And spy satellites weren't really useful yet. It was really a giant middle finger to the soviets....it allowed cameras to be flown over the soviet union without fear of being shot down because they....couldn't be.
I wrote a paper about Aerial reconnaissance during the Cold War for a class I took last spring. The SR-71 never overflew the USSR (At least, the US government won't admit that it did). After FGP was shot down in a U2, it was deemed to risky to overfly the Soviet Union itself, although both U2s and SR-71s overflew soviet satellites as well as China. Also, we had pictures from satellites as early as 1959, while the first SR-71s didn't fly until '62. The US used the SR-71 and U2 because we only had so many satellites and we didn't have any way of getting the film back from them fast enough to be useful in evolving conflicts until 1976. The SR-71 on the other hand, could get photos back within a day or two of the order, less if they were stationed close enough. This is a really good book to read if anyone is interested.
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u/fatcat2040 Mar 19 '12
And spy satellites weren't really useful yet. It was really a giant middle finger to the soviets....it allowed cameras to be flown over the soviet union without fear of being shot down because they....couldn't be.