My New Hobby: Digging Through CIA Documents.

Written By Spaceman

I SWEAR TO GOD IT’S NOT ILLEGAL

Has anyone here watched the Jack Ryan films? I assume so, because why else would you read this blog if you weren’t into that shit? Well, If you wanna be a CIA Analyst like Jack Ryan, you’re gonna be spending a lot of years in school and training. If you’re like me and your calling was in a totally unrelated field, you may still wanna dig into the history and the culture behind your adversaries. Thankfully, the CIA, DIA, NSA, and others have done the work for you!

A lot of these organizations declassify their old crap in what’s known as a FOIA Reading room. And there are some Gems in there. I’ve found everything from how the soviets were secretly shipping MIG-17s across the union for repair to the average careers of soviet naval officers. And I know it sounds pointless, but that average career thing created fictional adversary Captain Yevgenny Legzdin, in Operation Shark Hunter.

In essence, by using historical analysis like this, you can massively boost the realism of some operations. Operation Liberty Forge has benefited greatly from known locations of EVERY SINGLE SOVIET SAM SITE. The truth is, realism can be fun. At least I think it can, and the 3 letter agencies have been helpful enough to do 90% of the research for me because they though the world was gonna end if they didn’t. So now, I get to play CIA analyst with some dude from the 60’s work. Thanks unnamed researcher. I’m sure you can rest easy knowing that in the far future your work will be used to program a flight simulator.

Spaceman

THE Founding member of CVW 20. Spaceman started VFA-634 in a Naval Station Great Lakes Barracks. After exiting the Navy, Spaceman continued his career in Baltimore working for a US Defense Contractor. Spaceman will never avoid an opportunity to give his two cents on any topic regarding Aircraft, the 80’s, Flight Sims, Spaceflight, or National Defense.

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