The CIA had to setup shell companies to buy titanium for the A-12&#x2F;SR-71, making submarines out of Titanium didn&#x27;t made sense for the US as it would be a waste of a &quot;strategic material&quot;.<p>The soviets also had to use titanium in many applications that would require high end steel as they both had plenty of it (almost half the world supply at the time) and their steel industry was decades behind the west and they just could not make the required quality of steel alloys.
The soviets ended up using titanium as a replacement and became quite good at creating titanium alloys and working with titanium in general the US would most likely not be able to produce a hull out of titanium (at that time) without investing way too much effort into building that expertise which would be pointless given the titanium resources they had and their ability to make steels which were as good or better for most applications.
The soviets had to resort into using titanium for every thing from infantry armor plating to razor blades.