Haha I literally thought “what about satellites?” as soon as I saw the title

Me at tech school in 1998 listening to an instructor: Instructor: “we have satellites that can see carbonation bubbles in a can of soda from space”. Me 6 months later looking at images: “ah no, just no”!

In the early 90's, one day we all where outside at night. We looked up and there was this bright light in the sky at a very high altitude. Which went from one side of the sky to the other in just minutes. I've never seen something fly so fast. For something to fly over Mach 5. One needs to be over 130,000 ft. Prime example, the X-15. To understand the aircraft in the early 90's capable of hypersonic speeds. One first needs to go back to the development of the X-15 and Edwards Air Force Base. To start the story of Groom Lake. One needs to start with Burbank, CA, Palmdale, CA, and Edwards Air Force Base, You would also need to dive into Phantom Works (Boeing) and Skunk Works (Lockheed).

The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs. Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.

A few years ago there was a proposal to use small single use satellites launched within 48 hours. If I remember correctly rocket lab is on standby right now to test rapid launch capacity. While not equivalent capability it likely would help deal with some of the issues with satellite surveillance

Alex’s opinions hold more weight than you’d think and in places you’re not even considering. He knows why he dropped this timely nugget of gold out to us. 🙏🏼

I saw a comment recently that the SR-71 skin temperature at Mach 3 was around 600 degC (and therefore quite a challenge to insulate the pilot from) but that a move up to say Mach 5 would raise this to an estimate 2000 degC. So, apart from that fact alone steering us towards drones, have we really solved the problem of such surface temperatures in a practical unmanned aircraft yet outside of missile technology? I feel another video from you Sandboxx!

Alex Hollins, the SR-91 Aurora is the only answer for this problem. It's old tech but it's constantly being upgraded, so it's beter to reveal and use it than to use the TR series crafts as they are just way more extremely advanced than said Aurora.

I’ve often thought, what about suborbital spaceplanes? There is so much to overcome for hypersonic atmospheric flight, why not build on what exists today technologically for reusable platforms like the X-30? Lots of research went into that SSTO system.

Great video, Alex Hollings! Your knowledge and experience is appreciated by me. God bless you 🙏 and go in peace ✌️

Could you do a video about upcoming (or returning) vehicle types? Laser trucks/tanks seem to be coming soon, the anti air cannon is back from the grave (Gepard is back, SkyRanger will come soon), drone carrier trucks or tanks will add to howitzers, artillery and mortar launchers, drone command center tanks seem plausible as well, EW/jamming trucks will probably become a lot more common, and is the future of the MBT to become a nible sub 50 ton racing tank while IFVs get up to 50 tons as well?

I'd love to hear what you think RDEs (rotating detonation engines) will do for military capabilities. Will they have any surprising applications?

That slo-mo footage of the Raptor @3:40 never gets old. I feel like I can always rely on Alex to make sure it finds it's way into every video!

Keep them coming Alex. Look forward to them.

Great update on the real world of intelligence.

Back when they said the shut down the SR71 because they said that satellites could do the job, I really didn't believe it. Looking back at October 1973 I was stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB. During that time we received 2 SRs, one stayed for 2 or 3 days and the other for about a week. As I have gotten older I've become willing to bet they were for the Yom Kippur War. I worked graveyards at that time, so I got to see one take off a couple of time, WHAT A SIGHT!!!

Don't worry about placing a pilot in the things, and it becomes a lot easier to build them. Removes a LOT of parasitic weight, and removes several constraints on maneuverability.

Think a point to throw out is that theres already a real world issue that space is already pretty congested such that once every few months some satelites do indeed burn propellant to maintain a safe distance from other objects that may come close to colliding with them

Amazing how hard it is to convince the general public that a fast plane could be useful. Thank you for making it clear that spy sats are very useful but just one component of full situational awareness. There are also some undisclosed technologies that are likely to exist in some capacity such as stealth sats and manned subsonic stealth spy planes but obviously there are benefits to having a mix of manned/unmanned, supersonic/subsonic, stealth/non-stealth, and space/air technologies for intel gathering.

Another fantastic episode Alex!

An excellent presentation, Alex. Thanks !

AH is one of the best. His passion is infectious

As usual exceptionally good coverage

Everyone needs to realize that you can get app’s for smart phones that will show you satellites before they come over. Stealth tech is not the answer anymore. Sure the SR’s and A-12’s were the start of stealth but as soon as they came over the horizon you could see the heat radiating off the jets. Speed is the answer now or speed is the new type of stealth. We spend a fortune on stealth coating repair on the B-2, F-22 and F-35. Get rid of the expensive coatings and start building for speed. Alex is spot on regarding a new jet.

