Andrei Frolov, editor-in-chief of Russian magazine Arms Exports, said Russia had successfully produced prototypes of new weapons systems, but struggled to move to serial production. Russia hopes to add 14 more such ships to its navy but has no engines for 12 of those vessels. The air force has also been an issue. Moscow had initially been expected to procure about of the fifth-generation Su stealth fighter jet, but defence industry and government officials say they now expect just one plane, the first serially produced aircraft, this year.
A further 14 may follow. Analysts say the costs of mass-producing the new fighter jet are simply beyond Russia. On Sept. The SNIE concluded there was no clear evidence of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba and that the Soviets probably would not deploy such weapons.
The buildup was clearly large in scope and scale. Yet every data point — arrivals of aircraft , cruise missiles , surface-to-air missiles SAMs , and the overall spike in secretive military cargos arriving in Cuban ports with incomplete or false manifests — was equally consistent with either 1 Soviet claims these were conventional military shipments meant purely for Cuban self-defense or 2 fears by individuals like McCone that the buildup might contain nuclear weapons.
Later, this and similar experiences drove the intelligence community to develop structured analytic techniques to surface hidden assumptions about the meaning of collected data. Additionally, they came from sources with little vetting or reporting records. Yet despite the need to continue monitoring the buildup for evidence it might possibly include such weapons, on Sept 10 Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk directed future U-2 flights to avoid Cuban airspace to dodge the recently discovered SAMs — disregarding protests by IMINT representatives that this would cripple collection over central Cuba.
Administration officials were only pressured to resume flights over the Cuban interior on Oct. This resulted in the fateful Oct. As this case highlights, collection platforms and sources are themselves political devices and actors whose peculiarities, limitations, and risks shape how intelligence is produced. The implications of this case are enduring because they reflect basic realities of human nature and political behavior.
Successful collection requires complementary coverage from multiple disciplines. This is the conclusion that the modern intelligence community has arguably taken most to heart.
Multiple sources are essential for production of accurate, comprehensive intelligence. Eventual discovery of the missiles was only possible through cross-cued, multi-INT collection. SIGINT failed to provide independent proof of an offensive buildup, but identified increased maritime shipments and unusual communications, drawing further attention. Such collaborative, multi-INT collection is a hallmark of modern intelligence operations.
Despite being frequently depicted as sequential steps, collection, analysis, and policy are in a constant state of interaction and backflow.
Policymakers hamstrung this collection request based on analysis that, in turn, suffered from insufficient collection. A politician, perhaps aware of classified reporting on the issue, shaped the debate over collection and analysis by publicly making it a partisan political issue. Geographic proximity is no guarantee of useful collection. Format Media Type.
Creator Maker. Language ISO Type ARC. Title Folder. Rights Copyright Status. Relation Container Digid. Rights Access Restrictions. Rights Access Restriction Note. Subseries Name. Series Name. Description Historical Note. Subject Organization. Subject Person. End Date. Start Date. From that launch point, they were capable of quickly reaching targets in the eastern U. If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.
The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the U. The Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island—the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in —and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.
From the outset of the crisis, Kennedy and ExComm determined that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. The challenge facing them was to orchestrate their removal without initiating a wider conflict—and possibly a nuclear war.
In deliberations that stretched on for nearly a week, they came up with a variety of options, including a bombing attack on the missile sites and a full-scale invasion of Cuba.
But Kennedy ultimately decided on a more measured approach. First, he would employ the U. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. Second, he would deliver an ultimatum that the existing missiles be removed. In a television broadcast on October 22, , the president notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact the blockade and made it clear that the U.
Following this public declaration, people around the globe nervously waited for the Soviet response. Some Americans, fearing their country was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded food and gas. A crucial moment in the unfolding crisis arrived on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba neared the line of U. An attempt by the Soviets to breach the blockade would likely have sparked a military confrontation that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange.
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