ethical code apart , espionage is an indispensable part of statecraft . The ISR [ Intelligence , Surveillance , and Reconnaissance ] information gather help oneself point national policy decisions for everything from mundane trade negotiations to the blackest of ops . And nowhere is this more evident than in the growing of the US undercover agent orbiter fleet during the Cold War . These orbital scope granted an unprecedented peep over the Iron Curtain — revealing Soviet military capableness , supply reserve , industrial sites , and more — that no earth - base spook could hope to provide .
During the Cold War , accurately ascertain the USSR ’s military capacity was a top US precedency — as well it should have been given that we had as many as 21,000 atomic warhead pointed at each other during that time . And while we had plenty of spy operating in Moscow , the purview from disk overhead supply the President and his cabinet fundamental insight into the extent of Soviet strategic capableness which influenced defense team planning and arms ascendence dialogue . As such , the US invested immense sums of money into high - EL research — from other “ conditions balloons ” to the SR-71 Blackbird and U2 Dragon Lady to orbital telescopes — and established not one but three Federal agencies — the National Reconnaissance Office ( NRO ) , the National Security Agency ( NSA ) , and the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA)—all in an elbow grease to harvest any jot of information that could give us an vantage .
orbiter technology is , by far , the most expensive ISR method at the US ’s disposal but also the most good , its event well worth the billions of dollars spend . As President Lyndon B. Johnson excellently quip in 1967 after a Soviet hoax led to worries of abomber gap :
I would n’t want to be quoted on this … We ’ve spent $ 35 or $ 40 billion on the place programme . And if nothing else had derive out of it except the cognition that we make from outer space picture taking , it would be worth ten times what the whole programme has cost . Because tonight we bed how many projectile the opposition has and , it turn out , our supposition were way off . We were doing things we did n’t postulate to do . We were building matter we did n’t necessitate to build . We were harboring care we did n’t need to harbor .
Of course , much of the development of our home reconnaissance capabilities is still shroud in embryonic membrane of categorisation . Heck , the NRO was established in 1961 and operated for three decades before the government even ever acknowledged its existence . pressure reports made limited references to the office as far back as 1971 , but it was n’t until the Deputy Secretary of Defense revealed the NRO in 1992 , was it ever officially discussed by the DoD. Oversight from the DoD and Congress was near non - actual save for the “ unfastened - checkbook ” policy of the times . As long as the intelligence vindicate the monetary value tag , any cost was satisfactory . It was n’t until the early 1990 ’s that any selective information on these devices was declassify , after the crepuscle of the Soviet Union brought an terminal to the Cold War . Even now , information on the early satellites is sparse and anything after 1972 is non - existing save for a few photos take by the KH-11 satellite which were leaked toJane ’s Defence Weeklyin 1985 .
What we do know is that the US has been researching high - altitude reconnaissance applied science since about 1946 when the RAND project , precursor to Rand Corp. , began campaigning for its growing . When the Army and Navy could n’t correspond on who would have control over the orbital engineering , it was impute to the newly - formed USAF in 1947 . It take in a few eld for RAND researchers run on “ Project Feedback ” to image out how a satellite would even serve — this was a brand name newfangled technological concept , mind you — but by 1953 they had not only devised the world-wide characteristic and capabilities of a reconnaissance satellite but had begin to develop many of the components as well , like the television organization and altimeter . The Atomic Energy Commission also began oeuvre on miniaturized atomic powerfulness sources for the vehicles at that fourth dimension . By 1954 , the USAF accepted RAND ’s assertion that the technology was of “ vital strategic sake to the United States ” and officially established the US satellite program .
