With the two departments’ gloves off, the fate of Oxcart now hung precariously in the balance. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara snidely told CIA director John McCone that he doubted the Oxcart would ever be used. If it was used, McNamara said, it would “probably have to be done without the specific knowledge of the President,” alluding to the Gary Powers shoot-down. Never again could a president be linked to a CIA aerial espionage mission. John McCone shot back that he had “every intention of using Oxcart and had so advised the President.” McNamara may have won the battle by getting President Johnson to surface part of the Oxcart program, but McCone was letting him know on behalf of the Agency that the Pentagon hadn’t yet won the war.
A second Air Force–Agency debate that involved the fate of the Oxcart, which in turn involved the fate of Area 51, centered on improvements in satellite and drone technology. McNamara told McCone that these two platforms would eventually eliminate the need for the Agency’s expensive, cumbersome Oxcart program. And yet both men knew that for the time being, Oxcart could deliver what satellites could not, and on two separate but equally important counts. In the six years since Sputnik, satellites had advanced to the degree that their spy images were good, though not great. But satellites had an inherent limitation in the world of espionage: they worked on fixed schedules. This would forever negate any element of surprise. The average satellite took ninety minutes to circle the world, and overflight schedules were easily determined by analysts at NORAD. The ironically named Oxcart was an attack espionage vehicle: quick and versatile, nimble and shrewd, with overpasses that would be totally unpredictable to any enemy. But most of all, in terms of clear photographic intelligence, nothing could compete with what Oxcart was about to be able to deliver to the president: two-and-a-half-foot blocks of detail made clear by film frames shot from seventeen miles up.
While McNamara and McCone fought, a presidential election loomed for Johnson. Nikita Khrushchev, ever the antagonist, decided to make things difficult for the saber-rattling Texan. During the campaign summer of 1964, the increasingly bellicose Khrushchev declared that any U-2s flying over Cuba would be shot down. The CIA saw the threat by the Soviet dictator as an opportunity to let Oxcart show its stuff, and McCone pushed President Johnson for an official mission. Finally, the president approved the Oxcart for Operation Skylark, a plan to fly missions over Cuba if Khrushchev showed signs of putting missiles in Cuba again. Skylark provided a terrific opportunity for the CIA to flex its overhead muscle and gain an edge on the Air Force. The only problem was that out at Area 51, the Oxcart wasn’t quite ready.
Kenneth Collins sat in the cockpit of the world’s fastest aircraft as it climbed through sixty thousand feet. On this particular flight, navigators had him flying north to the border of Canada, where he was to turn around and head back. Flight-testing the Oxcart was the best job in the world, according to Ken Collins. Most jobs came with a daily routine, and for Collins each day of work at Area 51 meant another performance field to tackle—anything but routine.
For months, the pilots had been testing the hydraulics, navigation system, and flight controls on the aircraft. After each flight, the data from flight recorders was analyzed by a team of Lockheed engineers. Changes were made daily at Groom Lake. The wiring continued to be problematic until replacement materials that could withstand 800 degrees were finally located. Another problem that took forever to solve involved the buildup of the liquid chemical triethylborane (TEB) that had been preventing the engine afterburners from starting. Finally, that too was solved. But one dangerous problem remained, and that was the dreaded un-starts.