Russia Archives

NASA SR-71 Blackbird Creative Commons NASA Photo

Aerospace & Defense

A Lockheed Mach 3.2 YF-12 Spy Plane Locked Onto a Target Drone From More Than 100 Miles Away and 14.2 Miles Below It, Then Killed It With a Missile Fired From 53 Miles. That Was 1966, and Only 3 of These Aircraft Were Ever Built.

Lockheed stripped the cameras out of a Blackbird, put a Hughes AN/ASG-18 fire control radar in the nose and three AIM-47 Falcons in internal...

Brandon WeichertOctober 5, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

A tank with an unmanned turret and an armored crew capsule was shown off in 2015, kept out of its own country’s war because cheap drones might kill it, and is now being redrawn around a 152mm gun with 40 rounds, 24 in the autoloader, and a drone on a tether

The 152mm idea dates to the Soviet Object 195, which never entered production, and it forces a turret redesign, more internal volume and a...

Brandon WeichertOctober 4, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

The B-36 Had a 230-Foot Wingspan, 10 Engines and a 10,000-Mile Range, Survived 5 Attempts to Cancel It, and None of Nearly 400 Built Dropped a Bomb in Anger

Designed in 1941 to strike Europe from the Western Hemisphere if Britain fell, the B-36 was saved by Gen. Hap Arnold the day Hiroshima...

Brandon WeichertOctober 4, 2026

USS Iowa (BB-61) Fires a full broadside of nine 16/50 and six 5/38 guns during a target exercise near Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, 1 July 1984. Photographed by PHAN J. Alan Elliott. Note concussion effects on the water surface, and 16-inch gun barrels in varying degrees of recoil. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the the Department of Defense Still Media Collection.

Aerospace & Defense

Four US Navy battleships mothballed for decades came back in 1982 for $1.7 billion to answer a Soviet nuclear battlecruiser, one plan cut off an aft 16-inch turret for a Harrier flight deck, the Navy bolted on 32 Tomahawks and 16 Harpoons instead, and all four were gone by 1992

Reactivating USS New Jersey alone was estimated at $247 million in 1982, about $857 million today. The battleships got AN/SPS-49 radars, SLQ-32 electronic warfare...

Isaac SeitzOctober 4, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

Lockheed Drew Up an SR-71 Blackbird Firing 210-Kiloton Nuclear Missiles From 80,000 Feet at Mach 3.2, Range 500 Nautical Miles, and Half Would Have Missed

Ben Rich's paper reshaped the Blackbird's forward fuselage with blunter chines, a rounded underside and a longer nose for radar to fit the 14-foot...

Brandon WeichertOctober 4, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

$10,000,000,000 ‘Package’: Iran Wanted a Fleet of T-90 Tanks From Russia to Upgrade Old Made in America M60 Patton and Soviet T-72s

Iran's armor still mixes US M60s, British Chieftains, hundreds of T-72S and the homegrown Zulfiqar. A reported $10 billion Russian package never produced a...

Harry J. KazianisOctober 2, 2026

MEDITERRANEAN SEA (July 20, 2017) The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) sails through the Mediterranean Sea in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. The ship and its carrier strike group are conducting naval operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe and Africa. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Zachary Wickline/Released)

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Was 40 Percent Done With a Nimitz-Class Style Aircraft Carrier That Might Have Been 94,000-Tons and Had 4 Nuclear Reactors When It Was Scrapped

Laid down at Mykolaiv in 1988 beside the future Liaoning, the 1,054-foot aircraft carrier Ulyanovsk had a 70%-complete hull by 1992 when Russia told...

Isaac SeitzOctober 1, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

The S-3 Viking: The Submarine-Hunting “War Hoover” Has No Equal Today on a US Navy Nuclear Aircraft Carrier

The S-3 Viking had ten hours of endurance, could make better than 500 mph at 25,000 feet, and carried a four-man crew with sonobuoys...

Sean SpoontsSeptember 30, 2026

Russian T-90 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Worked Out That Ammunition Stored in the Fighting Compartment Was Blowing Its Tanks Apart, So the T-90M Got a Bustle Magazine With Blowout Panels. It Kept the Carousel Under the Crew Anyway. Oryx Has Now Documented 159 T-90M Losses — More Than Russia Had When the War Began.

The T-90M was the answer to everything the earlier tanks got wrong: a welded turret, Relikt reactive armor, the Kalina fire control suite, and...

Isaac SeitzSeptember 30, 2026

Aerospace & Defense

I Was a US Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare Operator: The Soviet Alfa-Class Was the Fastest and Deepest-Diving Submarine Ever Built — 40-Plus Knots and a 900-Meter Design Depth. X-Rays Found Cracks in the Titanium, So They Capped It at 400. The Reactor Was So Loud They Could Not Use the Speed Either.

Project 705 was built from a titanium alloy that cannot be welded in open air, so the Soviets constructed a sealed hall filled with...

Sean SpoontsSeptember 30, 2026

19FortyFive

All posts tagged "Russia"

Aerospace & Defense

A Lockheed Mach 3.2 YF-12 Spy Plane Locked Onto a Target Drone From More Than 100 Miles Away and 14.2 Miles Below It, Then Killed It With a Missile Fired From 53 Miles. That Was 1966, and Only 3 of These Aircraft Were Ever Built.

Aerospace & Defense

A tank with an unmanned turret and an armored crew capsule was shown off in 2015, kept out of its own country’s war because cheap drones might kill it, and is now being redrawn around a 152mm gun with 40 rounds, 24 in the autoloader, and a drone on a tether

Aerospace & Defense

The B-36 Had a 230-Foot Wingspan, 10 Engines and a 10,000-Mile Range, Survived 5 Attempts to Cancel It, and None of Nearly 400 Built Dropped a Bomb in Anger

Aerospace & Defense

Four US Navy battleships mothballed for decades came back in 1982 for $1.7 billion to answer a Soviet nuclear battlecruiser, one plan cut off an aft 16-inch turret for a Harrier flight deck, the Navy bolted on 32 Tomahawks and 16 Harpoons instead, and all four were gone by 1992

Aerospace & Defense

Lockheed Drew Up an SR-71 Blackbird Firing 210-Kiloton Nuclear Missiles From 80,000 Feet at Mach 3.2, Range 500 Nautical Miles, and Half Would Have Missed

Aerospace & Defense

$10,000,000,000 ‘Package’: Iran Wanted a Fleet of T-90 Tanks From Russia to Upgrade Old Made in America M60 Patton and Soviet T-72s

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Was 40 Percent Done With a Nimitz-Class Style Aircraft Carrier That Might Have Been 94,000-Tons and Had 4 Nuclear Reactors When It Was Scrapped

Aerospace & Defense

The S-3 Viking: The Submarine-Hunting “War Hoover” Has No Equal Today on a US Navy Nuclear Aircraft Carrier

Aerospace & Defense

Russia Worked Out That Ammunition Stored in the Fighting Compartment Was Blowing Its Tanks Apart, So the T-90M Got a Bustle Magazine With Blowout Panels. It Kept the Carousel Under the Crew Anyway. Oryx Has Now Documented 159 T-90M Losses — More Than Russia Had When the War Began.

Aerospace & Defense

I Was a US Navy Anti-Submarine Warfare Operator: The Soviet Alfa-Class Was the Fastest and Deepest-Diving Submarine Ever Built — 40-Plus Knots and a 900-Meter Design Depth. X-Rays Found Cracks in the Titanium, So They Capped It at 400. The Reactor Was So Loud They Could Not Use the Speed Either.

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