by Dwayne Day
In preparing this estimate we have had available conclusive evidence of a great postwar Soviet interest in guided missiles and indications that the USSR has a large and active research and development program. However, we have no firm current intelligence on what particular guided missiles the USSR is presently developing or may now have in operational use. Therefore, in order to estimate specific Soviet missile capabilities we have been forced to reason from: (a) the available evidence of Soviet missile activity, including exploitation of German missile experience; (b) our own guided missile experience; and (c) estimated Soviet capabilities in related fields. In addition, we have analyzed such factors as: (a) Soviet industrial resources and economic capabilities; (b) Soviet nuclear capabilities in relation to guided missiles; (c) the estimated reliability of missile systems; (d) various logistic and training factors; and (e) Soviet capabilities in geodesy and cartography. Finally, in the absence of current evidence on specific Soviet missile projects, we have estimated Soviet intentions on the basis of probable Soviet capabilities in this and other weapons fields. Therefore our estimates of missile characteristics and of dates of missile availability must be considered as only tentative, and as representing our best assessment in the light of inadequate evidence and in a new and largely unexplored field.2
In 1954, accurate long-range nuclear-armed missiles existed only as theoretical constructs. But by the end of 1957 Soviet Sputniks 1 and 2 had demonstrated to the entire world both the feasibility of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the fact that the Soviet Union possessed the capability to develop such a weapon system. With photography from high-altitude U-2 aircraft complementing sources such as those enumerated in the 1954 NIE, the U.S. Intelligence Community was able to provide more detail on Soviet missile programs. The scale of Soviet efforts, however, remained extremely hard to interpret.
In the run-up to the 1960 presidential campaign and in the campaign itself, charges were constantly made that the Eisenhower administration was permitting development of a “missile gap,” the result of which would be Soviet predominance in ICBMs. Although the president and others in the Eisenhower administration found U-2 photography reassuring and attempted to calm public opinion, they could not reveal the source of their confidence because of the highly classified nature of the U-2 missions. In addition, the Intelligence Community gave top officials comparatively unsteady support. An NIE of mid-1960 asserted: “Since there is insufficient direct evidence to establish the scale and pace of the present Soviet ICBM production and deployment program, we have based our estimate in part on various indirect forms of evidence and on argument and analysis deduced from more general considerations.” Each member of the U.S. Intelligence Board had his own conclusion. The Air Force Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence predicted that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs by mid-1961 and 700 by mid-1963. His Army and Navy counterparts predicted 50 ICBMs by the first date and 200 by the second. The DCI split the difference, predicting 150 and 400. The State Department representative predicted that the numbers would be somewhat higher, but not as high as those foreseen by the Air Force.3
An image of a Soviet SS-9 ICBM launch silo taken on September 8, 1967. American leaders were particularly concerned about the massive SS-9, but CORONA helped allay their fears by providing images that analysts could use to determine how many of the weapons were actually deployed. ICBM silos were easily identifiable because of their long access roads with gradual turns. Such roads were necessary to accommodate the tractor-trailer trucks used to transport the missiles. (Photo courtesy National Photographic Interpretation Center)
In the autumn of 1961, with John F. Kennedy by then president, the Intelligence Community produced an NIE significantly different in both tone and content:
1. New information, providing a much firmer base for estimates on Soviet long-range ballistic missiles, has caused a sharp downward revision in our estimate of present Soviet ICBM strength.…
2. We now estimate that the present Soviet ICBM strength is in the range of 10–25 launchers from which missiles can be fired against the U.S., and that this force level will not increase markedly during the months immediately ahead.4
The new specificity possible in intelligence estimates presented to the administration is further indicated by an NIE of mid-1962. It commented on levels of activity at Soviet missile test ranges, put at only six to ten the number of first-generation Soviet ICBMs, but provided details on two second-generation systems, designated as SS-7 and SS-8.5 By 1964 the Intelligence Community could describe at length for President Lyndon B. Johnson not only Soviet missile tests in progress but the basing, flight characteristics, and probable payloads of yet another generation of ICBMs, designated as SS-9. Although the community still voiced uncertainty about probable future deployments, the range of uncertainty was much narrower than before 1961.6 Based on the new information, U.S. security planners knew that they did not have to spend billions of dollars to develop the systems needed to counterbalance a threat of massive Soviet ICBM attacks on U.S. territory.
