Tolkachev

I’ll have a full review up later, but for now I’ve written a bit about Adolf Tolkachev in my latest at the Diplomat:

Will we ever have a Chinese Tolkachev?

As detailed in David Hoffman’s Billion Dollar Spy, between 1979 and 1985, Soviet radar engineer Adolf Tolkachev turned his hatred of the Soviet regime into some of the most devastating industrial espionage ever conducted. Tolkachev took advantage of his position at the radar design firm Phazotron to make copies and photographs of volumes of material associated with Soviet radar and electronics systems. This gave the United States an inside look at the sensor capabilities of the USSR’s most advanced fighters and interceptors.

Pictured above is the Gryphon ground launched cruise missile. Essentially, Tolkachev’s espionage let the US know that the Soviets had no effective way of detecting the missiles before they reached their targets.