RUSSIAN'S LOOKING TO ACHIEVE PARITY WITH ANNOUNCEMENT OF MiG-41

The Soviet's never built a plane capable of catching the SR-71. The MiG-25 and MiG 31 could fly Mach 3+ but only at the expense of destroying it's turbojet engines. This is why the American's opted for a Turbo-Ramjet/Ramjet-Rocket powered SR-71. 

The SR-71 was a Single Stage To Orbit SSTO aerospace superiority vehicle. It was designed to be at least 20 years ahead of what the Soviets could shootdown. This turned out to be the case. The Russians began shooting down Blackbirds in the 1980's. The Height-611 UFO incident was a Soviet shootdown of a Blackbird. The American's deployed the AURORA, a codename reminiscent of its main theater of operation, namely the North Pole, in the late 80's, with its first test flights occurring sometime in 1987. The Aurora developed under the auspices of the National Aerospace Plane. Basically the same cover gambit the Americans used in the late 50's to develop the Blackbird although at that time it was the SST. The SST never happened. America did use the prospect of the SST to convince the Soviets to sell them the titanium used to build the Blackbird. This was a useful gambit in that Soviet metallurgical analysis of any crashed vehicle would suggest that the planes were theirs. 

So, it looks like the Russians are finally going for some kind of parity. The question is, is this 60 years too late?