Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

MIG-31 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Dmitriy Pichugin) Source- The Diplomat Author- Robert Farley Will we ever have a Chinese Tolkachev? As detailed in David Hoffman’s Billion Dollar Spy, between 1979 and 1985, Soviet radar engineer Adolf Tolkachev turned his hatred of the Soviet regime into some of the most devastating industrial espionage ever conducted. Tolkachev took advantage of his position at the radar design firm Phazotron to make copies and photographs of volumes of material associated with Soviet radar and electronics systems. This gave the United States an inside look at the sensor capabilities of the USSR’s most advanced fighters and interceptors. The impact of Tolkachev’s espionage was virtually incalculable. The material acquired helped to shift decisions and priorities within the U.S. defense-industrial complex, especially with regard to aerospace technology. It may have given the U.S. a massive, enduring advantage in aircraft effectiveness s

USS Parche ( SSN 683) ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Navy) Source- The National Interest Author- Steve Weintz Seemingly ripped from the pages and screens of a geopolitical thriller, one of the Cold War's most incredible adventures stretched from outer space to the ocean floor, involved bus-sized satellites and deep-diving subs, and pulled together sailors, spooks and scientists into a secret new national capability. On June 15, 1971, eleven years after the first spy satellite began taking its photos and the first submarine reached the bottom of Earth's oceans, a U.S. Air Force Titan III missile lofted a spacecraft the size of a Greyhound bus into orbit. The first of America's third-generation spysats, the KH-9 HEXAGON carried 33 miles of film and four recovery capsules to return it all to Earth. Its cameras and film stock could count the slices of a pizza from 100 miles up. In those pre-electronic-imaging days, large film cameras a