The change in these intelligence estimates was largely due to CORONA. Although the initial imagery obtained from this space-based reconnaissance system was inferior in quality to that from U-2s, the area covered was immensely wider. Indeed, the very first CORONA mission covered more of the Soviet Union than had all U-2 flights combined, and the imagery included areas of the Soviet Union not previously photographed.7
Technical improvements described elsewhere in this volume quickly made CORONA imagery a match for that from the U-2. Within a few years, CORONA was making it possible for the Intelligence Community to portray Soviet strategic missile programs with a degree of assurance hardly conceivable to authors of the NIEs of the 1950s. In June 1967, for example, the managers of CORONA presented the results of a five-day mission. The mission produced photography of all twenty-four known Soviet ICBM complexes. It resulted in an almost exact count of deployed Soviet ICBMs—between 893 and 898.8
THE IMPACT OF CORONA
It is not possible to state with any assurance the larger effects of CORONA. It is clear that President Eisenhower thought the program of highest priority. He persisted in pressing the development of CORONA despite an extraordinary number of expensive initial failures. We can only guess as to the course of history had he lost patience and given up and the advent of satellite imagery therefore been postponed. The actual course of history was much happier than it might have been. The rival Cold War alliances had arsenals of nuclear weapons adequate to destroy civilization, perhaps life, in at least the Northern Hemisphere. They did not use them. The sure knowledge of Soviet ICBM and other capabilities bestowed on American leaders by CORONA may have been a key reason.
The summer of 1961, when CORONA imagery was first being successfully recovered on a regular basis, was a period of intense Cold War tension. In 1958 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had begun to threaten unilateral action to change the status of divided Berlin. He periodically delivered ultimatums, then withdrew them. Meeting new U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev renewed his threats. Kennedy returned from Vienna fearful that Khrushchev intended this time to force a crisis. What happened was the sudden erection of the Berlin Wall, followed by gun-barrel to gun-barrel face-offs between Soviet and American tanks. In retrospect, we can see the Berlin Wall as a punctuation point, temporarily easing the problems posed for the Eastern bloc by massive emigration from East to West Germany. At the time, however, American leaders thought the building of the wall merely a preliminary to further moves aimed at testing the willingness of the West to fight for Berlin. Policy memoranda exchanged in Washington in the fall and winter of 1961–62 discussed seriously the possibility that tension over Berlin would culminate in exchange of nuclear weapons.9
The retrieval of the first good CORONA imagery, as reflected in NIE 11-8/1-61, produced a collective sigh of relief in Washington. Although Kennedy and members of his administration had already begun to doubt t
he soundness of election-time allegations of a wide missile gap, they retained qualms. CORONA demonstrated that, far from having scores of ICBMs, the Soviets had approximately six. With crash programs to field Atlas and Titan ICBMs, to develop a follow-on generation of the solid-fueled Minuteman, and to put ballistic missiles on submarines, the United States was far ahead. Although a missile gap existed, it ran very much in America’s favor.
Beginning in the autumn of 1961, administration officials quietly put the Soviets on notice of this fact. Administration rhetoric, meanwhile, became more calm in tone. Some historians who have reviewed recently released records of the Kennedy White House believe that the president himself began in early 1962 to think in terms of something like the détente achieved by President Richard M. Nixon eight to ten years later.10
America’s new CORONA-induced confidence did not have a calming effect on Moscow. Khrushchev made rash decisions that produced the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. He had many reasons for making these decisions. A desire to offset American missile superiority was only one. Affected by Cuban pleas for protection against a possible American invasion, by worry about repercussions within the Communist bloc should the Chinese take him to task for not adequately protecting the Cubans, and by other concerns, Khrushchev could well have acted as he did, even if American self-confidence had not taken a visible upturn.
When the Cuban missile crisis actually occurred, CORONA steeled the nerves of the Kennedy administration. Imagery from CORONA and related intelligence enabled the president and his associates to judge not only whether missile sites in the Soviet Union were making launch preparations, but also whether other types of Soviet forces were moving into position for offensive operations. On the eleventh of those awful thirteen days, for example, Kennedy’s intelligence advisers could reassure him that, while some Soviet bloc armed forces were increasing their operational readiness, there were still not significant redeployments.11
One can argue, of course, that the Soviets might have redeployed forces without necessarily intending hostilities, and that knowledge of these redeployments could have caused the United States to precipitate a still-avoidable war. But this did not happen. Day after day, reports based on CORONA continued to give President Kennedy confidence that he could prolong the effort to reach a negotiated settlement. CORONA thus contributed significantly to the denouement of the most dangerous crisis in the history of humankind, when, on the last of thirteen days, Khrushchev drew back, publicly promising to withdraw his nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from Cuba, and Kennedy reciprocated by publicly promising not to invade Cuba and secretly promising to withdraw long-range missiles from Turkey.
In the decade after the Cuban missile crisis, CORONA played a significant role in shaping both U.S. defense policy and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.12 From the 1950s to the beginning of the 1960s, much American debate about national defense had focused on the appropriate number of bombers and missiles to deploy. The essential question had to do with how many strategic weapon delivery systems the United States needed in order to overmatch the Soviets. With CORONA imagery, the U.S. government could count the precise number of bombers and missiles in the Soviet inventory; this greatly simplified the process of sizing U.S. strategic forces. Before CORONA, the Air Force had proposed deploying 10,000 Minuteman ICBMs in order to be sure of having a lead over the Soviets. With information from CORONA in hand, Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, could judge the actual size of Soviet strategic forces to be such that 1,000 Minuteman missiles, less by a factor of 10, would provide a more than adequate counter. This order-of-magnitude difference saved billions of dollars.
