US High Altitude Reconnaissance Balloons during the Cold War

[Flyaway]

The Space Review: The truth is up there: American spy balloons during the Cold War r

The truth is up there: American spy balloons during the Cold War
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, April 17, 2023

In early February, the US military tracked a Chinese intelligence collecting balloon that it had designated Killeen-23, named after a notorious murderer, before eventually shooting it down off the East Coast. An early assessment by the US intelligence community indicated that the balloon’s payload was sophisticated and may have included a radar, among other intelligence collecting systems, and sent its data back to China via a satellite link. Balloons, aircraft, and satellites have long been used by the United States for intelligence collection. But they have also been intertwined when it came to technology development, with balloons perfecting technology that was later adopted for both aircraft and satellite intelligence use, and occasionally being promoted as a means to cover gaps in American satellite intelligence collection.

 

[indicisivedivide]

NASA uses large telescope on stratospheric balloons. Can't see why the Pentagon can't have them.

 

[1635yankee]

The late, unlamented USSR found US strategic reconnaissance balloons to be a significant enough problem to have developed aircraft specifically to deal with them.

 

[riggerrob]

Also see the biography of USAF Colonel Joe Kittinger about how he tested a high-altitude (circa 100,000 feet above sea level) parachute system for manned recce balloons.

 

[edwest4]

There is an error in that article. The CIA knew that the U-2 would be detected. That is why various ways to disrupt or hide the U-2 from microwaves were tried. None were successful or practical. The only advantage the U-2 had was height. See: From Rainbow to Gusto: Stealth and the Design of the Lockheed Blackbird.

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[Temistocle]

I wrote an article in 2011 for an italian magazine (Rivista Italiana Difesa) about the recce ballons of the Cold War. The Soviets spent a lot of resources against the american balloons, not only the development of the M-17 prototype, but also for some anti-balloon weapons (i.e. a 23 mm round for their Gsh cannon, tested on a modified Tu-16 against target balloons). There were some other "balloon shootdowns" well beyond the end of Genetrix and the other official programs, for example:

1969, Ye. N. Kravets with a Su-9 of the 179o GvIAP attacked a balloon at 26000 meters with two RS-2-US missiles (AA-1 Alkali), they hit only the payload, the ballon was shootdown by another fighter at a lower altitude (Y. Gordon, Sukhoi Interceptors - Red Star Vol. 16, 2004, p. 41.)

1976, over Makhachkala the same Ye. N. Kravets of the 179o GvIAP (now with a Su-11) hit the paylod of a balloon with a specially developend anti ballon version of the R-8M missile (AA-3 Anab) (Y. Gordon, Sukhoi Interceptors - Red Star Vol. 16, 2004, p. 41.)

April 1984, a flight of MiG-25PDS from Nasonaya AB intercepted a balloon at 25000 meters, they holed the balloon with a missile, the shootdown was completed at a lower altitude by a Mig-23 whit its cannons (Y. Gordon, Mikoyan MiG-25 Foxbat, Red Star Vol. 34, Midland Publishing, 2007, p. 104.)

I think the soviets were not visionaries, so other recce/Elint/harassement balloon programs were developed in the second part of the Cold War. Or they intercepted some of their own balloons gone wild...
A lot of balloon interceptions were made between the '50s and the '90s, a (maybe) complete list can be found here:

Cold War Soviet aerial victories