SpyWatch: How Russia Targets America’s Stealth Aircraft Technology

 

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.