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It has been a rule: the US and USSR went to insane lengths to maintain plausible deniability of direct military-to-military engagement. The Soviets flying jets
by gfodor 5y ago
It has been a rule: the US and USSR went to insane lengths to maintain plausible deniability of direct military-to-military engagement. The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets! The scenario I am arguing against is the one proposed in some circles that nuclear armed NATO members ought to shoot down Russian jets over Ukraine.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The Soviets flying jets over Korea spoke in Korean on the radio and flew Korean jets! They spoke in Korean sometimes (but especially under stress, spoke Russian), and flew Soviet jets based in China and nominally assigned to Air Defense, not Frontal Aviation. They weren't maintaining plausible deniability, but a transparent fig leaf. We knew they were Soviet pilots, and they knew we knew they were Soviet pilots. And the Soviet anti-aircraft crews shooting down American jets in Vietnam didn't even have a transparent fig-leaf of not being Soviet troops.
- gfodor 5y agoFair, but why the leaf?
- dragonwriter 5y agoIn the 1950s, when it was bothered with? To provide a face saving way to back down without changing the official narrative in the absence of MAD constraining escalation of geographically-constrained conventional combat. Nuclear arsenals we're tiny at the time of Korea.