Quite true. The earliest post war radars had such difficulty, even having trouble tracking supersonic aircrafts. Huges Airwest Flight 706 was quite an example of such problems.
Yes, although for the very specific reason that at the time the U-2 was being designed they knew that the Soviets were using American radars (provided during the war) that could not track aircraft at very high altitudes. However, they didn't appreciate that the Soviets had upgraded those radars and they actually could track U-2s. They did learn this very quickly once they started overflights, but because they didn't have satellites yet they felt that they didn't really have any choice but to continue and experimented with various efforts to make life more difficult for the Soviets.
It was also somewhat of a moot point. The Soviets could track the aircraft, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. Their interceptors couldn't reach it and neither could their SAM systems. It wasn't until the USSR deployed the SA-2 that they could actually threaten the U-2
It may be so. But if Soviets even after tracking the U-2s couldn't do anything why bother with reducing the RCS and spending tons of money for no gain?
There was, nevertheless, an operational issue, in that the United States would have preferred the Soviets to be unaware of overflights. This way the United States could get better-quality intelligence (since the Soviets would not know to take precautions to interfere with U-2 observations) and it could use the intelligence it did gain more effectively (since the Soviets wouldn't know that the United States knew certain things about them). Additionally, it was useful in a diplomatic sense, because if the Soviets couldn't even detect the U-2 there would be no way for them to call out the United States for overflights. Finally, from a technical level it was possible that the Soviets could use their ability to detect the U-2 to intercept it sooner than the CIA and Air Force would have liked (as indeed happened).
Less than this, you would agree?
View attachment 587355
and certainly Vulcan has lower RCS than this, yes?
I seem to recall the B52's also used jamming against the voice radios that the North Vietnamese GCI system used to control their fighters (and the B52's even managed to shoot down a few Migs with their tail guns.) Accounts I have read of the 1960's NORAD exercises also mention jamming of voice radios but apparently the high power ground to air data link systems NORAD had begun to use to control newer interceptors were considered to be immune from jamming, but they were not universally available.
