Friday, July 26, 2013

The Pentagon Now Wants A New Stealth Spy Plane

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Son Of A Blackbird: The Pentagon Eyes New Stealth Spy Plane -- Killer Apps/Foreign Policy

The general responsible for preventing World War III wants a new strategic reconnaissance plane to help him do it.

The Pentagon needs a new stealth plane capable of flying over the world's most heavily defended airspace and scooping up secrets, said U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, head of U.S. Strategic Command, today.

"We know that there will have to be some kind of penetrating" spy plane in the coming years, said Kehler, the man in charge of defending America from nuclear, cyber, and space (seriously) attack, during a breakfast with reporters in Washington.

Think of this plane as a successor to the legendary Cold War era SR-71 Blackbird (shown above). That jet flew at the edge of space at speeds of up to Mach 3 while taking pictures of the Soviet Union and other places the United States wanted to know more about.

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My Comment: I have to laugh .... it appears that twenty years after the United States retired its fleet of super-sexy spy planes in favor of satellites, it has decided that there is once again a need to have such aircraft in the fleet. So what's old is now new again.

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