"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
One of the most important lessons, I think, coming from the war on
terrorism
is that poor intelligence is becoming very costly. Satellites are
predictable and are unable to loiter over an area, while drones can cover
only relatively small areas. From Desert Shield up to now we have been
basically blind in our search for WMDs, terrorist and troop
concentrations,
mobile Scuds, etc.

I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot, here. The SR-71 is
relatively
cheap, there are enough spare parts to last virtually forever, and it
would
be enormously effective in giving us better intelligence. The planes are
in
pretty good shape; in fact, their airframes are stronger than they were
when
first built. I believe these planes should be re-activated.


I believe that the final nail in the SR71s coffin, after the program costs
and maintenence and all of that stuff, was simply that the information
coming out of the SR71 took too long to get a hold of, and was limited in
scope. It was optical only, so an overcast would ruin a mission, and, the
primary problem, it was not real-time. So it took almost a day or more to
unpack the film, get it developed and scanned, then distribute and analyze
it before it finally got to the decision makers.

In today's everything-real-time battle environment (and especially in the
future) a day may as well be a year. Nobody wants to wait that long. So the
SR71 was seen as simply out of pace with the new way information was
gathered and used.

I suppose that a new sensor package could be designed for it, with a
synthetic apeture radar system, digital optical cameras and a real-time
datalink, but nobody at the Pentagon is going to be willing to spend the
money on it; especially as they are trying to make every penny scream as it
is.

It's a shame though; high speed recon and the ability to be anywhere,
anytime, with no prior notice is a tool that we should definately keep in
our toolbox.

Unless, of course, there already is such a system, and we just don't know
about it.