It’s cause A10’s are cheap and F-35’s are expensive. Same reason why the SR-71 was killed (10 planes to own the sky and any adversary vs an order for hundreds).
Also: "On Sept. 3, 2012 an article written by Rakesh Krishman Simha for Indrus.in explains how the Foxhound was able to stop Blackbirds spy missions over Soviet Union on Jun. 3, 1986.
That day, no less than six MiG-31s “intercepted” an SR-71 over the Barents Sea by performing a coordinated interception that subjected the Blackbird to a possible all angle air-to-air missiles attack.
Apparently, after this interception, no SR-71 flew a reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union and few years later the Blackbird was retired to be replaced with the satellites."
The Aurora project and TR3-B were successful. There's no chance we don't have a few of them in Dreamland or off the intercontinental self where we simply use them for reconnaissance. Just look at the old F-16 pilot footage from 2007, it was a controlled leak to see how the government would react to such technology, just like the disclosure of Area 51 (Bob Lazar) after satellite imagery was beginning to become popular.
IDK, part of me feels like there's too high of a chance of Aurora being confused for a ICBM reentry. And similarly, the same interceptor missiles used for hypersonic payloads like that would be effective against it. And the countries that don't have nukes and anti-nuke infrastructure, we just fly drones over with relative impunity. So I legitimately don't see the niche where they make more sense than something else that's public.
That being said, the Space Shuttle didn't really make sense on it's face either and we built it, so I could def be wrong.
I agree with you on all points, but they are already disclosing the late 80s technology to the general public with the SR-72. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_SR-72) Allegedly, Ben Rich of Skunk Works after he retired in 1991 gave a presentation at UCLA chronicling his career and hinted at the Aurora and that "we now have the technology to send ET home" so we probably have some new type of propulsion system that makes planes interstellar. This is all speculation though.
What's really fascinating is the x-37b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 we have an autonomous space craft in orbit for years, yet I never head anything about it. It's part DARPA project so, it's probably some sort reconnaissance experiment.
I could go on and on, I just find this all fascinating.
