Striking the Soviets - the role of the SR71 in the SIOP

SIOP – a simple acronym whose four letters referred to the innocuous sounding ‘Single Integrated Operational Plan’ (LINK). Had this plan ever been delivered then it would have heralded the most violent conflict in human history, as the United States delivered a nuclear attack onto an opponent. A masterpiece of analysis and data, crunching numbers, images and assessments to produce a coherent war plan that enabled the USA to overwhelm an opponent.

The plan began in the 1950s as the US sought ways to fight a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and represented a coherent effort to work out the best manner to employ the nuclear arsenal appropriately. Simply put it identified which targets needed to be hit by what type of weapon, and in what sequencing order to overwhelm the Soviet Union, China and other allies in a single strike. In its initial format it would have seen over 3200 weapons delivered across Eurasia, and had it gone to plan, the attack would likely have killed over 285 million people in a single day.

This initial overwhelming brute force attack was quickly revised in 1962 into a more nuanced strategy of nuclear escalation, allowing the President to approve a variety of strikes against different targets from the Soviets own missile fields to command centres to finally all out general war. In various forms and policy evolution the SIOP continued until 2002 when it was replaced by a different plan.

This grim introduction is necessary to consider the role of the SR71 Blackbird and A12 reconnaissance aircraft in providing timely warning to policy makers during the build up to a general war. As was discussed in Part 1 of this series, these aircraft were to play a vital part in informing military planners about the state of the world.

Documents held on the US national archives (LINK) to the history of the CIA Office of Special Activities have cast light on this critical role, and how for a considerable period the SR71/A12 force played a critical part in informing the US authorities. This second article is about this role, the challenges it faced and the problems policy makers had with it.

Wartime Role

During the mid 1960s as the US introduced the SR71 platform to service, a considerable amount of planning work was done to work out how many aircraft would have been needed to meet the various requirements its users had. This work was carried out to ensure that sufficient aircraft were purchased to meet any conceivable need throughout the service life of the aircraft.

This work was complicated by the fact that there were two entirely separate platforms to consider -the SR71 and the A12. The A12 was a civilian (e.g. CIA) manned airframe funded and operated by the CIA specialising in photography and also employing supporting unmanned drones. The SR71 was a military manned aircraft intended to collect intelligence across a variety of spectrums and firmly under USAF control.

As budget cuts hit in this period, considerable work was done to assess how to rationalise two very similar airframe types and deliver continuing capability. The CIA files show how options papers were staffed, incredibly similar to those familiar to many long suffering staff officers today, looking at different options, costs and capabilities for the force.

Officials concluded that there were four main roles for the force:

·         Strategic Reconnaissance in Peacetime – general targets across the globe

·         Force Mobilisation Reconnaissance  -general targets in China and India

·         Reconnaissance for a general war crisis – against Soviet / Chinese

·         SIOP Reconnaissance – against Soviet Union ahead of delivery of the SIOP.

It was quickly realised that the first role (general recce) was of limited utility. The combination of existing systems and the increasing prevalence of satellite reconnaissance imagery meant there was limited need. There was also the intriguingly prescient observation about the post 1968 likelihood that unmanned drones would be increasingly used in this role.

The paper notes the likelihood that were the increasingly capable overhead imagery satellites to be destroyed by a potential foe, this would make life hard for the SR71/A12 force, noting that the capability to destroy a satellite system is far more complex than air defence missiles. Planners quickly discounted the peacetime value of this role, sensing a need for only 6 aircraft to carry it out in total.  

Manned reconnaissance aircraft became more valuable during the time of mobilisation, where the planners noted the difficult in launching new satellites and responding quickly to emerging crises. It was also noted that the force provided significant flexibility in responding to both strategic and tactical reconnaissance missions, particularly if a crisis escalated. Accordingly the US planners wanted a dozen airframes to cover this role across two potential crisis zones.

As planning moved into the general war crisis role, the perceived value of the SR71/A12 force grew further still. Planners noted that during this time frame the force provided a near unrivalled capability to quickly image targets across the Soviet Union on an enduring basis and provide timely feedback on developments. There was an assumption that 6 daily sorties would be flown across the USSR to spot their preparations for war, particularly the strategic nuclear forces.

