Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s

[Blackstar]

Leach recorders.

Interesting Lockheed were the only alternative, and iirc you said they bought Leach eventually ?

Yes, I believe so.

[LittleBird]

I'm confused (with all the SIGINT codewords and program names/numbers).   

STRAWMAN had the CONVOY payload tailored for ABM radar intercepts. Was P-113 in addition to CONVOY? Were the P-113 detachable free-flying P-11s?

P-113 does not seem to be detachable, as the structure has the same shape as REAPER in front of it. Especially as no other objects appeared in orbit.

Thanks. Thus P-113 was permanently attached to the side of the mounting of the big deployable umbrella-type antenna for HARVESTER?

Did we ever get any clarity about the mysterious P-113 payload on STRAWMAN ?

[LittleBird]

I'm confused (with all the SIGINT codewords and program names/numbers).   

STRAWMAN had the CONVOY payload tailored for ABM radar intercepts. Was P-113 in addition to CONVOY? Were the P-113 detachable free-flying P-11s?

P-113 does not seem to be detachable, as the structure has the same shape as REAPER in front of it. Especially as no other objects appeared in orbit.

Thanks. Thus P-113 was permanently attached to the side of the mounting of the big deployable umbrella-type antenna for HARVESTER?

Did we ever get any clarity about the mysterious P-113 payload on STRAWMAN ?

And while on subject of HARVESTER, perhaps somebody should tell the NRO that 3 documents seem not to have uploaded ? One is https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/SIGINTphaseIII/SC-2017-00004_C05098891.pdf
titled "Project HARVESTER-a proposal for an intercept system on Program 770".

The other two seem to be ...5098860 and ...5098879.

[LittleBird]

Always interesting to be reminded how far the technological basis for SIGINT has come. Here's an analogue to digital converter  from RCA in Electronics magazine in 1962. It can handle 3 input channels, has 6 bit output for each, a 5 KHz sampling frequency, and uses, wonderfully, ferrite "transfluxors".

[Blackstar]

I am working on an article about the collection of intelligence on Soviet ABM programs during the 1960s and 1970s. There were a lot of satellites that had a primary ABM detection capability, and others that had it as a secondary capability. My article will highlight that a lot of attention went into this subject during that time period.

But I've gotten confused (again) by the mission designations. What were these missions?

OTHER P-11 SATELLITES
7308 NAME?
7314 NAME?
7315 NAME?
7318 NAME?

[Skyrocket]

OTHER P-11 SATELLITES
7308 NAME?
7314 NAME?
7315 NAME?
7318 NAME?

7308 = TRIPOS I (with 7307 FANION I)
7314 = SAMPAN I (with 7315 SOUSEA I)
7315 = SOUSEA I (with 7314 SAMPAN I)
7318 = TRIPOS II (with 7317 FANION II)

[Blackstar]

7308 = TRIPOS I (with 7307 FANION I)
7314 = SAMPAN I (with 7315 SOUSEA I)
7315 = SOUSEA I (with 7314 SAMPAN I)
7318 = TRIPOS II (with 7317 FANION II)

Thank you. These were the early "pencil beam" ABM detection satellites. There were a bunch that then followed up on these earlier missions. There are several ways to count things, but at least a couple of dozen satellites launched in the 1960s had some kind of ABM detection mission, and maybe a dozen had it as a primary detection mission. That's a lot of assets to throw at a problem.

[Blackstar]

And while on subject of HARVESTER, perhaps somebody should tell the NRO that 3 documents seem not to have uploaded ? One is https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/SIGINTphaseIII/SC-2017-00004_C05098891.pdf
titled "Project HARVESTER-a proposal for an intercept system on Program 770".

The other two seem to ...5098860 and ...5098879.

I filed a FOIA for them. Hopefully they will fix soon. That kind of thing has happened before. Some kind of glitch when they upload.

They're still not uploaded, apparently. What were the titles of the other two documents?

[Blackstar]

And while on subject of HARVESTER, perhaps somebody should tell the NRO that 3 documents seem not to have uploaded ? One is https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/SIGINTphaseIII/SC-2017-00004_C05098891.pdf
titled "Project HARVESTER-a proposal for an intercept system on Program 770".

The other two seem to ...5098860 and ...5098879.

