Hi,
Sorry if this has been asked before, did a search and I could not find anything. I realise that this is quite recent history but I was wondering what, if anything the Russians knew of the US stealth project 'have blue' and also the reasons why they did not invest in it.
Also with the nighthawk, when did this become known about. Was it just the gulf war or were there rumours before that?
Thanks in advance
Get the book "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich, it'll cover some of your questions and is a great read.
According to a declassified CIA memo , the Soviets got a lot of their information on US stealth from open source journalism, especially International Defense Review's Bill Sweetman. While the memo doesn't go into specifics and is redacted in parts, they note that open source reporting from trade journals got the contours of the US stealth programs correct and th Soviets appreciated that this was a far more reliable source than the New York Times.
As to why the Soviets didn't invest in stealth, part of the reason is low observable technology only matured as the Soviet Union collapsed. Furthermore, the way defense procurement was set up in the USSR often precluded innovation of the type that the Skunk Works exemplified. Individual Soviet design bureaus operated in close conjunction with the state planned economy and the Soviet military. This system prized regularity and predictability (Sukhoi does ground attack, Mikoyan-Guverich fighters, etc), and inhibited design bureaus from acting outside their normal interests.