A Soviet military airfield at Mineralnyye Vody imaged by a CORONA satellite. A trained photo-interpreter could determine much information from such photographs, such as the number and type of Soviet aircraft and the presence of nuclear-weapons storage facilities.
CORONA shifted the debate about strategic forces away from quantitative and toward qualitative issues. Instead of numbers of missiles (or missile-launching platforms), planners focused increasingly on numbers of warheads and on questions concerning antimissile defense. Since data from CORONA and other sources could not easily discriminate between single-warhead and multiple-warhead missiles, planners fearful that the Soviets might gain a competitive edge turned to advocating that the United States multiply numbers of warheads and those numbers increased dramatically. By May 1972, when the United States and the Soviet Union reached their first agreement on limiting strategic arms, the United States fielded about three times as many warheads as launchers.
Since CORONA and related sources could identify and locate Soviet surface-to-air missiles but could not ascertain whether they were antiaircraft or antiballistic missiles, planners in the United States focused increasingly on proposals for U.S. antiballistic missile (ABM) systems. However, they encountered effective opposition, for it was argued that ABM deployments would threaten prospects for stabilizing the U.S.-Soviet arms competition.
Here one sees an effect of CORONA almost as important as its effect on crisis management and strategic force planning. CORONA, by creating certainty regarding numbers of deployed missile launchers, made it practicable for the United States to propose negotiated agreements limiting that category of strategic weaponry. It had become clear that the strategic nuclear arsenals of two sides were already, or soon would be, so powerful as to threaten mutual annihilation. Some argued that the two could find safety in agreements leaving each capable of destroying the other, the presumption being that knowledge of this fact would deter each from initiating war against the other. In view of the authoritarian political system of the Soviet Union and its extreme secrecy, American leaders dared not trust simply to Soviet promises. (Even if presidents had been willing to take chances, the Senate was unlikely to do so; the Senate had to ratify any arms limitation treaty.) Owing to CORONA, however, negotiations for stabilizing the numbers of launchers were possible, for the numbers could be verified.
CORONA, of course, served many other uses. It informed U.S. leaders about China’s progress in nuclear weaponry. It allowed them to keep exact track of the Middle East war of 1967. It provided immense new knowledge about the earth’s geography and the location of natural resources. Probably, however, the best one-line epitaph for CORONA would read: “It helped keep peace in the nuclear age.”
ALBERT D. WHEELON
2
CORONA
A Triumph of American Technology
The story of the U.S. intelligence satellite program begins on December 7, 1941, when the concept of a surprise attack on U.S. territory became a vivid reality. The shock of that disaster remained forever tattooed on the memories of people who lived through it. Neither Harry Truman nor Dwight Eisenhower could forget it.
Truman believed that adequate intelligence data had been available in 1941 to warn of pending attack, but that it had been segmented and scattered. In 1945, as president, he took the initiative to establish a peacetime intelligence service. The first task of his small Central Intelligence Group was to bring all data to a sharp focus and to ensure that policy positions of the various departments of government did not color the results.
Eisenhower also remembered Pearl Harbor. During World War II, he insisted that all available intelligence be provided to his headquarters in order to plan his military campaigns in North Africa and Europe. As president, Eisenhower became increasingly concerned about the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack. The USSR had moved quickly to establish a nuclear arsenal. The threat of a swift strike became a real possibility when Soviet long-range bombers became operational.
In March 1954, President Eisenhower asked James Killian, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his scientific colleagues to address the problem. The resulting study was called the Technological Capabilities Panel. One of its three committees focused on the problem of strategic intelligence. Edwin “Din” Land led that work. This unique and
gifted man went on to guide U.S. reconnaissance activities for the next three decades. The Killian group focused much of its attention on the need for good strategic intelligence, because it believed that such intelligence was the most highly leveraged component of national security. Din Land described the group’s commitment: “We simply cannot afford to defend against all possible threats. We must know accurately where the threat is coming from and concentrate our resources in that direction. Only by doing so can we survive the Cold War.”1
President Harry S. Truman and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Both men were profoundly impressed with the need for intelligence; they wanted to guard against another surprise attack by America’s adversaries like Pearl Harbor. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration)
The Killian group enjoyed Eisenhower’s complete confidence, and he ensured that they were given access to all facets of American intelligence. The group was not impressed by what they found. Their final report said:
We must find ways to increase the number of hard facts upon which our intelligence estimates are based, to provide better strategic warning, to minimize surprise in the kind of attack, and to reduce the danger of gross overestimation or gross underestimation of the threat. To this end, we recommend adoption of a vigorous program for the extensive use of the most advanced knowledge in science and technology.
Killian and Land briefed the president personally on the specific technologies they had in mind. The U-2 spy plane was the first result of their strong influence on American presidents and American intelligence activities.