Upload
others
View
2
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
1
The Role of Clandestine Capabilities in Deterrence: Theory and Practice
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC)
Grant N00244-16-1-0032
Casebook
Brendan Rittenhouse Green, University of Cincinnati
Austin Long, Columbia University
September 2017
2
Table of Contents
1. Long-range acoustic surveillance-3
2. LOFAR (LOw Frequency Analysis and Recording) signal processing-5
3. Submarine quieting-7
4. Anti-submarine SIGINT/HUMINT capabilities-9
5. Electronic Warfare/Carrier Operations-11
6. CANOPY WING/Signal-M/anti-NC2 capabilities-13
7. MX ICBM Basing-14
8. “Angel Hair” Cruise Missile and Bombs-16
9. Stealthy reconnaissance aircraft-18
10. Stealthy strike aircraft-20
11. Deception on stealthy aircraft-22
12. Combat Tree IFF trigger-24
13. KAL 007 SIGINT revelation-26
14. ULTRA SIGINT in the Battle of the Atlantic-27
15. Israel and the “Special Means of Collection”-28
3
Case: Long-range acoustic surveillance, especially SOSUS (SOund SUrveillance System).
Time frame: 1950-1969.
Military-technical characteristics: Unique capability, costly countermeasures.
Political characteristics: Peacetime goals.
Outcomes: Conceal.
Description: In 1950, the U.S. Navy found itself in a difficult threat environment: the Soviet
Union had recently exploded an atomic bomb, and technology had raised the possibility of the
“true submarine,” a nuclear powered sub that could evade detection and deliver atomic munitions
from under the sea. When it finally emerged, Washington understood that the U.S. homeland
would become genuinely and massively vulnerable to atomic attack for the first time. In
anticipation of this day, the U.S. Navy initiated development of SOSUS, a system with the
potential to provide ocean wide surveillance, and in conjunction with other platforms, to track
and destroy hostile missile launching submarines before they were able to attack their targets.
SOSUS was a series of hydrophones attached to undersea cables that were laid across the axis of
the deep sound channel. The thousand foot apertures maximized array gain against the low
frequency part of the sound spectrum, while running these cables ashore allowed the Navy to
employ massive shore based computing power for spectrum analysis of tonals, resulting in
enormous processing gain. SOSUS had an ability to detect, classify, and track narrowband tonals
from thousands of miles away, often across entire ocean basins. The system quickly expanded:
after experiments in the Bahamas in 1951, SOSUS arrays were put off the Atlantic seaboard in
1952, the Pacific and Hawaiian coasts in 1954, Newfoundland in 1959. In 1964, SOSUS arrays
were placed off of Norway to cover the entrances to the Norwegian Sea from the Barents Sea,
and in 1965 they were placed forward into the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap.
By 1981 there were 36 SOSUS shore installations worldwide.
SOSUS data was integrated with SIGINT, HF/DF nets, and other forms of intelligence to create
ocean wide surveillance of hostile naval forces. This produced two important operational results.
First, the U.S. Navy became aware of the presence of Soviet submarines almost as soon as they
sortied, and certainly as soon as they left the shallow waters of seas adjacent and adjoining to the
Soviet Union. Second, SOSUS data cued shorter range ASW platforms, allowing Soviet SSBNs
to be tracked and trailed, oftentimes throughout their entire patrol. SOSUS’ synergy with other
platforms was especially significant, as it allowed inherently evasive targets to be reacquired if
they were temporarily lost.
The Soviet Union was aware of SOSUS arrays, but evidence indicates it did not appreciate the
full suite of ASW capabilities SOSUS facilitated. The U.S. government decided to conceal these
capabilities. The primary reason that ocean surveillance was obscured was because of its status
as a unique warning of a coming war: in the early Cold War both sides expected any general
conflict to be short and go nuclear early, meaning that Soviet subs would be sortied en masse if
Moscow anticipated real violence. Attempting to gain political leverage by showing the Soviets
how vulnerable their submarines were would therefore be too costly.
However, the full military meaning of ocean surveillance was eventually blown due to the
espionage of John Walker. This knowledge caused the Soviet Union to reorient its naval building
4
program for the second time in seven years, as well change its naval doctrine. The Soviet Union
thus abated an American advantage wrought by clandestine capabilities, though at great cost.
Bibliography:
http://www.iusscaa.org/history.htm
Edward C. Whitman, “SOSUS: The ‘Secret Weapon’ of Undersea Surveillance,” Undersea
Warfare 7, no. 2 (Winter 2005).
Owen R. Cote, The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines, Naval War College Newport Papers (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
2003).
Gary E. Weir, “The American Sound Surveillance System: Using the Ocean to Hunt Soviet
Submarines, 1950-1961,” International Journal of Naval History, Vol. 5, no. 2 (August 2006).
5
Case: LOFAR (LOw Frequency Analysis and Recording) signal processing.
Time frame: 1950-1989.
Military-technical characteristics: unique to replaceable, costly to less costly countermeasures.
Political characteristics: Peacetime goals.
Outcomes: Conceal (1950-1969), reveal (1983-4).
Description: The tactical heart of strategic ASW is the exploitation of acoustic signatures,
especially low-frequency tonals; it was one half of the “acoustic advantage” the U.S. Navy held
over the Red Navy during the Cold War.
In the late 1940s, the U.S. Navy began to develop the whole suite of capabilities relevant to
analyzing and acting on passive acoustic signatures, including the basic research at MIT and
Columbia that would eventually lead to SOSUS. Though originally inspired by the Soviet threat
to build a fleet of German “Type XXI” submarines and use them to interdict NATO SLOCs in
the Atlantic, the threat of submarine delivered nuclear weapons soon became the focus of Navy
development activity. The initiation of the Korean War in 1950, with its skyrocketing defense
budgets and corresponding intensification of superpower military competition, supercharged a
range of Navy programs aimed at the signal processing problem.
