Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sunday, I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday : The (Secret) Martial art of Edward L. Cooper
During the darkest days of the Cold War, from about the Cuban Missile Crisis until the Berlin Wall came down, the Defense Intelligence Agency was the go-to analytical group of the U.S. Intelligence Community that specialized in the nuts and bolts of a coming war. They came up with the specs and databases on foreign weapons and deployments. For instance, how many Backfire bombers the Soviet 22nd Air Regiment had and what was the range of the cruise missiles they likely carried.
The thing was, most available imagery of these systems was rather like pictures of bigfoot and UFOs as they were either captured by operatives with very small pocket cameras or at great distances from the deck of a moving ship or submarine. To really capture the imagination of the admirals, generals and privy lawmakers/cabinet members who needed to know, the DIA commissioned extremely well vetted in-house artists to take what was known about these weapons and turn them into a depiction of what (they believed at the time) looked like.
In these thirty years, highly skilled but shadowy artists such as Ronald C. Wittmann, Richard J. Terry and Brian W. McMullin, produced amazing art of things most westerners had very little if any idea of. Over 1,000 paintings all told. These would be used in both classified and unclassified (annual editions of Soviet Military Power and later the Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China) produced by the Pentagon and distributed to those in Congress and elsewhere.
One of the more prolific and multi-talented of these was Edward L. Cooper.
Soviet Mobile Laser in Afghanistan by Edward L Cooper. Click to big up
Soviet Kiev class aircraft carrier in a floating drydock. Cick to big up
SOVIET BLACKJACK LOADING AS-16 MISSILES – Edward L. Cooper, 1987. Click to big up
Soviet Mike class attack submarine. Courtesy of Soviet Military Power, 1984. Photo 64, page 61. big up
SOVIET 203-MM 2S7 SELF-PROPELLED GUN – Edward L. Cooper, 1987 big up
SOVIET MI-24 HIND DELIVERING CHEMICAL SPRAY – Edward L. Cooper, 1986 big up
TYPHOON Replenishing in the Arctic cooper. big up
SOVIET 280-MM MULTIPLE ROCKET LAUNCHER – Edward L. Cooper, 1988. big up
SOVIET GROUND-BASED LASER – Edward L. Cooper, 1986. big up
DELTA Class SSBN Firing ballistic missile from the safety of the Arctic bastion, Edward L Cooper DIA 1985 big up
SOVIET BM-27 MULTIPLE ROCKET LAUNCHER – Edward L. Cooper, 1986. big up
Tu-22M_Backfire_loads_AS-16_Kickback
YANKEE Class SSGN firing SS-NX-24 Cruise Missiles while submerged, Edward L Cooper DIA 1986. Big up
ZSU anti-aircraft guns Edward L. Cooper, 1987. Big up
SOVIET RAIL-MOBILE SS-24 MOD 1 INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE – Edward L. Cooper, 1988. big up
DELTA-III Class SSBN firing SS-N-18 missiles while submerged, Edward L Cooper DIA 1987
In 1996 the agency released a bunch of the artwork publicly and even sold a number as prints, but since then has taken down the galleries. But hey, the art is still out there in a number of places including Global Security, Wiki the Federation of American Scientists and elsewhere.
According to FAS, “Edward Cooper is the only one of the original visual information specialists still employed at the Agency. He’s still working at the graphics office. He switched his drawing table with a computer. Cooper and some of his colleagues still keep on working in their free time even after retirement.”
Thank you for your work, sir.
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