Hunting the Red Bear: Satellite Reconnaissance and the ‘Second Offset Strategy’ in the Late Cold War

Abstract

Cold War historians have argued that reconnaissance satellites were a stabilizing force in superpower relations because they created transparency and enabled arms control treaties. But this is an incomplete view of the role of reconnaissance satellites in U.S. national security. Newly declassified documents reveal that beginning in the late 1970s, reconnaissance satellites were a key component of the ‘Second Offset Strategy.’ With this new defense framework, the Pentagon endeavored to use advanced technologies to secure qualitative advantages over the numerically superior Red Army. A new class of reconnaissance satellites provided the means of tracking and targeting Soviet units in near-real-time to enable precision strikes deep behind enemy lines. This newfound ability to use satellites to pinpoint Soviet forces helped facilitate the U.S. shift towards a more flexible nuclear and conventional military strategy in the late 1970s. By this time, the same satellites that were policing arms control agreements were also secretly a key component of a competitive U.S. conventional and nuclear strategy to ensure that NATO would prevail in a superpower conflict. Moreover, this emerging military support role of reconnaissance satellites catalyzed the development of weapons designed to attack them, thereby precipitating space arms competition in the late Cold War.