During the Gulf War, they use the aging RF-4 for reconnaissance because the SR 71s had been recently deactivated. They were sitting in hangars.
They even sent up F-18s at times to survey the battlefield before they went out."
The Blackbird is the fastest, highest-flying plane in the world. The satellite worshipers in Congress didn't want it, and the Air Force brass preferred spending money on other toys. Satellite buffs like Dick Cheney think satellites will do it all. The fact is, they can't. They only provide interval photography. Cloud cover can hamper their effectiveness. And once they are launched, the equipment cannot be altered. We needed the SR-71’s!
Friendly fire in Washington did.
It was the fighter pilot mafia that killed the Blackbird. They weren’t having it anymore. It’s not that they necessarily truly believed in satellites; it’s that they were sick and tired of the SR 71 being the one plane that was better than them.
Paul Crickmore recently said that the SR 71 was retired five years early.
During the Gulf War, they needed the SR-71 reconnaissance expertise desperately.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf asked the Pentagon for a Blackbird as early as July when Iraqi forces were assembling on the Kuwait border. His request was denied. The Navy asked for Blackbird overflights in September, but that request was denied, too. For reconnaissance, they were using the aging RF-4! They were asking the fighter pilots when they came back from the field. What was going on out there?
Who knows how many men and women had to die during the Gulf War because we didn’t have the SR 71s?
My father, Skunk Works, Director, and former SR 71 RSO Butch Sheffield, along with Skunk Works Ben Rich, fought hard to keep the SR 71s because of all these reasons; this is why I have made this point I know the truth about what happened in the killing of the Blackbirds
Source Washington Post, JACK ANDERSON and
Paul Crickmore speech at Royal Aeronautical Society Headquarters Nov 9, 2023
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