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General Discussion => Historical Spaceflight => Topic started by: Blackstar on 05/16/2016 10:37 pm

Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/16/2016 10:37 pm
http://thespacereview.com/article/2985/1

That’ll do, DONKEY, that’ll do

by Dwayne Day
Monday, May 16, 2016


When the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program started in late 1963, it was going to be an incredibly complex machine: both a human space station and a collection of military experiments and equipment for performing an operational intelligence collection mission. The centerpiece of MOL was going to be a large optics system for conducting photoreconnaissance, code-named DORIAN. But MOL would also operate other intelligence equipment, including a signals intelligence system. Over the next several years, as MOL moved from concepts and studies to becoming blueprints and designs, its managers began to realize how complicated it was and sought to simplify and streamline the spacecraft. In 1965, they decided to eliminate a communications intelligence collection payload called DONKEY. But although the mule might have taken a kick, it didn’t roll over. DONKEY still found a way to fly, the only MOL system that did.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/16/2016 10:38 pm
I'll be writing more articles on American sigint satellites in the next few months. More on the Agena ferrets, AFTRACK, as well as the P-11 subsats.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edkyle99 on 05/16/2016 11:59 pm
Interesting that that extra fairing part extended down past the regular payload shroud to the side of a portion of Agena itself.  It seems to have extended over the Agena forward section, which housed guidance and other equipment.  Perhaps DONKEY had systems mounted in the equipment racks available in that area.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2016 12:13 am
I suspect that it may also have had to do with clearance issues--they mounted it on the side in order to fold out the dish far enough. I need to get a photo of the actual payload without fairing, but this thing was packed with antennas--four that folded out, plus probably up to four others on the front.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 01:17 am
Good read. Sounds like an ideal system to boost to a molniya orbit.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2016 01:47 am
Good read. Sounds like an ideal system to boost to a molniya orbit.

I think this ended up as part of the CANYON mission. If I remember correctly, CANYON had a slightly inclined orbit that allowed it to slowly move in and out of the line of sight of microwave transmitters and suck up their signals.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 03:42 am
If it was working off the side lobes, it might have needed to change geometry a little to pick up different microwave relays. While they radiate out the side lobes, there are null locations that radiate nothing. No one position would have been perfect for every tower.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 08:31 am
Good read. Sounds like an ideal system to boost to a molniya orbit.

I think this ended up as part of the CANYON mission. If I remember correctly, CANYON had a slightly inclined orbit that allowed it to slowly move in and out of the line of sight of microwave transmitters and suck up their signals.

Curious that the name CANYON is still classified long after optical reconnaissance payloads that are far newer have been fully declassified.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2016 09:55 am
Good read. Sounds like an ideal system to boost to a molniya orbit.

I think this ended up as part of the CANYON mission. If I remember correctly, CANYON had a slightly inclined orbit that allowed it to slowly move in and out of the line of sight of microwave transmitters and suck up their signals.

Curious that the name CANYON is still classified long after optical reconnaissance payloads that are far newer have been fully declassified.

Not really if you consider their policy. They have treated the sigint stuff more seriously than the photo stuff. For instance, they declassified Corona in 1995 and GRAB in 1998, but even after declassifying GRAB, they only released minimal information on it. They have treated high altitude sigint as more sensitive than low altitude sigint.

And for all of this stuff their general rule of thumb seems to be that they won't even consider declassifying a program until at least 25 years after the program ceased producing data. The last CANYON as launched in 1977. If it operated for 10 years they would not even have started considering declassifying it until 2013.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 01:28 pm
Good read. Sounds like an ideal system to boost to a molniya orbit.

I think this ended up as part of the CANYON mission. If I remember correctly, CANYON had a slightly inclined orbit that allowed it to slowly move in and out of the line of sight of microwave transmitters and suck up their signals.

Curious that the name CANYON is still classified long after optical reconnaissance payloads that are far newer have been fully declassified.

Not really if you consider their policy. They have treated the sigint stuff more seriously than the photo stuff. For instance, they declassified Corona in 1995 and GRAB in 1998, but even after declassifying GRAB, they only released minimal information on it. They have treated high altitude sigint as more sensitive than low altitude sigint.

