NASA appears to be pulling its SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest production plane ever made, out of retirement as the Trump administration teases its new line of hypersonic surveillance jets — but doubt…
Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
they are both hypersonic aircraft.
They are not. The F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.6. It’s a supersonic aircraft.
The SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.2 lol. Literally twice as fast as the F-35 but still well short of the Mach 5 required for hypersonic flight.
The F-35 also has a flight ceiling of 50,000 feet, while the SR-71 has an 85,000 foot ceiling.
The SR-71 served exactly one role: Hypersonic aerial reconnaissance. No weapons, nothing. Just fly higher and faster than anything else on the planet.
The F-35 is a strike fighter and air superiority fighter.
They’re really not comparable.