The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; the U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
234

The increased level of U-2 activity in the Far East during the spring of 1963 exposed a serious weakness in Projects IDEALIST and TACKLE, a shortage of aircraft. The Agency only had seven flyable U-2s when the TACKLE overflights of the PRC began in January 1962, and one of these aircraft had already been lost during an overflight in September 1962. To deal with this shortage, DCI McCone asked Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 10 June 1963 to transfer two U-2s from the Air Force to the CIA. The Defense Department quickly approved this request. Before the two Air Force aircraft were placed in service, however, the Agency had them upgraded with J75/P-13A engines and various electronic devices, a process that took more than four months. $ ^{52} $

As overflights over the PRC increased, so did concern about the growing number of Chinese surface-to-air missile sites. The Office of Special Activities, therefore, got permission from the Defense Department to equip Project TACKLE aircraft with System-XII SAM-warning units. These devices alerted the pilot that his aircraft was being tracked by the FAN SONG acquisition radar, part of the SA-2's electronic targeting system. The System-XII units also recorded each radar-tracking sequence. Analysis of these recordings revealed changes in the FAN SONG radar's characteristics, information that proved useful in designing electronic-countermeasure (ECM) devices for US aircraft operating over Vietnam during the late 1960s. $ ^{53} $

Despite the addition of System-XII in the spring of 1963, the Nationalist Chinese-piloted U-2s of Project TACKLE had far fewer ECM devices than other Agency U-2s. Project IDEALIST aircraft possessed a complete suite of ECM gear in addition to the previously mentioned System-XII unit. Among this ECM equipment was a device that told the pilot that an SA-2 missile had been launched (nicknamed the "Oscar-Sierra" unit, which was the acronym for the expletive U-2 pilots used when they learned that an SA-2 missile was on the way: "Oh, shit!") and a System-XIII unit that produced false-angle returns to the homing radar aboard the approaching missile in an effort to steer it away from the aircraft. The Defense Department opposed installing such devices aboard Detachment H's U-2s, for fear they could fall into Communist hands.