How US Military Spy Plane Drove the USSR Crazy

What if we told you the world's fastest and most advanced spy plane was actually designed just a decade after World War II, and where it's still being flown today would easily put almost everything else in its class to shame? Well, buckle in, because today we're talking about the SR-71 Blackbird, a high-flying Cold War speed demon that looks like it would be more at home in Bruce Wayne's Batcave than the type of jet aircraft you might expect to find sitting around in your typical Air Force hangar. Let's start by taking it back to one of the most intense and dramatic periods in modern history, the Cold War. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was almost limitless in its dimensionality, but two of the most crucial areas of competition between the two superpowers were in the realms of intelligence and technology. Both were tightly interwoven and would ultimately define the outcome of the conflict itself. In an age where even the slightest misunderstanding could result in thermonuclear war, the world's preeminent powers relied on thorough, accurate, up-to-date information to make their decisions, design their strategies, and respond to threats perceived and real. The biggest problem in the Cold War, as you might imagine, was how to actually gather up-to-date intelligence on one's ideological rival. The traditional approaches were incredibly dangerous and risky. You could either send in a spy and hope they didn't get caught, or you might bribe some locals to do your dirty work for you. Whether you were trying to conduct industrial espionage, steal state secrets, or get a leg up on your geopolitical rival, getting in behind the Iron Curtain was a difficult prospect – one in which a number of American, British, and local spies identified and rounded up by counterintelligence officers ultimately paid for with their lives. With the conflict's nuclear implications and strictures on what human intelligence could and couldn't actually achieve in Soviet Russia, American military officials found themselves in a real bind. As the CIA had only come into existence shortly after World War II, the Soviets had objectively better spies than the United States, with decades of experience training new agents, recruiting foreign assets, and networking them into a vast and reliable network. But as the Russians began developing nuclear weapons of their own, gathering intelligence on Soviet nuclear capabilities became a top American priority. American military officials needed to know how fast their enemies' missiles could be deployed, how far they could be fired, where they were located, and what their maximum range was – and they needed to know now. Operating under the perennial threat of nuclear devastation, American officials recognized that only with superior intelligence could chief policy makers and strategists chart the nation's global defense posture, identify weaknesses in its own R&D, and keep itself ahead of the Soviets. In the end, the quality and reliability of its intelligence might be the only thing that could save the United States. And yet the question remained – how could the American military catch a glimpse of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain? While it continued to develop its nascent spy capabilities, the United States decided to turn to the one area it knew it could outpace the Soviet Union – technology. The Americans did, in fact, have an ace up their sleeve. At the end of World War II, as Allied forces converged on Nazi Germany, several farsighted leaders – including Winston Churchill – foresaw that the collapse of the Nazi regime would not automatically guarantee the peace the world sought. That after Germany's fall, another ideological conflict would naturally arise from the irreconcilable world views of the Allies themselves – Western liberal democracy and Eastern communism. Never aware that their wartime decisions would invariably shape the contours of this looming conflict, on their path of liberation American, British, and Soviet forces did everything in their power to gather as much Nazi technology as they could. In the process, they identified and recruited top-tier Nazi scientists who had been responsible for developing some of the world's most feared and advanced weapon systems. It was an ethically fraught decision, but it was also an ethically fraught time, and by the end of World War II, the stakes were higher than ever. In exchange for renouncing their Nazi roots, the United States and Soviet Union both promised ex-German scientists safety, protection, and long-term employment. While the Soviets resorted to coercive methods to get certain high-value targets to join their side, the majority opted to willingly surrender to American authorities, knowing they would be treated more fairly and humanely than if they'd fallen into Soviet hands. The injection of German scientific talent into the United States magnified its technological potential overnight. It already had unmatched industrial capacity. Now to that it added imaginative technological expertise and precise know-how, and as more scientists flocked to the United States from other war-torn countries, it eventually leapfrogged the Soviet Union in several key areas. The Soviets were still on top in the world of rocketry, but with the help of Wernher von Braun and other German engineers, the United States wasn't far behind. In the design of high-performance aircraft, however, the United States simply couldn't be beat. If it could somehow merge the two fields, could the United States develop a platform that could solve its pressing intelligence problem? Enter the legendary Clarence Leonard Kelly Johnson, a renowned aeronautical engineer who had in mind the world's most technologically advanced reconnaissance