
Lockheed’s D-21 Tagboard Supersonic Spy Drone - vt240
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27178/air-force-wanted-to-turn-skunk-works-mach-3-capable-recon-drone-into-a-nuclear-bomber
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noir_lord
> Lockheed Skunk Works' legendary boss Kelly Johnson was so distraught over
> the accident, he initially refused to work on the program any further and
> offered to refund the money the U.S. government had already paid.

I need to track down some good books on this guy, he sounds interesting.

~~~
sachleen
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich is really
good

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errantspark
I'll second this recommendation, it isn't about that damned swede, but it does
give you some sense of his magnitude.

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Zolomon
Which Swede are you referring to?

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jessaustin
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19516935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19516935)

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jvolkman
There's one of these (along with a Blackbird) at the Museum of Flight just
south of Seattle.

[http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/lockheed-d-21b-drone](http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/lockheed-d-21b-drone)

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jessaustin
Yikes, all that work and expense for a program that flew _four_ missions. Two
transferred all the tech to both USSR and China, and the other two suffered
mysterious film recovery mishaps that prevented any intelligence gathering.
It's no wonder they were so eager to get spy satellites figured out.

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walrus01
For the original reconnaissance platform version, the idea that something so
expensive and complicated could be considered one-use disposable is amazing.
But then again they were looking at it as an alternative to very low orbiting
satellites with finite film canister supplies...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_\(satellite\))

Makes you wonder what they're testing at Groom Lake these days, which ISN'T
public.

[https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pictures-
boeing-u...](https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pictures-boeing-
unveils-new-loyal-wingman-drone-at-456123/)

~~~
djsumdog
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of
its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The
cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30
cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles
of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels
of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed
more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true
sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross
of iron.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

~~~
tomohawk
Exactly. But when you are facing Communists who have taken over a very large
chunk of the world, and who have starved tens of millions of people to death
and shown very little regard for basic human rights, it kinda seems worth the
cost.

Because, you aren't going to have _any_ of those fine things if the Communists
succeed with their plans.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
I don't think anyone argues that the United States should have cut its
military budget to zero. It is a question of degree.

Did the US chronically overstate the Soviet threat, inflating the defence
budget well beyond what was necessary? One could make a good case that it did.

From the start the Soviet Union was on the defensive. Stalin reigned in the
Red Army in the final months of the Second World War from taking West Germany,
for fear of inflaming the US and UK. He refused to support the communists
(mostly ex-resistance fighters) in the Greek Civil War for the same reason.
Nor did he lend support to the Chinese Revolution.

The US was the far greater power from the beginning of the Cold War. The
Soviet Union had only industrialised in the last generation and was wrecked by
the Nazi invasion. While it showed impressive growth into the 1960s, under
Brezhnev it began to stagnate.

Various US operations (e.g. Vietnam) and defence programmes (e.g. the
Strategic Defence Initiative) were not only unnecessary, but detrimental to
the US. Both of these examples were based on exaggerations of the Soviet
threat: Vietnam on domino theory; SDI on the phantom 'missile gap'.

~~~
Sommer_Son
Soviet Union never was on defensive side. From the very beginning they've
tried to conquer most of their neighbors, they've attacked Poland together
with Hitler and Finland in 1940.

Even in 1945 they've tried to annex part of Persia and wrestle Bosfor Straight
control from Turkey.

~~~
Emma_Goldman
It has been the historical norm for great power's to exert control over a
sphere of influence. That is exactly what the United States did in the 19th
century in the Western hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine. The cases you
raise fall into that category.

In fact there is an obvious parallel between the USSR's attempt to gain access
to the Turkish Straits and the United State's repeated interventions to build
and control the Panama Canal. The only difference is that while the United
States was able to dominate its sphere of influence, the Soviet Union's
attempt to intimidate Turkey failed. Instead of gaining access to a vital
strategic waterway, it led to the Truman Doctrine. Don't forget that one of
the pivotal events of the Cold War - the Cuban missile crisis - was based on
the same asymmetry. The United States had Jupiter missiles in Italy and
Turkey, but would not accept Soviet missiles in Cuba, a country that it had
tried and failed to invade.

Before the end of the Second World War the United States had set its sights on
something far more ambitious than a regional sphere of interest: global
primacy. The Soviet Union never had the capability to do that, or considered
it a realistic goal. It was bunkered in a traditional land empire.

When I say that the Soviet Union was on the 'defensive', I mean that in the
context of its bipolar confrontation with the United States, not that it never
engaged in aggression. Obviously it did, often brutally.

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Sommer_Son
So from the very first day USSR was confronting US?

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Emma_Goldman
I think that's a very unhelpful way of putting the matter.

There is no direct confrontation standing at the origin of the conflict. Hence
it being a 'Cold' War. It emerged from an accumulation of strategic moves over
time. Each power worked to advance its interests, while watching other powers
(namely Germany, Japan, and the British Empire) fade. At some point, they
recognised that they were in direct geopolitical competition. When they did,
it was clear that the Soviet Union was the lesser power. Its actions reflected
that reality.

If you _did_ want to identify an 'originary' moment to the conflict - which
again, I think is an unhelpful way of approaching the subject - then it would
have to be the US intervention in the Russian Civil War against the
Bolsheviks.

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izzydata
That photo of them assembling those aircraft reminds me of one of the scenes
from the original Star Wars where they are in the hanger with X wings.

~~~
stcredzero
The J-type 327 Nubian royal starship from the prequels was basically an SR-71
ripoff.

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zaroth
The D-21 perched on the M-21 mothership is just insanely badass.

This was almost 50 years ago. I feel so cheated!

~~~
quanticle
If you want to see one in real life, the Museum of Flight, in Seattle, has a
SR-71/M-21 with the D-21 drone.

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basementcat
The Pima Air and Space Museum outside of Tucson, AZ also has one.

The Chinese Aviation Museum in Beijing has a D-21 in somewhat less airworthy
condition.

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foxyv
I saw one of these over at March Air Museum in southern California. They also
have a cool display of the SR-71. Probably the coolest place in southern
California to visit if you are interested in military aviation.

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CodeSheikh
It is like SR-71 had a baby

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toufiqbarhamov
Other way around, this preceded the SR-71.

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CodeSheikh
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

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sabujp
yo dawg, I heard you like blackbirds!

