<story><title>A KGB agent shipped a Sidewinder missile by mail to Moscow (2017)</title><url>https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-the-kgb-shipped-sidewinder-missile-by-mail-moscow-21673</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ransom1538</author><text>Yes. But put ON your tin foil hat for a second.&lt;p&gt;I think the West &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; the missile to be taken. Handing over old missile technology is pretty ingenious. If your adversary actually pulls it off and copies it, they will have a 5 year old missile.  Having an old missile on your warplane, while flying against the latest tech was a &lt;i&gt;death&lt;/i&gt; sentence.  This was different than say, nuclear technology, where having a 5 year old model was still &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; dangerous.&lt;p&gt;Also, being handed old tech sucks up all your engineering resources. An analogy would be reading vs writing code.  Reading code is x10 more difficult, fraught with misconceptions and inability to expand the tech.</text></item><item><author>ptero</author><text>This is indeed a great story, which gives again two different views on security.&lt;p&gt;East of the iron curtain everything, even marginally secret, was very carefully controlled, accounted for and losing a single not-too-secret page meant an automatic 10-year labor camp term. West of it, control was much looser and many more secrets leaked out. However, technology was also developed much faster -- you need serious encouragement to convince a good engineer to work under East&amp;#x27;s penalties and restrictions on personal life if other interesting work is available. East put major resources of the state on stealing technology not by choice -- it had few other options to avoid military tech obsolescence.&lt;p&gt;So leakage and all, West&amp;#x27;s system worked pretty well. My 2c.</text></item><item><author>jstanley</author><text>&amp;gt; Although outnumbered, the Taiwanese pilots achieved a positive kill-to-loss ratio.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not that impressive, even 1:1000 kills:losses is a &lt;i&gt;positive&lt;/i&gt; ratio.&lt;p&gt;I assume they mean a ratio &amp;gt; 1.&lt;p&gt;And: this is a pretty incredible story. If you don&amp;#x27;t bother reading it all (it&amp;#x27;s not that long), at least read this bit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Exploiting thick fog and careless guards, Manfred Ramminger – a KGB-agent in West Germany – entered Neuburg air base during the evening of Oct. 22, 1967. Together with his Polish driver Josef Linowski and German F-104 Starfighter pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe, he stole an operational AIM-9 [sidewinder missile] from the local ammunition depot and transported it down the entire runway on a wheelbarrow to his Mercedes sedan, parked outside the base.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The 2.9-meter-long missile proved unwieldy. Ramminger broke the rear window and covered the protruding part with a carpet. In order not to attract attention of the police, he then marked the protrusion with a piece of red cloth, as required by law.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tivert</author><text>&amp;gt; If your adversary actually pulls it off and copies it, they will have a 5 year old missile. Having an old missile on your warplane, while flying against the latest tech was a death sentence.&lt;p&gt;If they want to copy your 5 year old missile, their current missiles are probably &lt;i&gt;even worse&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If you have the capability to clone an air-to-air missile, you have the capability to evaluate its performance to confirm that it&amp;#x27;s an improvement over your current designs.</text></comment>
<story><title>A KGB agent shipped a Sidewinder missile by mail to Moscow (2017)</title><url>https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-the-kgb-shipped-sidewinder-missile-by-mail-moscow-21673</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ransom1538</author><text>Yes. But put ON your tin foil hat for a second.&lt;p&gt;I think the West &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; the missile to be taken. Handing over old missile technology is pretty ingenious. If your adversary actually pulls it off and copies it, they will have a 5 year old missile.  Having an old missile on your warplane, while flying against the latest tech was a &lt;i&gt;death&lt;/i&gt; sentence.  This was different than say, nuclear technology, where having a 5 year old model was still &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; dangerous.&lt;p&gt;Also, being handed old tech sucks up all your engineering resources. An analogy would be reading vs writing code.  Reading code is x10 more difficult, fraught with misconceptions and inability to expand the tech.</text></item><item><author>ptero</author><text>This is indeed a great story, which gives again two different views on security.&lt;p&gt;East of the iron curtain everything, even marginally secret, was very carefully controlled, accounted for and losing a single not-too-secret page meant an automatic 10-year labor camp term. West of it, control was much looser and many more secrets leaked out. However, technology was also developed much faster -- you need serious encouragement to convince a good engineer to work under East&amp;#x27;s penalties and restrictions on personal life if other interesting work is available. East put major resources of the state on stealing technology not by choice -- it had few other options to avoid military tech obsolescence.&lt;p&gt;So leakage and all, West&amp;#x27;s system worked pretty well. My 2c.</text></item><item><author>jstanley</author><text>&amp;gt; Although outnumbered, the Taiwanese pilots achieved a positive kill-to-loss ratio.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not that impressive, even 1:1000 kills:losses is a &lt;i&gt;positive&lt;/i&gt; ratio.&lt;p&gt;I assume they mean a ratio &amp;gt; 1.&lt;p&gt;And: this is a pretty incredible story. If you don&amp;#x27;t bother reading it all (it&amp;#x27;s not that long), at least read this bit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Exploiting thick fog and careless guards, Manfred Ramminger – a KGB-agent in West Germany – entered Neuburg air base during the evening of Oct. 22, 1967. Together with his Polish driver Josef Linowski and German F-104 Starfighter pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe, he stole an operational AIM-9 [sidewinder missile] from the local ammunition depot and transported it down the entire runway on a wheelbarrow to his Mercedes sedan, parked outside the base.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The 2.9-meter-long missile proved unwieldy. Ramminger broke the rear window and covered the protruding part with a carpet. In order not to attract attention of the police, he then marked the protrusion with a piece of red cloth, as required by law.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>logfromblammo</author><text>There is also something to be said for convincing your enemy to build obsolete weaponry that is &lt;i&gt;more expensive to build&lt;/i&gt; than the obsolete weaponry they were already building.&lt;p&gt;If you have reasonable certainty there won&amp;#x27;t be a hot war, winning a cold war is a matter of having a stronger economy and better logistics.  You can leak older missile tech to the enemy, and they can work on reverse engineering it, while you install cutting-edge countermeasures on all mobile targets.  They wasted a bunch of time and money catching up to where you were, and you&amp;#x27;re already 50 miles down the road.  Then maybe you have a proxy war to show off your new tech.  You keep the war cold by convincing the enemy that if they start something for real, they will not only lose, but also suffer international humiliation and disdain.&lt;p&gt;It also keeps your rival in the game, so they don&amp;#x27;t give up.  A cold war is good for the military-industrial complexes on both sides.  Peace and consumer trade cuts in to the profit margins.  Can&amp;#x27;t have people choosing butter over guns.</text></comment>