Hey everybody, Flashwick Bay here. As part of our evolution of seed series here on the

Aphiburn podcast, today we are going to talk Sam, surface air missile systems. We're going to talk

about the early development of these systems, how they came to be the very first Sam system

that was ever introduced and some fun facts about some of those things. And then we're going to talk

about kind of the OG of the world supplier surface-terror missile

systems, Russia or the Soviet Union, if we will. Throughout this series, we're going to talk

about different countries and their indigenously produced SAM systems. But today we're going to

start with Russia. So how did Sam's become to be? As with all things, with a new capability, a counter to that capability

or a threat to that capability was developed. So when the aeroplane became a thing back in 1903

and then utilized in World War I with early on fighters and some balloons and things like that,

people on the ground were like, how can we shoot those things down?

So the very first kind of concept of a surface-dair missile system was actually based on a guided

rocket, if you will.

So, I mean, if you could just shoot them down with a small arm weapon or a gun from the ground,

all good.

But as far as a guided system to hit a moving target, What they developed was these rockets. So what it was was a light beam from the ground would track an aircraft and then these rockets with selenium cells on the fins would actually guide toward the system. So you had these selenium cells on the fins on the back. And whenever one of those cells would go outside of the light beam, it would detect that

and then it would steer opposite to make sure that all four of those cells were getting back

into the light beam.

Kind of a little bit like the bang bang guidance of a GB12.

Didn't work.

So as far as these things were developing, the very first drawing of a surface-dair missile

system, interestingly enough, was by a German

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