Why The Soviets Never Built Their Darkstar DSB-LK? 

Gun turrets on a supersonic bomber? The 50s and 60s were a wild time indeed

You've gotta admit the DSB-LK is incredibly cool looking. It's kind of sci-fi looking.

For an airplane moving at that speed, you would definitely want all the engines on the centerline of the aircraft. With the engines set so far apart, if you have an engine out situation the plane will be violently wrenched to one side and most likely break apart. Pilots of the SR-71 said that when they had an 'unstart' happen at speed, it was like hitting a brick wall.

Beautiful CGI. I particularly like the cockpit and crew images.

This thing looks like one of these aircraft you'd see in an alternate-history franchise. Just like the Silbervogel which was a German project for an orbital glider during WW2 to reach the east coast of the US

Given the sweep of the wing leading edge and the design of the engine inlets, this design would have encountered serious issues exceeding mach 2.5 or 2.8 sustained. It looks really cool though.

Truly crazy bomber ! Love how you added the realism of heavy black smoke to let us know it's got Russian engines ! LoL

Your ability to take some technical drawings and descriptions and turn them into such quality-made mini documentaries simply blows me away with every single video you make. 10/10 as always

The presentation, editing and renders just keep getting better and better. Awesome stuff. What a mad plane, it seemed like a much more versatile platform than an ICBM

Surely those gun pods would either melt or be torn off by the speed and heat. And the bullets would travel slower than the aircraft and shoot itself down or else be completely useless.

Fastest bomber ever designed, you should have seen the stuff I used to design back in middle school. Super fast, warp speed stuff.

This is such a cool looking aircraft. Even today, this looks like it was designed yesterday for combat roles in the future. It actually looks more advanced than the MSV Normandy SR2 from Mass Effect.

im such an aviation nerd that if i had unlimited funding and resources, i would personally fund every cancelled/unrealized projects to have at least one model in existence for my own enjoyment.

The graphic renderings in your videos is top notch! Amazing work.

I remember this project, when I was in the Belgian Air Force. Thanks for sharing mate. Keep up the good work.

I designed a space cruiser that could have been the fastest craft ever. Sadly, it never went into production

Fastest bomber ever designed? I think you will find that that is the Sanger Silbervogel which would have reached 13,500mph.

*“Honey, the Russians are designing crazy vehicles again!”*

Your videos are the highlights of my week! I absolutely love planes, and I absolutely love random planes that I knew little about or nothing about. Thank you for all the work you put into your videos!

Wonderful video. It still stands fantasy vrs reality. Sr71 was built and flown.

As far as the American one resembling it I mean you can really only make a flying wing so many different ways before compromising performance I'd imagine. Their can't be very many flying wing designs that give the desired capabilities so by evolution they will all look more and more alike as designs are optimized further.

Requesting videos on the following: -switchblade aircraft designs such as the FA-37 Talon from the ‘05 movie “Stealth” or the X-02 Wyvern from the Ace Combat franchise -Super Tomcat-21 and ASF-14 -the NATF program as a whole -early ATF proposals -Sea Apache -F-20 Tigershark -aircraft with forward swept wings

DSB-LK if it have gone past the drawing board this would have been the real life equivalent to the fictional Firefox from the 1982 film.

The 50s made way for the best nuclear jet designs, they really looked like they were ripped out of a sci fi movie and way ahead of their time with the fancy space age type aesthetic

Moskalyov: "I might not have the big bureau behind me, but through grit and determination I will design the most powerful bomber to ever exist!" Korolev: "Parry this you filthy casuals."

The SR-71 is actually older than the YF-12 interceptor variant of the A-12 Oxcart..

This is such an awesome channel I wish full scale replicas of these could be built today and placed in a museum. Partially because you do such an awesome job with your animated renditions

It looks like Russia's SR-71 bb, but it's a bomber, awesome

I love how futuristic the DSB-LK (didn't they ever give this bird a proper name?) and its rival the SR-71 Blackbird look, especially for designs from the 1950s.You look at the DSB-LK's engines and you go, "Warp drives." You look at its gun turrets and go, "Phasers." You look at its intended payload and go, "Photon torpedoes." Knowhutimean?

Theres no need to be stealth when your fast enough you can get out of the Radar in seconds -Mig 25, 31 and 41

It's just that the first launch of a Soviet ballistic missile with a mock-up of a nuclear charge took place on October 4, 1957. After the first intercontinental dummy nuclear weapon flew around the world sending a peak-to-peak signal, the USSR no longer had a need to develop a super expensive bomber. At the same time, the USSR had the Spiral project. And the launch of Buran led to a treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in space. This agreement lasted until 2014.