The interpretation of such signatures depends upon several factors, including the sonar
characteristics of the listening platform, processing techniques, and knowledge gained from
operational experience. The key principle behind exploiting acoustic signatures is that the target
submarine’s signal must be separated from the background noise produced in the rest of the
ocean and in the listening sensor itself. Most central was the development of LOFAR. LOFAR
reduces the amount of noise competing with a submarine signature by using a frequency
spectrum analyzes to pass sound through a series of narrowband filters that are cued on particular
frequencies of interest. All other noise outside those narrow frequency bands that competes with
submarine signatures is filtered out, thus providing an impressive “processing gain” that
drastically increases the range at which nuclear submarines—which have important low
frequency tonals—can be detected and tracked.
The Navy also pursued improvements in the sonar platforms doing the listening. These included
the development of large SSN bow sonars and towed arrays that increased the detection range of
Soviet submarine signals through “array gain.” Array gain is simply the nullification of sound
outside of the main beam of the sonar, and increases with sonar size. Finally, and of particular
note, operational experience created knowledge of sound signatures that could be exploited
tactically. The ability of American ASW forces to practice against the early generation of
American SSBNs across a range of tactical conditions supercharged the refinement of both array
gain and processing gain. For instance, early exercises lead to the discovery of propeller blade
rate tonals, which are caused by the motion of submarine propellers radiating down the length of
the hull, and are inherent in submarine design.
The Soviet Union eventually adopted narrowband signal processing and improved its own sonar
platforms, but did so very slowly; it is unclear when, if ever, during the Cold War that Soviet
signal processing mirrored the American approach. It is clear, though, that these capabilities
were concealed enough to make the process take much longer than expected. American decision-
6
makers declined to signal U.S. ASW capabilities in part because they feared that the Soviets
would invest heavily enough in ASW to gain operational experience, thus reaping the synergies
the U.S. enjoyed. Such a result would, over the medium term, eliminate any political or military
benefits clandestine ASW capabilities might provide.
However, by the end of the Cold War, this capability seemed less likely to be lost. The Soviets
had demonstrated that they were not highly responsive to American signal processing
capabilities in the acoustic area, as the sonar of their boats consistently lagged behind the U.S.
Navy’s. In part for this reason, the U.S. Navy began a campaign of signaling associated with the
maritime strategy. In one signal highly relevant to this discussion, CNO James Watkins revealed
the existence of propeller blade rate tonals, as well as the towed arrays used to detect them in
very quiet Soviet submarines, in open testimony before Congress. The point conveyed was that
the United States retained signal processing advantages over the Soviet force, despite its apparent
recent gains.
Bibliography:
Tom Stefanick, Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Naval Strategy (Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books, 1987).
Owen R. Cote, The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines, Naval War College Newport Papers (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
2003).
Norman Polmar and Moore, Kenneth J., Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of
U.S. and Soviet Submarines, 1945-2001 (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2004).
Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage (New York: Harper-Collins, 1998), 180–96.
7
Case: Submarine quieting.
Time frame: 1955-1989.
Military-technical characteristics: unique; more responsive (1960s) to less responsive (1980s).
Political characteristics: Peacetime goals.
Outcomes: Conceal (1960s); rationale for revelation of other capabilities (1980s).
Description: If exploiting submarine signatures is the tactical heart of strategic ASW, then
quieting those signatures is the strategic heart of SSBN defense. But there is a tension between
the endurance an SSBN needs to provide a secure deterrent and the noise it produces. The
nuclear power plant that allows SSBNs to spend months at sea and quickly evade diesel
submarines also requires reactor coolant pumps and other such machinery to operate
continuously. This machinery caused early SSBNs to produce a large signature in the low-
frequency end of the sound spectrum, and to do so at virtually all times, though the strength of
the signature can vary by aspect and speed.
The United States attacked this problem with several engineering techniques, the basic thrust of
which was to trade speed and specialization for silence. This began by eliminating the loudest of
the reduction gears in the nuclear power plant, and also relying on single screws that turned
slower to reduce cavitation. Most important, though, was the innovation of “rafting”: the
engineering plant of the submarine was separated from the hull and placed instead on a flexible
mount or “raft.” Thus detached from the hull, the size of the signature that the power plant put
into the water for prying ears to hear was greatly reduced.
Early Soviet submarines, by contrast, had different characteristics: multiple classes of SSN
specialized for different missions co-existed, where silence was not given pride of place in ship
design. Most Soviet submarines were double screwed and double hulled, which created large
broadband signatures. More importantly, by and large they also contained two large nuclear
reactors mounted to the hull, which created crystal clear signatures than enabled ocean wide
tracking.
Quieting innovations are significant because of how they affected American anticipations of
Soviet responsiveness to signals about other American capabilities. To the Americans, these
were simply engineering problems—some of them fiendishly difficult, to be sure, but problems
that would inevitably yield before a superpower budget. Thus, in the 1960s Washington was
extremely hesitant to send signals that would push the Soviets onto the correct technological path
and thereby eliminate the U.S. Navy’s acoustic advantage.
To some degree these fears were realized with the travesty of the Walker spy ring, which
coincided with the first Soviet attempt at rafting on the Victor II SSN engineering plant.
However, in broader scope, American fears turned out to be overblown. By the 1980s the Soviets
had managed to produce a few ultra-quiet SSNs (led by the Akula class), and sizeable fleet of
relatively quiet Victor III SSNs that were nevertheless trackable. But the large bulk of their
submarine fleet, and especially, their SSBN fleet, was still noisy. It had become clear that the
precise quality control and repeated trial and error at American shipyards—which could be
disciplined by an angry Congress or Navy—did not translate as easily into the heavily
8
bureaucratized environment of the Soviet Union. Washington was therefore less reticent about
signaling its acoustic advantage in the 1980s.
Bibliography:
Tom Stefanick, Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Naval Strategy (Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books, 1987).
Owen R. Cote, The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines, Naval War College Newport Papers (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
2003).
Norman Polmar and Moore, Kenneth J., Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of
U.S. and Soviet Submarines, 1945-2001 (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2004).
Donald C. Daniel, Anti-Submarine Warfare and Superpower Strategic Stability (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1986).
9
Case: SIGINT/HUMINT capabilities against the Soviet submarine force.
Time frame: 1945-1989.
Military-technical characteristics: unique; responsive.
Political characteristics: peacetime competition.
