According to the quarterly financial report, Lockheed Martin is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on an undisclosed, highly classified aviation program. According to American media, there is more evidence that the SR-72 hypersonic reconnaissance and bomber aircraft development is still in progress, and may soon be completed. As per the reports, the program may be transitioning from development to production.
The Lockheed Martin SR-72 is the successor to the legendary supersonic reconnaissance aircraft SR-71 Blackbird, which was created in the 1960s by Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin’s well-known Advanced Development Programs branch. In 2006, the company secretly began developing the SR-72. Seven years later, the program was announced, with Lockheed Martin describing the SR-72 as a hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft capable of flying at six times the speed of sound.
At the end of 2013, Brad Leland, Lockheed Martin’s program manager for hypersonics, stated that hypersonic planes paired with hypersonic missiles could cross prohibited airspace and target practically any site on the continent in less than an hour. Speed is the next innovation in aviation, which will confront new risks in the next decades. This technology will be a game changer in deployment areas, much like stealth technology is transforming the fighting zone today, he noted.
A 2013 press release highlighted the possibility of introducing the SR-72 into service by 2030, which was 17 years in the future at the time. Now we have a six-year horizon.
According to Lockheed Martin, Skunk Works has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne for several years to create a method for combining a conventional turbine and a ramjet engine to drive an airplane from a standstill to Mach 6. The SR-72 aircraft, dubbed the “son of the Blackbird” by Aviation Week, has a combined engine and airframe system tailored for great performance and affordability, stated the company at that time.
In June 2017, Skunk Works’ CEO, Rob Weiss, announced begning of the construction of the SR-72 Flight Research Vehicle, a single-engine technology demonstrator. This vehicle was expected to be “around the size of an F-22 Raptor” and, after 2020, to demonstrate the ability to take off with a conventional jet engine, accelerate to supersonic speed, and then transition to a ramjet engine. Only a few months later, witnesses reported seeing a small SR-72 FRV demonstration flying above Palmdale, California. In February 2018, Jack O’Banion, Vice President for Strategy and Customer Requirements, verified the flight of the SR-72 FRV, informing the Wall Street Journal that the aircraft is also maneuverable at hypersonic speeds and has reliable engine starts.
However, during the next six years, there was no more information on the initiative. According to a lengthy post on the Sandboxx webpage, reports about the SR-72 became silent following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2018 speech, in which he highlighted the necessity to build hypersonic weapons. As a result, the firm erased all mentions of the SR-72 from its website, and, as Sandboxx remarked, the parade of statements from senior officials abruptly stopped. The company did not announce the program’s discontinuation or explain why public discussion of the SR-72 had been stopped. It just seemed to fade from existence.
Official sources kept mute on the SR-72, although signs suggested that the program was operational and progressing. In 2021, Lockheed Martin will open Building 648 in Palmdale, California, as part of Plant 42, a vast manufacturing and assembly complex. The United States Air Force owns and operates this complex, which is used by a variety of aerospace businesses such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. Some of the most advanced military aircraft, including those produced by Skunk Works, were designed and built at Plant 42. These include the SR-71 Blackbird, B-2 Spirit, B-21 Raider, F-117 Nighthawk, and F-35 Lightning II, among others.
At the same time, Lockheed’s Palmdale workforce grew to nearly 5,500 individuals, more than doubling from 2018. In prior years, Skunk Works had not been extremely active in manufacturing—the sole serial secret program was the fabrication of 20 to 30 RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones for the CIA. The new facility and the increase in personnel numbers indicate a major increase in the manufacture of complicated combat aircraft.
Safran Landing Systems stated in May 2022 that it had signed a contract with Lockheed Martin to design the landing gear for a “future aircraft,” which would include both the nose and main gear structures. Toward the end of 2023, Vago Muradian, editor-in-chief of Defense & Aerospace Report, mentioned a very advanced reconnaissance aircraft built and tested by Skunk Works.
The most compelling hint came in the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick, in which the main character Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, flew a hypersonic aircraft known as the DarkStar. Skunk Works specialists created and built an aircraft mock-up. According to speculation, this was an accurate, although greatly scaled-down, portrayal of the SR-72. It is probable that the company tested new manufacturing procedures and tools on the mock-up. Building 648 was already functioning at the time. Perhaps the DarkStar mock-up is an SR-72 FRV with two engines.
At the end of July this year, Aviation Week, which was also the first to reveal the SR-72 program in November 2013, referenced Lockheed Martin’s quarterly financial report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC regulates and oversees financial markets in the US, and publicly traded companies are required to publish financial results and other essential information to investors on a regular basis.
