
A KGB agent shipped a Sidewinder missile by mail to Moscow (2017) - rishabhd
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-the-kgb-shipped-sidewinder-missile-by-mail-moscow-21673
======
jstanley
> Although outnumbered, the Taiwanese pilots achieved a positive kill-to-loss
> ratio.

That's not that impressive, even 1:1000 kills:losses is a _positive_ ratio.

I assume they mean a ratio > 1.

And: this is a pretty incredible story. If you don't bother reading it all
(it's not that long), at least read this bit:

> Exploiting thick fog and careless guards, Manfred Ramminger – a KGB-agent in
> West Germany – entered Neuburg air base during the evening of Oct. 22, 1967.
> Together with his Polish driver Josef Linowski and German F-104 Starfighter
> pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe, he stole an operational AIM-9 [sidewinder
> missile] from the local ammunition depot and transported it down the entire
> runway on a wheelbarrow to his Mercedes sedan, parked outside the base.

> The 2.9-meter-long missile proved unwieldy. Ramminger broke the rear window
> and covered the protruding part with a carpet. In order not to attract
> attention of the police, he then marked the protrusion with a piece of red
> cloth, as required by law.

~~~
ptero
This is indeed a great story, which gives again two different views on
security.

East of the iron curtain everything, even marginally secret, was very
carefully controlled, accounted for and losing a single not-too-secret page
meant an automatic 10-year labor camp term. West of it, control was much
looser and many more secrets leaked out. However, technology was also
developed much faster -- you need serious encouragement to convince a good
engineer to work under East's penalties and restrictions on personal life if
other interesting work is available. East put major resources of the state on
stealing technology not by choice -- it had few other options to avoid
military tech obsolescence.

So leakage and all, West's system worked pretty well. My 2c.

~~~
ransom1538
Yes. But put ON your tin foil hat for a second.

I think the West _wanted_ the missile to be taken. Handing over old missile
technology is pretty ingenious. If your adversary actually pulls it off and
copies it, they will have a 5 year old missile. Having an old missile on your
warplane, while flying against the latest tech was a _death_ sentence. This
was different than say, nuclear technology, where having a 5 year old model
was still _extremely_ dangerous.

Also, being handed old tech sucks up all your engineering resources. An
analogy would be reading vs writing code. Reading code is x10 more difficult,
fraught with misconceptions and inability to expand the tech.

~~~
afiori
It could have been 10 years old even, the point is that they can use it to
build better missiles. This can happen both because their missile were
terrible or because now they can copy the solutions you used 5 (or 10) years
ago.

unless that particular model was a certified crappy missile that could not
work in any way and that was a plot the have them lose time there is no reason
to give them an old missile.

~~~
jacobush
There were such plots though, look for red mercury. :)

------
mpweiher
At my base in Northern Germany, an officer of the MAD, the aptly abbreviated
West German military intelligence agency, waltzed onto the base and all the
way into the central weapons store wearing a Colonel's Uniform.

An _East German Army_ Colonel's Uniform.

Ooopsy.

~~~
bergoid
I had to look it up.

MAD: Militärischer Abschirmdienst (Military Secret Service, Germany)

[https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/MAD](https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/MAD)

~~~
detaro
Literal translation would by _Military Shielding Service_

------
yummybear
Thousands of national security measures foiled by a guy in a mercedes with a
wheelbarrow and a postman - impressive.

~~~
itronitron
it would be interesting to know if and when they noticed it was missing

~~~
dfox
Given my experience I would assume that when they noticed it was written off
as an inventory tracking error (assuming the thieves haven't left conspiciosly
open empty transport case on the site)

------
sohkamyung
Perhaps the link should be updated to [1] as the primary source, since it was
stated at the bottom that:

> _This first appeared in WarIsBoring_

[1] [https://warisboring.com/the-kgb-shipped-a-sidewinder-
missile...](https://warisboring.com/the-kgb-shipped-a-sidewinder-missile-by-
mail-to-moscow/)

~~~
rurban
But this link has the cost of shipping wrong: $79.25 whilst the original
NYTimes linked in op's link got it right: $483.88

~~~
rocqua
Maybe the NYT adjusted for inflation?

~~~
opencl
The NYT article was written in 1970. However it is an OCRed article and has no
currency symbol in it so it might be in Deutschmarks rather than dollars.

~~~
petre
In 1970 the exchange rate was something like 3.65 Deutsche Marks for a dollar.
$79.25 would be 289.26 DM.

------
altmind
> Ramminger and his aides were all arrested in late 1968 and jailed for four
> years.