I filed a FOIA for them. Hopefully they will fix soon. That kind of thing has happened before. Some kind of glitch when they upload.

They're still not uploaded, apparently. What were the titles of the other two documents?

I don't know, I just had them as zero length in the helpfully archived set on jcm's site. Can't now see where I got title of 98891 from.

Yeah, my problem was that I only had the document numbers, not the document titles. As previously noted, I submitted a FOIA to NRO for those three documents and hoped they would be easy to upload, considering that they have already been declassified.

Once they get uploaded, I'll trim this thread and delete my comments about them missing.

[Blackstar]

I don't expect anybody to have an answer to this, but I just noticed this deletion. Vulnerability detection payloads were mounted on satellites to determine of the Soviet Union was tracking them with radar or trying to take over their commands. I'm surprised that something from the early years remains deleted.

[hoku]

I don't expect anybody to have an answer to this, but I just noticed this deletion. Vulnerability detection payloads were mounted on satellites to determine of the Soviet Union was tracking them with radar or trying to take over their commands. I'm surprised that something from the early years remains deleted.

Maybe just one of the inconsistencies in the declassification process?

"Otex", e.g., has been redacted in one doc of the 2017 release, and spelled out in another.

[Blackstar]

Maybe just one of the inconsistencies in the declassification process?

I am maintaining that as a possibility.

[LittleBird]

"Otex", e.g., has been redacted in one doc of the 2017 release, and spelled out in another.

Perhaps they’ve realised the secret is out ;-) https://www.otexear.com/

[LittleBird]

Meanwhile some interesting things there in Hoku's grabs.

i) I recall that Blackstar had written about Mercury Grass, but I'd forgotten (if I knew) that it was a target as early as 1964 for Opporknockity.

ii) Interesting to see explicitly that launch pad telemetry was indeed the mission of Pundit-again I am sure we'd seen this but possibly not spelled out in a table.

[LittleBird]

Prompted by a remark of Blackstar's in my ATS-6 thread about the pros and cons of "joining the dots" I thought it might be good to explain in this more relevant thread why I think that pinning down the CANYON antenna as being 20ft in diameter actually tells us several, to my mind important, things.

But first a reminder of where we were 5 years ago, and yes I was that "little bird"

[LittleBird]

Prompted by a remark of Blackstar's in my ATS-6 thread about the pros and cons of "joining the dots" I thought it might be good to explain in this more relevant thread why I think that pinning down the CANYON antenna as being 20ft in diameter actually tells us several, to my mind important, things.

But first a reminder of where we were 5 years ago, and yes I was that "little bird"

First thing to note is that a 20ft dish, scaled down from the packaged size of the later ATS-6 variant, neatly explains how CANYON was squeezed into the rather narrow 5 ft diameter Agena shroud, in stark contrast to the very long nose needed for RHYOLITE's dish-described by an eyewitness as a "French umbrella".

More to follow.

[Blackstar]

Prompted by a remark of Blackstar's in my ATS-6 thread about the pros and cons of "joining the dots" I thought it might be good to explain in this more relevant thread why I think that pinning down the CANYON antenna as being 20ft in diameter actually tells us several, to my mind important, things.

I really touched a nerve, huh?

But let me be clearer about this--I have a problem with using the same investigative techniques that we were forced to use 40+ years ago because there was nothing else available and somehow thinking that they tell us much of value. If all you have is crumbs, then you eat the crumbs. But you cannot call it a meal.

And this doesn't tell us what intelligence was collected, how it was used, what value it provided. Knowing that the dish was 20 feet in diameter instead of 18 feet diameter isn't that revelatory. It doesn't really answer the "So what?" question very well. And to return to my analogy, why spend time eating the crumbs when there's a smorgasbord available to dive in to?

[LittleBird]

Prompted by a remark of Blackstar's in my ATS-6 thread about the pros and cons of "joining the dots" I thought it might be good to explain in this more relevant thread why I think that pinning down the CANYON antenna as being 20ft in diameter actually tells us several, to my mind important, things.

I really touched a nerve, huh?

But let me be clearer about this--I have a problem with using the same investigative techniques that we were forced to use 40+ years ago because there was nothing else available and somehow thinking that they tell us much of value. If all you have is crumbs, then you eat the crumbs. But you cannot call it a meal.

