Lockheed Martin SR-72?

Perhaps Lockheed had realised that the SR-72 was too advanced for the current time technology wise and has gone back to the drawing boards.

Lockheed realized nobody was going to give them billions to develop it, especially since several years earlier the estimated cost was much smaller.
 
This says differently.


Considering your one of those who also didn’t think the ‘RQ-180’ existed..,

From the article:
While there is no confirmation of this, a hypothesis that arises following the description of the “article” points to the rumored SR-71 successor: the SR-72. Lockheed Martin revealed the existence of such a project back in 2013, describing it as an unmanned hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike platform designed for Mach 6.

The supposed connection between a rumored new Lockheed reconnaissance aircraft and the "SR-72" concept is an unproven hypothesis with nothing to substantiate it.

I have thousands of pages of (expensive) USG documents that show the "SR-72" was never a program. The concept was used in other programs, but it was a dead end and was replaced by something else. The DARPA FALCON program included the HTV-3/HTV-3X hypersonic cruise vehicle. That was later spun off into the "Blackswift" demonstrator competition, which was quickly cancelled. In 2013 Lockheed rebranded their Blackswift concept "SR-72" and put out press releases saying, essentially, "if someone gave us a few billion we could build this". The Blackswift/"SR-72" concept was used for propulsion studies by other agencies - because hypersonic aircraft have tight integration between the propulsion system and the airframe, you can't test/validate/study a propulsion system on it's own. These propulsion studies were various iterations of TBCC concepts and would not have been appropriate for a "SR-72" demonstrator or operational aircraft.

Further discussion of the "SR-72" should be moved to the appropriate thread, it has nothing to do with NGAD.
 

Throughout weeks of research and interviews

Weeks...?

I've compiled the most complete and extensive timeline of the SR 72 development ever published online.

Most complete and extensive?
*Re-reads this thread*
Yeah I don't know about that.

In the video the author has a strange preoccupation with scramjets. Even in the material he shows in the video the *ramjet* is clearly labelled. The "SR-72" was studied with a number of different TBCC propulsion systems, though (IIRC) none of them were scramjets other than one of the NASA propulsion studies that used a dual mode scramjet. They were variations on turbojet + dual mode ramjet. Again, that is illustrated in the video itself as it shows illustrations from various documents.

The video also states:
During this event, O'Banion projected an artist's rendering of the SR 72 on the screen behind him and then discussed the aircraft as though it not only already existed, but had already been seeing successes in testing.

While ignoring that shortly after that event, Lockheed refuted the idea that an SR-72 had been built:

from https://www.flightglobal.com/singapore-lockheeds-carvalho-kiboshes-sr-72-idea/127007.article
The head of Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics division has dismissed recent media reports that it has
developed the SR-72, a successor to the iconic SR-71 Black Bird.
“I can tell you unequivocally that it has not been built,” says Orlando Carvalho, executive vice- president of aeronautics at Lockheed Martin.
In early January, several media reports indicated that a successor to the SR-71, the so-called SR-72, might actually have been developed. The reports followed a presentation by Lockheed vice-president Jack O’Banion, in which he discussed advanced design and manufacturing techniques.

“I think Jack’s comments were taken a little bit out of context,” says Carvalho. “What Jack was trying to express was that with the technology we have available to us today, including the fidelity of the
analysis tools we use and the design capabilities – really the whole digital revolution that we all benefit from... and how that applies to aircraft designs.”
“What Jack was trying to communicate was how that enables us to have confidence that if a reusable hypersonic vehicle were desired, then we can have confidence in its design, its capabilities and performance....it was not to imply that there is one that has been built and it’s sitting in a base somewhere. I can assure you that’s not the case.”
 
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[...] throughout weeks of research and interviews [...]
The interviewee:
Sock-puppet-008.jpg


I seriously missed the part where he interviewed anyone.
Or the one where he conducted any research at all for that matter.

Reading press releases and articles written by other people and stitching them back together without any critical analysis going into it can hardly be considered research.
This is a school essay for people with 5 minutes attention span, not research.
 

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