In article ,
ess (phil hunt) writes:
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 01:13:20 -0700, Scott Ferrin wrote:

Kinda gives you an appreciation of the AIM-47. A long ranged missile
fired at Mach 3+ and 80,000ft+ I still think that the YF-12 was one
of the best "might have beens".

Didn't it take ages to fuel the thing, making it incapable of
scrambling quickly?

With the Blackbirds, it's not so much fuel as it is the ancilliary
stuff, for example the Tri-Ethyl Borane needed to get the fuel burning (And
is Nasty Evil Stuff, handled more carefully (and much more dangerous)
than Nuclear Waste, and the hydraulic fluid, which is barely liquid
at most ambient temperatures and must be heated before flight on
standard days. Launching an A-12/F-12/SR-71 was a major operation, in
some ways more of a Space Launch than scrambling an airplane.

It's possible that special alert facilities could have been built for
them, with all the necessary reservoirs and preheaters & such, but
that would have tied the airplanes to specific fixed bases, and not
allowed them to deploy to dispersal sites in times of high alert.
Having your interceptors permanently stuck in known locations is just
hanging a giant ICBM target on that location.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster