SOVIET RADAR ALLEGEDLY STOLEN FROM U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807300012-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-R
3
ARTICLE,
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
24 September 1985
Soviet Radar AllegedlyStOk~
From U.S.
By Michael Weisakopf
Wuhingten Pat Staff Writer
When the Carter administration
decided against BI bomber produc-
tion in 1977, officials said the pro-
posed aircraft would have difficulty
surviving a bombing mission be-
cause of Soviet strides in develop-
ing,a new airborne radar system.
As U.S. officials were making
that rationale public, Soviet tech-
nicians were secretly poring over
U.S. documents, adapting American
technology for their feared "look-
down/shootdown" radar.
The fire-control radar of U.S.
F1 jet fighters, whose design was
contained in documents stolen by
Moscow, served as the "technical
basis" for the new Soviet radar's
abilit to look down and spot invad-
ing, low-level bombers ore they
reach their target, according to an
intelligence report released by the
Pentagon last week.
Purloined documents pertaining
to the F18, one of the most ad-
vanced U.S. combat jets, saved So-
viet radar and aviation industries
five years and 35 million rubles in
developing countermeasures to the
F18 and other U.S. aircraft, the
report said.
The report cited the F18 case to
dramatize dangers of a Soviet cam-
paign to subsidize its defense indus-
try, legally and illegally, with the
cream of Western technology.
Based on unusually detailed ac-
counts an rare Kremlin documents
supplied to the French intelligence
service a KUB agent, the re rt
contends that Soviet acquisition of
tens of thousands of Western blue-
prints and weapons in recent years
has ne i e almost every Soviet
m> i,tary researc project.
Moscow has use everything
from sophisticated Western com-
puters to cruise-missile documents
to raise the technical levels of thou-
sands of weapons and industrial
processes, accelerate military re-
search projects by years and initiate
hundreds of new programs annu-
ally, the, report said.
With sensitive microelectronics
fabrication equipment smuggled
from Japan, Europe and the United
States, the Soviets have shortened
the Western lead in that area from
10 years to four years, according to
the report.
Most of the integrated circuits in
Soviet strategic and tactical mili-
tary systems are copies of Western
microchips, the report said. A mi-
croprocessor adapted by Soviet
technicians from an American com-
ponent reportedly carries the equiv-
alent U.S. part number to avoid
confusion with other stolen items.
"Significant advances" in the So-
viet microelectronics industry were
achieved with help from Western
businessmen who, in exchange for
lucrative fees, falsified export li-
censes and established dummy
firms to smuggle thousands of
pieces of sophisticated components,
including epitaxial reactors and dif-
fusion furnaces, the report said.
Western documents, it said,
helped the Soviets cut their re-
search time by two years on a new
generation of fuses for munitions
with a large kill radius and self-aim-
ing aviation cluster munitions.
The report describes a well-or-
ganized Soviet effort responsible
for "massive diffusion" of Western
technology. At the top is the Mil-
itary Industrial Commission, known
by the Russian acronym VPK. It
consists of top defense industry ex-
ecutives who earmark funds for
"collection" of specific items.
Soviet and East European intel-
ligence agents netted about half o
the pieces of military hard-
ware and one-fifth of the 400,000
technical documents targeted
t e tween 197 an1980
So-
improving "large numbers" of
viet weapons, the report said.
It said the VPK, which targets
items in their order of priority, fo-
cused in recent years on the IBM
370 computer, used as a model for
the Soviet "Ryad" computer, on a
cruise missile computer sought for
its large-capacity digital memories,
and on a U.S. Fairchild Instrument
Corp./Xincom semiconductor mem-
ory tester.
The VPK's program is a "Soviet
success story," said the report,
which cited such significant leaks of
Western technology as documents
on ballistic-missile defense con-
cepts, the U.S. Phoenix missile,
U.S. Copperhead laser-guided ar-
tillery and millimeter radar.
Military hardware netted by the
Soviets include infrared radiome-
ters, fiber-optics systems, analyzers
for submarine quieting and aircraft
engine vibration control systems,
according to the report.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807300012-4