Space house isn't real. It can't hurt you"
Space house: 0:37
Great episode. What are chances of manned hypersonic ISR platforms ( greater situational awareness? Immediate problem at Mach 5 plus is aircraft skin temperature. Brings into question metallurgy (skin melting point), expansion, fuel etc. All problems faced by SR-71. Advances in ceramics & carbon fiber sufficiently advanced to meet these challenges? Thanks.
We have the SR-91 Aurora.
Could Starship make a viable space recon platform once the orbital refuel capacity is implemented? It seems like a spacecraft with enough fuel to get to Mars could change effectively at will.
The DoD will never again partner for critical capabilities with a Musk-owned endeavor after what he pulled to black out Ukrainian star link service to save the Russian fleet from attack months ago. Sure they will use spacex rockets for resupply and general duties like that, but no mission critical systems.
If a near peer can take out a Kehole with precision easily I don't think throwing platforms onto a 27 story building that's yet to be proven is going to be super helpful. However, Rocket Lab is lined up to test some ISR cube sats as soon as they're ready.
@@hazonku While it's easier to hit a 27 story building than a smaller target all else being equal, a 27 story spaceship is going to have a much greater capacity to carry counter-measures (both evasive and destructive) than a smaller one.
a constellation of low earth orbit satellites, similar to starlink, would be good if the sensors (and lenses/etc) are good enough. but the number required would be high ,and the orbits would have to be quite varied
Why couldn't optical arrays be used to provide sharpened pictures as they're combined from multiple satellites? Or even extremely high speed photos/video taken that are combined together to provide 3-D imagery?
@@jum5238 yep, could be done. like the compositing imaging telescopes we have on earth. thats a good point
Alex, what if for the sake of argument, all Starlink satellites (around 5000) were secretly equipped with downward facing wide field cameras. Obviously low resolution, but near total real-time global coverage would already be a thing. I would imagine it would take some sort of AI to monitor that much real-time information. If they build (built?) such a system, let’s just hope they don’t name it SkyNet.
Shhhhh!
I remember reading news accounts when the SR71 was retired stating that satellites could do the same job
Iiiiiiii’mmmm Alex Hollings, and I need that video of Soviet satellite spoofing shenanigans now!
You might want to have a read of "Deep Black" by William Burrows (1986). He puts the first US photo-intel sat, KH-1, as being deployed in 1959 (also called the CORONA project).
Good book for a historical perspective of the ISR war in space.
The fact that them hoot & scoot tent things are clear is extremely questionable! Why wouldn't they make them opaque? Crazy world we live it.
Honestly, in all due respect, Im pretty sure we all know we already have it.
Intelligence and coordination is not only paramount, it's what decides win or loss today. So in what way would it benefit us to say hey! We have our most important plane/drone flying here at exactly 6,000mph please don't hurt it because our men's lives depend on it!
Sorry to say mate, I have studied and taught analysis of satellite imagery. I've processed and made maps from most platforms- drones, contact sensors core samples... you name it, I've analysed it. What I can tell you is the capability of ordinary satellites- not the spy kind- is scary good. The issue you have typically is the lack of people who can take full advantage of the available data, and create maps and models predicting what you want to know. It certainly is not an issue with the tech!
If it had been built in the original quantities, the configuration of the B-2 would have allowed a reconnaisance variant to be developed and I suspect the B-21 may be similar.
Excellent report sir. You are one of my intel sources.
One thing alex is Missing in the Kessler syndrome is the fact that it would make it impossible to launch any spacecraft Et cetera into orbit.
Lockheed-Martin: “Hold my beer”.
Most of problems mentioned in this video can be solved by large scale low orbit satellite constellation, especially if StarShip could achieve stable launch schedule as SpaceX promised.
Not good to rely that much on a single asset, much less a private company. Unless the US were to buy the technology from spaceX, at that point it would be better to procure a more agile and versatile plane
What America needs is to be held accountable for all the wars it has caused on false pretenses.
Also by placing Edward Snowden around the 2:04 ts. Epic
If a Kessler syndrome did happen, would that then have a significant impact on RPAs that rely on satellite feeds to control them? Seems like a direct pilot is gonna always be necessary in some capacity (which is great news for Maverick and the rest of the Top Gunners)
Kessler will be bad, but not impossible to manage. From what I've seen the probable impact is reduced orbital time, not total shut down of all satellites.
Still will have radio control from other air / ground assets ect.
The B21 gives me the creeps reminds me of the giant spider in HP series. The cockpit windows are the eyes of the monster.
Idk kinda looks like windows but that’s cool too
Your comment on the SR speed of 2,193mph (Mach 3.30) would be wrong.
A pilot of the SR stated he had his SR at Mach 3.67 (2443mph) at altitude.
Need an audio card with your voice, saying...
" I'm Alex Hollings and this is your happy mother's day greeting!"
I would like to see a good video from sandboxx news about spying. How much has spying hurt defence?
That’s a really tough question - you’d need to know the full extent of the secrets first, secrets stolen second, and which stolen secrets resulted in tech breakthroughs or posture changes third before you can assess the real damage.
I’ll put some thought into looking for ways to assess without being in on all the spookiest stuff and see what I can come up with!