the role of clandestine capabilities in deterrence: theory

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).

http://www.iusscaa.org/history.htm

5

Case: LOFAR (LOw Frequency Analysis and Recording) signal processing.


Military-technical characteristics: unique to replaceable, costly to less costly countermeasures.


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).



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.


Military-technical characteristics: unique; more responsive (1960s) to less responsive (1980s).


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).



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.


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).



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


Military-technical: Modest; modest

Outcome: Conceal


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


Military-technical: Unique, Costly

Outcome: Partial reveal


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


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


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

29

Uri Bar-Joseph, “The ‘Special Means of Collection’: The Missing Link in the Surprise of the

Yom Kippur War,” Middle East Journal Vol. 67, No. 4 (Autumn 2013)

Howard Blum, The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War (New York:

HarperCollins, 2003)

the role of clandestine capabilities in deterrence: theory

Documents