For at least the second time this year, Lockheed Martin is dropping hints of a new aircraft on social media. The image, released in a short video via the company’s Instagram page yesterday, celebrates the 80th anniversary of their legendary Skunk Works division.
Last year, the movie Top Gun Maverick was all the rage, but it wasn’t Mav flying F-18s that stole show. Or even the return of the F-14 on the silver screen. It was arguably the Darkstar hypersonic aircraft flown by Mav at the beginning of the movie.
Lockheed actually developed it for the movie. It was a real prop (not flight worthy), with a functional cockpit. We saw it for ourselves at last year’s Edwards AFB Air Show (watch above). Lockheed even made their own video about it too, which you can watch HERE.
The Chinese government even thought Darkstar was real, which sent them into a panic, according to Top Gun’s producer Jerry Bruckheimer in an interview with Sandboxx News.
“The Navy told us that a Chinese satellite turned and headed on a different route to photograph that plane. They thought it was real. That’s how real it looks”
And then, earlier this year, Lockheed released another public post with carefully chosen word “acknowledged”:
SR-72, something else, or just playing with us?
Lockheed has previously released artist renderings of future hypersonic aircraft, with several spokespeople saying a hypersonic SR-72 would be coming, going back as early as 2013.
In 2018, Lockheed’s Jack O’Banion, Vice President of Lockheed’s Strategy & Customer Requirements for Advanced Development Programs (aka Skunk Works), publicly stood next to an illustration of a hypersonic and talked about it as if it already existed, saying “without the digital transformation, the aircraft you see there could not have been made.”
If you Google “SR-72 Lockheed”, you’ll immediately see a link to Lockheed’s website and a SR-72 page, but it says “no information available”.
The subject is a rabbit hole that doesn’t provide much information other than a few cool photos. It is interesting and fun to speculate, Lockheed has said themselves they are working on projects, and they seem to be intentionally dropping hints publicly once or twice a year about it via social media.
Previous aircraft developed by Skunk Works were not publicly disclosed until those aircraft were already operational for years, including the U-2 and F-117. Both of these aircraft are still flying in the U.S. Air Force inventory.
