United States aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union

It was a foregone conclusion that other countries would be scrambling to develop their own nuclear capabilities; the Americans and British already knew that the Soviet Union was doing so, although they had failed to realize how thoroughly penetrated by spies the Manhattan Project had been until the damage was already done.

The United States military and executive branch were thus keenly interested in having nuclear detonation detection capabilities, for which no deployable systems yet existed; the ideas for them were still just brainstorms and tentative experiments.

In this environment, while grander replacements were still under development, the United States pressed forward with initial efforts such as Project Mogul, in which high-altitude observation balloons (analogous to weather balloons but thoroughly differentiable in the technical details suited to the purpose) would perform reconnaissance and surveillance via any combination of air sampling for isotopes, soundwave detection, and film photography.

[3] William Blum has also claimed in Killing Hope that the CIA worked with the anti-communist group National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS) in covert operations inside the Soviet Union.

Blum claims the CIA covertly trained, equipped, armed and financed the NTS out of West Germany and secretly dropped their operatives as paratroopers into Soviet territory.

From there, Blum claims these groups engaged in actions such as assassinations, stealing documents, derailing trains, wrecking bridges and sabotaging power plants and weapons factories.

[2] In November 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a secret program under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency to build and fly a special-purpose high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft with the code name AQUATONE.

During Project HOMERUN (between March and May 1956) RB-47E reconnaissance aircraft flew almost daily flights over the North Pole to photograph and gather electronic intelligence over the entire northern section of the Soviet Union.

On 6 May 1956 six reconnaissance bombers, flying abreast, crossed the North Pole and penetrated Soviet airspace in broad daylight as if on a nuclear bombing run.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev angrily protested this overflight and feared that "when they understand that we are defenseless against an aerial attack, it will push the Americans to begin the war earlier.

The CIA's Project OXCART, an aircraft which flew even higher and four times faster than the U-2, advanced aerial overflight reconnaissance capabilities with eventual development of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

Aerial reconnaissance of mainland China continued with the Ryan Model 147 "Lightning Bug" RPVs (Remotely Piloted Vehicles); several of these drones were shot down or recovered by the Chinese during the Vietnam War era.

[14] Dmitry Volkogonov, a former Soviet and Russian general and historian, has claimed that more than 730 pilots and airmen were captured and arrested after making forced landings or having their aircraft shot down.