Outcomes: Conceal; but connected to the revelation of other capabilities (1980s).
Description: Signals and human intelligence have been a major part of ASW since the use of
Ultra decryptions of German communications in World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic.
Combined with acoustic surveillance, these capabilities have contributed to the development of
an ocean-wide picture of the undersea battlespace, allowing operators to keep tabs on enemy
forces in peacetime and direct assets effectively against them in wartime. Signals and human
intelligence have also been informative about the enemy’s cognitive architecture; that is, the
scenarios he finds most threatening and the information he finds most salient, which permits
clever strategists to signal in particularly effective ways.
Unfortunately for would be signalers, the information from these kinds of intelligence sources
tends to be irreplaceable and the countermeasures against them easy to effectuate once the
problem is discovered. For this reason, an entire generation of World War II history had to be re-
written once the existence of ULTRA was declassified, so tightly was this information held.
Similarly, U.S. SIGINT and HUMINT against the Soviet Union get only passing and oblique
references in some discussions of 1950s-60s ASW; these capabilities remain highly classified to
this day.
Somewhat more is known about the advances of American intelligence capabilities against the
Soviet submarine force in the late 1970s and 1980s. SIGINT provided data on the Red Navy’s
plans for the use of its reserves, the working of its command and control, and after-action reports
on its naval exercises. It has also been reported that HUMINT was a major part of the American
ocean surveillance effort, and resulted in several significant penetrations at the highest level of
the Soviet Navy. Finally, it is now known that the United States engaged in extensive cable
tapping of Russian naval communications in the Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.
Together, these intelligence sources allowed Washington to keep very close track of Soviet
submarine deployments; according to the commanding officer in the Pacific during the mid-
1980s, there was an American SSN trailing all Soviet SSBNs that left port. Moreover,
intelligence also gave American naval analysts and operators a much better picture of how Soviet
naval officers thought and what they feared. This lead to a revolution in the U.S. Navy’s analysis
of Soviet doctrine: the Red Fleet’s primary goal was to protect its SSBNs from attack in bastions
far to the North, not to interdict NATO SLOCs as had earlier been supposed.
None of the specific SIGINT and HUMINT capabilities just referenced were ever directly
signaled to the Soviets, as they were far too sensitive. Indeed, we only know of the cable tapping
because the tap in the Sea of Okhotsk was eventually blown and removed by Moscow. However,
the picture provided by the intelligence helped the United States craft a signal of American
strategic ASW capabilities that policymakers believed would be effective without endangering
unique sources.
10
Crucially, the undersea balance in the Soviet bastions depended on how difficult the American
search problem would be in a wartime scenario. Would American SSNs arrive before the large
part of the Soviet SSBN fleet had been deployed, presenting a fairly easy barrier solution to the
ASW problem? Or would they have to search for an SSBN fleet that was already at sea, and
possibly defended by friendly forces? How fast would the Soviets be willing to move in a
dangerous situation, given that Northern SSBN deployments might well blow any chances of
surprise the Red Army had on the critical central front?
With these questions in mind, the U.S. navy made several snap deployments of its SSN fleet
during the early to mid 1980s. These included an exercise where virtually the entire Atlantic SSN
force left their ports within twenty-four hours; other exercises saw the whole two ocean force
leave within two to three days. The U.S. Navy also exercised the trailing of Soviet boomers
under the ice, to let them know the central Arctic was no sanctuary. CNO James Watkins
testified before Congress to the effect that the signal being sent was very intentional. But it was
only sent because secret SIGINT and HUMINT sources had shown American leaders an area
where the Soviet Navy was especially sensitive, and because planners had devised a signal in the
“youth quadrant”—one that could send a message about capabilities without revealing their
source.
Bibliography:
Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg, The Admirals’ Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational
Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005).
Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage (New York: Harper-Collins, 1998).
William J. Holland Jr., “Strategy and Submarine,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 139, no. 12
(December 2013).
David A. Rosenberg, “Process: The Realities of Formulating Modern Naval Strategy,” in Mahan
Is Not Enough: The Proceedings of a Conference on the Works of Sir Julian Corbett and
Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, ed. James Goldrick and John B. Hattendorf (Newport, RI: Naval
War College Press, 1993).
Owen R. Cote, The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with
Soviet Submarines, Naval War College Newport Papers (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,
2003).
11
Case: Electronic Warfare/Carrier Operations.
Time frame: 1980s.
Military-technical characteristics: less unique, less responsive.
Political characteristics: peacetime competition.
Outcomes: Signal.
Description: The degree to which the American Navy could penetrate the bastions during the era
of the Maritime Strategy would not have been determined solely by SSN performance. Other
sonar platforms might also be brought to bear, but only if the U.S. could avoid the powerful land
based bombers of Soviet naval aviation. A deadly pre-emptive dynamic existed between the
American fleet and these bombers to get the first blow in wartime. Soviet backfires could engage
U.S. Carrier battle groups with radar guided missiles from outside the range of their defensive
screen; a successful attack could cripple large portions of the U.S. surface fleet. On the other
hand, Soviet bombers were too large for hardened shelters; a successful carrier borne raid could
quickly destroy much of the Soviet Naval bomber force, providing some opportunity for
American surface borne sonar platforms to contribute to the bastion campaign.
The ability of the American surface fleet to remain concealed, especially in the early phase of a
war, was therefore of some importance to the bastion campaign. The U.S. Navy established
several capabilities relevant to this mission; the most central of these was the clever use of
electronic warfare techniques to allow the U.S. fleet to maneuver in position for a strike, to
support bastion operations, or between safe areas. Moreover, because U.S. Carrier Battle groups
were nuclear capable, their existence on the periphery of the Soviet Union could threaten Soviet
perceptions of the nuclear correlation of forces which, bizarre though they may have been, U.S.
intelligence had shown to be a motivating force in Soviet doctrine.
