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Having served in the US military, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the fraud, waste, and abuse is insane. So much money wasted

Sometimes the real missile defense system is the friends we made along the way

Small physics correction that most get wrong. Aerodynamic heating is not caused by friction, it is caused by atmospheric compression. Which is why the leading edge where the flow stagnates gets the hottest, not the sides that are sliding through the air with the fastest flow. See diesel engine compression ignition for a clearer discussion of the thermodynamics of compression heating.

Simon, as one who was around in the 50s I can tell you categorically that the U.S. surface to air missiles were pronounced with 2 syllables something like ny-(rhymes with "my") key (like the thing that opens a lock). So ny-key. Actually the name comes from Greek mythology. The Greek goddess of victory was named Nike (in Greek nee-kay but in English ny-key). Trust me on this. I was a total geek about anything aerospace.

I was at that explosion in Suffield. I was very young and all I really remember is a huge crowd waiting on a hill in expectation, then an explosion, then a shock wave rippling the grass as it came toward us. All these years and I never knew what it was for. Now I know. Thanks, Simon!

Been there years ago, after the Great War the place was completely overrun by ghouls, if i remember correctly. You can't even get close without some hefty antiradiation gear.

And then we have all the ordinary hardware store equipment the US military paid insanely overprices for because the weapons manufacturers told them it was "special equipment".

Notice that the sight was largely underground. Then look at the size of the parking lot, that tells you how big an operation it really was.

There’s a video on here of a Sprint test, as Simon says the missile glows within seconds of blast off. When the first stage separates its immediately destroyed by the hypersonic air stream it was exposed to. Apparently the missile was covered in ablative material similar to the heat shield of the Apollo Command Module to protect it from the heat. Whatever the merits of the system it was an incredible piece of engineering! EDIT Here’s the video! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o9mIp8qFu7PHpXU.html

Sad that the Nike Sprint missles aren't mentioned - they were an absolutely insane compilation of engineering feats especially when you consider they started development about 75 YEARS AGO! 10x the speed of sound under 4 seconds with even semi-accurate guidance would still push the highest quality and mozt modern material, chemical, and geolocation/tracking science and technology to the brink. Nike Sprint deserves its own episode. You gotta look into it!!!!

it's pronounced nī-key. Both the missiles and shoes are named after Niké the greek goddess of victory.

I kept going "it's pronounced Nike! Like the shoe!" 😂

It isn't hard to understand why Congress would allocate the funds for a project, and then cancel it upon completion. One need only reflect that the sole purpose of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us of, is to further enrich already-wealthy defense contractors and their shareholders. This is the basis for most of the American economy, IMO. We MUST defend ourselves against the wraiths invented by the MIC.

I remember when the US military spent a lot of money studying the Frisbee.

You should do a video on the SAGE system (Semi Automatic Ground Environment). A system of networked regional air command and control centers for NORAD that brought in radar from 1/4th of the US, digitized and displayed on consoles. At the time (1950s) it was the most ambitious computer system ever built and they had to figure out how to get a computer to do what they wanted it to do and just how to go about shuttling data over huge distances far in advance of any kind of ethernet networks. It could be argued that the SAGE system is what ushered in our modern computers. The lessons learned in building SAGE were used to build military and civilian computers for the next two decades or more. It was so heavily classified NOBODY knew it even existed. As a young airman in the mid 80s I worked in its successor system built next to the original SAGE building at McChord and was one of the ones tasked with ripping out all the old hardware. The computer was HUGE!! floor after floor of magnetic memory, tubes, relays wires and other things I don't even know what they were.

I not only lived on the base in Nekoma as a child and went to school there due to my father being one of the civilians who worked in the pyramid but, I toured the inside of it several times while it was active and being shut down. My dad coined the phrase "The greatest monument to the stupidity of mankind" when asked about it for an article. :) I believe I still have a picture of myself standing under one of the radar ports from on the inside.

Imagine growing up with these crazy threats hanging over your head... wait, I did just that!

Safeguard was a US Army system. Earlier on USAF and Boeing developed the BOMARC SAM system which suffered similar cost overruns, missed deadlines and reduction of scope but was actually deployed in the US and Canada. It was independent of the Army system because - well the Air Force didn't want to be involved with an Army project. It was eventually cancelled for similar reasons: the threats it was designed to counter had been replaced by different ones. I used to work for a company that subcontracted computing designs for BOMARC (well before my time) and as far as I could tell, the Air Force money was well spent in advancing computer design and techniques during the 1950's.

I like the sparkling on the left to the video added when showing old photo or old video footage lol! Good job Daven! It makes the old pictures look authentic!