One of the SR-71's great strengths was it's unpredictability compared to sats.

IIRC, there was a novel written in Tom Clancy's universe where the Kessler effect was a major plot point.

Love your content Alex, the way break down information its cool to learn about this stuff 👍 thx

A video about the AAS / FARA (armed scout helicopter) program would be cool. Sikorsky has the S-97 Raider compete with the Bell+Textron 360 Invictus. The Raider has troop capacity while the Invictus does not, but that gives the Invictus better stealth properties, just like the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche had. Not sure why Sikorsky abandoned that design, as they first came up with it. Just to push a common scout and transport design when they already lost the Blackhawk transport replacement to the Bell V280 Valor?

Great work! Another wonderful video. Thank you 😎.!

Excellent! Thank you once more, Alex! ❤🤍💙

I think a lot of people have a major disconnect between spy & recon. One can argue the semantics of the two, but at the very least there is a lot of overlap. Yet people seem to associate spy with either archaic tech like the Blackbird, or outright James Bond stuff. Thus lots of people don't really think about the spying aspect in words like those used near the beginning of the video, even if they are envisioning exactly that.

This is precisely why retiring the SR-71 before a replacement was available was an unforced error.

Loved seeing "Enemy" pop up on your video. My partner and I did computer screens for that movie. The research Opportunities that were given to me leading up to the film we're amazing. Blast to work on. Good to see Chris's face again. I do miss Tony.

I always thought taking the SR-71 out of service was a big mistake. There is no substitute for air recon in real time. Satellites take too long especially with today's tech.

I worked for a government defense company for a bit, and their unofficial motto was “yesterdays technology, tomorrow”

War is a game of Chess in real life and it's all about how many moves you can stay ahead of your opponent, The Further ahead you are and can remain the more likely you are to win. It's could to see that the US is trying to think outside the box in attempting apply these types of principles in military strategy. It does fit quite nicely with moving to Multiple Domain Warfare from Combined Arms.

In terms of "miles-per-gallon" hypersonics still lose out to subsonic platforms generally, as far as I know. Thus in the usual case, highly stealthy subsonic jets will remain king. The use-case for hypersonic ISR is the reactivity.

I'm literally just now hearing about a jet made in the 90s. Damn that thing is wild, gets me wondering wtf they have now

Just had a thought- Habitual Linecrosser made a skit where the plane 'characters' said "oh no, it's a spy plane, said no enemy ever" So, would our enemies fear our spy-plane, as it were?

In regards to space-based cameras, where I've learned recently, the hard way, that gamma radiation can seriously burn camera sensors 😂 I put my Canon 90d too close to a piece of pitch blend uranium ore I know the sensor has permanent defects 😮

These are probably going to operate at extremely high altitude, where the air is thin and causes less air resistance.

Keep up the awesome content!

So much great content! Thx!

Actually, my first question was how do you know we don't have one?

Love the u2 just a cool design.

Honestly, in all due respect, Im pretty sure we all know we already have it. Intelligence and coordination is not only paramount, it's what decides win or loss today. So in what way would it benefit us to say hey! We have our most important plane/drone flying here at exactly 6,000mph please don't hurt it because our men's lives depend on it!

Even better, let's just stop fighting. I know I know. But it's still a nice thought.

Great job as usual Alex!

A whole video about counter measures against satellites? Yes please!

One thing I believe they were testing with the X-37B was the ability to quickly change its orbit to make them less predictable when they came around by using the upper atmosphere, which could be employed for some of those LEO satellites especially in a conflict scenario (depending on propellant availability of course)