The problem with this plan was, as the planners admitted:

“As yet, there has been no thorough analysis or conclusive evidence that indicates how useful or feasible crisis reconnaissance would be against Soviet strategic forces. There is no data base that allows a comprehensive comparison of the normal and crisis appearance of these forces, of the degree to which such changes can be detected photographically;· and of the frequency and time urgency of these flights.”

In other words, there was no way of knowing whether the escalated levels of coverage was identifying normal activity, preparations for war or something else entirely.

This is worth considering for a moment – the Soviet Union was an information black hole, and it was very hard to get more than sketchy information on large amounts of the Soviet forces capability. Tired analysts during a crisis would have to make snap judgements with no evidence base to support it as to whether the Russian strategic forces were ready for war, and if they were on the verge of launching a surprise attack.

The sheer pressure that would have been placed on very junior analysts here is terrifying to contemplate. Providing timely, accurate and objective advice is hard enough at the best of times, particularly in a rank-based hierarchy. But imagine being a junior imagery analyst looking at blurry images of deployments that you’ve never seen before, set against the backdrop of a system preparing for war, and trying to decide whether to tell your chain of command that they are preparing for imminent launch, or its just a drill – and defending that decision knowing the consequences if you get it wrong.

In a world where there is a near constant real time feed of imagery from commercial satellites, we take the free flow on information for granted. But in the 1960s huge parts of the Soviet system remained an enigma – policy making was based on peacetime assumptions, yet seniors would have to make decisions based on hasty information gathering without understanding the full picture of what they were seeing.

The other challenge in all of this is the risk of escalation by sending the flights over in the first place. Although penetration of Soviet airspace had regularly occurred during previous overflights, this was usually solo flights on an irregular basis during an uncertain peacetime environment. What was not clear was how the Soviet system would respond if suddenly, during a time of heightened tension, six high speed US aircraft were tracked entering their airspace.

Again, think of the pressure on the Soviet system during this period – knowing that you faced an enemy who (in your mind) was ready to launch an all out nuclear attack, and knowing that Russia has suffered too many surprise attacks in her history. Would the initial sight of these aircraft be enough to launch a retaliatory attack – for surely they are trying to carry out a preemptive strike, or would you take a risk and hold your fire?

The US assessment drily notes:

“Current plans call for six simultaneous sorties over the Soviet Union in a crisis situation. Since these sorties might be interpreted as an attack, they might present a high risk of escalating the crisis. The extent of this risk would depend heavily on the previous conduct of the crisis and on other indications by the United States at the time the aircraft were committed.”

The real concern had to be the timing of the decision making during this period of transition to war. Although the US felt it could generate coverage of 80% of the required territory by running 6 sorties at a time, it would still take 36 hours to generate usable intelligence product from the order to go being given. At a point when world peace would on a knife edge, knowing that you are making decisions on imagery 12-24 hours old would be a tremendous responsibility.

What is also striking from these assessments is how little information the US expected to get on the likely targets in order to decide whether a war was likely. The image below shows an assessment that overhead reconnaissance capability would, at best sample about 50% of the required targets that SAC would need to strike, and would take 48-60hrs to do so. By contrast the SR71 force would cover 80% within 24hrs. The ‘price’ for using satellites to deliver transition to war capability would have been the loss of half of their ‘buckets’ (means to recover the images).

The 1960s posed an astoundingly difficult time for planners preparing to fight a nuclear war, yet reliant on information that was likely scanty, inaccurate and hours out of date. Had the world ever moved to a scenario like this, the fear must have been that the US decision making system could have acted on highly incomplete information.

This though is arguably better than the position the Soviets found themselves in – without a similar aerial reconnaissance capability able to penetrate US airspace, and with an ever-larger proportion of their foes forces being deployed at sea, would the Kremlin have had the ability to make a timely judgement on readiness and intentions of US strategic nuclear forces?

