British Marine Reacts To How US Military Spy Plane Drove the USSR Crazy

[Music] hey troops welcome to the challenge ended commando my name is ryan and i'm a former royal marine from the united kingdom today we're going to be reacting to how the united states military spy plane drove over ussr and drove them crazy so before we get into it guys let's like share and subscribe to the channel i really do appreciate it it helps me out an awful lot guys all right so i just want to say thank you first and foremost for being here okay but without further ado let's just get straight into this one i'll see you in the comments in the early part of the cold war the united states had a serious problem gathering intelligence on the soviet union was proving incredibly difficult to do several attempts to establish intelligence networks behind the iron curtain had been violently put down and a number of american and british spies along with local collaborators had met their ends at the hands of soviet counterintelligence forces penetrating the iron curtain was proving all but impossible and while the americans were relatively new to the spy game the soviets were seasoned veterans that ran rings around the cia gathering intelligence on so okay i didn't realize that the soviets at that time were better at that kind of stuff than the united states that's really interesting that changes my thought pattern on this then soviet nuclear weapons was critical how many did they have where were they located how fast could they be deployed and what was their maximum range in these early decades of the cold war the world hung on the edge of nuclear war and knowing its enemy could prove to be the only thing that would save the united states or at least mitigate the damage of an all-out nuclear exchange yet human operatives were routinely failing in their mission or winding up dead recognizing that they still had a lot to learn from their soviet counterparts about spying the u.s turned to the one area that it was superior to the soviet union inn for an answer technology immediately after world war ii the ui so i wonder why ussr was better at spying on people then how did that skill set develop and why why did they develop that skill so if you know drop me a comment yes britain and the soviet union all scrambled to get their hands on all the nazi technology they could along with their brilliant engineers and scientists given the united states liberal society and deep animosity between germans and communists most german scientists however opted to turn themselves into american authorities willingly and the soviets were largely forced to resort to kidnapping or threats to get their hands on high-value germans the influx of german talent to the us and the lure of american liberal culture to a world decimated by war and pitted between dictatorships and communist regimes helped bring other great minds to american shores and soon the u.s was leapfrogging the soviet union technologically in several key areas one of those areas was in the design of high performance aircraft while the soviets were always the superior rocket scientists american talent for aircraft was unmatched anywhere in the world one of those mines the legendary kelly johnson would bring the world to the most technologically advanced aircraft in the world putting his mind to the united states intelligence gathering problem johnson went to work on a spy plane with the endurance to overfly the soviet union and photographed soviet military bases then returned this critical intelligence for analysis not only had the soviets fallen behind in aircraft and jet engine design they'd also fallen behind in the development of radar technology knowing right so in what the united states was like and they decided to utilize what they were good at which was aviation you know the the the development of airplanes and stuff was just superior so it's fantastic that the one thing that they did actually lack on they tried to make better through a spy plane because they were good at that so i like the ingenuity i like the thought pattern of the united states there they thought well how can we make what would buy that better well let's utilize what we're already good at and combine the two pretty pretty cool if i may say so doing this johnson developed the u2 spy plane a slow but extremely high flying plane that could fly over much of the soviet union and remain completely out of reach of soviet fighter planes and missiles both taking flight for the first time in 1955 the u2 soon proved its worth as it boldly flew into soviet airspace on route from west germany to photograph the submarine base in leningrad as the u2 slowly tracked its way across international waters and began to penetrate soviet airspace american officials waited with bated breath soviet radar may have been less advanced than american radar but even their ground stations would have easily detected the incoming u2 from dozens of miles away intercepted radio communications told us officials that soviet interceptors were in the air and rapidly approaching the incoming u2 flying at just a few hundred miles an hour and equipped with zero weapons the u2 was utterly defenseless flying at 70 000 feet the americans were alarmed when it became clear that not only had the soviet radar spotted the u2 but had actually been able to intermittently track its course this was a stunning revelation to american planners who had believed that soviet radar would be unable to accurately track such a high flying target for any amount of time not only was this assumption now clearly false but in fact turned out that the soviet radar may have actually been a little better than american radar worried wow okay so that's a lesson there guys