aircraft. Johnson believed he had a revolutionary solution to the United States' intelligence-gathering problem, but it was one which would take time to develop. Since the invention of aircraft, aerial photographic reconnaissance had been used to confer a military advantage on its user. Johnson, however, wanted more. What he wanted was photoreconnaissance capabilities jacked up on steroids. Contemplating an aircraft far more advanced than any before it, he started designing a spy plane capable of overflying the Soviet Union. Developing military installations and secret facilities along the way, before returning its intelligence halfway around the world for immediate analysis. Johnson believed the US had the ability to design the jet propulsion engines and airframe required to meet these objectives. The result was the much-acclaimed U-2 spy plane, a slow but extremely high-flying reconnaissance aircraft that remains in service to this day. Though it could only fly a couple hundred miles an hour and possessed no armament whatsoever, the U-2 could traverse incredible distances, flying at altitudes of 70,000 feet, a height many believed lay beyond the threat of Soviet interceptor aircraft and their missiles. The plane debuted ten years after the end of World War II in 1955. But early on, there were several red flags. On one of its first missions, an attempt to photograph the submarine base in Leningrad, the Americans realized from intercepted radio communications that Soviet radar ground stations had picked up the U-2 dozens of miles out from its destination, and had scrambled fighter aircraft to the unarmed spy plane's location. The fact the U-2 had so easily been picked up by Soviet radar alarmed American planners, who were stunned that their initial assumptions the U-2 would be undetectable had been so summarily disproven. The revelation amplified insecurity that Soviet radar was perhaps even superior to American detection systems. Bolstered by Johnson's reassurances that the vulnerable U-2 could nevertheless complete its mission, its pilot was ordered to proceed on to Leningrad, even as Soviet MiG-17s raced up to meet it. As they reached their service ceiling of 54,000 feet and came within range, Soviet pilots arced the fighters' noses into the air, hoping to get a lock on their lumbering target. Their inferior air-to-air missiles, however, could not bridge the gap between the aircraft at that altitude, and one by one the MiG-17s stalled out and plummeted back to Earth. The Soviets weren't done yet, launching a salvo of surface-to-air missiles at the U-2 in an attempt to down the fragile aircraft. Yet before they witnessed the anticipated explosion and elimination of the infuriating radar blip, the SAMs expended all of their fuel trying to get up to the plane's altitude, and the U-2 got away. It was an incredible feat of human engineering, vindication of Johnson's vision that the Americans could, in fact, develop aircraft that could not only penetrate Soviet airspace with impunity, but also discern the number of enemy bombers, the state of existing military facilities, and possible future plans in the process. Yeah, you can imagine how angry this made the Soviets. The Americans staged multiple U-2 incursions over the Soviet Union throughout the 1950s, and capped their impressive run with a proverbial cherry on top, a ballsy overflight of Moscow itself. On that occasion, the Soviets scrambled so many interceptors to try and stop the aircraft that the photographs the U-2 took were often littered with Soviet aircraft tumbling out of the sky. The Americans learned they had to tread carefully. The U-2 was an incredible tool, but using it too often would only provoke the Soviets, potentially causing an escalatory spiral that could make a peaceful Cold War suddenly go hot. Increasingly, however, American strategists believed the Soviets would be forced to reckon with the widening technological gulf, convinced by the U-2, and eventually would accept there was nothing they could do to stop it. In the interim, the Soviets lodged their share of diplomatic complaints but never publicly acknowledged the U-2 incursions. To do so ran the unacceptable risk of recognizing Soviet shortcomings and possible diplomatic embarrassment. It was around the time American confidence was at its highest that these lofty assumptions came crashing down. On May 1st, 1960, a Soviet surface-to-air missile careened into the fuselage of Gary Power's U-2 spy plane, causing an international incident which damaged American credibility and illustrated the fact that Soviet missile technology had improved dramatically over a relatively short amount of time. The incident was nothing short of an intelligence disaster. But even as American officials denied their knowledge of the U-2 spy program, they doubled down on their need for the type of critical intelligence the aircraft offered so central to their hopes of retaining the strategic edge over the Soviet Union. Another solution was needed. Fortunately for the US, Kelly Johnson already had another ace up his sleeve. Since the debut of the U-2 spy program, Johnson contemplated an even more advanced military reconnaissance aircraft. If the Soviets could track, intercept, and now even shoot down a U-2, the specs of the new aircraft would, in the immortal words of Daft Punk, need to be harder, better, faster, and stronger than anything else that had come before. Thus, Johnson and his advanced development group known as the Skunk Works in Burbank, California, flung themselves wholeheartedly into Johnson's next ultra-secret project. A prototype jet-powered plane so unconventional and futuristic, it looked more at home in the Marvel comic books of the era than anything that had flown before. It was truly an impossible task, delivering a technology