Alex, you raise a lot of important points but I'd argue that a subsonic stealth platform and/or a large constellation of smaller and cheaper recon sats would do the job better and possibly cheaper than a hypersonic aircraft and the reason is because of the myriad problems with very high speed aircraft, namely: 1. Hypersonic planes can't be stealthy. They might be hard to shoot down, but you still lose a huge advantage of the target not knowing they're being spied on because of their IR signature and radar-reflecting exhaust trail. 2. Manoeuvrability or lack thereof is a real killer. The SR-71 never flew over the USSR (or China, I think) and flights had to be very carefully planned to avoid entering Soviet airspace. This problem only gets far worse with a hypersonic plane because its turn radius is so enormous that performing a mission without intruding into someone's airspace where it would cause political fallout becomes almost impossible in many parts of the world. 3. High speed aircraft aren't easy or simple to operate or maintain. The SR-71 required its own fuel and tankers to be put in place in advance, and if the hypersonic aircraft requires cryofuel then it'll need entirely new infrastructure and tankers to be built. It took a minimum of 19 hours to prepare an SR-71 for flight once it was in-place at its operating base and it could only fly once a week due to damage sustained on each flight. A subsonic aircraft that required less prep work could easily be faster at getting on station than a hypersonic plane. 4. Spy sats can be stealthy - the Misty series demonstrated very good directional stealth and effectively disappeared from ground tracking. 5. Satellite sensors being relatively old is less of a problem than you think. Sensitivity, spectral range and noise of the latest sensors isn't dramatically better than what was being built 10 years ago. 6 Satellites don't need to fly overhead to obtain high-quality imaging. A satellite passing directly over Pittsburg could image anything from Indianapolis to New York and nobody on the ground would know what it was looking at. It's not practical to cover up everything any time a satellite gets within a few hundred miles because it happens too often. 7. Spying on allies and "friendly" nations is out of the question for a hypersonic aircraft, but satellites can do it routinely. There's also no issue with airspace violations or giving an enemy an opportunity or reason to target the recon platform - unlike shooting at an aircraft flying over your country, shooting at a satellite would be an unprovoked act of war. 8. Spy satellites can't loiter unless they're in geostationary orbit, but neither can hypersonic planes. Put all those sensors on a subsonic very stealthy platform and you'd have something that could operate anywhere, run on regular fuel and refuel from any old tanker, would be simpler and cheaper to maintain and operate, could loiter for many hours over its targets, could spy on its targets without anyone knowing (very valuable when trying to avoid escalation or when spying on allies and friendly nations) and without the risk of causing a political storm if it was flying over nations without their agreement.

Where did you get that B Roll? Wow you really do a professional job!!!! Much appreciated.

Theoretically micro/cub recon sats launched in large constellation to observe an area could give near 24 coverage. Plus being micro/cube sats they could lanuched rather quickly by a Falcon 9 in few hours.

Pumping out videos left and right now!

Great report. Thank you.

8:30 😂 I used to make those corner cube prisms.

TRUTH, TRUTH, TRUTH Facts vs Feelings..! Great job bringing us the TRUTH...

Of note is also that these advanced engines for hypersonic aircraft could be a large part of the equation of a greatly reduced cost of the access to space, potentially allowing for the human race to clean up after itself after a kessler-syndrome type event takes place (there are of course other ground based methods as well, such as the NASA idea of a "orbital laser broom" which basically deorbits the junk by pointing a laser at it and vaporizing part of the junk to push the junk the other way using Newton's Third Law). After all, mach 10 or higher is already a little less than half way to the velocity required to maintain a circular orbit over the earth, meaning that you could practically use such a hypersonic craft as the first stage of a rocket designed to get to orbit. Imagine being able to launch a Vulcan Centaur without the Vulcan part, only needing the Centaur upper stage, potentially with a much much smaller solid rocket motor being needed solely to bring it to an altitude sufficient for ignition of the vacuum-rated engines of the Centaur upper stage.

Kevin Bowcutt, the lead hypersonics researcher at Boeing, was hinting that they had mastered dual-cycle scramjet years ago, so I would imagine the US is already in possession of advanced hypersonic drones.

Thanks for sharing

I just love this guy! Great reporting! Somehow I feel better about paying my taxes (LOL).

Thanks for the Irregular Warfare Podcast recommendation; I have been looking for something like this and I have now added it to my "follows"!

I'm willing to bet it will be an optionally manned vehicle like the B21 or perhaps fully autonomous. It will also be interesting what its low speed loiter capability may be if it's really to be a long term observation platform.

Whats the name of the music around 17:00-17:40? I've looked at every single song posted in the description but none of them seem to match.

Speaking of the predictability of satellites, I have seen imagery over both land and sea on the EU Copernicus platform with artifacts that look like they are using countermeasures to disrupt the sensors

The US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has selected Australian aerospace company Hypersonix Launch Systems to deliver hypersonic test vehicles. The new award is part of Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities (HyCAT1) programme. The DIU is executing this programme in collaboration with the US Air Force (USAF) and the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (USD R&E). Hypersonix has been selected for this programme after a competitive process, in which a total of 63 international aerospace companies participated to offer their solutions for the DIU’s HyCAT project. The first hypersonics solicitation under this programme was issued by DIU and USD R&E’s Director of Hypersonics and the Test Resource Management Center in September last year. In response, Hypersonix proposed its ‘DART Additive Engineering (AE)’ vehicle, which is expected to have a modular payload bay of nearly 20lb.

Great episode! Loved the music!

