Last month, Sandboxx News broke the story that Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works team was directly involved in the development of a fullsized mockup of the hypersonic Darkstar aircraft featured in Top Gun: Maverick.

There seems to be much more to this story than a coollooking imaginary airplane, and the truth is, Darkstar may not be as fictional as you think. In fact, Lockheed Martin has been working on just such an aircraft for a long time now… And although they’ve purged their website of any mention of it, we managed to dig up some interesting bits of evidence.

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Further Reading:
The full story on Sandboxx News: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/isthere...
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ producer says Darkstar looked so real it fooled China: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/topgun...
Darkstar: Is 'Top Gun's' Maverick flying an SR72?: https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/darkstar...

Citations:
Mayhem: https://aviationweek.com/defensespac...
Mayhem ROI: https://www.govconwire.com/2022/03/af...
WayBack Machine Links: https://web.archive.org/web/201803010...
Lockheed Martin's Darkstar webpage: https://lockheedmartin.com/topgun
2018 O'Banion Report: https://sofrep.com/news/lockheedmart...
Bloomberg Quote: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
SR72 Tech Demonstrators in 2017: https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/am...
Palmdale Plant Development: https://www.dailynews.com/2021/08/18/...
Wired's SR72 coverage in 2007: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/likeal...