My Friday just got much better thank you 🙏

It's rather doubtful that the engines could have been developed as the needed alloys & design concepts did not exist. Even for short periods to say nothing of 13,500KM!!

If you increase the smoke speed, the sense of speed would be higher... 😉Awesome animations and story! But it seems that there's little consensus about the aircraft top speed. Thank you!

Can we have more high speed videos? I really enjoy them and they give me inspiration for planes in a game! Thx f&e

A fleet of these with those hypersonic missiles would have been a much more cost effective and combat sustainable way of dealing with Allied carrier groups than what the Soviets ended up actually doing, building insane numbers of TU-22 bombers and expecting to lose most of them in a sortie.

Reminds me of the US star raker, it’s big and fast.

Consider the XF-103, another “extreme speed” design of the ‘50’s. They didn’t really understand the “heat barrier” encountered around Mach 3. The calculations on thrust work out, the Vne is the problem.

Hey, Found and Explained, can you maybe do a vid on the “Die Glocke”/“The Bell”? Also incredable vid, love your work man, keep it up

De longe esse é o meu vídeo e avião nunca construído favorito (da URSS). Se, e mesmo considerando as capacidades e tecnologias de hoje, esse avião fosse construído nos dias atuais, seria talvez um dos mais ambiciosos e mais caros projetos de aviões bombardeios da Rússia. Não consigo imaginar ela sozinha desenvolvendo e construindo o projeto por inteiro. E certamente, para haver parcerias internacionais, como com os chineses e com os indianos (espero que o Brasil um dia chegue a esse mesmo plano), a Rússia teria que compartilhar tecnologias sobre esse megaprojeto de aviação. Eu invejo e admiro esse avião tanto quanto qualquer outro que já apareceu neste canal.

Another great video. I really enjoy these x-plane videos, bring list history back to life. Keep them coming!!!

It was a beautiful looking plane. Seems like they dreamed up all kinds of cool stuff in the 50

OMG that cockpit shot was insanely cool !!!

It looks futuristic for its time and it also looks 100% achievable technically and engeneeringwise using the NK 32 engines that was already existing in the late 60s and and used for Tu144 supersonic passenger airliner and and upgraded versions on Tu 160 Black jack bomber

Kind of fascinating how all we tech-history-buffs went aaaaw over the nazis napkinwaffe in the ninetieties. And now twenty-something years later the soviet napkinairforce is all the rage.

Well, I heard that the true speed of the SR-71 is still classified. It could've gone past Mach 4.

Love the pinups in the cockpit!

FYI it was known as the Firefox Project, and had more than just this hypersonic bomber. It also has hypersonic fighter aircraft as well as Recon aircraft platforms. Very interesting read, their research was fairly spot on for the technology level of that specific time period.

In a way, it's like a cruise missile range extender. Which is probably the best type of bomber ever if those missiles are accurate.

Your animations are starting to look like Mustard's animations(although the missile smoke effect needs a bit of improvements) Keep the good work going on!

My Goodness man and I thought I was well informed on odd Soviet designs never made. You continue too amaze.

Loving the content, the rendering is getting better and better every video. The subject matter however, Not so sure, I'm sure there have been 1000's of hypersonic bombers designed over the years that never made it past the drawing board. Anyone can design a bomber. Building and testing one sucessfully is something else entirely. I'd be willing to bet that design, with the tech available to the Soviets at the time, it would barely squeek past mach 2.

I have been thinking about the Star Raker off and on for a while, and one thing that bugs me is that spaceplane is simply gargantuan. An SSTO spaceplane would make a great rapid response vehicle. But more often than not, you would not need something as huge as the Star Raker, which is fine for moving large amounts of cargo, personnel, or longer trips, say to Geosync orbit or the Moon and back. But looking at the DSB-LK, adding a single rocket booster, which would be fired off at the correct altitude, you would have a space plane roughly half the size, or less, that could get to orbit, with emergency parts, personnel, or to get someone home in a hurry. If stationed in orbit, with a space station would be a, if still large, a rescue vehicle. We'd still be years, if not decades, from something only the size of fighter plane. Having a turnaround about as long as a normal airplane, space planes would go a LONG way to making space travel less expensive and convenient. But we have to look at making them less big, to that end, first.

In the end, a project with this scale and magnitude at that time was far out of their skill and innovativity to built it. I'm sure, Russia had it's prototype-version of a SR-71 counterpart, but not the money to produce and run it as a "Silver Bullit" - system.