U.S. electronic warfare capabilities took many different flavors, but the basic emphasis was on
deceiving Soviet ocean surveillance for long enough to allow groups of ships to slip inside the
bastions unnoticed. Techniques included strict emissions control (EMCON), jamming, and
emissions decoys. The Americans would also use satellites to track the movements of Soviet
Naval Air by their afterburner signatures. Finally, American ships also perfected a method of
approaching or operating near Soviet waters: by using mountainous terrain as a screen, which
blocked the line of site for SNA radar guided missiles. Combined with Electronic Warfare
techniques, this allowed Carrier battle groups to slip across the Pacific towards the sea of
Okhotsk by hiding in the Aleutian Island chain, or to operate in the deep-water Fjords of Norway
adjacent to the Barents Sea.
The Americans demonstrated these capabilities in a series of exercises throughout the 1980s. In
early 1981, an 83 ship NATO task force evaded Soviet intelligence to transit the Greenland-
Iceland-United Kingdom Gap and head far north. The task force conducted a series of drills that
revealed it could penetrate Soviet air defenses at long ranges, while baffling the attempts of SNA
aircraft to pursue and trach it. A separate four ship group broke away from the main force and
slipped into the Barents, operating off Murmansk unidentified for nine days before turning on all
their electronics to reveal their presence on the way home. Similar exercises were conducted off
the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Pacific.
12
The decision to signal these capabilities was probably based on another opportunity for a “youth”
style deception operation. The fact that the American fleet could evade Soviet Ocean
surveillance was obvious; the sources of that evasion were not. U.S. policymakers were likely
also attracted by the political benefits: the ability to tie down Soviet forces in an area they U.S.
intelligence had realized was very sensitive to them. These were resources that could not then be
devoted to the Central Front or to interdicting NATO SLOCs, battlespaces of special interest to
the Americans.
Bibliography:
John B. Hattendorf, “The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986,” Newport
Paper No. 19 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2004).
John T. Hanley Jr., “Creating the 1980s Maritime Strategy and Implications for Today,” Naval
War College Review 67, no. 2 (Spring 2014).
David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its
Dangerous Legacy (New York: Anchor, 2010).
Gregory Vistica, Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy (New York: Touchstone,
1997).
Gordon Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford, CA:
Stanford Security Studies, 2009).
13
Case: CANOPY WING/Signal-M/anti-NC2 capabilities.
Time frame: Late 1970s-mid 1980s.
Military-technical characteristics: Unique, responsive.
Political characteristics: Peacetime competition.
Outcomes: Conceal.
Description: One major source of late Cold War competition between the superpowers was in
nuclear command and control (NC2) systems. If a nuclear first strike was ever launched, the
ability to defend one’s NC2, or degrade the enemy’s, would come at a premium: even ten to
fifteen minutes delay might prevent an adversary from launching its forces before they were
destroyed in an attack.
During the early to mid-1980s, the United States allegedly developed capabilities to exploit
vulnerabilities in Soviet high frequency communications between the Soviet high command and
its air, sea, and silo based nuclear forces. This vulnerability was to be paired with a full suite of
other Electronic Warfare capabilities in a research project code named CANOPY WING, with
the aim of launching a full spectrum assault on Soviet military command centers prior to a
nuclear exchange. The proposed suite of capabilities included a system for temporalizing all
Soviet HF radio traffic; overriding and simulating new orders to the Soviet air and naval nuclear
forces; the attack of communications with microscopic carbon-fiber particles and/or chemical
weapons; and targeting hardened Soviet command systems with precision weapons.
CANOPY WING’s existence was certainly not signaled to the Soviet Union during the Cold
War; such a program, even in its infancy, would have simply been to valuable to try to exploit
for transient political advantage. Indeed, the only reason we know of its existence is that East
German spies penetrated the program and later wrote of its existence in their memoirs after the
Cold War’s end. Coincidentally or not, the Soviet NC2 system for its ICBMs, Signal-M,
underwent an upgrade shortly after the American programs were penetrated. Perhaps the upgrade
to the new Signal-A system was scheduled, but the timing was suspicious: Signal-M had taken
almost a decade to develop and had only officially been accepted for service a few years earlier.
Bibliography:
Benjamin B. Fischer, “CANOPY WING: The U.S. War Plan That Gave the East Germans Goose
Bumps,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 27, no. 3 (May 12, 2014).
Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear
Forces 1945-2000 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2002).
Fred Kaplan, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2016).
14
Case: MX ICBM Basing.
Time frame: late 1970s, early 1980s.
Military-technical characteristics: Unique, somewhat responsive.
Political characteristics: envisioned crisis or wartime capability.
Outcomes: N/A, only a hypothetical capability, but did influence major U.S. procurement
decisions.
Description: Another part of Cold War nuclear competition related to the vulnerability of land
based missiles. Many U.S. policymakers believed that the Soviet Union might gain some
strategic advantage, or think it had gained a strategic advantage, if it could destroy, or threaten to
destroy, most of the U.S. land-based ICBM force. The subject of ICBM vulnerability was
therefore closely monitored when it came time to modernize the U.S. Minuteman ICBM force
with the MX missile.
Dozens of basing modes for the MX were considered, but most foundered against the increasing
accuracy of Soviet ICBMs and their perceived ability to destroy even the most hardened targets.
The most promising schemes were based around the idea of a “shell game”: a force of MX
missiles several hundred strong would be shuffled amongst several thousand shelters. The
Soviets could destroy any particular shelter, but if they did not know which ones held an MX,
they would be forced to expend a gargantuan number of warheads to destroy the entire system of
shelters, exhausting their supply and making the whole attack pointless.
However, as the shell game concept advanced through the procurement cycle, U.S. policymakers
discovered a problem: what if the Soviet’s obtained a clandestine capability to determine the
location of MX missiles, either through surveillance or through penetrating U.S. secrecy
procedures? The then leading MX basing scheme moved vertical ICBMs between shelters in a
process that took twenty-four hours. This would mean that, in a crisis or conventional war, the
Soviet Union could suddenly reveal their ability to destroy the entire MX force on the cheap,
with potentially serious diplomatic consequences.
The horror of this potential situation drove a major change in U.S. procurement policy: the
shelter basing scheme was changed in order to move missiles between shelters while horizontal.
This allowed a missile to “dash” between shelters quicker than an ICBM could be launched
across the globe, thus mitigating the political value of any revelation about Soviet intelligence
capabilities. The change would have added several billion dollars to the already pricey MX price
tag.
