Documents / FOIA release
This is a 1992 CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, originally classified Secret NOFORN and approved for release in 2013. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and the two aircraft it developed, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. The history covers the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers and later operations in Asia and Latin America. It also includes a section on U-2s, UFOs and Operation BLUE BOOK.
“RAF”18 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 6
267
Although President Eisenhower supported the purchase of this type of aircraft, he questioned the plan to procure any before they had been tested. Promising that more thought would be given to the matter before such an order was placed, Secretary Quarles noted that CIA, the Defense Department, and the Bureau of the Budget were working on a funding plan for the project. The President suggested that the Air Force "could support the project by transferring some reconnaissance money." At the close of the meeting, Eisenhower asked the group to return after completing the next work phase to discuss further stages of the project with him.7
## COMPETITION BETWEEN LOCKHEED AND CONVAIR
With funding for the proposed new type of aircraft now available, Richard Bissell asked Lockheed and Convair to submit detailed proposals. During the first half of 1959, both Lockheed and Convair worked to reduce the radar cross section of their designs, with assistance from Franklin Rodgers of the Scientific Engineering Institute. In pursuing his antiradar studies, Rodgers had discovered a phenomenon that he believed could be used to advantage by the new reconnaissance aircraft. Known as the Blip/Scan Ratio but also referred to as the Rodgers' Effect, this phenomenon involved three elements: the strength of a radar return, the altitude of the object being illuminated by the radar, and the persistence of the radar return on the radar screen (Pulse-Position Indicator display).
Most tracking radars in the late 1950s swept a band of sky $ 3 0^{\circ} $ to $ 4 5^{\circ} $ wide and $ 3 6 0^{\circ} $ in circumference. Any object encountered in this area reflected the radar pulse in a manner directly proportional to its size—the larger the object, the stronger the returning radar signal. This return appeared on the cathode-ray tube of the radar screen as a spot or blip, and the persistence of this blip on the radar screen also depended on the strength of the radar return, with blips from larger objects remaining on the screen longer. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, a human radar operator watched the radar screen and kept track of the blips that indicated aircraft within the radar's field of view. Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.