<text id=00he1500><title>Keeping an Eye on the Enemy: Introduction</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Keeping an Eye on the Enemy: Introduction</hdr><body>
<p>"We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked."
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<p>Dean Rusk, President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of State, said it softly in the tensed hush of the Cabinet Room of the White House. It was Wednesday afternoon, 24 October 1962, and the gathering had just heard that some Russian ships headed for Cuba had altered course. It was the first indication that the Russians were beginning to ease the pressure of the Cuban confrontation.
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<p>It was another of the potential head-on collisions that had marked the postwar years. It was a far more serious crisis than any before it, because it involved the presence of Russian nuclear-tipped intermediate-range ballistic missiles sited in Cuba and capable of blanketing most of the United States.
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<p>Their presence had been discovered by daring photo-reconnaissance of the island, one of the means that the US had for keeping an eye on possible enemies.
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<p>It was apparent early in the Cold War, if it had not been completely apparent in World War II, that Russian progress and capabilities in warfare would not be easy to assess. They were reluctant to publish their prowess in aeronautical science or missile technology. They attended no international conferences in science or research. A long history of national paranoia, going back to the early czars, added to the difficulty of learning anything through open means about the Soviet military might.
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<p>Right after World War II, the United States enjoyed, if that is the right word, the atomic monopoly. Technically, US aircraft were far superior to Russian types. Dealing from that strength, the intelligence gatherers decided to take advantage of the performance of American planes and use them to go look at the Russians, photograph whatever installations could be seen, and monitor electronic transmissions.
