SR-71 Air to Ground Aircraft?

The types of weapons capable of reliable interception would be similar to those used for shooting down intermediate and lower range ballistic missiles.
Not really - missiles don't manoeuvre. A SAM capable of reliably intercepting a B-70 or SR-71 is by default a very capable ABM, but an ABM can't expect to kill an aircraft except by luck or through sheer size of the (nuclear) warhead. Still, it's a useful guide to the size of missile we're talking about - THAAD has the kinetics, but you'd need a different kill vehicle with an explosive warhead and endoatmospheric manoeuvring capability.
Depending on how much a strike SR-71 costs, it might be more efficient to go with B-70 type aircraft. The SR-71 cost $8 million each ($96 million was appropriated for 12 early aircraft). The F-12 would have cost $15 to $18 million. A B-70 seems to have cost around $22 million ($265 million was appropriated for 12 prototypes in 1960).

Another option would be reviving the F-108 program to produce the strike aircraft. The F-108 used honeycombed steel instead of titanium, so it should be more suitable for mass production and maintenance by regular Air Force personnel.
Careful with costs - the A-12 family was never truly productionised, so every airframe was a hand-built prototype with significant differences. There would be significant scope for cost reduction. By comparison, the B-70 was productionised from the start since it was intended to be the main long-range bomber of SAC.

In practice, I suspect that the F-108 would always be cheaper than the A-12 due to the design decisions made (steel vs. titanium, J93 vs J58) but would give up some performance to get there.
 
SAM range and ceiling are mutually exclusive, you can't have 300km range when you're shooting at something at 35km altitude.

So what is the range of various versions of the S200 SAM at maximum altitude? I get the feeling that even with 60 sites available when the improved V-860PV/5V21P with a ceiling of 29km entered service in 1970 there is a hell of a lot of airspace at that altitude that a Blackbird could use.
 
At what point does it become more practical to simply build a spaceplane and go into orbit? Would Blackstar really have been capable of getting an X-15 or Dynasoar to orbit, and could it have deployed a larger spaceplane with a higher payload capacity?
Not likely orbital-capable, not unless it could carry at least 75 tons externally. As far as a very suborbital capacity...if we assume that "Blackstar" carried about the same 50,000 lbs as the B-70, then a reasonable single-stage upper stage...it might be capable of being about the size of Gemini and capable of ~6.5 km/s total (including 1.5 km/s boost from the carrier plane). That'd give a range from boost of a few thousand km, though the apogee of an ideal orbit would be poorly useful--way too high.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Related to this, how would the MiG-25 and MiG-31 fare as ground attack aircraft? Would they be unsuitable for the role given their external carriage due to the speed limits many munitions have to prevent overheating?
 
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