And for all of this stuff their general rule of thumb seems to be that they won't even consider declassifying a program until at least 25 years after the program ceased producing data. The last CANYON as launched in 1977. If it operated for 10 years they would not even have started considering declassifying it until 2013.

Very interesting. I've seen you quote that 25 year rule before, but there does seem to be some flexibility in it as little bits and pieces have started appearing about the KH-11 in recent years and that's still in use.

I honestly thought by now we might have heard a bit about the first generation NOSS satellites and the earlier LACROSSE. I wonder where radar reconnaissance falls in the general scheme of things on classification as like optical reconnaissance you do see civilian equivalents with radar earth resources satellites.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2016 01:42 pm
I wonder where radar reconnaissance falls in the general scheme of things on classification as like optical reconnaissance you do see civilian equivalents with radar earth resources satellites.

Look at QUILL--flown once in 1964, but they did not declassify it until 2014.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 02:24 pm
I would argue that understanding what optical satellites do is pretty straight forward. SIGINT is not, and the reason they are dragging feet as much as possible is telling how they work lets people understand and counter it. You kind of know if something can or can not be seen from space and if you should or could hide it ... but if you don't know something is emitting critical data, you can not mask it.

For instance in the case of DONKEY, you have to be pretty sophisticated to understand a Rose plot and realize that a point to point antenna like that is actually exploitable from space.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 05:06 pm
I would argue that understanding what optical satellites do is pretty straight forward. SIGINT is not, and the reason they are dragging feet as much as possible is telling how they work lets people understand and counter it. You kind of know if something can or can not be seen from space and if you should or could hide it ... but if you don't know something is emitting critical data, you can not mask it.

For instance in the case of DONKEY, you have to be pretty sophisticated to understand a Rose plot and realize that a point to point antenna like that is actually exploitable from space.

Would you say your explanation is also applicable to radar reconnaissance as well?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 06:32 pm
Would you say your explanation is also applicable to radar reconnaissance as well?
Who knows. RADAR comes in so many forms.

Remember one of the arguments against QUILL was you where no longer passively attempting to acquire information. Pointing a RADAR beam at someone can be construed as an aggressive act. It also tells someone on the ground that you are interested in them. Passive systems, like optical and SIGINT do not give themselves away like that. You have to assume if the satellite is in the sky, it is looking at you. 

Here is a fun one, old analog systems swept a beam across the target (unless they locked on to it) at regular intervals. The AESA beam can be randomly pointed at different locations in it's field of view at any point in time. That means instead of getting a repeating blip at a set interval you can query an object of interest at random intervals with just enough power to return the information you desire while steering the beam away from areas that you do not want it to query. AKA a stealthy sweep, that may not be picked up, or just ignored as spurious noise... It was one of the things talked about in some of the av week articles on the "RQ-180", what ever that really is.
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 08:06 pm
Would you say your explanation is also applicable to radar reconnaissance as well?
Who knows. RADAR comes in so many forms.

Remember one of the arguments against QUILL was you where no longer passively attempting to acquire information. Pointing a RADAR beam at someone can be construed as an aggressive act. It also tells someone on the ground that you are interested in them. Passive systems, like optical and SIGINT do not give themselves away like that. You have to assume if the satellite is in the sky, it is looking at you. 

Here is a fun one, old analog systems swept a beam across the target (unless they locked on to it) at regular intervals. The AESA beam can be randomly pointed at different locations in it's field of view at any point in time. That means instead of getting a repeating blip at a set interval you can query an object of interest at random intervals with just enough power to return the information you desire while steering the beam away from areas that you do not want it to query. AKA a stealthy sweep, that may not be picked up, or just ignored as spurious noise... It was one of the things talked about in some of the av week articles on the "RQ-180", what ever that really is.

That's interesting.

Did you also see the speculation about LACROSSE 5 when that bizarre business (I say this because it's not generally the done thing to publish photos of each other's spy satellites) of a Russian observatory having pictures of them that appeared online and it turned out it had a different shaped main antenna compared to the others in the series?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 05/17/2016 08:14 pm
What was so special about the antenna shape?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 08:25 pm
What was so special about the antenna shape?

The others were round it wasn't.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 08:26 pm
Earlier versions where a round dish, the newer model was a flat rectangular plate. AKA some sort of phased array antennae.

