For a decade after the end of World War II, the issue of
Soviet strengths and intentions had been the top item on every Western
political agenda, but the available information came almost exclusively from a
combination of refugee interviews and oblique photography taken by aircraft
flying along the Soviet periphery. While these flights eventually demonstrated
that there had not been any threatening buildup of airstrips in locations that
would bring the United States within range of a surprise first strike, there
remained a significant problem that could only be overcome by flying directly
over potential targets deep inside the Soviet Union. At the time, the nuclear
deterrent consisted of free-fall atomic weapons that were to be dropped by U.S.
Strategic Air Command and British Bomber Command aircraft. However, the
effectiveness of the deterrent was entirely dependent on the weapons being
delivered to their targets accurately, and the bombardiers’ aiming systems
required radar ground-mapping of every site. This procedure demanded advance
reconnaissance of each target, which in turn necessitated a vertical radar
survey that could only be undertaken by long incursions into hostile air space.
Thus, during the Cold War there were a variety of reasons for the many
reconnaissance flights flown into Eastern Bloc airspace. There was the need to
locate Warsaw Pact radar stations and air defense systems, then a requirement
to map the Soviet Union and survey potential targets, and finally the long-term
commitment to monitoring hostile communications channels as an early-warning
precaution against a surprise first strike.
During the uneasy postwar period, American and British
aircraft routinely penetrated the Soviet Bloc, and Red Air Force Tupolev-95 Bears
constantly tested the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air defenses. These
risky provocations continued throughout the Cold War and between 1950 and 1970,
252 American aircrew were shot down by Soviet fighters. But as reliance on
technical intelligence sources grew, and on signals in particular, the use of
airborne platforms to intercept telemetry and other communications increased,
especially in those parts of the world where safe land sites were unavailable.
Although the National Security Agency established eavesdropping facilities in
friendly countries such as Turkey, Japan, and Germany and developed
relationships with the British and Norwegians, the U.S. Air Force was often
required to fill the gaps when, for instance, the sites at Kagnew, Eritrea, and
the three in Iran had to be evacuated because of changes in the local regime.
In the absence of convenient ground sites in strategic locations, aircraft were
deployed to intercept the target traffic.
The issue of Soviet strategic bombers and missiles was
equally crucial, and until the U-2 began regular overflights of Red Air Force
bases, the science of judging the Kremlin’s military capability became almost
as arcane as the art of predicting the Politburo’s decisions. Soviet secrecy
and the repressive nature of the regime effectively prevented use of the “Mark
I Eyeball” to study production figures, accumulate published statistics,
monitor factory output, watch airbases, or photograph naval installations.
Indeed, in the absence of even Soviet roadmaps, the postwar intelligence
analysts were obliged to rely on ancient prerevolutionary maps of Russia and
aerial photographs taken by the Luftwaffe. Yet the need to find the submarines,
aircraft, nuclear facilities, railway lines, test sites and training areas
became increasingly important, and it was not until the U-2 imagery became
available that analysts could grasp the scale of Nikita Khrushchev’s
breathtakingly ambitious bluff, which culminated in the Cuban missile crisis.
In November 1959, he had boasted that a single factory had produced 250
hydrogen warheads over the previous 12 months. It had seemed incredible that
any responsible leader would blatantly lie about such an important issue yet
the frequent claim that a “missile gap” had left the United States vulnerable
to a more powerful potential enemy had a significant influence on American
domestic politics, especially during the presidential campaign won by John F.
Kennedy.
The mystery of the Kremlin’s true strength would eventually
be solved by the U-2 and then by the deployment of satellites, but Khrushchev’s
ingenious remedy to the relative weakness of his atomic arsenal was simply to
move his short-range weapons closer to their target, and the result was the
Cuban missile crisis, the catalyst for which was the discovery by U.S. air
intelligence of his scheme. Although the resulting naval blockade of Cuba was
enforced by warships, the whole confrontation was essentially about aircraft,
with Soviet missiles detected by American aircraft. Indeed, the only fatality
of the entire incident was a U.S. Air Force pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson,
whose U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet SA-2.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/airdef/v-75.htm
Many of the other conflicts fought during the Cold War,
often proxy battles in which the adversaries were equipped by the superpowers,
served to update intelligence analysts on the relative potency of air power.
Following the invasion of South Korea, Soviet aircraft and pilots skillfully
outmaneuvered and outgunned their U.S. counterparts until new equipment and
tactics could be deployed in the skies over the peninsula. Initially, the
MiG-15, powered with a reverse-engineered Rolls-Royce jet engine, proved
invincible, at least until the F-86 Sabre evened the balance. This was to be
the last time American fighter jocks would ever engage the Soviets in sustained
aerial dogfights, leaving future confrontations to surrogates, apart from some
suspected incidents over North Vietnam. In that war, overwhelming and permanent
air superiority proved no substitute for political support at home and
Vietnamese tactics in an environment that favored the insurgents and limited
the effectiveness of comprehensive air cover.
Most future tests of relative equipment, personnel, and
avionics would occur in simulated environments over secret airbases in the
western United States or in real conditions, with Israelis pitted against
Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, and Iraqi aircrews. For decades, the Middle East
provided a highly realistic scenario for American manufacturers to bench test
new jets and electronic countermeasures against Eastern Bloc interceptors and
ground defenses. Captured Warsaw Pact military equipment, ranging from an
entire Egyptian radar station to a defecting Iraqi MiG Fishbed, ended up in
American laboratories, so all their most secret components could be examined
and the appropriate countermeasures devised. While politicians picked over the
consequences of 1967’s Six Day War and the participants on both sides
reexamined the strategic lessons, the air intelligence analysts were assessing
the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces, confident that the outcome
of the next clash again would be decided in the air.
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