 |
| America's Next-Gen Aircraft Are Prime Targets for Russian Intelligence |
When I look at how America’s high-tech
aircraft have evolved, it feels like I’m watching the future trying to break
its way into the present. Take the X-44 MANTA. It never got past the concept
stage, but it showed just how far our engineers were willing to push stealth.
No tail, no extra drag, just a sharp, clean triangle built to cut through the
sky while staying off the radar’s map.
It was the kind of idea that arrives too
early for its own good, then gets buried, then resurfaces decades later when
people realize it wasn’t crazy at all. Now the Air Force is chasing the Next
Generation Air Dominance fighter, and you can practically see the MANTA’s ghost
floating around in those early renderings. It’s funny how ideas don’t really
die. They just wait for technology to catch up.
And that’s exactly why foreign intel
services latch onto these programs. When something like the MANTA shows up,
even just as a concept, it hints at where American aerospace is headed. That
kind of progress means power, and power always draws thieves. Russia’s been
playing this game since the Cold War, and their playbook hasn’t changed much.
They send in businessmen, engineers, folks on short-term visas, so-called
consultants, and every kind of go-between you can think of to grab our aviation
tech before it ever leaves the ground.
A few years back, a Russian official named
Alexander Korshunov got grabbed by authorities for trying to snag jet engine
composite tech from an American company. He wasn’t hacking from some basement
either. He was working through insiders and industry contacts, trying to
quietly walk off with years of U.S. research.
The whole thing showed how these
operations actually look in real life: slow, patient, and hidden behind
handshakes and business deals. That case was a good reminder that the hunt for
our secrets never really stops. It just shifts targets depending on what’s new
and valuable.
I think about that when I work on my own
writing, especially The
Hunt For A Russian Spy. In that story, Corey Pearson goes
undercover in one of Boeing’s most secretive facilities to catch a mole before
they walk out with the plans for a hypersonic spy plane. And even though it’s
fiction, I wrote it with real world cases in mind. Corey pretends to be a
janitor, sets up hidden surveillance, lays digital traps, all while blending
into the background like another tired face punching a time clock.
The scary part is that real moles use the
same camouflage. They hide in the ordinary. They rely on the assumption that
people stop paying attention after a while. That’s how leaks happen. That’s how
technology slips away.
Watching a video about MANTA pulled my
mind right back to Corey’s mission. Whether it’s a spy plane in a story or some
wild stealth concept from the 90s, our edge has always come from pushing past
the comfortable stuff. If we let those ideas slip away or let someone else
twist them into their own weapons, we lose the air advantage we’ve spent
generations building.
The implications for national security are
simple and blunt. We cannot afford to let our most advanced aviation concepts
leak into the hands of foreign intelligence. The value isn’t just in the
hardware. It’s in the years of research, the failures, the breakthroughs, the
quiet trial-and-error that no adversary should ever get for free. Protecting
that isn’t paranoia. It’s survival.
Robert
Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence
Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He writes
the Corey
Pearson- CIA Spymaster Short Story Series, which blends his knowledge
of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. Each
short story can be read in one sitting, for those on the go! His thrillers
reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.
No comments:
Post a Comment