Sharing the Blackbird

Abstract

In a decade of flight that began in 1959, the X-15 rocketplane reached heights and speeds unmatched by any other aircraft, investigating aeronautical developments from heat-resistant paint to experimental engines. Most of its researches were conducted jointly by the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, although in the last 10 months before tight budgets grounded the plane (SN: 2/ 8/ 69, p. 144) it was under sole NASA sponsorship. The other interagency research superplane was the XB-70, which acquired the X in its name (for experimental) and NASA as a co-sponsor only after the Air Force had discovered the craft to be far too expensive to buy in quantity as a bomber. Even as a research vehicle, however, it proved costly enough that a year ago it too succumbed to financial flak. Now there is a third flight research effort joining the two agencies, which both parties hope to carry on for five years. This time the flying testbed is the YF-12A, a twin-engined jet fighter produced for the Air Force in what may be the most secret aircraft development facility in the country, Clarence Kelly Johnson's skunk works at the Lockheed-California Co. in Burbank. Unofficially known as the blackbird, the YF-12A is neither as fast and highclimbing as the X-15 nor as big and powerful as the XB-70. A top speed of more than 2,000 miles per hour and a ceiling of almost 20 miles, however. make it one of the hottest performers currently in the sky. The blackbird got its research job, as did the XB-70, by default. Originally conceived as an advanced interceptor-it can fly rings around the Air Force's best operational interceptor, the F-106-it was subsequently deemed by Congress to be too expensive for such a mission. Faith in the plane's capabilities was affirmed, however, when the purse-string-handlers allowed the Air Force to buy two full wings, comprising several dozen aircraft, of a reconnaissance version called SR-71. Only two of the interceptor versions were built, and both had been languishing in so-called flyable storage at Edwards Air Force Base in California. though the Air Force still nurtures dim hopes of getting more some day. Then, last summer, the joint research arrangement was proposed, and the two erstwhile dust-collectors seemed like naturals. Rescued from having to let the expensive blackbirds die of senescence, the Air Force readily agreed to provide both planes, along with spare parts, ground equipment and base support. NASA, with a growing interest in aeronautical research, is thereby getting off lightly in funding the actual research, even though it is footing the bill for both agencies. The space agency estimates that $10 million should take it all the way through fiscal 1974, compared to about $6 million a year for the X-1 5 with the plane's costs included. The program is in two phases, with the Air Force doing research through the end of 1971 and NASA taking over in the summer of 1972. The first Phase 1 flight took place on Dec. 11; a second came in the middle of January. The Air Force has two main goals in its share of the project: to explore the full capabilities of the aircraft itself in a variety of studies, and to use it as a simulated enemy interceptor in developing bomber penetration tactics. Here. in a way, the YF-12A has an advantage over the X-15, whose performance was so far removed from any presently known manned weapon sys-