{"id":441336,"date":"2026-05-30T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/sr-71-blackbird-secret-drone-sibling-flew-4-misions-failed-every-one\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T00:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:00:18","slug":"the-sr-71-blackbirds-secret-drone-sibling-flew-4-missions-failed-every-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=441336","title":{"rendered":"The SR-71 Blackbird&#8217;s Secret Drone Sibling Flew 4 Missions &amp; Failed Every One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In some ways, the <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"3540409\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/lockheed-martin\/\"  >Lockheed<\/a><\/span> D-21 spy drone appears as a program ahead of its time. In other ways, it is a reminder of a pre-digital and pre-satellite world, and a time long before Google Maps&#8217; satellite view existed. The D-21 was an early attempt to replace or complement manned reconnaissance flights over hostile territory following the development of effective Soviet surface-to-air missile defense systems that rendered even high-flying high-Mach aircraft vulnerable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The D-21 drone was developed to be an early spy drone carried by an SR-71-related aircraft and then B-52, but failed on every mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,3298,1626],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aircraft","category-spy-plane","category-sr-71"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441337,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441336\/revisions\/441337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}