The Corona Program
The first such programme was the Corona project , a codeword itself code call “ Discoverer ” for the public account of why the government was can a rocket into outer space ( a rarefied event in the tardy 1950s that would have attract a curious public and outside scrutiny ) . The platform began in 1959 at the Onizuka Air Force Station , run until 1972 , and was declassify in 1995 by President Clinton . Its initial budget was a modest $ 108.2 million ( $ 860 million adjust to 2013 ) , though that quickly increased following the 1960 incident in whichGary Powers ’ U2 was flash down over Soviet air space . The 144 - appendage kin of Corona satellite — each intend Keyhole- # , or KH- # , depending on the spacecraft iteration — were produced and operated by the CIA in continuative with the Air Force and allow invaluable photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union as well as the People ’s Republic of China , and other communistic countries .
Launched aboard a Thor booster rocket and Agena ballistic capsule , these planet rely on a pair of five pes longsighted stereoscopic Itek television camera using 12 - column inch , f/5 triplet lenses and a 24 - inch focal duration ( late models also incorporated a third “ index ” photographic camera for reference ) . The former cameras could achieve a 40 - foot firmness of purpose . By KH-3 , optical advance decrease that figure to 20 foot . afterward missionary work continued to halve the declaration until researchers were capable to dissolve one - pes full objects , realized that that was way too close-fitting to be of any strategical role and backed off to a more doable 3 - foot resolution .
They were fed a particular Eastman Kodak 70 millimeter film that produce 170 lines per mm — more than three times the 50 lines / mm resolution in the first place WWII aerial photography could compose . The first Coronas carried a paltry 8,000 feet of film — per camera — though through improvements in the picture show chemical science and intention reduced the material thickness , research worker were finally able to double that amount . The cameras themselves underwent numerous upgrades as well , elongate to nine feet and incorporating bird’s-eye Petzval f/3.5 lens .
Once the camera had pass through its full complement of film , it would eject the roll via a reentry capsule designed by General Electric . After the capsule discarded its rut shield at 60,000 feet , it deploy a parachute and could either be nabbed by a passing sheet fit with a claw hook shot ( above ) or land safely in the sea where it would float for two days awaiting pick-me-up . If the capsule was n’t retrieved within 48 hours , a salt male plug at the bottom of the tin would fade away and settle it . If it was clean up in time , the flick would be transported to Rochester , New York , for processing at Eastman Kodak ’s Hawkeye facility .
The Argon Program
The KH-5 ARGON ran in conjunction with Corona from 1961 to 1964 , though never with the same level of achiever . These 1150 – 1500 kilo satellite manufacture by Lockheed Martin and operated by the NR used a single 76 mm focal length tv camera with a 140 time resolution were operated primarily for map - qualification — they were the first to image Antarctica from distance — and took less than a week to create . Of the 12 flight attempted , however , only five successfully put the unit in orbit .
The Lanyard Program
The KH-6 Lanyard program was the NRO ’s first attempt at high definition photography but survive just six months and three launches in 1963 , two of which failed to produce persona . These 1500 kg Lockheed satellites were hurriedly construct using the previously - cancelled Itek “ E-5 ” camera so as to survey a rumored anti - ballistic projectile land site nearTallinn , Estonia . The E-5 had a 66 - inch focal length and six foot solution covering a 9 x 46 mile area . The only successful flight returned 910 photographic frames . However , the image quality was so inadequate that they were virtually useless .
The Gambit Program
out of doors of the Corona program , America ’s initial attempts at satellite picture - reconnaissance failed more often than not . The KH-7 and KH-8 serial publication , codenamed Gambit , were a pronounced going from that trend and the only other predominantly successful orbiter ISR program in the 1960s . This 3,000 kg Low Altitude Surveillance Platform develop by Lockheed flew just 75 mile up ( Coronas orbited at 100 miles ) and operate for intimately two decades from 1964 to 1984 . No few than 54 such satellite launch ( these things only worked for three months , tops ) from Vandenberg AFB aboard Titan III rockets during that time .