one thing i was taught in the military's never assume anything all right never assume anything you have to have concrete evidence on it before you you can assume anything because you know lives are lost in the military if you assume something something bad can happen in this case he assumed that the technology wasn't as good they should have found out at the end of the day and uh that's a that's one mistake i've seen so far officials nevertheless approved the continuation of the mission and the u2 continued to fly toward its target in leningrad though unable to accurately track the u2 for long soviet ground stations nonetheless were able to guide interceptors toward the u2 unable to do anything about the incoming fighters the youtube's pilot stayed on course his faith in the assurance granted him by kelly johnson the man behind the u2 mig-17s were soon within range and their pilots pitched their noses up to gain the altitude needed to successfully fire and that's the thing this spy plane hasn't got any weapons at all and its maximum speed is crap so yeah that's a bit of a tricky situation to see the least guys on the helpless american plane yet their planes only had a service ceiling of 54 000 feet and their inferior air-to-air missiles couldn't bridge the gap to the u-2 one by one the soviet planes climbed only to stall out as their engines flared out and then tumble out of the sky having avoided the mig threat soviet air defense stations received an order to fire on the american plane within minutes a half dozen surface-to-air missiles rose screaming into the air gunning directly for a plane so fragile that a two steep turn would rip the wings off the fuselage yet as with the migs the u2 was too high up to touch and soviet missiles expended all of their fuel trying to reach 70 000 feet and then wow okay so the one thing that was really really really in its favor was the fact that it could fly super super high and nothing could get it ingenious guys and they were confident in that and fell to earth the u2 was a success and the us could now overfly the soviet union to gather critical intelligence on everything from number of bombers to missile silos with complete impunity the kremlin was furious and if they were mad about the multiple u2 incursions throughout the mid 50s then they were even more angry when an american youtube flew directly over moscow so many interceptors were being sent to try and shoot down the american planes that the photographs the u2 took were often littered with soviet aircraft tumbling out of the sky the u.s restricted the flights of the u-2 not wishing to risk a provocation to war the americans believed that the soviets would simply accept that they could not stop the u2 and while they launched many diplomatic complaints they never publicly acknowledged the incursions on the world stage for fear of international embarrassment american assumptions about the soviets would prove terribly wrong however when on may first 1960 a soviet surface-to-air missile brought down a u2 on a mission over the soviet union the soviets had caught up to american technology and in a matter of a few short years dramatically improved their missile technology and yet the u.s still desperately needed the critical intelligence that the u2 had offered with this intelligence america had yeah and i guess they can't really counteract that with getting a plane that just keeps on going higher all the time because how high can you go you know there's going to be a constant arms race of who's actually got the um the higher altitude all right and dominating the highest guys they've actually got to develop um you know their spy plane capabilities far beyond just altitude guys i think which says a lot for the beginning bit is where they just need to develop the spy capability um in its entirety an unparalleled strategic advantage over the soviet union and knew the layout of its military forces almost as well as the soviets did themselves the shooting down of the american u2 was now an official intelligence disaster when the u.s needed a solution already in development before the shoot-down of the u-2 in 1960 kelly johnson redoubled his efforts on the development of a brand new spy plane the soviets proved they could track and shoot down a u2 so johnson's answer was simple we'll just go faster than their missiles a lot faster johnson had for a few years been working on a new ultra secret prototype airplane jet fighters and bombers were still a relatively new development having been operational in significant numbers for about a decade and now johnson was designing a jet powered plane that was decades ahead of anything else in the sky experimenting with a few variants for different mission types johnson's secret and very futuristic plane finally settled on a role as a reconnaissance aircraft and the first sr-71 took to the sky on december 22 1964. on its first flight the plane reached an incredible speed of mach 3.4 and it immediately became apparent okay so for the 60s that is incredible guys all right the technology has just gone through the roof quite literally all right and uh it's amazing what happens militarily and technologically when there's an absolute need for it you know and i've said there's nothing greater than a human being under pressure or a collective group of human beings under massive amounts of pressure because it brings the best out of us okay it truly does especially with technological advancements um it's just phenomenal what the human person the human mind can do us had the tool it desperately needed to keep tabs on the soviets four years later the sr-71 flew its first operational sortie penetrating into north vietnam and revealing hidden vietnamese bases two weeks later