where everything had to be invented from scratch, which could live up to its promise of being impossible to shoot down. Such were the stakes, and so the Skunk Works proceeded. Eventually, the SR-71 Blackbird was born, and after several experimental tests proved it airworthy, American officials started to see that there was truly nothing in the world like it. Yes, the ultra-secret prototype jet-powered plane was decades ahead of anything else in the sky. As an example, when Johnson and his Lockheed engineers proposed the SR-71 project, nobody believed you could actually build a full-frame aircraft out of titanium, the only substance capable of withstanding the 1,000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures that accrue as the jet ramps up to Mach 3, three times the speed of sound. So yeah, the Blackbird needed to be able to fly at Mach 3, as well as be able to cover thousands of miles on a single sortie at 90,000 feet, 20,000 feet higher than the U-2. According to Brian Shull, one of only a handful of astronaut-rated pilots to ever fly the SR-71, Kelly with a slide rule and some pencils got in there at Lockheed and said, we're just going to figure out a way to do it. And they had to invent technology to build this airplane. Think about that. Fuel, oil, and hydraulics to withstand 90,000 feet, a thousand degrees, up and down, cool and hot, this all in the late 50s, early 60s, are you kidding? It would be the first and last stealthy aircraft designed with a slide rule. Well, they did it. By the end of its maiden flight, the U.S. knew it had the tool it needed to keep tabs on the Soviets. Four years later, the SR-71 made its first operational sortie, flying into North Vietnam from an airbase on Okinawa. Slipping deep into enemy territory, the Blackbird photographed previously hidden North Vietnamese bases. Within two weeks, those bases no longer existed, destroyed by well-informed American troops. As the SR-71 demonstrated its value in Asia, it wasn't long before the NVA and their Soviet advisors grew wise to the incursions going on in the skies above. The SR-71 wasn't technically a stealth-grade aircraft, though its curvy linear design certainly prefigured those utilized by stealth aircraft today. Occasionally, NVA radar operators could see blips indicating some sort of uninvited guest overhead. These, however, were almost immediately dismissed as equipment malfunctions. Nothing man-made, they claimed, could actually fly that high or that fast. Apparently it could, and the SR-71 did. Several radar glitches later, and the Soviets began to believe the Americans were at it again. And on July 26th, 1968, they managed to track an incoming SR-71 and even fire a salvo of surface-to-air missiles. In most cases, this was a rare if not impossible feat. The plane's speed and stealthy design meant that even if a radar made contact, the connection was so slight the missile could not get a strong enough lock. That did not stop them from trying. And so, on that particular day, the crew of the SR-71 began hearing alerts in the cockpit, warning them of the incoming missile threat. It didn't mean much. They had a standard missile-avoidance protocol they were trained to follow in situations like these. They simply turned on the afterburners and went even faster. As the plane accelerated to Mach 3.3, the crew held its breath. Could it really outfly a supersonic missile like they'd been promised? Training in the simulators had prepared them for the reality of having a live missile streaking after them in the sky. Soon they had their answer. Covering a mile every 1.6 seconds, the Blackbird went on its way, unharmed. Returning to base over the same SAM site, the SR-71 had the same outcome. When their superiors went in to analyze the terrain-tracking footage, they discovered the nearest missile had exploded a full mile behind the aircraft. The day had truly come. The SR-71 could, in fact, outfly even the fastest missiles. With that assurance, the US turned the Blackbird loose over the Soviet Union once more. And Soviet officials realized very quickly they were back to square one, just as they had been with the U-2 in the late 1950s. Slowly, methodically, Soviet secrets were laid bare for the Americans to photograph from the sky. Each time the Soviets would fire salvos of surface-to-air missiles, and each time, the Blackbird pilot simply went full throttle and outran them. The machine was a technological marvel. Thanks to its continuous supersonic afterburners, it could fly faster than a .30-06 bullet. It could cover a whopping 3,200 miles on a single mission, without refueling, and fly from New York to London in a blistering time of 1 hour, 54 minutes, and Los Angeles to DC in 1 hour, 4 minutes. At altitude, the SR-71 gave its pilot and navigator, both wearing modified spacesuits, a stunning 360-mile panoramic view of the Earth. Cruising through the blue-black sky at altitude, the aircraft's skin temperatures averaged about 600 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the aircraft to expand 3 to 4 inches in length and 1 to 2 inches in width as it flew. The landing gear, retracted into the body during the flight but nevertheless subject to intense heat, had to be made of an aluminum-latex hybrid, filled with nitrogen and pressurized to 415 PSI, 12 times the pressure of standard car tires. Pilots even had to be married. Personal ties the Air Force deemed would make them less likely to defect to the USSR if shot down and captured. There were 29 Blackbirds built, and future iterations would have a radar jammer and other sophisticated electronic countermeasures to make it harder to target and track. Soviet radars could in fact see it, but they normally wouldn't have a high enough resolution to lock and guide their SAMs home. Those that made it into