Eastman Kodak ’s A&O Division in Rochester , New York , produced the Gambit ’s primary strip camera system . With a focal length of 175.6 inches , a 6.3 kilometer wide coverage area , and 3 - animal foot resolution , the KH-8 was ideal for gathering high - resoluteness images of Soviet sites . Unlike conventional aperture tv camera , the Gambit ’s slit camera reflected light off of a 48 - in mirror , through a snatch aperture , and on to a move length of Eastman Kodak Type 3404 celluloid . It would then either send packing the roll as the Coronas did or automatically grow the photographs , scan them , and channelize the image back to Earth in as little as 20 minutes through the Film Read - Out GAMBIT ( FROG ) feature of speech ( though after $ 2 billion dollars and nearly a decade of development the 1971 administration nix(on)ed it ) .
In addition to keeping tabs on Soviet air capability , Gambit was also designed to snap the spacecraft around it . This power come in in handy in 1973 . The brand new Skylab had just launched when its meteoroid shield broke loose and damaged the space post . As NASA scrambled to send off up a manned fixing mission , the National Reconnaissance Office launched a new Gambit , which click this characterization and helped NASA engineers plan accordingly .
The HEXAGON Program
The KH-9 HEXAGON was , by all accounts , an unmitigated achiever with 19 of its 20 launches make orbit between 1971 and 1986 . This $ 3.262 billion Lockheed - built NRO programme is officially view as a Broad Coverage Photo Reconnaissance satellite but is better known as “ Big Bird . ” And while its existence was n’t revealed until 2011 , the programme dates back to the 1960s as a successor to the Corona plan .
The first generation of HEXAGON employed a pair of f/3.0 fold Wright Camera photographic camera with a 60 - column inch focal length able to decide objects down to 2 feet and carry four re - entry vehicle . The last three generation boast a pair of panoramic tv camera as well as upgraded electronics , C&C systems and nitrogen - ply re - entranceway canisters . They also a began surviving longer . Most undercover agent satellites have very limited life story spans — two to three months — and once they ’re out of cinema they have no further purpose . But with ever increasing film load , the final iteration of the KH-9 lasted 275 day in blank space . Between 1973 and 1980 , these satellite visualise every square foot of the Earth in 29,000 pictures , much of it better timbre than LANDSAT , a rival planet mapping programme . Most of these images have been declassify since 2002 , though sore expanse such as government installation and most of Israel remain tightly guard .
The KENNAN Program
The KH-11 KENNAN is the most advanced recon satellite to be unclassified . First launch in 1976 by the NRO , it ’s the first US planet to employ an EO digital sensing element and charge - match equipment ( CCD ) , which reportedly provides an Enemy of the State - style material - time reflection capability . Very slight is known about the artificial satellite ’s hardware though many have excogitate that its some the same size of it as the Hubble Space Telescope with a similar 2.4 - metre mirror producing a six inch resolve . There ’s also wide of the mark speculation that the KH-11 is the source of images declassified in the Wake Island of the 1998 embassy bombings , as well as others of China and Russia declassified the year prior . The persona the CIA used to find Osama bin Laden ’s hideout were reportedly supplied by the KENNAN . Fifteen KH-11 ’s have been launched in full — nine between 1976 and 1990 aboard Titan-3D rockets , five between 1992 and 2005 aboard Titan IVs , and the final one in 2011 aboard a Delta IV — at an estimated cost of $ 2.2 to 3 billion .
The end of the Cold War certainly put a damper on reconnaissance mission satellite funding , as did the ascension of commercial-grade satellite engineering science , but it remains a staple of our intelligence service gathering resources . The technology has also found new use of goods and services in cater tactical information to ground troops ( not having to catch film canisters with sky hooks facilitate ) . Satellite imagery was first used in 1991 during Desert Shield and again in Iraq , Bosnia , Kosovo , and Afghanistan ( above ) .
[ Raytheon – NRO – FAS1,2 – Wiki1,2,3,4,5 – Oneonta – Images : NRO , CIA , NASA ]
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