Denne fotograferte jeg på Museum of Flight nær Seattle i 2011, på ryggen av en SR-71: (Red.)
Sjekk video her: https://tinyurl.com/y5tx3jvy
Lockheed D-21 Mach 3 Drone
In the 1960s, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson was
given an almost impossible task by the U.S. Air Force and CIA. He needed to
create a spy drone with range, speed, and altitude capabilities that could
match the supersonic A-12.
The hope was that Lockheed’s Skunk Works team
could build an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft unlike any other in order to
replace the increasingly vulnerable U-2 spy plane. The result was the D-21. It
was a ramjet with wings and a camera, built to self-destruct after its mission.
Early tests were promising, but failures to execute correctly when released
over China resulted in several missteps and even a Soviet clone…
The D-21 was initially designed to be launched from the back of an M-21 carrier aircraft, a variant of the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. The drone had maximum speed in excess of Mach 3.3 (2,200 miles per hour; 3,600 kilometers per hour) at an operational altitude of 90,000 feet (27,000 meters). Development began in October 1962. Originally known by the Lockheed designation Q-12, the drone was intended for reconnaissance deep into enemy airspace.
A D-21 on
display at the United States Air Force National Museum
The D-21 was designed to carry a single
high-resolution photographic camera over a preprogrammed path, then release the
camera module into the air for retrieval, after which the drone would
self-destruct.[1] Following a fatal accident when launched from an M-21, the
D-21 was modified to be launched from a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. Several
test flights were made, followed by four unsuccessful operational D-21 flights
over the People’s Republic of China, and the program was canceled in 1971.
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