USSR Archives

Aerospace & Defense

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird’s Pratt & Whitney J58 Engines Ran at Full Afterburner for Hours at a Time With Exhaust Temperatures Near 3,400 Degrees. At Mach 3.2 Cruise, Roughly 80 Percent of the Thrust Came From the Inlet, Not the Engine.

The J58 burned JP-7, a blend so hard to ignite that a lit match dropped into it goes out. Starting the engines required a...

Steve Balestrieri1 day ago

Aerospace & Defense

Northrop Spent About $1,200,000,000 of Its Own Money on the F-20 Tigershark and Sold 0 Aircraft. The F-5 It Was Built to Replace Has Been Flying for More Than 60 Years.

The F-5E was never meant to be the best fighter available. It was built to be credible, affordable and easy to keep in the...

Steve Balestrieri1 day ago

Typhoon-Class Submarine SSBN Soviet Navy

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Typhoon-Class Submarine Displaced 48,000 Tons, Carried Up to 200 Nuclear Warheads, and Had a Swimming Pool and a Sauna. It Could Stay Under the Arctic Ice for 120 Days.

Inside one outer casing sat five separate pressure hulls: two complete parallel main hulls side by side like a catamaran, plus three more for...

Harry J. Kazianis1 day ago

Aerospace & Defense

General Dynamics Is Delivering All 250 M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams Tanks to Poland in About 24 Months. Warsaw Ordered Them for $4,750,000,000 Along With 17 Bridge Layers and 26 Recovery Vehicles.

Poland ordered 250 M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams in April 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in a $4,750,000,000 package that also included 17...

Caleb Larson2 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

The US Air Force Retired the F-117 Nighthawk in 2008 and Never Stopped Flying It. The Service Now Says the Aircraft Will Stay in the Air Until 2034 — 26 Years After Its Own Retirement.

Lockheed built 64 F-117 Nighthawks — 5 development aircraft and 59 production F-117As — in a classified program costing about $6,560,000,000. The Air Force...

Brandon Weichert2 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

Congress Spent $100,000,000 Bringing Just 2 SR-71 Blackbirds Back from Retirement in 1995 and Another $30,000,000 in 1997. By 1998 the Program Was Dead Again.

Across its whole service life the SR-71 Blackbird accumulated 53,490 flight hours, 11,675 of them above Mach 3, over 17,300 sorties. By the late...

Brandon Weichert2 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

The Government Accountability Office Reviewed All 13 Programs in the US Air Force’s $21,000,000,000 B-52 Modernization and Found 10 of Them in Trouble. The Engine Replacement Went From $3,000,000,000 to $15,400,000,000.

The Government Accountability Office examined all 13 programs inside the US Air Force's roughly $21,000,000,000 B-52 modernization effort and found 10 of them running...

Caleb Larson2 days ago

Vega Space Probe 19FortyFive Photo From Smithsonian Taken on June 30 2026

Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

In June 1985 the Soviet Union released 2 balloons into the clouds of Venus. Each was 3.4 meters across, hung a 7-kilogram gondola from...

Harry J. Kazianis4 days ago

Aerospace & Defense

The US Navy Built 188 Lockheed S-3 Viking Aircraft to Hunt and Kill Soviet Submarines from Aircraft Carriers. Not 1 of Them Ever Sank a Submarine. They Destroyed Iraqi Missile Sites and Coastal Radars Instead.

Lockheed built 188 S-3 Vikings for one job: finding and killing Soviet submarines from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The Soviet Union collapsed...

Christian D. Orr4 days ago

Space and Technology

A Russian spacecraft built in 1972 to land on Venus finally made its landing 53 years later, on 10 May 2025 — except it came down on Earth, carried through a fiery reentry intact by the same titanium shell its engineers had built to survive the hottest planet in the solar system.

At around one in the morning on April 3, 1972, four red-hot titanium spheres fell out of the sky onto farmland near Ashburton on...

Harry J. Kazianis5 days ago

19FortyFive

All posts tagged "USSR"

Aerospace & Defense

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird’s Pratt & Whitney J58 Engines Ran at Full Afterburner for Hours at a Time With Exhaust Temperatures Near 3,400 Degrees. At Mach 3.2 Cruise, Roughly 80 Percent of the Thrust Came From the Inlet, Not the Engine.

Aerospace & Defense

Northrop Spent About $1,200,000,000 of Its Own Money on the F-20 Tigershark and Sold 0 Aircraft. The F-5 It Was Built to Replace Has Been Flying for More Than 60 Years.

Aerospace & Defense

The Soviet Typhoon-Class Submarine Displaced 48,000 Tons, Carried Up to 200 Nuclear Warheads, and Had a Swimming Pool and a Sauna. It Could Stay Under the Arctic Ice for 120 Days.

Aerospace & Defense

General Dynamics Is Delivering All 250 M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams Tanks to Poland in About 24 Months. Warsaw Ordered Them for $4,750,000,000 Along With 17 Bridge Layers and 26 Recovery Vehicles.

Aerospace & Defense

The US Air Force Retired the F-117 Nighthawk in 2008 and Never Stopped Flying It. The Service Now Says the Aircraft Will Stay in the Air Until 2034 — 26 Years After Its Own Retirement.

Aerospace & Defense

Congress Spent $100,000,000 Bringing Just 2 SR-71 Blackbirds Back from Retirement in 1995 and Another $30,000,000 in 1997. By 1998 the Program Was Dead Again.

Aerospace & Defense

The Government Accountability Office Reviewed All 13 Programs in the US Air Force’s $21,000,000,000 B-52 Modernization and Found 10 of Them in Trouble. The Engine Replacement Went From $3,000,000,000 to $15,400,000,000.

Space and Technology

In June 1985 Russia Flew 2 Balloons Through the Sulfuric Acid Clouds of Venus. They Rode 150-Mile-an-Hour Winds for 46 Hours and 11,600 Kilometers, and No Balloon Has Flown on Another Planet Since.

Aerospace & Defense

The US Navy Built 188 Lockheed S-3 Viking Aircraft to Hunt and Kill Soviet Submarines from Aircraft Carriers. Not 1 of Them Ever Sank a Submarine. They Destroyed Iraqi Missile Sites and Coastal Radars Instead.

Space and Technology

A Russian spacecraft built in 1972 to land on Venus finally made its landing 53 years later, on 10 May 2025 — except it came down on Earth, carried through a fiery reentry intact by the same titanium shell its engineers had built to survive the hottest planet in the solar system.

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