Great episode. What are chances of manned hypersonic ISR platforms ( greater situational awareness? Immediate problem at Mach 5 plus is aircraft skin temperature. Brings into question metallurgy (skin melting point), expansion, fuel etc. All problems faced by SR-71. Advances in ceramics & carbon fiber sufficiently advanced to meet these challenges? Thanks.

"Space house isn't real. It can't hurt you" Space house: 0:37

Thanks Alex.

Also by placing Edward Snowden around the 2:04 ts. Epic

Personally, I find it really difficult to believe we don’t already possess these aircraft.

Excellent report sir. You are one of my intel sources.

I haven't watched the whole video yet so this question may get answered; but when thinking about the satellite conundrum I thought, "Are there any 'micro-satellites' out there that they could make swarms of?" Perhaps enough relatively cheap satellites that can be launched on relatively cheap launch vehicles that could simply overwhelm an enemy's air/space defense? I have no idea if this is even remotely feasible or practical but I imagine someone has thought of this before and studied the problem to see if it could be done.

I would love to see you do a deep dive on what we actually know about Area 51 and the X planes that were tested there. Awesome video as always.

Your videos are excellent!

Iiiiiiii’mmmm Alex Hollings, and I need that video of Soviet satellite spoofing shenanigans now!

Great video very informative as they always are . I also love Enemy of The State. I thought that was the NSA featured in that film. My question is are they considered one in the same as a government agency?

@sandboxx When the SR-71 was at operational altitude and above Mach 3, could the sonic boom be heard on the ground? I have never asked myself that question before and did just now. It's an interesting side effect.

Thanks!

Could Starship make a viable space recon platform once the orbital refuel capacity is implemented? It seems like a spacecraft with enough fuel to get to Mars could change effectively at will.

Since everything is targeted by means of gps which is satellite driven and will be one of our first assets targeted by China and or Russia what will we be using to replace it? Thank you and great work Alex.

I agree Alex.

Unmanned hypersonic spy vehicle, thank you!

Missouri to China in one hour.... It's hard to comprehend a plane that doesn't turn into a molten ball of exotic material after just a few minutes at that speed

Very informative. Thanks Alex. How will all this information, which seems daunting, be analyzed? AI download to Langley and then back to the AI enabled source, then to policy makers, and then back to the AI to AI driven operational system?

Hey! February 4 is my birthday, too! We're twinsies, lol. Along with Alice Cooper and Dan Quail. (!)

Superb video 👏👏👏👏👏👍

The way you do the intro is fantastic

The Soviets arguably made better use of the the knowledge when and where satellites would pass over head. They would then move their bomber fleet around to make it look as if they had more. They also had the same group of bombers over fly parades over and over.

everything Modern Warfare Instittue does is amazing

Hey man I love your videos! One note: it's pronounced "nev-ADD-uh" not "nev-ODD-uh". That's how we natives can tell if you're from here or not.

Looks like the RF-4C Phantom II wasn't as obsolete as they told us and was retired too soon. Same with the EF-111A.

7:10 I see that thing on every space vid I watch😂

You might want to have a read of "Deep Black" by William Burrows (1986). He puts the first US photo-intel sat, KH-1, as being deployed in 1959 (also called the CORONA project). Good book for a historical perspective of the ISR war in space.

Sorry to say mate, I have studied and taught analysis of satellite imagery. I've processed and made maps from most platforms- drones, contact sensors core samples... you name it, I've analysed it. What I can tell you is the capability of ordinary satellites- not the spy kind- is scary good. The issue you have typically is the lack of people who can take full advantage of the available data, and create maps and models predicting what you want to know. It certainly is not an issue with the tech!

Small correction, regarding satellites being useless once they run out of fuel: While technically correct, there _are_ "space tug" satellites now, that can dock with 'dead' satellites (due to an empty gas tank) and revive them by performing their station keeping duties! (or, to ferry them into the graveyard orbit) They are a proven technology now, not an "idea on paper". 🤘 There's also work on being able to refuel satellites, but it's pretty unlikely they'll be able to service any *currently* up there. Future ones would be (plausibly) given that ability, though. However, there's an idea that they MAY be able to, for some satellites, by perhaps being able to refuel them directly through their thruster port... a colonic, of sorts... lol _(currently, most of the tugs dock through a similar means, with an expansion-clamp pushed into the thruster nozzle opening)_

I remember reading news accounts when the SR71 was retired stating that satellites could do the same job

I knew there was something I liked about you Alex we share a Birthday together 🎉I love the way you present your information about this subjects.

Thanks Alex....🇺🇸