Edit: Source; http://aero.tamu.edu/sites/default/files/images/Alfriend/S4%203%20Aleshin.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2016 08:28 pm
Earlier versions where a round dish, the newer model was a flat rectangular plate. AKA some sort of phased array antennae.

I wonder if that accounts for its so called disappearing trick that satellite observers have noticed over the years.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 08:32 pm
I wonder if that accounts for its so called disappearing trick that satellite observers have noticed over the years.
Nah, must be aliens ;)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 05/17/2016 08:37 pm
Interesting. It seems to me that most civilian high-resolution satellites use flat antennas too. If I recall my SAR lessons correctly, it's because antennas that are short in one direction have a higher resolution when doing SAR.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/17/2016 08:56 pm
Like SeaSat...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2016 09:18 pm
That SeaSat image is similar to the Agena signals intelligence satellites like MULTIGROUP and STRAWMAN. Pointed down, antennas sticking out the front.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: plutogno on 05/18/2016 11:09 am
minor correction to Blackstar's article

Quote
The Agena was an all-around workhorse that served both as the second stage for Thor and Agena rockets

you surely meant Thor and Atlas
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/18/2016 01:40 pm
I would have loved to see a two stage Agena!
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edkyle99 on 05/18/2016 08:53 pm
minor correction to Blackstar's article

Quote
The Agena was an all-around workhorse that served both as the second stage for Thor and Agena rockets

you surely meant Thor and Atlas

Brain glitch.

Fixed now. Thanks.

Even after looking at it over five times, I missed that.
Don't forget Titan!  Titan 3B/Agena. 

Maybe a Star motor has flown on top of three different launch vehicles, but I can't think of a liquid stage that pulled the trick except Agena.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 05/18/2016 09:08 pm
Centaur came very close... Well if you count Atlas V as a different vehicle, then three, almost four.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edkyle99 on 05/18/2016 09:27 pm
Centaur came very close... Well if you count Atlas V as a different vehicle, then three, almost four.
Good point.  Balloon tank Atlas.  Solid-boosted Titan.  Common Core Booster Atlas.  That's three basic launch vehicle types.  Vulcan-Centaur will be Number Four, beating Agena's record. 

I was working at KSC when they brought the first Shuttle Centaur into the VPF.  We nearly flew that one.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/18/2016 09:51 pm
Don't forget Titan!  Titan 3B/Agena. 

Maybe a Star motor has flown on top of three different launch vehicles, but I can't think of a liquid stage that pulled the trick except Agena.

I was not trying to be exhaustive.

But Agena was a real workhorse--not only upper stage, but provided power, stabilization and other support for a LOT of different payloads. The information released on the Agena signals intelligence satellites is not very exhaustive, but does indicate that they used gravity gradient stabilization. The Agena pitched over and then stayed that way without any active input. However, later on they discovered that the satellites were nodding slightly, affected by the Earth's magnetic field. It is possible that they had been doing this all along, but the payload accuracy was not high enough for it to show up in the telemetry at first. They corrected the problem with magnets.

Magnets: there's nothing they can't do.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: PDJennings on 05/18/2016 09:57 pm

Maybe a Star motor has flown on top of three different launch vehicles, but I can't think of a liquid stage that pulled the trick except Agena.

 - Ed Kyle

Block D
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/20/2016 10:44 pm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3011/1

The wizard war in orbit (part 1)
Early American signals intelligence satellites

by Dwayne Day
Monday, June 20, 2016


Tales of espionage are filled with lanky men in trenchcoats walking through cold Berlin streets at the height of the Cold War. But the most important intelligence—in terms of volume and reliability—was gathered by reconnaissance satellites far overhead. These satellites were precise, they collected vast amounts of information, and unlike spies, they did not forget, embellish, lie, or go rogue. Photographic reconnaissance satellites like CORONA, GAMBIT, HEXAGON, and KENNEN were in many ways the most prolific spooks. But they were also accompanied by other satellites, signals intelligence, or SIGINT, satellites that listened for the electronic whispers of radars and radios, engaged in a high-tech war of electrons against an enemy that could vanish and emerge at will.

