The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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20
Sec, et NOFOAN
Chapter 1
scientists. Thus, new and extremely powerful weapons were coming
into the hands of a government whose actions greatly disturbed the
leaders of the West. Only two months before the successful hydrogen
bomb test, Soviet troops had crushed an uprising in East Berlin. And,
at the United Nations, the Soviet Bloc seemed bent on causing dissen­
sion between Western Europe and the United States and between the
developed and undeveloped nations. This aggressive Soviet foreign
policy. combined with advances in nuclear weapons, led officials such
as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to see the Soviet Union as a
menace to peace and world order.
The Soviet Union's growing military strength soon became a
threat not just to US forces overseas but to the continental United
States itself. In the spring of 1953. a top secret RAND study pointed
out the vulnerability of the SAC's US bases to a surprise attack by
Soviet long-range bombers.-'•
Concern about the danger of a Soviet attack on the continental
United States grew after an American military attache sighted a new
Soviet intercontinental bomber at Ramenskoye airfield. south of
Moscow, in 1953. The new bomber was the Myasishchev-4, later
designated Bison by NATO. Powered by jet engines rather than the
turboprops of Russia's other long-range bombers. the Bison appeared
to be the Soviet equivalent of the US B-52. which was only then
going into production. Pictures of the Bison taken at the Moscow
May Day air show in 1954 had an enormous impact on the US intel­
ligence community. Unlike several other Soviet postwar aircraft, the
Bison was not a derivative of US or British designs but represented
a native Soviet design capability that surprised US intelligence ex­
perts. This new long-range jet bomber, along with the Soviet Union's
large numbers of older propeller and turboprop bombers, seemed to
pose a significant threat to the United States, and, in the summer of
1954, newspapers and magazines began publishing articles highlight­
ing the growing airpower of the Soviet Union. Pictures of the Bison
bomber featured prominently in such stories. 1;
" RAND Corporation. Plans Analysis Section. ··V11/11aahi/ity of U.S. Strategic Power to a
Surprise A/lack in /956, .. RAND Special Memorandum No. 15. Santa Monica. California:
the RAND Corporation, April 15, 1953 (TS. dcclassiticd May 1967).
'' "AF Cites Red Bomber Progress," Aviation Week. May .2-t 1954. p. 14; "Is Russia
Winning the Arms Race?, .. US News cmd World Report, June: 18. 1954, 'pp. 28-19;
"Russia Parades Airpower as 'Big Stick'." Aviation Week. June .28. 1954. p. 15; "Red
Air Force: The World's Biggest." Newsweek. August .23, 1954. pp. 28-33.
Sec,et