Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Iraq and no SR-71 Message-ID: <1990Aug18.183021.25493@cbnews.att.com> Date: 18 Aug 90 18:30:21 GMT References: <1990Aug8.030554.26134@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug16.030636.15921@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 35 Approved: military@att.att.com From: smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin) In article <1990Aug16.030636.15921@cbnews.att.com>, DJBQC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (David Bressler) writes: > > > From: David Bressler > I've got no knowledge except what I've read in books and the newspapers > over the past few years about the SR-71 and its missions. I believe the > reason that we were surprised in Iraq was because the Blackbird was not > operational. Sattelites are good but not flexible enough for the type > of lightning attack that Iraq used on Kuwait. I don't agree. Iraq had been massing troops on the border for weeks beforehand; they were able to attack for at least a substantial portion of that time. The decision to go was a political one, and SR-71s wouldn't have helped. > As an additional note, there was a small comment in the NY Times soon > after the Iraqi attack the the DOD was requesting money to have some of > the retired Blackbirds put on stand-by for the future. > Anybody else??? I saw a long AP article on the subject; the upshot is that you can't really do that. Being able to fly SR-71s requires a lot of infrastructure -- trained pilots, mechanics, repair facilities, probably large and varied sets of sensors, etc. Keeping all of this functional, without even flying the planes, is too expensive. In particular, the skills of the personnel involved will atrophy, as it were, and the units will no longer be together -- they'll be dispersed throughout the Air Force. Some senior folks may even use the cutback as an opportunity to retire -- and given the projected cutbacks in service strength, they'd probably be encouraged to if their skills were too specialized.