During the Cold War the United States intelligence community gathered signals intelligence from the Soviet Union via a variety of means. These included ground stations, cable-tapping and bugging operations, airborne platforms such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint and RB-47 Stratojet, and signals intelligence satellites. Any history of SIGINT satellite operations during the Cold War is going to be limited in scope because much of the story remains classified, and unlike the reconnaissance photographs, signals intelligence is an arcane and esoteric subject.

In 1998, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which develops and operates intelligence satellites, declassified the first signals intelligence satellite named GRAB, which was launched in April 1960. GRAB was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NSL) in Washington, DC, and part of the NRL was later subsumed as a component of the super-secret NRO. In 2007 the NRO declassified the follow-on to GRAB, named POPPY. But both of these declassification actions were limited, leaving out many major details such as the appearance of some of the satellites, the variety and types of signals they collected, and even how long they operated. The NRO released further details in dribs and drabs over the next several years, but GRAB and POPPY operations remained shrouded in a certain amount of mystery and confusion. But while the GRAB and POPPY revelations were significant, the reality was that they represented only a small part of the story. Throughout the 1960s the NRO operated many other SIGINT satellites and platforms, most developed by the US Air Force, and these remained shrouded in secrecy. Until now.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 06/21/2016 05:45 pm
I really enjoyed the article. Thanks
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/21/2016 05:46 pm
Was a good one. Thanks Blackstar.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 06/21/2016 05:52 pm
Ditto, looking forward to the rest of the series.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 06/21/2016 06:01 pm
I think I'm most looking forward to part five ;)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/21/2016 06:40 pm
I still keep hoping they'll declassify something about the first generation of NOSS satellites as they are something of an enigma.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/21/2016 07:26 pm
I still keep hoping they'll declassify something about the first generation of NOSS satellites as they are something of an enigma.

I have more info leading into their development and what they were trying to do.

I'm much more interested in JUMPSEAT. I have info on that, but I'd really like to get the detailed story.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Hobbes-22 on 06/21/2016 07:32 pm
Interesting. It seems to me that most civilian high-resolution satellites use flat antennas too. If I recall my SAR lessons correctly, it's because antennas that are short in one direction have a higher resolution when doing SAR.

You may be conflating two things:
Classical reflector (parabolic section) antennas are often short in one direction. On Earth, that can be useful for a search radar: your radar beam is narrow but high, covering all altitudes at once, but giving good resolution in the horizontal direction. 

When you use a phased array, all that no longer applies. You control the beam by coordinating the transmission of each element, using all or part of the array as you wish. Square or rectangular is no longer an issue.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 06/21/2016 09:23 pm
You may be conflating two things:
Classical reflector (parabolic section) antennas are often short in one direction. On Earth, that can be useful for a search radar: your radar beam is narrow but high, covering all altitudes at once, but giving good resolution in the horizontal direction. 

When you use a phased array, all that no longer applies. You control the beam by coordinating the transmission of each element, using all or part of the array as you wish. Square or rectangular is no longer an issue.
That's not what I remember from my college Microwave Antenna design course. But it's been decades. For a phased array all elements are radiating and you steer the beam through constructive and destructive phase interference. It is the phase (Delay) of each element that you control to steer the beam/pulse. As far as square and rectangular go, the dimensions of the array have a large effect on the shape and compactness of the beam. That said, I'm not a microwave engineer, and the elder Bush was president the last time I looked at it... 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/22/2016 12:38 am
The title of this thread is "Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s" and yet for some odd reason over half of the posts here seem to be about synthetic aperture radar.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/27/2016 11:23 am
Part 2 in my series on American signals intelligence satellites of the 1960 will appear later today. It is about AFTRACK. Only one poor quality AFTRACK payload photo has been released. However, we have a bunch of photos of Agenas being processed and their AFTRACK payloads are probably visible, if only we knew what they looked like. I think that the gray box in the top photo may be TAKI and/or SOCTOP. TAKI was a signals intelligence payload designed to intercept Soviet Tall King air surveillance radars.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/27/2016 10:31 pm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3017/1

The wizard war in orbit (part 2)
Black black boxes
by Dwayne Day
Monday, June 27, 2016

By fall 1959, a number of CORONA photo-reconnaissance spacecraft had already been launched under cover of the Discoverer program, but none had operated successfully. Program officials became concerned that the Agena spacecraft that carried CORONA might be vulnerable to tracking by Soviet radars, or possibly even deliberate electronic interference. They did not think this explained CORONA’s early string of failures, but it was a possibility they worried about. At the time, Harold Willis was working in the Office of ELINT located at CIA Headquarters when CORONA officials briefed him about their program and told him about their concerns.