american forces had destroyed them the sr-71 continued to fly deep into north vietnam and soon the north vietnamese and their soviet advisors grew wise to the airspace incursions not a true stealth aircraft the sr-71 nonetheless had stealthy features designed to make it more difficult to spot and successfully track the first incursions into north vietnam were disregarded by the vietnamese radar operators and their soviet advisors as being artifacts or equipment malfunctions nothing in the world could be flying at that high and that fast to be real yet the sr-71 was here we are with the vietnamese and the russians doing what the americans did in the early days they're just assuming they know better when in truth they actually don't very real and flying at three times the speed of sound from an incredible altitude of 80 000 feet after several of these radar glitches it was clear that something was going on in the skies above north vietnam the damned americans were at it again on july 26 1968 vietnamese air defense stations tracked an incoming sr-71 the problem for ground radar was that the plane was fast blazingly fast and this fact combined with stealthy characteristics of its design meant that by the time the radar contact was made it was typically too late to fire a missile nevertheless on this day the vietnamese tried firing soviet-made surface-to-air missiles at the incoming plane the crew was immediately alerted by their missile warning indicator and followed standard missile avoidance protocol go faster the plane accelerated to about mach 3.3 so it's its protocol was yeah just go faster i love that that's the um contingency plan guys right what we got um let's go faster guys if only go faster was the contingency plan for everything that goes wrong in the military that would be that would be brilliant and the crew held their breaths would kelly johnson's plane truly outfly a supersonic missile in moments they had their answer and flight 976 went on its way completely unharmed on their return journey back to base they overflew the same sam site and were fired on again to the same effect later analysis of the terrain tracking camera footage revealed that the nearest missile had exploded a full mile behind the big black plane the sr-71 could officially outfly missiles soon sr-71 flights took place over the soviet union itself and frustrated soviet officials found themselves in the same position they were back in the late 50s all of their secrets lay bare and exposed for the americans to photograph from the sky and they were utterly helpless to stop them salvos of sam's were fired at the incoming planes but each time the pilot simply stepped on the gas and outran the missiles to avoid interception the sr-71 was equipped with a radar jammer which would make it difficult to lock onto the plane once in range this difficulty was further compounded by the stealthy features of the big plane's body and together effectively lower tracking and target acquisition range to just a few dozen miles even at these ranges though a radar on the ground may spot the sr-71 but would not have a high enough resolution lock to successfully guide missiles to target the incredible speed of the sr-71 then allowed it to simply blaze over the surface-to-air installation and any missiles fired would spend all their energy on just reaching the 80 000 foot altitude the plane flew at and then simply fall back to earth soviet interceptors proved it's right so i wonder if they did actually shoot down or was successful at all with the missile attacks on these planes at that time before the technology bettered wonder if there was actually any any success in that or is is it is it just as it seems there wasn't any success at all no better at the job than their surface-to-air batteries did most of them simply lack the ability to even get high enough to threaten the sr-71 in the first place to solve the issue and to counter the threat of secret american supersonic bomber programs soviet designers created the mig-25 in essence the mig-25 was nothing more than a rocket with wings and included very few avionics despite being highly touted by the soviets the reality was that the plane could operate only as an interceptor and even then it had an effective combat radius of under 200 miles the max operating altitude of the plane was just below the sr-71 which in theory would allow for interception but the plane could not fly faster than mach 2.5 or it would destroy its engines the only hope for a mig-25 to intercept the sr-71 would be if it somehow managed to get an early enough warning to line up a head-on shot at the sr-71 and even then its missiles would fail to compensate for the incredible closing rate of the sr-71 and had no hope of hitting it when the mig-25 proved ineffective the soviets doubled down and developed the mig-31 a vastly improved interceptor the mig-31 had much greater range and operational altitude and was theoretically capable of intercepting an sr-71 in fact at least a dozen peaceful intercepts near soviet airspace were carried out during the 1980s and all of these when washington had hoped to improve relations with the soviet union by ceasing operations inside its airspace these intercepts led many to believe that the sr-71 had met its match yet in reality even the mig-31 was unlikely to intercept an sr-71 except in the most favorable conditions and even then it would need quite a bit of luck in order for the mig-31 to success so this vehicle this this airplane is just really really advanced for its time the fact that i can go that fast for that long and in return you know development of other aircraft has been smashed through the roof and they still haven't got the technology to keep up with this thing it