Is there a podcast version of this. Big fan of your other podcasts casual criminalist and decoding the unknown

Anyone else suffer a bit from hearing Simon mispronounce Nike a billion times? 😖😂

FYI Nike is pronounced Ni' Kee - two sylables

3:20 when you have a stroke saying “missile”

Have to admit, the title led me to expect the Sgt. York antiaircraft system.

That facility in Cavalier County, ND is active. It always was active. The cancelling of the program was just a cover. If you show up at the site. All the facilities and equipment still exist intact. If you snoop around Air Force security will show up and shoo you away. Then black Suburbans will follow your vehicle for miles and miles.

The Nike missiles are pronounced 'nigh-key' (think: shoes)

I used to live near Sharpner's Pond in Massachusetts. This was long after the ABM site planned for that location was canceled, and nothing remained of the project except for a road that led to Sharpner's Pond Park and dead-ended there. The road is used by maybe a half-dozen or so park visitors per day. Well worth $60 billion.

'Fuck ya' is Australian for 'fuck you' What you're looking for is 'fuck yeah'

The US will spend a billion dollars putting a laser inside a 747 but they won't spend anything to make a protection program for the people that help us.

Simon I’ve heard you refer to the shoes as Nye-ck too, it’s Nye-key.

I cant watch this, my OCD is pinging off my brain every time he says Nike wrong.

LOL wasn't expecting the Langdon pyramid to be discussed in this video 😂 Nodak doesn't have a lot, but what we have is pretty standard 🤣

6:46 wtf was that sound effect for? 👀😨

Was it just me, or was Simon speaking a lot faster than normal?

“We don’t have the money for universal healthcare”.

While the memory of ABM and all the discussions around it have faded a lot; seeing a Sprint launch on the CBS Evening News won't. Even in slow motion it was unbelievably quick. I'm not even sure if seen in real life one could believe their eyes as that missile shot up.

The title meme says it all. Where's my monster truck?

Hey Simon I've got two ideas for this channel that I think would be interesting, cause controversy and would bring many comments. The history and origins of both punk rock and hip-hop. An episode for each I think it would be hilarious you not being a big music guy. Take care and keep up great work!

Thank gods our health care is top notch, our roads and bridges are pristine, and our schools couldn't be better...

Safeguard was a great project and it worked. Sprint was the missile I am most familiar with. Many were not happy when they closed the program down.

Great now do the Littoral Combat Ship.

Im always happy to hear locations close to home mentioned by Simon! I do love White Sands, though I choose not to think much about the nuclear research that is the main reason for its existence.

At least a few surrounding towns got a nice upgrade.

When I was a kid back in the early 60s, everyone in Fort Worth had an assigned fall out shelter. We lived in the Arlington Heights neighborhood and our shelter was under the Amon Carter museum. We got to tour it and I remember they had lots of water and dried food, as well as blankets.

Wow KZfaq adverts at 1:23 into the video has to be a record.

what? The pentagon wasting and misplacing vast amounts of money, say it aint so.

Such a massive waste of money

My father was a radar operator for the Nike-Herc sit in Anchorage in the '60s - wild times he said. lol

60 billion dollars? There goes my lunch money

For some reason the military decided to show footage of the Sprint in action at my State Fair, along with a model of the missle.

hey look the thing from fallout 4

"Here to save the mother fckng day yeah!"😂

Yeeeeeaaaa, it hits my ears wrong too but its not the first time we've gone through this. 🤦🏽‍♂️

The military even today doesn’t require anymore money, Nuff Said.

There was a Nike Missile Base next to my Grandfather's farm in Wisconsin, USA. It closed in 1970. P

The editor LOVED the background music on this one. I can barely hear Simon.

In the 60s went on a tour of a Nike-Herc coastal air defense station at Norfolk. Pretty cool, they flubbed the reload though. I was maybe 6.

4:06 - You can hear and see that Whistler has absolutely no idea (or interest in) what he's just said, when he rambles through some of the supposed highlights of the complex, "...incorporating some of the latest large-scale applications of the then-new technologies of transistors and modular architecture".

You know with the various missile shields that have propped up over the past 20 years that there were people saying “oh we made that 30 or 40 years” before that.

3:50 The missile knows where it is at all times

It’s pronounced (nigh-key) lol, great video love it

When I first started this video I thought that pyramid looking building looked like something out of Fallout 4!

My mom says she remembers seeing Nike misslies stationed by Lake Michigan(I think) when she was little

You do this too much. You're starting to speak so fast that you slur your words. I still love it.

