Operation Sky Shield: NORAD’s Influence on SAC’s Tactics

Early in the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) used strategic bombing tactics from World War II, despite growing evidence that high-altitude formation bombing was vulnerable to Soviet air defenses. From 1960 through 1963, SAC took part in large-scale air defense exercises with the North American Airspace Defense Command (NORAD) called Operation Sky Shield. These exercises revealed weaknesses in SAC tactics, prompting SAC to make significant changes, such as adopting low-altitude single-sortie flights, passive radar jamming, structural modifications to existing bombers, and canceling planned high altitude bomber designs. These changes increased SAC bomber survivability.