truly is a an aircraft before its time you know i wonder what came after this as well if you know let me know in the comments troops fully intercept the sr-71 it would require the coordination of several aircraft to cover all approach vectors thus increasing the odds that at least one would be at the right incoming direction for the sr-71 the mig-31 would still stall out trying to get to the same altitude as an sr-71 and typically would only get within 10 000 feet not nearly close enough for a guaranteed missile intercept only by being directly in the path of an incoming sr-71 could the mig-31 hope to shoot one down and even then it was doubtful the extreme altitude yeah and with those variables guys you know the is there really any point of utilizing your assets for for what for failure i wouldn't even be utilizing the assets in that respect if it's just going to be fi failure at the end of the line you know what they do need to be doing is utilizing technology and trying to make these aircraft better to be able to intercept it that's what i said that's what i would say they should be utilizing it meant that any missiles fired would have a very difficult time maneuvering as they rely on fins to adjust their course as they fly through the air the very low temperatures also affected the proximity fuses on the missiles and made it unlikely that it would detonate in time to damage the aircraft on top of this the sr-71 itself was armed with defensive countermeasures that included jammers and the low radar reflectivity only confounded problems for an incoming missile the most optimal launch envelope for an enemy fighter would actually be to get directly behind the sr-71 where heat-seeking missiles could lock onto the engines but again with the mig-31 unable to keep up with the sr-71 speed this was an extremely unlikely thing to happen even the peacetime intercepts that the mig-31 carried out on the sr-71 were only ever truly possible because the sr-71's flight route was well known to the soviets had the sr-71 truly wanted to penetrate soviet airspace it would have taken an unpredictable approach vector and it would have been up to blind luck for the migs to be in the right place to take their shot in the end the sr-71 served america faithfully for over 30 years and despite overeating so for 30 years it's been a very successful bit of kit that's when you know you've truly came up with something um that can stand the test of time because it's still in service anything in the military especially the us movie that doesn't work they will just get rid of it and they'll put the money into something else that's how the united states military works they've got the budget they've got the know-how they've got the technology they will not waste any time whatsoever on something that isn't working all right that's just how it rolls so this thing is testament to being a fantastic bit of kit thousand missiles fired at it not a single sr-71 was ever lost to hospitals abound over its retirement in the 1990s with most people believing that advances in russian interceptors and missiles put the sr-71 at risk or that spy satellites were able to do the job of an sr-71 and it was no longer needed these assumptions are both tacitly false as there still doesn't exist a plane that is truly capable of ensuring a successful interception of an sr-71 and while useful spy satellites can take up the 24 hours to get over a target area and have a predictable route in the sky which allows an enemy to hide whatever they don't want seen when the satellite is overhead in truth the sr-71 was cancelled due to shifting budget priorities by u.s lawmakers in a world without the soviet union few believe that the sr-71 was necessary anymore and budgets increasingly went to the development of the b-2 bomber and uh and the b-2 bomber was a very very good development a worthy investment indeed today though with the rise of china and russia's renewed belligerence a successor to the sr-71 is now in testing and is rumored to hit speeds as high as mach 6 without a doubt the finest aerospace engineer in history kelly johnson designed and built the world's greatest spy plane and even today decades after his death the sr-71 remains unparalleled in capability why do you think the sr-7 wow okay guys so was the sr-71 the greatest spy plane we've ever seen from that the fact that it's been in service for for over 30 years um yeah i i can't deny that i don't i don't know too much about other spy planes in the business but all i do know is it was unrivaled for 30 years and it wasn't shot down once which is almost unbelievable guys all right if they further developed that thing past that 30-year point and put more money into it i think we could have been yeah we were definitely had it for around for another 30 years probably but the development of drones and stuff especially now is the main thing that uh i can see the the the aerospace kind of scene gone but if you like this video guys please like share and subscribe to it um and yeah i'll see in the next video troops thanks for stopping by [Music] peace you

Channel: Gen Dit Commando

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Rating: 4.9664531 out of 5

Keywords: spy, spy plane, SR71, SR 71, US military, military, USA, United States, plane, airplane, infographics, infographics show, USSR, Russia, Russian, amazing, news, video, secret, mystery, spies, cold war, sr-71, top secret, spy planes, aviation, British Marine Reacts To How US Military Spy Plane Drove the USSR Crazy, British Marine Reacts, How US Military Spy Plane Drove the USSR Crazy, USSR Crazy, US Military Spy Plane, Gen Dit Commando, Royal Marine Reacts

Id: CJjibznRGrI

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021