>>...taking an adversary at face value helps boost US defense spending.
This went on all through the Cold War.
That said - and probably related - one summer day in the 70s I was standing ankle deep in lake water with my dog at my parents' lake house in Northern Maine (AKA 'the Great North Woods). My dog suddenly looked up, so I looked up too - in time to see a flying telephone pole zip by at treetop height followed by a F-15 or F18 (flashed by, but I saw twin tails) a bit higher, maybe 1000'. The pole dropped to 25-50' over the lake and continued, popped up again at the far side (4.5 miles away). Over in a second or so. I'd have missed it if my dog hadn't looked up, given me the time to look up. No boom; fast but subsonic. No wake in the lake waters. My *guess* is that that was a proto-Tomahawk in testing - and the fighter following it was to shoot it down if it deviated from flight plan. At the time there was a naval air station in Bangor - so it might have been from there. Why the North Woods? I've read that the terrain is very similar to parts of Siberia.