Had the worst case scenario happened then the US planned one final role for the SR71/A12 force – namely post SIOP reconnaissance missions. This innocuous title perhaps conceals the horrifying reality of what the role entailed – namely flying strikes into what was left of the Soviet Union, already blasted by hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons to identify how well the SIOP is being executed, the impact of enemy air defences and what needs to be retargeted and where.

There is method in this seeming madness though – particularly as the SIOP was built around escalatory options. If the decision had been taken to launch a limited nuclear strike against Soviet strategic forces, then understanding the impact that the strikes had made was vital – how degraded was the enemy nuclear force, did it still pose a threat to the US, or was it necessary to escalate matters further?

The document drily talks about the nature of the mission – six prepositioned aircraft and 18 tankers would disperse globally, and on receipt of the news that the SIOP was underway, would launch to enter Soviet airspace about 3-6 hours after the first strikes had occurred.

The planners felt that aircraft would have used their radar for these missions as:

“the side-looking radar will provide the most valuable intelligence. This radar can provide intelligence independent of lighting and weather conditions and it would be only slightly affected by the heavy clouds caused by nuclear explosions and fires. Its 50' ·resolution would be adequate to pinpoint to within 150' actual ground zero of surface burst weapons. This resolution shoµld also be adequate to indicate major· damage to soft installations that have been attacked with airburst weapons. The photographic camera would provide much less information during this first wave of reconnaissance; the value of the COMINT'and ELINT collection would be somewhat greater.”

It was felt that the aircraft would return to the US to predesignated airbases and attempt to provide their material for processing. There are suggestions that a converted Titan missile silo near Denver would have been hardened to conduct emergency processing of the imagery. In turn this initial battle damage assessment would have been provided for retargeting, follow on strikes and decision making on whether to continue or cease the war.

The satellite force was also looked at to determine whether it would have been a better asset for use rather than the SR71 force. The planners noted that:

“The satellites would be somewhat more survivable than the aircraft assuming no concerted anti-satellite defense aimed at these vehicles (rather than at other satellites used for reconnaissance, communications,, navigation and weather). The aircraft have support tankers which must survive.. In both cases; there are similar problems in recovering data, processing it, and transmitting finished intelligence to decision makers.. ·”

The last line is perhaps most critical in all of this. For all the talk of how the SR71 could provide the means 12 hours after the most devastating attack in human history had occurred to determine what to do next, there was no guarantee anyone would be able to take this decision.

The touching suggestion that ‘decision makers’ would exist is perhaps more a triumph of hope over reality. In the aftermath of a nuclear strike,  finding and re-establishing chains of command and then passing on follow up messages on what to do next seems optimistic. At best one can forsee partial transmission of messages or data, but the system then collapsing under the weight of so much catastrophic activity.

To that end, it is perhaps realistic to look at the planning for the role of the SR71/A12 force  as being planners thinking about a mission they never thought it would need to execute. Much as the RAF Bomber Command V-Force pilots did no real planning on what to do once their weapon had been released, the suggestion that the SR71 could deliver much real effect to a world in the middle of a nuclear war is, at best, deeply optimistic.

Perhaps the ultimate assessment on the likelihood of all this occurring came from planners, who noted that the chances of the President countenancing sending 6 aircraft over Russia to do reconnaissance missions in the transition to war stage was deeply unlikely, provocative and unlikely to produce usable intelligence.

This is then the deepest irony of all – the US SR71/A12 force was held for a mission that its own planners felt it would never be able to deliver, as policy makers held back from using a tool of intelligence acquisition to help them make an informed policy decision. Arguably the SR71 force was a capability in search of a decision maker prepared to give it a mission.

This tale of officialdom fighting theoretical battles in a war to spend taxpayers money to save capabilities it never thought it would actually be able to use is a fascinating insight into the extremely dangerous world of Cold War politics in the 1960s.

But this war was not fought in isolation and the US leaned heavily on allies to help get support to deliver reconnaissance missions on other platforms such as the U2. In the next part of this series, we will look at the role of the Royal Air Force and others in operating the U2 on missions across the globe.