It was still quite detectable. Since it is moving so fast it has a tremendous thermal signature and withtheimage sensors available quite detectable. Also because of its great speed it is somewhat limited where it can be deployed. Just to make a turn you might violate several countries airspace.

It makes no freaking sence that they stopped this project in the 60s due to ICBM's but then made a competition in the 70s between three soviet aircraft brands to build the best bomber (this was the time also when the Tu-160 came out).

11:20 Thats a leap man. Id agree that "generally" its "similar" in shape but in no way was that a lift akin to say a Tupolev Tu-4 and B-17 which was CLEARLY a total copy.

With what I've seen over the last few months, I would feel the Russian 'Empire' has more chance of turning chocolate into gold than be capable of producing something like this, let alone it actually being able to fly and even less so being able to drop bombs accurately. I can imagine it sat on the tarmac with Moskvitch wheels and tyres, truck radiators (Like on their helicopters) riveted underneath and clingfilm stretched over the canopy.

These A-12 hints are killing me!

You always drop diamonds. Great work!

The SR-72 is going to be a hypersonic reconnaissance/bomber aircraft. It’ll be operational by 2026. Basically the same aircraft that was in Top Gun but it’ll be unmanned and can only fly at mach 6

Hiya, great to see a new episode mate. I could be wrong, but wasn't the YF-12 the predecessor of the SR--71?

6:25 Correction: Depending of where it takes off in the *Warsaw Pact* :) Edit: Very good vid, non-biased quality info. Thumbs up!

Even cooler than Clint Eastwood's FIREFOX. Definitely Stealth technology. The radar signature must have been like a seagull.

Basically flat MiG-31.

The idea of having gun turrets on something going mach 5 is just... hilarious... no rounds are going to exit those barrels are Mach 5 lol That shape is also not conducive to Hypersonic. It's just not. The nose itself would've been too hot, even for titanium, as it's clear at the time of this design, the designer didn't understand the physics of hypersonic flows and pressure. Which, this isn't to knock on him, hardily anyone did back then. The irony is that no one would really learn about Hypersonics in true detail until the Space Race itself. So in order for this bomber to built more effectively, the Space Race that put it out of commission would've still had to of happened anyway. What a twist. All in all, blunt front ends is what you need for hypersonic speeds. The air itself creates such a sharp shock boundary that your aerodynamics is more or less decided by the shockwave you create, not by how the flow glides over the aircraft's skin itself. With that in mind, I'd worry that the two nacelles of engines are spaced way too far to the outside of the aircraft to be functional during hypersonic flight. They're far enough out that they're outside the protective shock angle generated by the nose. Unless the nacelles intended to use ramp extensions to control the shock boundaries prior to engine ingestion, those engines would've likely encountered the turbulent shock boundary air which would have destroyed the laminar transonic flows into the compressors and would've have caused engine unstarts by blowing out the combustors. As cool as this design looks, it would've likely killed some test pilots. Also the note about Titanium is hilarious as the USSR was so abusive to the Jews in the southern portions of the USSR that they lost much of their workforce that was trained in electronics and computing fields. Much of them fled the USSR for Israel, US or Western Europe. The legacy of such bad decisions by the Soviets stands today as Israel is a power house of Electronics development, so damned good at it that they often order US Weapons without their electronics systems, as the Israeli's are so good that they often add their own. This lack of electronics work force meant you had no real base to develop CNC machining and proper smelting of Titanium. Titanium is extremely hard. This makes it more brittle than steel but in term of strength, it's way up there and it requires a lot of effort to machine. The Soviets CLAIM that they were going to use Titanium for this bomber when in fact they didn't have the workforce nor infrastructure to even work the crap to begin with. This is the reason why the OXCART Program bought so much Titanium from Russia using shell companies. Russian couldn't work it so the best they could do was sell it. Reference the later high speed project, the Mig 25 Foxbat. Even then, on a later program, the Soviets STILL Couldn't effectively work with Titanium so they chose to use Steel for the Foxbat. This bomber was pumped up purely by propaganda. In reality, there's no way the Soviets would've ever built this thing. Ever.

Thunderbirds are go. Great video man. 💪🍀

6:04 🤣🤣🤣 not me laughing so hard for the picture in the corner 💀

Hello nick this stream is too late for me but pls do die Glock and continue the amazing work u do I’ve already learnt so much from your vids and want to learn more

This is the fastest bomber ever designed because they never had to come close to actually building it. To this day, I doubt the Russians have the material science needed to build a hypersonic manned aircraft. There Helicarriers from the Avengers is more realistic than this airplane.

Well information. Good show.

