Robert Sneddon wrote:

In John D. Clark's "Ignition!" he mentions that at one point in the
late 1950s a group of Russian rocket engineers published details in the
open scientific press of a rocket fuel/oxidiser combo which was superior
to the state of the art known to the US defence field. The Russians were
apparently under the impression the information they had made public was
actually widely known. It caused some head-scratching in the US, in part
because the thinking went that if the Russians thought this advanced
rocket fuel/oxidiser combination was common knowledge, just how advanced
was their secret stuff?

We did the same thing in reverse - Adm Rickover openly published much
information on our [Naval] nuclear power program, until he toured the
[then] new Soviet icebreaker Lenin. Seeing how far behind they were,
and much of what he thought of as obvious actually wasn't, he returned
home and promptly classified great swathes of basic technology and
engineering.

OTOH it was widely believed in the Fleet that we intentionally leaked
details of our SLBM fire and launch control systems (which had standby
and training modes in addition to the launch modes) in hope the
Soviets would adopt them and replace their systems which only had
'off' and 'launch' modes.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL