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Four months after an Indian MiG-27 fighter bomber crashed, and all Indian MiG-27s were grounded, the aircraft have been cleared to fly again. The long delay was caused by fears that all the Russian made engines in these aircraft might have a common problem. This is not a new problem. The MiG-27, and Cold War era Russian warplanes in general, do not age well. India only has about a hundred MiG-27s still operational, and all of them were grounded for over a year (2005-6) when serious problems were discovered with the MiG-27s Russian designed engines. Things have since gotten better,...

1962 the Soviets swapped a U.S. airman to the Americans in return for their spies, but they kept the pilot's plane. Here's what happened to it. By Joe Pappalardo It looks like Russia and the U.S. are negotiating the biggest spy swap since the Cold War ended, as accused and convicted spies in both nations are set to be bartered, and some being moved from prisons in America to Vienna in anticipation of a deal. The episode harkens to the 1960s, when spies were traded to maintain the brittle peace between nations. The most famous of these cases involved Francis...

WASHINGTON — When Aleksandr Zaporozhsky, one of four Russians delivered to the West in this week’s spy swap, joins his family in the United States, it will be only the latest unexpected twist in a classic story of espionage and deception. For several years in the 1990s, Mr. Zaporozhsky, a colonel in Russian intelligence who became deputy chief of the American Department, was secretly working for the C.I.A., one of the highest-ranking American moles in history, Russian prosecutors say. After surprising his colleagues by retiring suddenly in 1997, he moved with his wife and three children to the United States...

John L. Martin supervised 76 espionage cases during his 26 years at the Justice Department, but he’s never seen one end like this one. Martin said swapping spies who have not been sentenced to time in prison, much less served it, is "all but unprecedented." Martin could recall only one case in which an accused spy was swapped without first being convicted and sentenced to prison. Alice Michelson, a courier for the Soviet KGB, was arrested in late 1984, indicted on espionage charges, held without bail, and eventually exchanged in a deal for 25 Europeans accused of spying for the...

A Cold War-style spy swap for the alleged Russian agents was being hammered out last night. All ten Russians held by the U.S. - including 'femme fatale' Anna Chapman - will reportedly be exchanged for ten prisoners being held in Russian jails who have spied for the West. The swap could begin as early as today, with Britain playing a pivotal role. [....] Say what? Why so fast? Have we even had a chance to interrogate these people? Are they part of bigger spy networks? What's going on here?

When it comes to nuclear weapons, oldies are goodies. Take, for example, the American B61 nuclear device. About the same shape as a 1,000 pound (455 kg) bomb, many NATO fighter bombers were equipped (with the electronics) to use this bomb during the Cold War (and many can still do so). Some 3,200 B61s were built since it entered service in the late 1960s, and about a third of those remain available for use. Some are to be refurbished, but politicians are still debating doing this just to keep B61s good for another two decades. Without the refurb, all these...

David Heathfield, an Ontario resident, said yesterday that the alleged Russian spy known as Donald Heathfield stole the identity of his younger brother who died when he was 6 weeks old. “When we first heard about it, we thought it was a joke,’’ David Heathfield said. “Then it was a shock to us. How can somebody get away using our family name as an alias for so long and not be detected?’’ He said his mother, Shirley, is distressed by the discovery that the child she lost to crib death has had his name stolen. David Heathfield, 51, said he...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday criticized the arrests of suspects in an alleged Russian spy ring, saying U.S. law-enforcement authorities "went out of control." He voiced hope that the scandal would not harm relations between the two countries. Russia's Foreign Ministry acknowledged that some of the suspects are Russian citizens. It called on American authorities to give them access to lawyers and Russian consular officials, and to take into account the "positive character" of U.S.-Russian ties in treating the case. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday announced the arrests of 10 alleged deep-cover Russian agents, saying...

Oleg Gordievsky, one of the Cold War's most famous defectors, says Russia may have as many as 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States. Gordievsky, a former deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would know the number of illegal operatives in each target country. The 71-year-old ex-double agent said that, based on his experience in Russian intelligence, he estimates that Moscow likely has 40 to 50 couples operating under cover in the US."For the KGB, there's usually 40 to 50 couples, all illegal," said Gordievsky, who defected to Britain...

Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots. In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. At the center of the story are two eager CIA paramilitary officers...