Bibliography:
Office of Technology Assessment, MX Missile Basing, September 1981.
William J. Perry, Testimony before the Sub-Committee on Research and Development, U.S.
Congress, Senate Armed Services Committee, 96th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, April 30, 1980). Declassified March 26, 2013.
15
Brian J. Auten, Carter’s Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy (Columbia,
MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008).
16
Case: “Angel Hair” Cruise Missile and Bombs
Timeframe: 1980(?)-1999
Military-technical: Unique; costly
Outcome: Conceal (1980-1991); Reveal (1991 and 1999)
Political: Peacetime competition (Conceal); Wartime (Reveal)
Description: Beginning in 1980, or possibly earlier, the U.S. military began experimenting with
new methods to disable enemy power systems. One method was to dispense very thin strands of
carbon fiber, potentially impregnated with other materials, from a missile or bomb. These
strands would cause substantial arcing on electrical lines and power systems they came in contact
with, knocking those systems out without the use of explosives. When mated to a missile that
could dispense submunitions, these fibers (known by the nickname “angel hair” due to their
thinness) could knock out power over a wide area. Reportedly planners of the U.S. hostage
rescue attempt in Tehran in 1980 considered using this system, which remained a closely held
special access program.
In 1985 the capability of angel hair weapons was accidentally demonstrated by a U.S.
Navy exercise off the coast of San Diego. The exercise had Navy electronic warfare aircraft
deploy “rope chaff,” a new type of chaff intended to be lighter and therefore likely to stay
airborne longer and thus block enemy radar longer. Prevailing winds blew some of this chaff
over the city, where it landed on power lines and, though not carbon fiber, nonetheless had a
similar effect to that intended by angel hair- it knocked out power to much of the city.
By 1991, if not sooner, the United States had apparently refined angel hair sufficiently to bring it
in to the arsenal. The U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missile was available in a land attack version
that could dispense submunitions (the D variant of the missile). While the standard submunition
dispensed contained high explosive, the so-called “Kit-2” submunitions dispensed angel hair.
In the planning for the 1991 Operation Desert Storm air campaign against Iraq, there was
substantial debate in the U.S. government about using the Kit-2 Tomahawks. There were
apparently two major arguments against use. The first was that revelation would allow
adversaries to take countermeasures against the system, which would be simple but costly (e.g.
burying all power lines). Second, there was concern adversaries could obtain samples of the
angel hair and duplicate it. Ultimately, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney chose to authorize
use of the weapon, which successfully struck multiple power sites in Iraq. It is unclear to what
extent the earlier inadvertent revelation influenced this decision.
The success of angel hair in Desert Storm apparently led the U.S. Air Force to develop
gravity bombs capable of dispensing the material. These bombs, allegedly designated BLU-114,
were used in 1999 in Operation Allied Force against Serbian power systems. Little is known of
any debate about their use, but the systems apparently again functioned as intended.
Bibliography
William Arkin, “Yugoslavia Unplugged,” Washington Post, May 10, 1999
Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1993)
Conversation with former U.S. defense official, March 2017
17
Richard Sale, “Utility Blackouts as Weapons,” Industrial Safety and Security Source, May 29,
2013
Jodie Sweezy and Austin Long, From Concept to Combat: Tomahawk Cruise Missile Program
History and Reference Guide 1972-2004 (Patuxent River, MD: Naval Air Systems Command,
2005)
18
Case: Stealthy reconnaissance aircraft
Timeframe: 1956-1974
Military-technical: Unique; modest
Outcome: Conceal
Political: Peacetime competition
The U-2 spyplane, itself a clandestine capability, was initially able to avoid Soviet air defensese
by a combination of high altitude and high speed flight. However, it was readily apparent from
the beginning of U-2 flights that Soviet air defense would eventually be able to use radar guided
missiles to down a U-2. This realization led CIA to initiate Project Rainbow, a program to
explore reducing the radar signature of U-2 and U-2’s planned successor, known as Oxcart.
Rainbow was tightly compartmentalized, with access strictly controlled. The program also ran in
to the limitations of both manufacturing and computer modeling technology.
It soon became clear existing technology was not able to make the Oxcart aircraft known
as A-12 (and its successor the SR-71 Blackbird) sufficiently stealthy to evade evolving Soviet air
defense. The emergence of satellite reconnaissance alleviated some of the need for manned
aircraft to overfly strategic targets, but satellites could not provide all the reconnaissance the
United States needed. This led the Air Force to modify a target drone, the Ryan Firebee, to
become a reconnaissance drone that incorporated some stealthy elements. The new drone, called
the Fire Fly, was ready by 1962.
Fire Fly was thus in place by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and, given the threat to
the U-2 posed by air defenses over Cuba, some in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
pushed for it to be used in the crisis. Yet the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Curtis
LeMay, scrubbed a Firefly overflight to avoid compromising the critical and unique capability.
Fire Fly (later redubbed Lightning Bug) was still insufficiently stealthy to avoid the
expanding capability of Soviet model air defenses so an even more exotic stealthy drone was
built. This drone, the D-21, “… was not just classified, it was a compartmentalized NRO
program so secret that even Skunk Works engineers working in the Fort Knox-like SR-71
assembly building were restricted from viewing the D-21 by a hangar bulkhead dubbed ‘Berlin
Wall West.” Yet the technology for drone operations was still immature, as was stealth, so this
program was not a success.
The expansion of satellite reconnaissance combined with the limitations of stealth and
drone technology eventually meant the window of utility for clandestine airborne reconnaissance
closed even without revelation of stealth. By 1974 CIA and NRO divested of airborne
reconnaissance, allowing Strategic Air Command to continue operating SR-71 aircraft in a more
or less open fashion. Stealth, at least for reconnaissance, had reached the end of its useful life.