And this doesn't tell us what intelligence was collected, how it was used, what value it provided. Knowing that the dish was 20 feet in diameter instead of 18 feet diameter isn't that revelatory. It doesn't really answer the "So what?" question very well. And to return to my analogy, why spend time eating the crumbs when there's a smorgasbord available to dive in to?

Why ? Well, as the French say, "à chacun son goût". I am not seeking to tell _you_ what to do with your time, merely seeking to explain why still I think the 20ft number is more interesting than you evidently do ...

... And because I have been curious about CANYON since I was started reading Spaceflight in the mid 70s and had no idea what these weird GEO Atlas-Agena launches were ...

... and because I don't actually expect to live long enough to see it declassified and am still curious (though I hope to be wrong about that) ...

... and because, old friend, while I have found your work hugely enjoyable and stimulating over 30-odd years, at the end of the day I can't help but follow my own nose rather than yours. I can't actually improve on Annie Dillard's words:

"People love pretty much the same things best. A writer, though, looking for subjects asks not after what he loves best, but what he alone loves at all… Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There’s something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."

which accurately capture how I felt reading about GEO SIGINT for the first time in the mid 80s, in the work of Ball and Richelson in particular ... and how I still feel about what will one day perhaps be recognised as one of the most extraordinary engineering feats of all time.

Anyway, some more examples, as promised, with more thoughts later as "day job" permits.

i) 20 ft has a lower "light grasp" (or its radio equivalent), but a larger field of view than a 30 ft dish. This is very well explained at  https://satelliteobservation.net/

It is thus trading off between sensitivity and field of view. This helps explain why a GEO COMINT dish designed to survey large areas of the USSR's microwave network would  actually be as _small_ as possible, even in CANYON's unusual orbit, whereas a GEO TELINT dish targeted at a few known ranges would be larger.

It also explains why NASA's 30 ft dish on ATS-6 would be both v useful as a test, with VORTEX in the near future, but somewhat nerve-racking for the NRO, as it would bring in weaker signals but over a narrower region.

It *may* even explain why even 60 odd years later the two dishes on Orion seem to be one of roughly RHYOLITE size, and one of roughly CANYON size, see https://satelliteobservation.net/2017/09/24/a-radiotelescope-in-the-sky-the-usa-202-orion-satellite/ though there's no reason to believe one is now exclusively for COMINT and one for TELINT.

[Jim]

It *may* even explain why even 60 odd years later the two dishes on Orion seem to be one of roughly RHYOLITE size, and one of roughly CANYON size, see https://satelliteobservation.net/2017/09/24/a-radiotelescope-in-the-sky-the-usa-202-orion-satellite/ though there's no reason to believe one is now exclusively for COMINT and one for TELINT.

Length 1 is off.   The Titan IV fairing was 16.7 feet in diameter so it could hold a 15 foot diameter payload with rattle space.   A true octagon  with a 15' diagonal would have a side of 13.9' (4.2m). A true square with a 15' diagonal would have a side of 10.6' (3.2m).  The bus is closer to the true octagon than square.  Plus the bus in the image looks oblong, so there is some distortion.

[WallE]

... and because I don't actually expect to live long enough to see it declassified and am still curious (though I hope to be wrong about that)

Have patience, remember it wasn't very long ago that the initial 60s ELINT programs were declassified (well ok GRAB was 1998). The 70s will be gotten to eventually I'm sure, while also noting that declassifying anything isn't free and it does take time, money, and personnel. Then consider the interesting fact that CANYON was publicly acknowledged as far back as 1990 while POPPY wasn't until 2012 (why, who knows?)

I think HEXAGON was the quickest ever NRO program between last launch and declassification (25 years, really 27 since that was the last successful launch in the program).

It *may* even explain why even 60 odd years later the two dishes on Orion seem to be one of roughly RHYOLITE size, and one of roughly CANYON size, see https://satelliteobservation.net/2017/09/24/a-radiotelescope-in-the-sky-the-usa-202-orion-satellite/ though there's no reason to believe one is now exclusively for COMINT and one for TELINT.

I would think with modern electronics there's no need for two separate COMINT and TELINT satellites and they can be folded into one system. Those 70s satellites predated microprocessor electronics, after all.