Ok, gang, the trailer to our documentary---coming in August---is now available. Among those you see in the trailer are "Mother's Finest," Robby Krieger, David Paich (Toto), Jimmy Haslip (Yellowjackets), Mark Stein and Vinny Martell (Vanilla Fudge), LA film score composer John Van Tongeren, Voice of America legal counsel Joseph Morris, Rudy Sarzo (Quiet Riot), Hungarian/Euro star Leslie Mandoki, and me. Glenn Beck did a 15 minute interview with me to air tomorrow, three times, and the trailer is (I think) being played behind me for part of it. Rock on! www.rockinthewall.com

Many Americans are anxious about the U.S. losing its supreme-superpower status. But in an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Peter Beinart says we need not dominate the world to enjoy it. An excerpt from the conclusion of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, forthcoming by Peter Beinart, about learning from American history that America can live safely and profitably in the world without dominating it. What America needs today is a jubilant undertaker, someone—like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan—who can bury the hubris of the past while convincing Americans that we are witnessing a wedding, not a funeral....

On June 2, 1979, the Pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw. The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways. By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw...

<p>In the event of a nuclear missile attack on Russia, three hard-shell briefcases filled with electronics are set to alert their holders simultaneously. Inside each is a portable terminal, linked to the command and control network for Russia's strategic nuclear forces. One of them accompanies the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, wherever he goes. It is known as the Cheget, and allows the president to monitor a missile crisis, make decisions, and transmit those decisions to the military. It's similar to the nuclear "football" that accompanies the American president.</p>

In the movie “Space Cowboys,” Clint Eastwood plays a test pilot/engineer who leads a group of aging astronauts on a mission to retrieve a nuclear-armed satellite, which had been put into space by a Soviet Union that then ceased to exist. It was, at least in small part, a case of art imitating life. During the Cold War, both superpowers contemplated the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. However, Moscow did more than contemplate. During the 1960s, the USSR had an operational system ready to go into orbit to attack the United States. This weapon was a combined low-flying missile...

NATO must win the war in Afghanistan, expand ties with Russia, counter the threat posed by Iran's missiles, and assure the security of its 28 members, according to its new mission statement for the next decade. The draft document, released Monday, seeks to bridge a growing rift between the U.S., which favors a greater international role for NATO, and European nations that want it to retain its traditional defensive focus. "NATO must be versatile and efficient enough to operate far from home," said former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, head of the team of experts who wrote the document....

For 30 years, it has protected the East Coast of the United States from sea and land strikes by enemy missiles. Yesterday, officials from the Air Force 6th Space Warning Squadron celebrated those three decades at PAVE PAWS — the first U.S. phased array warning system in the country and only one of four overall. "I think certainly the legacy is keeping a watch, a presence looking out over the Atlantic Ocean," Lt. Col. Max Lantz, commander of the 6th Space Warning Squadron, said Friday. "It's been one of vigilant watch for the past 30 years." Everyday, the 10-story radar...

The 27th Day is a 1957 Cold War science fiction B-movie. However, don’t let the B-movie label turn you off. I think it’s quite good. It features an intelligent script and good acting. It's difficult to find it on Region 1 DVD. However, it has recently been uploaded to YouTube. I don’t know how long it will be there before it gets yanked, so you may wish to download it. The screenplay is by John Mantley, who adapted it from his novel. It stars Gene Barry. The actor with the great voice who plays the alien is Arnold Moss. He...

MOSCOW (AFP) – Fifty years after his father was shot down by the Soviets in an incident that marked a turning point in the Cold War, Francis Gary Powers Jr on Friday visited the wreckage of his dad's U-2 spy plane. "It's a wonderful display," Powers Jr said while standing in the hall of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow which holds the wrecked plane and other material commemorating the so-called "U-2 incident" of May 1, 1960. On that day, Francis Gary Powers, a US pilot carrying out a secret mission for the CIA to photograph Soviet nuclear sites,...

MOSCOW — Fifty years ago Saturday, U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union, a dramatic episode of the Cold War that pushed the rival superpowers closer to confrontation. Now his son has come to Moscow on a mission of his own: By telling his late father's story, he hopes to help preserve Cold War history and prevent future generations of Russians and Americans from ever again facing the threat of nuclear war. On May 1, 1960, Powers was in the cockpit of the world's highest-flying plane, concentrated on keeping...