It would be fun if you did a history of Johnston Atoll and how it was used as a military site

1:25 The Glowing Sea...

Hey when someone else is paying for your joyrides, go on as many as you like. That’s how they go about things.

If the system is actually upgraded to track satellites, then the whole system could help track asteroids... What a waste to decommission it.

My father was an advisor in Korea and later assigned to a Nike missile unit. I was a young boy then. When Vietnam erupted he transferred to the 1st Air Calvary as an advisor. Unfortunately he died in 1972 as a result of the war so I never knew the details of his career. And it’s Nike like the shoes.

It’s “yeah” not “ya”. “Ya” is another way of saying “you”, “yeah” is another way of saying “yes”

I lived somewhat close to that concrete blob. And the countryside around where I lived was dotted with underground ICBM silos. I never worried too much about what I'd do if we went to war with Russia, I'd just a tiny bit of glowing green glass in a large field of glowing green glass ;) All those silos are gone now too, but I wouldn't bet the locations aren't still targeted.

Sounds like a way to give a fuck ton of money to a friend of someone in the government.

What happened to the video you posted the other day about the new advanced fighter jets I can't find it anywhere now

Please please please! Create/ research a video on the first video game console creator Ralph H. Bear creating the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 the very first game console pre-cursoring the Atari game console!

Old pictures do not need a dumb filter to make them look old.

I'm from North Dakota!!!!!! You finally did a video on something in my state!!!!! We call it the North Dakota pyramid, never been there myself, but one day

But they need more tax dollars.... Full accounting, and every overpaid member of Congress (ie, ALL of them) gives back everything over 30k annually, including every "donation" from a lobbyist or similar, and THEN we'll talk about tax increases after that's tossed at the national debt for a decade or so.

"That time" as in singular? I just assumed that the Pentagon had done this multiple times over the years. The amout of money our defense department wastes on pointless bullshit is staggering.

The Merica title is gold!😂😂😂

Simon, Nike is pronounced like this. Ni Kee.

1:33 Well i know it as Sentinel site and its located in Glowing sea.

Reimagine this system without a warhead. Utilizing magnetic hypervelocity weapons or solid state lasers in flight before retrieving the reusable booster and radar housing complex after interception instead

Insert Illuminati joke here. That radar pyramid looks like the all-seeing eye 😂 Wonder who was behind the design?

Is that the Harry Potter music in the background lol😂

“…we nonetheless should proceed with the fallout shelter program.” Seems the Vault-Tec lobbyists were hard at work. 🤓👨‍🔬

The downside of getting history from a short youtube video. While Simon does a great job, there is even more to this. Politicians negotiated this program away with the Soviets. Rather like the whole Star wars program it served to ratchet down tensions. Overall, the concept of technology overtaking current planning is not new. When France introduced a small bore smokeless powder rifle in the 1880s it set off a panic in every country, including those who had just adopted a .40- .45 caliber black powder rifle as their primary arm.

The last point, about ABM research and adoption driving diplomatic solutions is very true. Likewise, the Reagan era buildup (especially the Strategic Defense Initiative, AKA "Star Wars") fully succeeeded in its purpose - the Soviet Union went broke trying to keep up, which helped drive the collapse of the USSR and reducing the threat to the West without firing a shot. So called "soft" power is inportant. But to make it work, you need the underlying and *plausible* threat of "hard" power to back it up and encourage your adversaries not to reach for their military as the Easy Button to resolve disputes with you.

Which time was this one ? There are many many times this has happened .... one time they used these weapons on one side of the pentagon that had all the paperwork showing where all the money went , and it actually blew up , destroying the evidence.

The choice of bad or worse. I always find it remarkable.

That Time the US Military Spent $60 Billion On Something and 1 Day After Completing It Threw It Away ......... thats called Tuesday!

Nike..lol...its pronounced NI-KEY

Ya idk if history will ever record treaties stopping icbms instead of anti icbm tech.

Squarespace is paying Simon to talk about magic, and I find this to be peak trolling. I see you Squarespace.

Simon I hate to do this to you but the Nike missiles are pronounced just like the shoe brand or the Greek goddess... I swear I'm going to have an aneurysm.

2:15 Ni-KEE, please. The Greek goddess of victory in war.

Ohhhh, you may of heard about stuff left behind after various conflicts, I was in Afghanistan in 21, stuff that was left behind, mind-blowing

There is absolutely nothing "paranoid" about it!

Im a little surprised. A guy who clearly deals in educating people pronounces the word Nike so wrong.

If this system drove the Soviets to accept the SALT treaty, then it might have been money well spent instead of making more and newer missile defense systems