Image: Wikimedia.
Michael Peck, National Interest: Russia Got Its Hands on This 'Mini SR-71' Mach 3 Spy Drone (To Steal Its Secrets)
A crazy Cold War story.
Once the unmanned aircraft returned to base, the film canister would be ejected and land by parachute, after which the drone itself would land.
In November 1969, the U.S. Air Force sent Russia an early Christmas gift.
It was a sleek flying machine that bore an uncanny resemblance to the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.
The American generosity was purely unintentional. The aircraft was actually a cutting-edge drone dispatched on a mission to photograph Communist Chinese nuclear sites. And the drone did what it was supposed to until it failed to turn around, and kept on going north into Siberia before crashing.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The Cold War was definitely a desperate time.
