US Airforce and "near space"

[Killer-Kris]

Here was an interesting article I saw over on cnn today.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/19/arms.space.reut/index.html

Sounds interesting, but I'm kind of left wondering why the big announcement as if it were some special new capability. Of course the idea of putting communications relay aircraft up there that have extremely long loiter time is certainly new and exciting.

On the other hand...

but it could take up to a decade to develop other aircraft that would take on more sophisticated missions such as surveillance, Leaf said.

Now that really surprised me, I thought we have had these aircraft for an extremely long time now, both the U-2 and SR-71 fly in that region and are surveillance aircraft. Why is it going to take up to a decade to reinvent these planes?

 

[silence]

just google for Aurora project.....it's been long rumored about it.
SR-71 is pretty old and Aurora would be logical development of the idea....

 

[RussSchultz]

but it could take up to a decade to develop other aircraft that would take on more sophisticated missions such as surveillance, Leaf said.

Now that really surprised me, I thought we have had these aircraft for an extremely long time now, both the U-2 and SR-71 fly in that region and are surveillance aircraft. Why is it going to take up to a decade to reinvent these planes?

I think its talking about long mission loitering. The U2 and Sr71 could do one pass and that was it.

 

[Killer-Kris]

but it could take up to a decade to develop other aircraft that would take on more sophisticated missions such as surveillance, Leaf said.

Now that really surprised me, I thought we have had these aircraft for an extremely long time now, both the U-2 and SR-71 fly in that region and are surveillance aircraft. Why is it going to take up to a decade to reinvent these planes?

I think its talking about long mission loitering. The U2 and Sr71 could do one pass and that was it.

The blackbird yeah, but I imagine the U2 could actually loiter for quite a while. It's also slow enough to not just immediatly blow past the target area either.