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For all their bemusement at Soviet discomfiture over the Rust affair, U.S. air-defense officials could offer few assurances that the same thing might not happen in American airspace. While Air Force and civilian radar systems can spot virtually all aircraft entering the country, the U.S. is still incapable of intercepting or destroying them at will. Because its fleet of interceptor jets was useless against intercontinental ballistic missiles, which became the primary offensive weapon in the Soviet arsenal in the 1950s, the U.S. air- defense system has been allowed to deteriorate and is now dangerously out of date. By coincidence, on the very day of Rust's flight, the approaching Cessna aircraft of a defecting Cuban air force general was spotted and tracked by two U.S. F-15 fighters until it landed at Key West, Fla. But many unidentified aircraft, especially those involved in the huge drug-smuggling trade, disappear daily from radar screens without a trace. Says former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger: "The U.S. does not have an air-defense system worthy of the name."
As the amateur who shook up the military establishment of a superpower, Rust was being held in Moscow's Lefortovo prison, home last year to Nicholas Daniloff, an American journalist who was arrested on espionage charges and released 13 days later. West German diplomatic officials were permitted last week to speak for 30 minutes with the youthful flyer, who became an instant media hero back in West Germany. The diplomats said they found him "calm." Rust could face an investigation lasting up to nine months and a trial on charges of conducting an unauthorized flight into Soviet airspace. The maximum punishment for conviction is ten years in prison, but West German diplomats believe it is unlikely that Rust will serve more than six months.
Whatever Rust was telling his hosts, their skepticism about his motives seemed to grow by the minute. The Soviets claimed to have found evidence that far from deciding to take a joyride on the spur of the moment, Rust had carefully planned the trip over an extended period of time, studying "maps and models" in his hometown of Wedel, near Hamburg. The implication, of course, was that he was in the employ of a Western intelligence service. The Soviet news agency TASS noted that West German newspapers had begun raising "worried questions" about Rust's odyssey. Among them: Was it timed to coincide with an international peace conference of physicians, thus guaranteeing that more foreigners than normal would be on hand? And when the Cessna touched down, why did so many camera-bearing tourists just happen to be in Red Square to record the event in all its audacious derring-do?