Hard to believe that the SR-71 is almost 50 years old and it's still the fastest plane in the world.
[Update]
For some reason, I can't reply to the X-15 comment, so I'll add the extra info here. The X-15 is dropped from a B-52. There are a set of rules to qualify for the record. An unpowered scramjet dropped from another plane isn't going to quality either.
> Hard to believe that the SR-71 is almost 50 years old and it's still the fastest plane in the world.
Its not really that surprising -- survivability through sheer speed seems to have been largely abandoned in favor of focussing largely on stealth (see, B-2 Spirit vs. B-1 Lancer).
With the motivation for pouring money into moar speed gone, you stop getting moar speed.
The deeper the nesting, the longer it takes a "Reply" link to show up. Wait a bit, reload, and it will be there, or follow the "link" link and it will be there immediately.
This is a deliberate feature to slow down "discussions" that are actually unproductive back-n-forth arguments.
If you load a comment within X minutes, it won't show the reply link. If you click on "link", you'll see the text box for entering your reply as normal anyways.
I think nether has decided there are a group of A-10 fanboys who love the plane unconditionally. It has guns not missiles, therefore guns must be better than missiles. Perhaps the same group has unconditional love of SR-71. Not saying any of this myself, just trying to interpret nether's thoughts for you.
In my ROTC days they described the A-10 as basically a "flying gun" ... the rumor was they chose a massive gun, and then designed a plane to fit around it, done.
The A-10 is designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator, and half of one wing missing.