Willis also learned about the Samos Subsystem F signals intelligence satellite program, which at the time consisted of the F-1 and F-2 payloads. The former was a relatively small payload that would fly attached to a Samos photo-reconnaissance satellite and the latter a larger and more capable payload that would occupy the front end of an Agena spacecraft. Although the specialized F-2 satellite might be able to detect Soviet transmissions or interference, it was then scheduled to fly years after CORONA became operational. Willis thought that the Soviet threat to CORONA and other military satellites could develop sooner and they should not wait for the Samos signals intelligence satellites to provide data. He was not simply worried about problems over the Soviet Union but even far out over the oceans: the Soviets also had ships and trawlers with radomes, and nobody knew what they were for.

Willis discussed his concerns with Lockheed’s Bill Harris, who was working on Subsystem F payloads. Willis concluded that the Agena upper stages carrying CORONA cameras should be equipped with a small payload for detecting Soviet radar tracking or interference with the spacecraft’s S-band beacon. The beacon was used to announce the satellite’s presence to American ground tracking sites so that they could communicate with it. CIA officials approved Willis’ proposal in November 1959. The Agena spacecraft had an aft rack to which instrument boxes could be attached, like a luggage rack on a car. “AFTRACK” became the collective name for a large number of payloads carried on numerous spacecraft during the first half of the 1960s.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/05/2016 09:04 pm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3020/1

The wizard war in orbit (part 3)
SIGINT satellites go to war

by Dwayne A. Day
Tuesday, July 5, 2016

By early 1968, the United States military was involved in an escalating ground and air war in Vietnam. American aircraft were being shot down at the rate of nearly one a day, and Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of North Vietnam, was in full swing as B-52s unloaded racks of bombs over the jungle. The US Air Force was engaged in a constant battle against Vietnamese SA-2 surface to air missiles (SAMs), jamming them and spoofing them, electrons dueling invisibly in the air. American airmen with the job of physically destroying the missiles, going by the name Wild Weasels, went into battle with patches on their shoulders bearing the acronym “YGBSM.” It was reportedly the response of one electronic warfare officer when first told what he would be doing: “You gotta be shittin’ me…” he said. Fighting SAMs was a brutal business, and eventually the US military brought its top secret signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites into the war, using a strategic asset for tactical purposes. That effort followed over a half-decade advance in electronics and spacecraft technology.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 07/07/2016 07:35 pm
Great article. Do you plan to make a part on the geostationary signal intelligence satellites?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/07/2016 07:51 pm
Great article. Do you plan to make a part on the geostationary signal intelligence satellites?

I was not really planning on it. Part 4 is on the P-11 and other subsatellites. Will also touch on CANYON and I may also include JUMPSEAT (I have some info on both). Not sure if I'll go into RHYOLITE. There is minor new info on that, but not a lot. I will also do a separate article on the BIT boxes designed to protect the satellites from interference.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/11/2016 12:31 am
This is the image that accompanied my recent article. I got this declassified and it was exclusive to TSR. Never before seen image of the STRAWMAN satellite.

Whereas many of the payloads are labeled, there are actually two antennas that are NOT labeled. Based upon their positions, it appears as if one of those antennas may have been labeled and the label was deleted for security reasons. I thought at first that this might be CONVOY, but a list of payloads for the STRAWMAN missions indicates that only the first two carried CONVOY and this is clearly a later satellite.

CONVOY was a payload designed to intercept signals associated with an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar. HARVESTER was also designed to intercept signals associated with the SA-5 radar at Tallinn, Estonia. The SA-5 was initially suspected to be an ABM system. So it seems possible that HARVESTER was the follow-on to CONVOY.

