The U-2 remains essential, even after the Cold War, to detect threats from terrorists, says Glen Gustafson, examining aerial recon photos.

An Aerial View

Professor interpreted U-2 photos during 1962 missile crisis

Geography professor Glen C. Gustafson had a vested interest in rushing to the movie theater to see last fall's political thriller Thirteen Days, which dramatizes the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Gustaf-son not only lived through the crisis with the rest of the nation, he was an eyewitness.

From 1962 to 1966, Gustafson was a young U.S. Air Force airman 3rd class interpreter of photographs taken from high-flying surveillance planes. In 1962 he was stationed at

a Strategic Air Command bomber wing in Texas and was part of the U.S. intelligence community that interpreted U-2 spy-plane photographs showing the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba. He had a front-row seat to the ever-increasing tensions and threat of nuclear war.

"The October 1962 standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union was one of the most memorable events in my life," says Gustaf-son. "There I was, three or four months out of intelligence school, watching the secretary of defense and CIA briefers using aerial photo-graphy with which I was familiar. Everyone was, of course, on the highest level of alertness, and the experience was intensely energizing."

While stationed in Texas, Gustafson helped interpret U-2 photographs of Soviet missiles being readied for launchpad installation in Cuba. The re-duced time it would take for the missiles to reach the United States from Cuba instead of the Soviet Union increased the threat to America's nuclear defenses. But the Cuban missile crisis ended after 13 days when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles from the island nation just 90 miles south of Florida.

Gustafson also served in Europe, where he examined and interpreted U-2 and satellite reconnaissance photos. He said the U-2 program forced the Russians to escalate the arms race - much as the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik led the United States to step up the space race.

"The Russians were extremely embarrassed that we could send out planes to any part of their country, any time we wanted, and do pretty much anything we wanted," says Gustafson. "Khrushchev began an arms race to ensure that the U.S.S.R had the military power to avoid all such embarrassment in the future, which in turn, led us to spend too much of our national income on weapons and weap-ons systems. The U-2 helped win the Cold War, but victory came at an enormous price."

Although Gustafson's work was performed for the U.S. Air Force, the U-2 officially operated under the auspices of the CIA. President Dwight Eisen-hower approved the program in 1954, but because he be-lieved provocative flights over the Soviet airspace could be construed as an act of war, he insisted that a civilian rather than a military agency administer the program.

"I think we could have survived without the U-2 program, but the risk would have been enormously greater," Gustafson says. "It gave us eyes behind the Iron Curtain and allowed us to make some de-cisions that we could not have made otherwise."

For example, he explains, when the American public clamored for President Eisen-hower to engage in a massive arms buildup because of the Soviets' much-touted superiority in bomber and missile numbers, Eisenhower confidently resisted.

"He knew there was no bomber or missile gap," says Gustafson. "The U-2, flying over Russia at 70,000 feet, had provided him with irrefutable photographic evidence that the Soviets had nowhere near the planes or missiles they claimed to have."

Gustafson believes the collapse of the Soviet Union has not diminished America's need for the U-2 program. Our enemies are no longer Russian tank battalions, he says, but individuals with rocket launchers operating out of remote locations around the globe. "You've got to look at a lot more places and you've got to have imagery that's a lot better," he explains. "The U-2 is superior to a satellite because a satellite can't loiter over an area. One pass and a satellite is gone. We still need the U-2, and as of right now, the U-2 is serving us well."

The U-2 is scheduled to remain in the Air Force inventory until 2020, Gustafson says.

Nearly 40 years after the missile crisis Gustafson works in three-dimensional digital computer mapping. "When people think of geography, they think of something quite different than the occupation of being a geographer. We are no longer people who name all the capitals and crops of countries. We have specific skills to solve everyday problems that cities or governments or companies have."

By Charles Culbertson