There has been much discussion about whether KAL 007 was an overhead intelligence platform or not. This article does not attempt to directly answer this question. Instead it reviews the reasons why the US should attempt technical intelligence gathering around September 1983 – when KAL 007 was downed – and the means available to do it.
Motives for overhead intelligence gathering over Kamchatka
Since the late 1950s the US has been monitoring the Soviet launch site in Krasnoyarsk in order to determine Soviet nuclear capabilities (Klass, P Secret Sentries in Space, Random House, US, 1971, p30). Initially this was solely to evaluate appropriate military responses but with the signing of the 1972 SALT 1 treaty it was also a measure for stabilising the growth of nuclear stockpiles and relations between the superpowers (‘Verification of the Salt 2 treaty’ in 1980 SIPRI Yearbook pp285-313). SALT 1 forbade the creation of more than one new generation of nuclear weapons and the encryption of data that could conceal such developments (‘Verification of the Salt 2 treaty’ in 1980 SIPRI Yearbook pp286-303). In order to maximise the size and lethality of this new generation of weapons and conceal its development, both superpowers opted for MIRVing, concealing multiple warheads inside their missiles (Prins, G. Defended to Death, Penguin, Harmonsworth, 1983, p158). In order to monitor nuclear capabilities, US attention had to be transferred from watching Krasnoyarsk alone to full-scale monitoring of flight tests of missiles between the launch site to the impact site in Kamchatka. As will be explained below, technical means existed to evaluate the capabilities of missiles in flight, if not simply sitting on the launch pad.
In September 1983 the Soviets flight tested their anti-ballistic missiles and the ability of their ABM radars to monitor missiles in flight (Johnson, R. Shootdown, Unwin, London 1986, p76). Such tests would have been of considerable interest to the US because (a) their own missiles would have to circumvent such defences to be strategically relevant, (b) because it gave them an opportunity to assess their own ABM programme against the Soviets’, and (c) because it might provide an opportunity to allege Soviet violations of the 1972 ABM treaty. (At this time the US was trying to create public anxiety about Soviet ABM capabilities and compliance – or non-compliance – with a wide range of international arms control agreements, in the hope of being able to abrogate treaty obligations and massively expand arms procurement, particularly in the ABM field. ( Johnson, R. Shootdown, Unwin, London 1986, chapter 3)
Technical means available to the US
Old generation satellites such as KH-11 and KH-12 are adequate for monitoring what the Soviets want to be seen, but it is acknowledged that the Soviets have developed counter-measures to these cumbersome and slow-orbiting reconnaissance platforms to conceal that which they do not (Bamford, J. The Puzzle Palace, Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1982, p202). When the SALT 1 treaty was signed, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched a new generation of much more sophisticated satellites to monitor Soviet flight testing – Rhyolite (Bamford, J. The Puzzle Palace, Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1982, p198).
When missiles are launched telemetric information is transmitted dictating their flight plans and disclosing their ‘throw weight’ – and hence the number of warheads they are designed to carry (Bamford, J. The Puzzle Palace, Sidgwick and Jackson, London 1982, p198). In the early 1970s the Soviets erroneously believed that the microwave transmission of such data could not be intercepted. But this was exactly what the Rhyolite series were doing (Richelson, J. and Ball, D. The Ties That Bind, Allen and Unwin, London 1985, p178).
Even sophisticated overhead intelligence platforms like Rhyolite have their limitations, principally those of payload. The NSA were also monitoring the TELINT associated with missile launches from Krasnoyarsk from their station in northern Iran, only a couple of hundred miles away (Bamford p198). This proved so effective that when the NRO pushed for ARGOS (Advanced Rhyolite), US Secretary of Defence Schlesinger turned down the funding in 1976 (Bamford p200). NRO had to content themselves with another Rhyolite launch – this time over Kamchatka – in May 1977. (Bamford p198)
That year the credibility of the Rhyolite programme was seriously undermined. Through Christopher Boyce at TRW and Geoffrey Prime at GCHQ, the Soviets learned the technical capabilities of the satellites (Bamford, Preface) and, six months later, began the encryption of flight test TELINT (Richelson and Ball, p178). As the US still had its Iranian station, such compromise proved acceptable. However this too was swept away in the Iranian revolution a couple of years later, effectively leaving the US blind (Bamford, p200). Additionally, the Soviets took the extra precaution of introducing ‘buckets’ (capsules stored on the missile recording TELINT, and ejected prior to impact) for encrypted transmissions during flight, making them impossible to intercept (Richelson and Ball, p178). Such procedures are strictly contrary to the dictates of SALT 1.
As neither ground stations nor satellites were of use in monitoring the 1983 ABM flight tests, it is quite possible that the United States Intelligence Community had to resort to airborne platforms. Advocates of the ‘massacre 007’ school are quite right to argue that such an airborne platform need not have been KAL 007, but frequently miss an important secondary point and exhibit considerable ignorance of overhead intelligence history (Rohmer, R. Massacre 007, Coronet, London, 1984, p206).
Before the launch of America’s first reconnaissance satellite, Samos, in 1961 (Klass p108), the US were almost entirely reliant on airborne intelligence gathering techniques. As such expeditions emphasised and enhanced Soviet vulnerability to nuclear attack, they protested bitterly and repeatedly against US violation of their airspace and over 100 US intelligence staff were killed as a result of shoot-downs in this period (Campbell, Duncan The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, Michael Joseph, London, 1984, p131).
The most famous of these, of course, was the Gary Powers U-2 on May 1st 1960 and Khrushchev was quick to exploit the ‘spy’ Powers, forcing Eisenhower to forswear further aerial reconnaissance over the Soviet Union at the Paris summit that year (Klass p50). The use of satellites was only tolerated because the Soviets could deploy their own over the United States (Klass chapter 13).
However, the Eisenhower ban on overflights is still technically in force and – with the possible and currently unproven exception of SR-71 overflights (Richelson and Ball p233) – no US intelligence-gathering aircraft has violated Soviet airspace since then until September 1st 1983. On that date both the US and the USSR acknowledge that an EC-135 did overfly Kamchatka: whether or not KAL 007 was on a reconnaissance mission, it certainly was (Rohmer p206). We can therefore perhaps understand Andropov’s denouncing of the violation of Soviet territorial integrity during the public exchanges after KAL 007’s shootdown (Johnson, chapter 7).
Conclusions
There are two conclusions that arise from a review of KAL 007 in an overhead intelligence context:
- The Soviet attempt to conceal telemetric data during their ABM flight tests was contrary to SALT 1.
- The US were forced to use an EC-135 because they had no other effective method of overhead intelligence available to monitor these tests; and this was contrary to the agreement of 1960.