I just designed a time travelling laser shooting aircraft on a bit of paper . I don't have the tech or materials to build it but it's still relevant , right .

Hardly the fastest bomber ever designed... Mach 5 is just plain pokey compared to the likes of the Mach 6 Boeing Model 813, the Mach 6.8+ Lockheed HCV or the McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing DF-9 and General Dynamics Configuration 902, both capable of Mach 10 cruise. Never mind the numerous orbit-capable bombers such as the various WS-164L competitors or the Rockwell MRCC.

At this point in time, there's no way Russia can economically come close to designing one of these, let alone actively produce it. Awesome video, though!

"The SR-71 would have struggled to catch up with this plane the soviets were cooking up". *SR-71 exists* *Darkstar does not*

if those defensive remote cannons fired backwards when the aircraft was at full speed, the bullets would actually be flying backwards

In the 1950s the Soviets didn't have the technical knowhow to create something as ambitious as this fictional plane ! What kind of an engine would it use, to propel it above mach-4? A ram jet would come to mind, but I don't think that the Russians have a working ram jet today never mind 60 y ago

Russia did not have the required engine technoly to build a plane capable of hypersonic flight. What they had in the Mig 25 was pushing their capablitys to the absolute limit. And the whole design would not be able to handle hypersonic flight either. It was designed at a time where this was all still unproven, almost fantasy. The only things at the time that could reach such speeds were missiles, and rockets, but only for a very short time, and not inside the stratosphere, but high above it. Its a fabulous looking beast though, I have to admit!

The SR-71, YF-12 and A-12 were flown, the only way this could have been flown is if someone took the paper it was drafted on and folded it into a paper airplane and gave it a good toss.

Wow. A new galactic record! 11:53 of complete and utter bullashitta! Coulda woulda shoulda crapola! Well done!

When a plane is at a conceptual stage you can claim it has pretty much any capability you can think of. The is, that considering challenges SR71 has faced during its development and the fact that it has reached only about match 3.5 and the fact that it was enough to avoid any attempt to be shot down throughout its service time up the too early 2000s, as well as the fact that the first hypersonic missiles were used in a conflict only recently, I think I could conclude that the project was unrealistic at the time.

TLDW: because they could not. Like all other russian CGI planes.

Much better appearence on camera, as I've told you many times already DISTANCE, don't breathe on my soul.

Like most other projects with unique vehicles and crafts, the short explanation is funding, or lack of sufficient funding. The Soviets were outpaced by the west at the time so they were forced to burn through money like crazy to try and keep up. They would start these projects and use them for propaganda, then quietly shelve them because it was too expensive to complete. Same thing happened to their version of the space shuttle, the soviet Concord, their idea for a moon base, and the list goes on. They needed the money to try and maintain their (at the time) current equipment and infrastructure, which ultimately came to a screeching halt when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Jack Northrup designed his first flying wing, which was actually built and flown in 1947. His design came after the German Gotha Go 229 which was a jet engined version of the Horten HO 229 -- the glider version flew in 1944 but the engined version was abandoned. So, yeah, the Russian flying wing would have been years after the German and American versions. Many ideas get put forward that never see the light of day for one reason or another.

You always know how to find the aircraft most people have never heard of

Imagine going so fast that dropping any payload is impossible

cool video man! :D

I think that would be more of a blended wing body than a flying wing.

So it would of been a similar speed to Tempest (6th generation fighter) that is going to go 5,000 MPH

Only thing it seems to have to much wing area.. At hypersonic you hardly any wing area or control surface.. Those wings would melt off at mach 8 or higher

this looks like one of the MiGs in Red Alert 2 that Boris calls in if they were squished flat.

The Darkstar DSB-LK shares a similar predicament with my intergalactic fleet: everything from design to technology and scope are perfect, except for the budget, making it a letdown.

Makes me think of Fire Fox

Hey. In 5 years. Or right now. Can you do a video about the lexury flying hotel that they just announced? I love your vids. Keep the good work! 👍 (sky cruise)

Apparently, this guy's never heard of the 14000 mph stuff that's being developed, and that was back in popular mechanics and popular science back in the 1990s.. so under design, under development? It's like Russia says they have the only hyperspeed missiles out there, and I love the way the German guy said "Mr putin, you're not the only one with those things," and then he calmly went back into his speech.

Looks like the closest thing to something new to real-life aerospace, but common in fiction: The Corvette.

"The Russians want Mach 4, let's give 'em Mach 4.

11:23 “what a coincidence” Yes, the math on both sides of the iron curtain arrived at similar answers to similar problems

Nice vid. But oof the mispelling of service at 6:12