Check Out All These Blackbird Videos NASA Just Released

NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center is posting hundreds of film clips to Youtube from the agency’s flight test activities at Dryden/Edwards AFB over the decades, many of which have never been seen before. So far they have posted a few hundred videos, and a handful of them feature the legendary YF-12 and SR-71 Blackbird

YF-12C Mid-air Refueling
YF-12C Approach and Landing at Edwards Air Force Base
YF-12A Landing at Edwards Air Force Base
YF-12C Taxi and Takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base
YF-12C Takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base
YF-12A Coldwall Aerodynamic Heating Experiment
SR-71 Takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base
SR-71 Blackbird Refueling in Flight
SR-71 LASRE Refueling in Flight from a KC-135
SR-71 LASRE in Flight over California's Mojave Desert
SR-71B Blackbird Pilot Trainer Aircraft

Videos of the X-45 Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) were also posted. As we have discussed in great depth before, it’s amazing that networked UCAV technology was proven nearly a decade and a half ago. There are also some great clips of the X-40 Space Maneuver Vehicle in testing. This was the forerunner to the USAF’s successful X-37B orbiter that makes so many headlines today. Finally, a couple XB-70 Valkyrie videos were posted as well—it’s an aircraft we can’t get enough of. 

This is just a sampling of the various playlists that are offered up, so make sure you go other to Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Youtube page to browse the whole archive, and more videos are supposedly going to be uploaded soon.

X-45A / UCAV Project Overview and Autonomous Formation Maneuver
X-40A First Free Flight
X-40A Seventh Free Flight
XB-70A Cockpit View of Takeoff
XB-70 Valkyrie Landing on the Runway at Edwards AFB

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Tyler Rogoway

Editor-in-Chief

Tyler’s passion is the study of military technology, strategy, and foreign policy and he has fostered a dominant voice on those topics in the defense media space. He was the creator of the hugely popular defense site Foxtrot Alpha before developing The War Zone.