SR-72 Darkstar

If you don’t know SR-72 Darkstar, You can see it in the movie Top Gun: Maverick.

Make no mistake, even if it’s only for the film, the plane piloted by Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell was actually designed by Skunk Work. One of Lockheed Martin’s secret divisions.

According to Lockheed Martin, the production team behind Top Gun: Maverick contacted the Skunk Works division for help with the SR-72 concept. The Skunk Works is a division of Lockheed Martin that works on the secret aircraft program. Founded by legendary aeronautical engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson,

Skunk Works has established itself as the most important and influential aviation design agency of the modern era. This agency is responsible for the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

SR-72 is A son of SR-71 Blackbird 

the hypersonic SR-72 “Darkstar” still has genetics  from the SR-71 Blackbird, which was also developed by Skunk Works. 

The difference is that while the SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.3 (or 2,193 miles per hour), the SR-72 in the film is in hypersonic territory. The aircraft is capable of flying up to Mach 10, or 7,672 miles per hour. Hypersonic speed itself is anything that flies more than 3,000 miles per hour, or more than Mach 5.

Of course, the SR-72 Darkstar didn’t really exist. This film plane has the same name as the RQ-3 Darkstar. A durable, high-altitude reconnaissance drone developed by Lockheed Martin in the 1990s. The real Darkstar is a slow-moving spy platform that flies at less than 5 percent of the speed of the planes in the film.

But Skunk Work actually also gave rise to the design of the SR-72 aircraft and not for the film. The aircraft is designed to be unmanned and also flies at hypersonic speeds. This design was first announced in 2016.

The film’s SR-72 is nearly identical to the 2016 rendering Lockheed Martin released on its website. The only major difference is the addition of the pilot cockpit windows on the left and right of the SR-72 that was in the film. Meanwhile, real-world planes don’t exist because they don’t need them because they’re unmanned.

Lockheed Martin, on the Top Gun: Maverick webpage, explains that there were a number of staff working on the film project to perfect what the Mach 10 plane would look like.

So the SR-72 in the movie actually almost exists in real life. Although there is no Pentagon contract to build a real-world SR-72 yet. So far, development of the aircraft is an internal Lockheed Martin effort. So it may be built but it can also stop at the concept. Unfortunately if it was actually made he wouldn’t have a seat for Tom Cruise.