Bibliography
CIA Memorandum “Overflights of the Soviet Bloc,” October 17, 1958 (declassified August
2000)
CIA Memorandum, “R Clearances, USAF Intel. Officers,” August 1, 1957
CIA, “Rainbow Program-Phase II,” November 27, 1957 (declassified April 1999)
CIA Cable from Brig. Gen. Wendell Bevan, June 26, 1974
19
Thomas Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs: The Secret History (Arlington VA: Mitchell Institute for
Airpower Studies, 2010)
Gene Poteat, “Stealth, Countermeasures, and ELINT, 1960-1975,” Studies in Intelligence v.42
n.1 (Spring 1998)
David Robarge, Archangel: CIA's Supersonic A-12 Reconnaissance Aircraft 2nd ed. (Washington
DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2012)
20
Case: Stealthy strike aircraft
Timeframe: 1974-1980
Military-technical: Modest; modest
Outcome: Conceal
Political: Peacetime competition
Description: In 1974 a Defense Science Board study noted integrated air defenses were
becoming so capable U.S. aircraft might not be sufficiently survivable to provide critical tactical
or strategic strike in critical cases such as the defense of the Fulda Gap in Europe. At about the
same time, Director of Defense Research and Engineering Malcolm Currie called for renewed
efforts at radical innovation. Robert Moore of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) proposed a new effort for “high stealth aircraft,” which, with Currie’s support,
DARPA began to pursue.
By January 1975 DARPA had issued development contracts to two firms, McDonnell
Douglas and Northrop, for a stealthy manned fighter size aircraft. Lockheed, the designers of the
A-12 and SR-71 stealthy reconnaissance aircraft, had not been invited to compete as Lockheed
had not built a fighter sized aircraft in decades and, crucially, DARPA was unaware of
Lockheed’s previous stealth work. This highlights that even after clandestine capabilities are no
longer effective internal information management can remain a challenge.
Lockheed’s management nonetheless heard about the DARPA program and sought to
enter it. CIA granted Lockheed permission to share information on the A-12 with the director of
DARPA and, apparently impressed, he allowed Lockheed to join. Exploiting new computer
technology to model radar returns, Lockheed eventually won the competition with the stealthiest
model. DARPA transferred leadership of the program to the Air Force, where in 1976 it became
known as HAVE BLUE. Lockheed built two test aircraft and began to work on reduction of
other emissions.
Notable in this was the evolution in the classification of the program. DARPA, which
frequently works with academic and non-defense contractors, was not experienced with highly
classified programs. The initial studies from McDonnell Douglas and Northrop were only
Confidential, the lowest level of classification. Only after more finished proposals were in from
those two plus Lockheed did DARPA decide to classify the program Top Secret (but not in a
special access compartment). Only when the program transitioned to the Air Force as HAVE
BLUE did it become a special access program.
Even as Lockheed progressed with HAVE BLUE, in 1978 DARPA chose to have
Northrop pursue another aspect of stealth. As part of the Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft-
Experimental (BSAX) program, Northrup developed a test aircraft which not only made
advances in reducing radar cross section but also had a low probability of intercept (LPI) radar.
LPI radar uses various techniques to minimize the probability an adversary could detect the use
of radar. Northrup eventually built a test aircraft known as TACIT BLUE.
In parallel to these developments, the administration of President Carter was considering
the future of U.S. manned strategic bombers. The B-1, under development and intended to be the
next generation U.S. bomber, was not stealthy, making it dependent on some combination of
speed, jamming, and potentially low altitude flight to penetrate Soviet defenses. This approach
seemed less and less effective given the continuing improvement in Soviet air defenses.
Moreover, the new technology of cruise missiles offered a plausible alternative.
21
Crucially, President Carter selected William Perry as the Director of Defense Research
and Engineering (DDRE), the senior technologist in the Pentagon. Perry had been involved in
efforts to manipulate Soviet air defense radars since the late 1950s so he understood the potential
of stealth. This may have contributed to the administration’s decision to cancel B-1, which came
in 1977 after the success of HAVE BLUE. It subsequently launched the Advanced Technology
Bomber (ATB) program, with the goal of producing a stealthy strategic bomber. As with HAVE
BLUE the ATB program was highly classified.
Yet even before the creation of ATB, rumors about stealth had begun to circulate. In
1975, when DARPA’s initial efforts had not been compartmentalized, the press had reported on
some aspects of the program. Even in 1977, when stealth had transitioned to
compartmentalization as HAVE BLUE, a well-connected journalist was able to report on the
initial flights of Lockheed’s prototypes. According to a subsequent Congressional investigation a
major press article on stealth was withheld from publication in 1978 at the request of the
Pentagon. As a result, from 1977 to 1980 there was little press reporting on stealth.
This changed almost overnight in the summer of 1980, when several news sources
reported on stealth. William Perry then reached out to the author whose 1978 story had been
withheld and agreed to update him on stealth, ostensibly as a “damage limiting” measure
responding to the recent leaks. Perry and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown then gave a press
conference on stealth, again allegedly as part of an effort to limit further speculation about
stealth. Apparently both the commander of Strategic Air Command and the Chief of Staff of the
Air Force disagreed with this course of action.
Bibliography
David Aronstein and Albert Piccirillo, Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the "Stealth
Fighter" (Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997)
Central Intelligence Agency, “US Stealth Programs and Technology: Soviet Exploitation of the
Western Press,” August 1, 1985
Peter Grier, “The (Tacit) Blue Whale,” Air Force Magazine (August 1996)
House Armed Services Committee, “Leaks of Classified National Defense Information- Stealth
Aircraft,” February 3, 1981
Ian A. Maddock “DARPA’s Stealth Revolution: Now You See Them…” in DARPA: 50 Years of
Bridging the Gap 1958-2008 (Arlington VA: DARPA, 2008)
Ben Rich with Leo Janos, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (New
York: Back Bay Books, 1996)
22
Case: Deception on stealthy aircraft
Timeframe: 1980-1989
Military-technical: Unique, Costly
Outcome: Partial reveal
Political: Peacetime competition
Description: The revelation of stealth by the Carter administration, though perhaps cueing the
Soviets to the existence of the program, did not compromise the technical aspects. Moreover, it
merely affirmed discussion of stealth in the press for years. The impact in terms of both
compromising the military utility of stealth and increasing its political utility were probably
minimal.