the engine wash of the spy plane simply expended their fuel in the chase before harmlessly falling back to Earth. Building on their experience with the U-2, the Soviets knew they didn't have a fighter interceptor that could get high enough to threaten the SR-71. What they needed was a capable supersonic fighter of their own, so they got to work and soon developed the MiG-25. The MiG-25 had a simple enough design. It was essentially a rocket with wings, primitive avionics, and a max range of 200 miles. It also had a problem. On an interceptor mission, its maximum altitude was still below the Blackbird's threshold. That, and it couldn't go faster than Mach 2.5 before its engines exploded. A small but important detail, that. What this meant was, quite literally, that the only hope of successfully intercepting a Blackbird meant the Soviets would have to stumble into a perfect storm of circumstance. They would need early enough warning to vector a MiG to an intercept position, a difficult prospect when you consider how high and fast the SR-71 was flying. That would technically have to be a head-on shot. And even then, the MiG's missiles couldn't compensate for the insane closing rate of the SR-71. The Soviets went back to the drawing board and, in 1975, developed the MiG-31 Foxhound. This two-seat supersonic interceptor expanded on the MiG-25's capabilities and avionics. It had greater range, could fly at higher altitudes, had longer-range R-33 missiles, and theoretically could intercept an SR-71. It would be a long shot, though. According to one MiG-31 pilot, the procedures for a successful intercept were crazy and completely inadequate when considered against the threat posed by the SR-71's spy flights. The speed and altitude of the American aircraft, he added, simply hypnotized everyone. Russian fighters had exactly 16 minutes after receiving their first alert to get into an attack position. Rising to 65,000 feet, they would try to use the Blackbird's thermal channel until they were close enough for an incredibly brief window, mind you, to fire their missiles. Of all this pilot's attempted intercepts, he only ever saw a single Blackbird with his own eyes. In reality, even the MiG-31 would have to have the most favorable conditions imaginable to successfully bring down a Blackbird. We're talking multiple MiG-31s concentrated at the exact same point and covering all approach vectors from multiple directions, in the hopes the SR-71 in question would be going in the same direction. Since it could only get within 10,000 feet, the missiles would have to do the legwork, and at extreme altitude, the extreme temperatures would wreak havoc on the proximity fuses and fins they used to adjust course in the thin air. But the Soviets actually achieved this feat over the Barents Sea on June 3rd, 1986, when a group of six MiG-31s staged a coordinated interception that subjected the Blackbird to a possible all-angle air-to-air missiles attack, had the SR-71 finally met its match. The intercept was enough to convince many in Washington, and from that time on they agreed to only conduct reconnaissance missions outside the Soviet Union. While the MiG-31 was a worthy opponent, it was not the reason, as many assume, the Air Force stopped flying the SR-71. The Blackbird was already on its way into retirement by the time the Cold War officially ended. Modern-day satellites, better and cheaper imaging from orbit, steep operating costs, and faster missile technology all conspired to prompt the US government to shelve the Blackbird project. But while it is tempting to claim that the latest and greatest interceptor technology put the Blackbird at risk, or that modern satellite imaging put it out of business, both assumptions are wrong. There still isn't a plane in existence that can intercept the Blackbird. And spy satellites today can take up to 24 hours to get over a target and follow predictable, and increasingly vulnerable, orbit patterns, giving the enemy a brief window to hide anything he doesn't want seen. The truth is that by the early 1990s the Cold War was won, and the SR-71 was cancelled owing to shifting budgetary priorities as money was funneled into projects like the B-2 bomber, precision-guided munitions, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The Blackbird chalked up a peerless record in its 30 years of service, 54,000 flying hours, 17,000 sorties, on 3,500 operational missions, 26,000 aerial refuelings, and 4,000 missiles fired at it, and not once shot down. Its earliest missions had the plane overflying the Korean peninsula to take pictures north of the DMZ. It proved valuable in Vietnam, and it was responsible for discovering the largest Soviet fleet headquarters at Vladivostok, imaged secret airfields on the Kamchatka peninsula near Alaska, and striking fears into the hearts of Soviets during the Cold War. With a Blackbird in the skies, they could never feel safe knowing how far advanced American military technology actually was. Today with competition with China ramping up and anxiety over manned and unmanned spy technology abounding, there are rumors that the hypersonic successor to the SR-71 is in testing and has been rumored to hit speeds up to max 6. The foundations of that project were built on the shoulders of giants. Kelly Johnson and his team at Skunk Works dared to dream big, and as one of history's greatest feats of aeronautical engineering, they designed and created the world's greatest spy plane. Today, decades after his death, there's still nothing in the world like it. So what do you think? Is the Blackbird still the greatest spy plane in the world? Do you think the new SR-71 will be able to suppress its predecessor? Let us know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe for more military analysis from Military Experts.