85% of the SR-71 Blackbird’s Airframe Was Built From Russian Titanium That the CIA Secretly Bought Through Shell Companies

85% of the SR-71 Blackbird’s Airframe Was Built From Russian Titanium That the CIA Secretly Bought Through Shell Companies

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was the United States’ most advanced Cold War spy plane. It was designed to fly over Soviet airspace at Mach 3+ above 80,000 feet. At those speeds, skin temperatures could exceed 500°F. Standard aluminum would have softened. Titanium solved the problem. Roughly 85-90% of the SR-71’s airframe was built from titanium. But the United States lacked the industrial capacity to produce high-grade titanium at scale in the ea…