History, Politics And Current Affairs

What's interesting is that some aircraft overperformed in some cases -- but they weren't able to maintain those altitudes -- hence their lower pressure altitudes @ time of bomb release.

Wikipedia claims: "Featherweight III had a longer range and an operating ceiling of at least 47,000 ft (14,000 m), especially valuable for reconnaissance missions." Reality: 7th Bomb Wing Operations Order 61-53 was a routine training mission originating at Carswell Air Force Base [in July ...

Some more GAZELLE Photos

So, official photos of 53T6 GAZELLE have shown up starting from about 2020 when they were placed on display in an Ukrainian museum. There's always been suspicion on what GAZELLE actually was from various Russian language sources over the years; but it wasn't until recently we could see if they were ...

I think that the 41-For-Freedom fleet is a residue of the original "From the Sea" USN Deterrence Strategy, which was: 3. It is now technologically possible for the United States, at reasonable cost, to remove its nuclear striking forces from within the United States and to deploy them in m...

I literally had a shower thought earlier. We've been assuming for years that the main role for the BACKFIRE/Tu95/etc etc Kh-22 combo was to sink CVNs or to put pressure on HATO warships. But what if they were for damage limitation? 1.) Kh-22 can fly 600~ km in a bit over 6 minutes and can be armed w...

MIRV A Brief History (COVD-1571) Page 36 Most Soviet targets [in 1962] were assumed to be defended in the future by terminal ABMs such as upgraded SA-2 or SA-4 (See Note 11). Source is listed as "The Penetration and Target Damage Effectiveness of Single and Multiple Reentry Vehicle Systems Agai...

On SDN nearly 20 years ago back in August 2007, Stuart got into a conversation which I preserved, because buried in it; Stuart posted something very profound: That's why its critical to determine when a document was written, who write it, why it was written and who it was written for., A document ou...

North American Rockwell came up with an insane concept that was like BOMARC on cocaine: Mr. WRIGHT. The next chart shows an AERIE concept that I am going to be discussing, where it fits in with respect to intercept timeline. As you can see here, it is a relatively small interceptor. What you see on ...

Final VuGraph from the 1992 SDIO presentation

McDonnell Douglas proposed an expanded anti SLBM terminal defense using HEDI at several more sites along the coast; in addition to HEDI being deployed to Grand Forks.

Forgive me if this sounds like trivialising a superb technical post, but can we conclude from this that Stu was right all along in his contention that ABM was a problem mostly solved by the late 1960s? I've been reading a lot of sources but a lot depends on the definition of "is" is to qu...

From McNamara Memorandum "Recommended FY 1966-1970 Programs for Strategic Offensive Forces, Continental Air and Missile Defense Forces, and Civil Defense" to POTUS, dated 3 December 1964, showing us the Phase I Nike-X (Pre-SPARTAN) deployment concepts the Army had at the time. SPRINT-X.png...

NORTH AMERICAN AIR DEFENSE COMMAND and CONTINENTAL AIR DEFENSE COMMAND HISTORICAL SUMMARY JULY-DECEMBER 1962 In September [1962], NORAD learned that the Army had issued contract awards of $375,000 each to Douglas, Lockheed, Martin, and North American Aviation for a study to define a SPRINT AICBM mis...

Jack P. Ruina Oral History Interview – JFK#1, 11/08/1971 And it was at that time that I give myself credit for inventing the, what is the Nike-Zeus system now. Not that I handed it in from scratch because a lot of the technology which Nike-Zeus contained was already in the air. Answer had been worki...

I just realized I missed several important points in the above quasi essay: POINT 1: 1967 NIKE-X cost estimates given to the Senate in secret (declassified 2010) were: [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-110SPRT31436/html/CPRT-110SPRT31436.htm] SPARTAN @ $1.41M/ea SPRINT @ $0.636M/ea This is j...

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0395263.pdf DOD used SPRINT launches in 1967-68 for live tests to see whether OTH (Over the Horizon) Radar could be used to detect ABM operations. The ground range from the radar site to the Sprint launch site at WSMR is approximately 1500 naut. mi. The expected slan...

I remember him mentioning a few years before he passed away a bit about Soviet aircraft guns and how they weren't built to last because Soviet pilots weren't expected to live long enough for their guns to get worn out. The mentality was in the are instances where their life was up, they'd be straig...

As I mentioned before; the Anti ABM people collapse everything to the classic "single radar" problem.

Random things coughed out by the current (Nov 2025) free version of Grok: 2. Implications of the Fairbanks site (SR + ER co-location in Alaska) Fairbanks is the only continental site that can see ICBMs launched from Siberia or Kamchatka while they are still in powered flight or very early midcourse ...

NOTE: There is no thread II, III, IV, etc. We started at XLVI as sort of a nod as to how numerous this has been over the years. But if you're interested in other threads on this subject, try this on for size: LINK LINK 2 Try tossing these into your preferred online LLM (Grok, ChatGPT, etc) of choice...