Its surprising how much he got away with. It was a theft, conspiracy,
espionage, mailing and customs rules violation. Did he that in US 2019, he
would get 30 years min.

------
alanfranzoni
I'm happy that 2017 is the date of the article, and not of the event.

~~~
anonymfus
Well in 2017 KGB agent would ship a missile to Minsk, not Moscow.

~~~
doikor
In 2017 KGB does not exist.

~~~
ineedasername
That's a very fine bit of hairsplitting. The current intelligence organization
is literally the same group that went through a reorganization in the 90's and
renamed twice: first to the FSK, then a few years later to the current FSB.

So, your statement is a bit like saying "2019 Google doesn't exist" because it
reorganized into Alphabet, and there's no more Google Inc, only a much more
narrowly focused subsidiary named Google LLC.

~~~
simula67
FSB does not operate outside of Russia. It is the equivalent of FBI in USA.
Foreign intelligence agency of the Russian Federation is the SVR and GRU

------
golem14
A Google search for [Ramminger Knoppe] reveals original sources and an
interesting Wikipedia article:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=ramminger+knoppe](https://www.google.com/search?q=ramminger+knoppe)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/10/archives/3-germans-
guilty...](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/10/archives/3-germans-guilty-of-
missile-theft.html)

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Ramminger](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Ramminger)

------
equalunique
A few thoughts:

1) It's amazing how the operation to steal the AIM-9, despite being so high-
risk, was accomplished with much ease & simplicity.

2) I am surprised that the KGB agent and his conspirators only received 4
years of prison time for this. This might just be my ignorance of the subject,
but isn't stealing a missile and giving it to an enemy more deserving of a
stricter sentence? Perhaps a deal was involved related to the intelligence the
former KGB agent could provide in exchange for some leniency.

3) Tangential but semi-related: There is an interesting theory by Dimitri
Khalezov about the armed Russian Kursk submarine, which sunk in 2000, being
the source of a stolen nuclear-capable P-700 Granit anti-ship cruise missile.
His theory is that this missile was the projectile which rammed through The
Pentagon (but failed to detonate) on 2001 September 11th. Who stole the
missile and why is a mystery, but pictures of the impact at The Pentagon and
what is known about this missile could support the theory. Allegedly, when the
Russians extracted the warheads from their sunken submarine, the extraction
team was ordered to fill the warhead containers with a type of foam that would
permanently seal them without checking the contents of the containers
themselves. In essence, one or more missile containers recovered from the
submarine may have actually been empty & verification of the contents was
prevented in order to cover up the fact that a nuclear weapon had gone
missing.

~~~
umvi
> 3) Tangential but semi-related

So wait... some people think a missile hit the Pentagon instead of an airplane
on 9/11? What happened to American Airlines Flight 77, then?

~~~
Larrikin
Those same people tend to believe the moon landing was faked as well.

~~~
equalunique
The moon landing I tend not to care about either way, because the impact of
that event didn't result in terrible things for the US (like decades of war in
the middle east.)

------
ToFab123
In Thailand you can ship basically everything by mail. Here is how to ship a
motorcycle [https://www.tielandtothailand.com/shipping-motorcycle-
thaila...](https://www.tielandtothailand.com/shipping-motorcycle-thailand-
mail-post-office/)

------
dimitar
He was most likely a GRU (Soviet military intelligence), not a KGB agent.
Still in that era the existence of GRU was not well known. His officer likely
wouldn't share too many details.

------
parsnips
The Soviets spent a lot of time and effort with their premiere intelligence
agents to steal a missile invented in an American garage. Amazing.

------
billfruit
Perhaps the iron curtain, I think was not such a great barrier as portrayed by
the Western Media, people could mail things across it, and travel across it
wasn't much different from crossing international borders now, I think there
was even regular passenger ferry between FRG and USSR. Between East Berlin and
west Berlin, there seems to have been much daily movement of people, like
people living in West Berlin but working in East Berlin, etc.

~~~
muro
I grew up living next to the iron curtain, literally <100m away. It was
multiple tall fences, guard towers every 100m or so, a road, electric fences,
detection mechanisms, barbed wire. To travel across from East to West, you
needed a special permit, that was given or held back depending how much "risk"
you were (of fleeing, not to the regime). My parents could travel only if they
left me there, I stayed with grandparents for 2 weeks. There were regular
known cases of people getting killed or jailed trying to cross.

~~~
close04
The security tended to get tighter and tighter as time went by and more...
"permeations" were discovered. So I expect security around the iron curtain in
the '60s was a bit more lax than in the '80s. If the Berlin wall is any
example, it was.

