Spy work

 

The 200 Millisecond Mission: Inside the Secret CIA Plan to Steal Soviet Missile Data

On February 13, 1966, a high-altitude reconnaissance drone flew a top-secret mission over Vietnam. North Vietnamese air defense picked up the drone’s disguised U-2 spy plane radar profile on its approach to Hanoi. In response, a Soviet-made SA-2 Guideline missile streaked towards the drone, turning it into a fireball of metal seconds later—the mission was over.

From all appearances, the small skirmish would've been a clear win for the North Vietnamese, but all was not what it seemed—this "SAM Sniffer" was created to be destroyed. In the 200 milliseconds before its demise, the drone’s electronics would—if everything went according to plan—record details of the missile's radar tracking, guidance systems, and its warhead fusing and transmit them before it was too late.

Under the codename United Effort, the CIA had planned and prepared for this mission for three years in the hopes of attaining data that no manned aircraft ever could. Several drones had tried to learn the SA-2’s secrets—they all failed.