Re: 1987 adumbrations of stealthy, multispectral spysats

"thomsona@xxxxxxxxx" <thomsona@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Viktor Suvorov, a former Soviet intelligence officer who
>defected to the west in 1976, says the Soviet military collects
>data on hostile spy satellites, predicts their orbits and tries
>to dodge or deceive them.
>
>"No trials of tanks, aircraft, radio sets, radars, or submarines
>were to be undertaken if, at a particular moment, a hostile
>satellite was overhead," Mr. Suvorov wrote in his book "Inside
>the Soviet Army." Moreover, he said, the increasing accuracy of
>American missiles prompted the production of false targets, "a
>colossal field of activity."

Viktor Suvorov said all manner of things that the folks debriefing him
in the West wanted to hear. It would be very interesting to actually
compare his writings (and those Sheymov) with what we now know to be
true.

>Accidents of nature have occasionally helped reveal Soviet
>deception. In his book on the Soviet military, "The Threat,"
>Andrew Cockburn tells how American photo interpreters in the
>early 1970's discovered that a new ballistic missile submarine
>had joined the Soviet northern fleet at Polyarnyi on the Barents
>Sea. But not long afterward, a storm swept the area and when the
>skies cleared, the new "submarine" was bent in half.

One suspects the analysts would not have been long fooled even in the
absence of the storm. We kept an eye on their shipyards, and the eyes
in the sky were not the only way we kept count of the number of
submarines they had.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
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