NASA may be preparing to bring the SR-71 Blackbird—the fastest jet ever built—out of retirement, amid suggestions from the Trump administration that a new generation of hypersonic surveillance aircraft could be in development.
Former NASA and Air Force engineers told Aviation Week they had recently been approached about helping return an aging Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird to flight, nearly 27 years after the aircraft last took to the skies.
Mike Relja, a former Blackbird test engineer, said NASA contacted him last month about reviving the neglected aircraft. The SR-71 could reach Mach 3.3—roughly 2,200 mph—but Relja said he was too old to take on such an enormous project.
“I told the guy, ‘You know, I’m too old to be doing this,’” Relja told Aviation Week. “‘I wish you well. I’d like to see you make it. It would be interesting. But I just don’t think you can get there from here.’”
“I do know they’ve got people working on it,” Relja added. “But again, without equipment, it’s beyond me what they’re doing.”
The aircraft reportedly involved is Tail No. 884, an SR-71A that had been displayed at Edwards Air Force Base in California before it unexpectedly disappeared from public view in May.
The Blackbird had been housed at the base’s Armstrong Flight Research Center since Oct. 9, 1999. That date marked the final flight by any SR-71 in the United States.
After years on display, the aircraft could be filled with sand and moisture. Its engines may not have been lubricated or rotated since that 1999 flight, while spare parts valued at $600 million were destroyed in 2007.
Relja expressed doubt that engineers could repair the Blackbird’s damaged wings and retrain pilots to fly it, though he acknowledged that NASA’s considerable resources could make the seemingly impossible achievable.
“If you got a ton of money, maybe you can make it happen,” he told Aviation Week. “They went to the Moon, you know.”
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First introduced 59 years ago, the SR-71 still holds the public-record speed mark for a crewed jet aircraft.
At Mach 3.3, the Blackbird could theoretically travel from New York to Los Angeles in just over an hour. A commercial airliner typically requires about 5 hours and 30 minutes to cover the same route.
Other retired NASA employees also said former Blackbird engineers had been contacted during the summer about working on the aircraft.
However, during interviews with those former engineers, NASA reportedly declined to explain why it would want to return the SR-71A to the air.
The agency has not publicly confirmed or commented on the alleged effort.
Speculation surrounding the Blackbird has intensified this month after NASA chief Jared Isaacman hinted at plans for a new class of hypersonic surveillance jets.
Isaacman, a billionaire aerospace enthusiast, owns what has been described as the world’s largest private air force.
“In the service of the first A [aeronautics] in NASA, we are rebuilding our X-plane fleet. The X-59 is researching quiet supersonic flight, but it’s just the beginning,” Isaacman said at the tech-focused All-In Summit in Los Angeles.
The X-59 Quesst is an experimental aircraft designed to test whether supersonic flight can be achieved without the powerful, disruptive “sonic boom” associated with breaking the sound barrier.
“It will not be long before NASA is once again flying as high and as fast from decades past—and then even more,” Isaacman said.
When a Blackbird-like image came up during a live interview immediately afterward, Isaacman added fuel to the mystery by asking, “You sure that’s a Blackbird?” He offered no further clarification.