Yet the risk of program compromise was real. The Soviets had very substantial human
intelligence successes, as with those that compromised earlier strategic ASW efforts. At a
summit meeting in July 1981 between the recently inaugurated Ronald Reagan and French
President Francois Mitterrand, the French revealed extensive evidence on Soviet intelligence
collection on technology. The so-called Farewell Dossier was derived from a French human
intelligence source inside Soviet technical intelligence (KGB’s Line X).
This French intelligence confirmed long held suspicions of some in the U.S. intelligence
community of Soviet efforts. Yet it also created an opportunity. With extraordinarily complete
knowledge of who Soviet intelligence officers focusing on technical issues were and what their
collection priorities were, which included stealth, the United States government was able to tailor
a strategic deception and counterintelligence campaign against them.
This campaign, which began in early 1982, required extensive coordination between CIA,
FBI, and the military counterintelligence organizations with very senior U.S. government
officials meeting regularly to discuss the campaign, which seems to have had three major parts.
The first and simplest was for the United States and many of its allies (once informed) to expel
the bulk of Soviet intelligence officers engaged in technical espionage. The second part of the
campaign was apparently to tailor the focus of other U.S. counterintelligence efforts to protect
sensitive programs such as stealth. The third, and most complex, part of the campaign was to
feed the Soviets faulty technology and false data about U.S. programs. Citing unclassified
sources, one of the chief architects of this campaign for CIA claims this program included
providing misleading information on stealth. This required further use of double agents and the
careful selection of “feed material” to provide the Soviets. Some of this feed material would
have to be genuine to convince the Soviets, while the rest would still have to be plausibly
misleading.
The U.S. effort was aided in this respect by understanding of Soviet organizational and
technical factors. On the organizational side the United States understood the existence of a
separate military service for strategic air defense would create a strong demand for intelligence
on stealth- it was after all this service that would have to face the challenge of stealth. On the
technical side CIA’s recruitment of Soviet radar expert Adolf Tolkachev probably aided in
tailoring feed material as it provided insight into the state of the art for Soviet radar.
Bibliography
Conversation with former military officer, April 17, 2017
Conversation with former senior intelligence official May 3, 2017
23
Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, trans. Catherine Cauvin-Higgins, Farewell: The Greatest Spy
Story of the Twentieth Century (Seattle: AmazonCrossing, 2011)
Michelle van Cleave, Counterintelligence and National Security (Washington, DC: National
Defense University Press, 2007)
Gus W. Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier,” Studies in Intelligence 39, no. 5 (1996)
24
Case: Combat Tree IFF trigger
Timeframe: 1966-1972
Military-technical: Moderate, Moderate
Outcome: Reveal
Political: Wartime
Description: During the air war over North Vietnam, U.S. aircraft were at a disadvantage in
confronting North Vietnamese aircraft. The primary disadvantage was the North Vietnamese
were able to use ground-controlled intercept (GCI) techniques, which used powerful ground
based radars to help plot optimal intercepts of U.S. planes. An almost equally important
limitation on U.S. aircraft was that despite having radar guided air to air missiles capable of
downing North Vietnamese planes at distances beyond visual range there was always a danger of
shooting down a friendly aircraft if the target could not be visually identified.
American signals intelligence began exploring ways to solve the problem posed by GCI
and the need to identify North Vietnamese aircraft at long ranges. The solution was a system
initially known as the QRC-248, which was able to exploit the identify friend-foe (IFF)
transponder on the North Vietnamese aircraft. IFF systems allowed the North Vietnamese to
identify which aircraft appearing on radar were friendly and which were not. By exploiting the
North Vietnamese system U.S. aircraft were also able to determine which radar returns were
North Vietnamese and, as a bonus, could do so at longer ranges than radar alone.
However, there was a real concern at the U.S. National Security Agency that this system,
if overused or used carelessly, would be compromised and the Soviet bloc could develop
countermeasures (e.g. changing the IFF system). Given the QRC-248 could be applied to other
Soviet export aircraft, including potentially in a major war with the Warsaw Pact, there was
reason to protect the system even though the U.S. Air Force was in a shooting war. As a result
the use of the system, which began experimentally in December 1966, was initially restricted to
“passive” mode- detecting when the North Vietnamese triggered their own IFFs. This kept the
QRC-248 operation clandestine, but limited its utility relative to “active” mode, which would
trigger the IFF without North Vietnamese action.
Yet the pressure of the air war was real and immediate, so the Joint Chiefs of Staff
apparently began to pressure the National Security Agency to allow active use of the QRC-248.
After roughly six months of debate, the National Security Agency agreed to lift the restrictions.
When active use began in July 1967 the results were profound, an almost “night and day”
difference in the U.S. picture of the air war. This led the Air Force to begin development of a
smaller and more advanced version of the QRC-248, which was eventually produced and
deployed on F-4D fighters as the APX-80- code named “Combat Tree.”
The fears about North Vietnamese discovery were warranted, as at some point the drastic
improvement in the ranges and effectiveness of U.S. air-to-air missiles beginning in mid-1967
tipped the North Vietnamese that something was going on. While they did not fully understand
how the system worked they apparently began to change tactics to some degree, leaving IFF
transponders off in some cases (despite the risk of fratricide). Nonetheless the system was still
helping American pilots engage the North Vietnamese by the end of the air war in 1972,
underscoring the difficulty in rectifying even seemingly simple vulnerabilities.
25
Bibilography
Robert Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975
(Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 2002)
Marshall Michel, Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972 (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 1997)
26
Case: KAL 007 SIGINT revelation
Timeframe: September 1983
Military-technical: Low, High
Outcome: Reveal
Political: Peacetime
Description: In September 1983 Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 007 from New York to Seoul via
Alaska drifted off course due to pilot error. At roughly the same time a U.S. reconnaissance
aircraft passed near the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Soviet Far East. KAL 007’s
errant course took it over Kamchatka at a point when Soviet air defense was already prepared to
respond to U.S. reconnaissance efforts.
KAL 007 exited Soviet air space before Soviet fighters could intercept it but then crossed
Soviet air space again over Sakhalin Island. At this point the flight was intercepted by a Soviet
fighter, which was ordered to shoot down the aircraft. The downing killed hundreds of civilians.
