Few aircraft ever pushed the limits of speed, height, and technology nearly as far as the YF-12A. Offspring of the same lineage that would produce the SR-71 Blackbird legend, this Cold War interceptor was a union of record-setting possibilities and technological advances decades in advance of its era.
It was a stealth aircraft, an irresponsible aircraft, and an engineering marvel whose impact lasted long beyond the termination of its cancelled flight programme.
YF-12A was more than just a speed interceptor. It was a plane that broke the highway to flight’s future. Once the program closed down, existing aircraft served new purposes as Air Force and NASA test aircraft. Lessons learned in flight were directly transferred to the Space Shuttle program, and the technological legacy endures today in high-speed research.
Its radar and missiles continued as the basis for the F-14 Tomcat production-line AWG-9 radar and AIM-54 Phoenix missile, evidence of its DNA continuing to shape more than a generation of combat aircraft.
The YF-12A is also shrouded in Cold War secrecy. Even during the height of tensions, it was still hidden even from its very existence in the government. Under its misleading designation of “A-11” before President Lyndon B. Johnson ultimately approved it in 1964, he did so as a brilliant gambit calculated to take the spotlight away from the even more covert A-12 spy plane program.
Engineers tasked with working on the YF-12A were kept under strict secrecy restrictions, and even materials for constructing the aircraft were purchased secretly, reminding us how much like a secret the program was kept. The YF-12A was not only faster, but so were its cutting-edge systems.
It featured the Hughes AN/ASG-18 radar, the first pulse-Doppler radar to be installed on an American airframe, capable of measuring the sizes of enemy aircraft targets up to bombers at over a hundred miles range. With the option of an infrared track device, it was capable of detecting approaching enemies near ground level.
With a Mach 4 flight capability on three AIM-47 Falcon missiles, it finished all testing. In a stunning test, a missile launched at 74,000 feet at over Mach 3 destroyed a drone bomber flying at just 500 feet above the ground. To withstand Mach 3 temperatures, the plane had to be built almost entirely of titanium, a metal that could not easily be provided in the amount available in America then.
A Vladimir and Estragon-esque twist of fate saw huge amounts of the metal needed and bought in secret form through shell companies and redirected into the program. That clandestine system powered an airplane that was built to deflect the same threat that it originally was supposed to defend against, which actually only adds to the mystique. And perhaps most of all, though, the YF-12A is defined by its incredible performance.
It broke world records in 1965 at more than 2,070 miles per hour and more than 80,000 feet altitude. All these fell short of the incredible, given the era. The plane had no issue flying at Mach 3.2, well out into enemy interceptor or missile range.
It was not only a weapon of defense, but it was an air defender, a testament to science that overpowered all the conventions of what human beings thought they could do flying high in the skies.