According to the article, an unnamed secret program overspent its budget by $45 million in the second quarter, and by a total of $335 million since 2022. These losses could continue to rise as the corporation faces “advanced procurement costs.” The program is apparently facing difficulties due to sophisticated design and system integration.
All indications indicate to huge investments in a technologically challenging aviation program, with annual expenses in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.
Lockheed Martin appears to believe that the Pentagon will recognize the strategic relevance of this covert platform and provide the cash required to cover development costs. Skunk Works used a similar method in the 1960s to build the supersonic surveillance drone D-21.
According to Aviation Week editor Steve Trimble, this is a “pre-contract investment” in which Lockheed funds the construction of a secret combat aircraft without a clear contract or commitment from the US government. This could be an attempt to keep the operation under wraps, as federal financing makes it simpler to trace in various Pentagon budget reports and legislative committees. Furthermore, this technique helps them to avoid regulatory bottlenecks and lengthy approval processes, minimizing the likelihood of leaks.
Given Lockheed’s extensive ties to the American political, military, and intelligence establishment, as well as strong personal relationships at the highest levels, it is clear that there are strong unofficial commitments to fund the company’s investments through future government contracts.
If the program has been running since 2006—nearly 20 years—and its annual costs are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, plus the construction of a new, though relatively modest, production facility that will cost hundreds of millions more, one is likely looking at producing only a few dozen highly complex aircraft with unit prices in the high hundreds of millions, potentially around one billion dollars each. For example, if the company produces and sells 20 aircraft, it might recoup all of its investments.
The SR-72 is expected to be a reconnaissance and strike aircraft whose primary advantage will be its speed. Stealth is not a priority because the aircraft’s design must be tightly tuned for extreme speeds, and at such high speeds, the aircraft will emit a substantial infrared signal.
Similarly, it will not have extensive sensor equipment or a huge cargo capacity, so it will not be comparable to the B-21. The optimum armament for the SR-72 looks to be hypersonic missiles, like Lockheed Martin’s Mako. The SR-72 is planned to carry no more than four missiles, potentially as few as two. It may even be equipped with a single type of weapon, like the F-117 bomber was intended specifically to carry Paveway III laser-guided bombs. It’s also likely that the SR-72 will carry the new AGM-181 LRSO (Long Range Stand-Off Weapon) nuclear missiles, which makes sense.
The SR-72’s primary function will be to rapidly cross huge distances at high altitudes, often 25,000 to 30,000 meters.
Thus, the SR-72 might act as both a deterrent and a highly visible strategic signal with a “wow” effect on potential aggressors. The presence of such modern aircraft in a region may have a psychological influence and considerably complicate opponents’ assault planning and execution, particularly if they are planning “fait accompli” operations like the swift capture of Taiwan or another Pacific island.
Of course, the SR-72 faces significant technological problems, which may have already been addressed. For example, at Mach 6, the most exposed components of the aircraft can reach temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius, necessitating material science breakthroughs.
The “holy grail” of hypersonics is propulsion. The SR-72 has a mixed propulsion system, which includes a conventional jet engine, most likely a modified Pratt & Whitney F100 or General Electric F110, for takeoff and high supersonic speeds. The speed limit for jet engines is around Mach 3.
As the SR-72 approaches three times the speed of sound, the intake ducts guide airflow from the jet engine to the ramjet engine. This change is visually illustrated in the film Top Gun. A ramjet has no moving parts and relies on the high-speed passage of air for compression.
When supersonic air enters the engine, shock waves form, slowing and compressing the air without the use of moving elements. The natural process of air compression by shock waves enables efficient burning and strong thrust.
A shock wave is essentially a very tiny zone that experiences abrupt changes in physical characteristics – pressure, density, and temperature. These changes occur extremely quickly, within a few nanoseconds. A shock wave occurs when an item, such as an aircraft, travels at supersonic speeds and the air in front of it does not have enough time to get out of the way.” Instead, the air is compressed rapidly, resulting in the creation of a shock wave.
Turbine-Based Combined Cycle (TBCC) engines are made up of a jet engine and a ramjet. The TBCC enables the aircraft to greatly exceed the SR-71’s record maximum speed, Mach 3.2, and possibly exceed the fictitious speed of the Darkstar, which was more than Mach 10. At this pace, a trip from the United States east coast to NATO’s eastern flank would take only 45 minutes, including take off.