The news sites tell us that Russian planes are getting very close to our boundaries at Alaska. See Russia Sends Its Most Advanced Fighters to U.S. Coast. Are they testing testing our nerve with a game of chicken?
More likely they're testing our electronic countermeasures and their counter-counter measures. We did it in the 60s to the Russians in Cuba and probably continue to do it wherever appropriate.
I'm reading Annie Jabosen's book, "Area 51, An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base." It's probably not one the UFO fanatics might think from the title. But it contains a lot of history about the spy work that came out of the Nevada Test and Training Range of which Area 51 is a small part. One project occurred during the cold war and involved a bomber flight with a missile in the hull toward Cuba but just shy of Cuba's airspace. Here's an excerpt:
"'We had the nose cone off and part of the skin off too. The missile was loaded on a stand inside the plane. It was my job to watch the electronics respond," [Thornton "T.D."] Barnes explains. The airplane and its crew took off from the airbase and headed for Cuba. The plan was for the airplane to fly right up to the edge of Cuban airspace but not into it. Moments before the airplane crossed into Cuban airspace, the pilot would quickly turn around and head home. By then the Russian radar experts working the Cuban radar sites would have turned on their systems to track the U.S. airplane. Russian MiG fighter jets would be sent aloft to respond. The job of Project Palladium was to gather the electronic intelligence being sent out by the radar stations and the MiGs. That was the first step in figuring out how to create a jamming system for the A-12 at Area 51.
The Cubans and their Russian patrons could not have had any idea whether the Americans were playing another game of chicken or if this act meant war. "Soviet MiGs would scramble toward us," Barnes recalls. "At the time, ECM [electronic countermeasure] and ECCM [electronic counter-countermeasure] technology were still new to both the plane and the missile. We'd transmit a Doppler signal from a radar simulator which told their MiG pilots that a missile had locked on them. When the Soviet pilots engaged their ECM against us, my job was to sit there and watch how our missile's ECCM responded. If the Soviet signal jammed our missile and made it drift off target, I'd tweak my missile's ECCM electronics to determine what would override a Soviet ECM signal." Though primitive by today's standards, what Barnes and the NSA agents with him inside the aircraft did laid the early groundwork for electronic warfare today. "Inside the airplane, we'd record the frequencies to be replayed back at Fort Bliss for training and design. Once we got what we wanted we hauled ass out of the area to avoid actual contact with Soviet planes."
I picture Vlad Putin saying, "Annie Jacobsen, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
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3:46 PM 5/7/2017
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