The communications between the Soviet aircraft and Soviet ground command stations
was intercepted by U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) sites in Japan. These communications
were recorded and indicated Soviet air defense made little or no effort to determine if the
intruding aircraft it shot down was civilian. The Reagan administration saw this as a golden
opportunity to portray the Soviets as brutal and uncaring.
However, countering the Soviet claims to the contrary would require some release of
SIGINT in the form of the taped Soviet voice communications. This would reveal something
about U.S. SIGINT capabilities that would be relevant in a conflict. However, after a relatively
brief consultation the U.S. National Security Council chose to approve release of the tapes,
which were subsequently played at the United Nations. The judgment was relatively easy to
make as the capabilities to intercept Soviet communications was not unique, was already
reasonably well known to the Soviets, and fixing the revealed vulnerability would have been
onerous for the Soviets in terms of changes to air defense communications.
In contrast the political benefits of revelation were significant. The Reagan
administration was seeking to portray the Soviets to European allies as implacably dangerous.
The KAL 007 was a major propaganda victory for the administration in this campaign.
Bibliography
Conversation with former intelligence official, May 3, 2017
Thomas Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War; 1945-1989, v.4 (Ft. Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 1999)
27
Case: ULTRA SIGINT in the Battle of the Atlantic
Timeframe: 1941-1945
Military-technical: Highly unique, medium
Outcome: Partial reveal
Political: Wartime
Description: The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the key contests of the European theater
during World War II. It pitted the U-boat submarines of Germany against the critical Allied
supply lines from North America to Europe. The losses in the initial months of the Battle of the
Atlantic were staggering as U-boats were able to pick off Allied ships with little fear of reprisal.
These losses were so high there was real concern about the ability to continue supplying
European operations.
The British Royal Navy eventually altered tactics to create more secure convoys to
protect shipping. Yet the contest continued to be close and both sides sought to exploit signals
intelligence (SIGINT) to gain advantage. This included decrypting messages, known by to the
British by the codeword Ultra, as well as analyzing communications patterns and directions. The
Allies had previous SIGINT success during the airborne Battle of Britain but the challenge of
German naval signals was substantial.
The Allies had a major breakthrough in May 1941 with the capture of German codebooks
and a German encryption machine known as Enigma. This allowed the Allies enormous success
in locating German U-boats and either attacking them or avoiding them. Yet the Germans were
also having substantial success in breaking British codes so the SIGINT contest was not entirely
one sided.
Both sides faced a substantial challenge in using SIGINT to support operations without
compromising the sources. Over the course of 1942, following American entry in to the war, the
Germans actually began achieving renewed success against Allied convoys as Allied SIGINT
experienced substantial challenges. The Germans made a fatal blunder in protecting their
SIGINT successes by transmitting to U-boats that information they were provided came from
decrypted British communications. The British quickly began changing their codes, ending
German success.
In contrast, the Allies were successful in protecting their decryption successes with a
variety of cover stories. Following an Allied breakthrough in early 1943 the Battle of the
Atlantic began to shift decisively against the Germans. While Allied success was not entirely due
to SIGINT, Ultra intelligence was critical to this success and the protection of Ultra, as the
contrasting German case shows, vital to ensuring its continued viability.
Bibliography
Patrick Beesly, Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty's Intelligence Centre 1939-
45 new ed. (London: Chatham, 2006)
Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunters 1939-1942 (New York: Modern Library, 2000)
Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunted 1942-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2000)
Harold Deutsch, “The Historical Impact of Revealing the Ultra Secret,” Parameters (1977)
28
Case: Israel and the “Special Means of Collection”
Timeframe: 1973
Military-technical: Highly unique, low
Outcome: Conceal
Political: Crisis
Description: In the period after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli Defense Forces faced a
continuous threat from the Arab states, most notably the Egyptian effort to wear down the
Israelis through attrition. In order for the much smaller Israel to maintain its economy and
security at the same time, much of Israel’s conventional defense posture hinged on early warning
to mobilize reserve forces.
In 1973 most Israeli intelligence assessments argued the Egyptians would almost
certainly seek another war eventually but that the Egyptian Army was not yet ready, lacking long
range strike and other critical capabilities. Moreover, Israeli intelligence believed under most
circumstances it could provide a few days of warning before any Egyptian offensive. Yet there
was always the possibility the Egyptians could launch a war before it was “ready” and that it
might do so under cover of large scale military exercises, which would hamper Israeli warning.
As an insurance policy, the Israeli Defense Force developed a “special means of
collection,” a still classified signals intelligence (SIGINT) capability. While the exact nature of
the special means is not known, it is believed they could essentially have enabled Israeli
intelligence to unequivocally tell whether a major Egyptian troop movement was actually an
exercise or was in fact an invasion at least 24 hours before any hostilities began.
However, the means had limitations. They apparently relied on devices emplaced on
Egyptian territory by Israeli special operations forces and were subject to discovery. Use would
apparently increase risk of discovery. The devices also apparently had limited battery life, so the
more they were used the faster they would have to be replaced- if indeed they could be replaced.
In May 1973 the special means of collection apparently proved its worth by correctly
identifying a major Egyptian troop movement as an exercise, contradicting other sources
claiming it was cover for war. Yet at some point between May and October 1973 one of the
devices comprising the special means was accidentally acquired by the Egyptians. While it did
not compromise the special means, it created very serious concern about any further use of the
means. The means were only to be used at the sole direction of the head of Israeli military
intelligence.
On October 1, 1973 the Egyptians launched another major troop movement, alleged to be
just another exercise. At this point, three of the Israeli military intelligence officers who knew of
the existence of the means all pressed the head of military intelligence to activate the special
means. He refused, only relenting to allow brief testing of the special means on October 4. As
other signs of war grew more ominous, Israel’s senior leadership, including the prime minster,
chief of staff, and minister of defense, all seem to have believed the special means were turned
on and reporting nothing. Finally on October 6, with war only hours away and Israel rushing to
mobilize the special means were turned on, far too late to have affected the crisis. The effort to
conceal and preserve the “special means” in crisis had prevented the clandestine capability from
achieving any affect.
Bibilography