Ergo, whatever those two antennas are, they are probably not follow-ons to CONVOY. They're something different. According to Gunter's Space Page "Strawman 4 also carried the RM 19 radiometer payload." I don't know where that information comes from. I also don't know what a radiometer would look like. But maybe that's one of those things here.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 07/11/2016 01:53 pm
This is great.  The Thor "Heavy Elints" were a big mystery to me.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edkyle99 on 07/11/2016 02:23 pm
I'm intrigued by the "Reaper" antenna array.  Were they spiral log periodic or spiral conical antennas?  Spiral log periodics, which have a spiraling antenna conductor on a cone, are broadband and thus might make sense for this application.  Helicals are probably designed for a tighter frequency band.  The drawing suggests cones to me.

Now I'm trying to imagine how a GEO version of this might look.  Big reflector onto an array of antennas, possibly.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/11/2016 05:03 pm
This is great.  The Thor "Heavy Elints" were a big mystery to me.

We have a lot more on them now. "The SIGINT Satellite Story" was my primary source for my series (except for the AFTRACK stuff), but I've pieced together other information as well. The official history has some problems (for instance, referring to mission numbers and also Agena numbers, which is confusing), so you have to patch it together. My suspicion is that now that NRO declassified that chapter of the official history they may release a document collection on the Agena SIGINTS as well, just as they did for Dual Mode GAMBIT, QUILL, AFTRACK and others. Let's keep our fingers crossed, because there are a number of interesting questions that the history raised that I would like to be able to answer. Off the top of my head, here are some of the open questions:

-what were the various payloads for? There are a few that we just don't have any description about.
-what were the frequency ranges in general?
-how did the Agena satellites fit with the other satellites in operation, like POPPY? What was the division of labor and the overlap in their missions?
-how did the Agena work for these satellites? We have a lot of info on the CORONA Agena development, but how did it differ for these satellites?
-what were the configurations for each of the satellites? It appears that each satellite was different, but how?
-what did the satellite payloads look like?
-how did the PENDULUM system work? What was its value?
-what happened to STRAWMAN 5? Was it preserved or scrapped?
-why was the program eliminated? What had changed?

I've got partial answers to a lot of those questions, but nothing definitive. I'd like to nail that down more.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/11/2016 05:07 pm
I'm intrigued by the "Reaper" antenna array. 

So REAPER was apparently primarily a location locator, and at least one sentence in the official history describes it as having sectors. So apparently it looked down and had (maybe) four quadrants. Depending upon where a signal originated, it could localize that signal, figuring out where it was on the Earth.

How it did this stuff is beyond me. There isn't much description in the official history, and I bet that it gets into weird frequency magic, so I'd probably never understand it anyway. Presumably the satellite itself has to know its location fairly precisely in order to pinpoint something on the Earth. But how did the satellite do that? And that goes to the earlier question I posed about the Agena: how did the Agena record north/south/east/west and up and down so that it knew the location of the signals it was picking up?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 07/11/2016 07:13 pm
Ergo, whatever those two antennas are, they are probably not follow-ons to CONVOY. They're something different. According to Gunter's Space Page "Strawman 4 also carried the RM 19 radiometer payload." I don't know where that information comes from. I also don't know what a radiometer would look like. But maybe that's one of those things here.

Some info on the RM-19: http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA051469

"RM-19 - These infrared sensors were packaged and mounted as a secondary payload on an Air Force satellite for the purpose of collecting background data in three different spectral regions. This successful program was performed by Lockheed from start to launch in a period of ten months and required interfacing with the integrating contractor, the SCF and the AFWTR operations."

Here is also some info on the RM-19 payload (although focused on the cryocooler of RM-19 and not the radiometer itself) and the launch month: "July 1971" - with STRAWMAN-4 being the only Air Force launch in July 1971.

https://books.google.de/books?id=YGsbU1XVmG8C&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230&dq=%22RM-19%22+%22radiometer%22+1971&source=bl&ots=QTzmAmpQKp&sig=a3wKhyyIDy7TNu_DxqgA8XJLBq4&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22RM-19%22%20%22radiometer%22%201971&f=false



Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 07/11/2016 08:35 pm
Quote
-how did the PENDULUM system work? What was its value?

Based on your article, I am wondering if it was something they did on the ground to get the radar sites to switch on. You know, hand a pilot the task of zipping over the Vietnamese country side at high speed at a set time to get the radars to switch on while the satellite was overhead.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edkyle99 on 07/11/2016 09:58 pm
I'm intrigued by the "Reaper" antenna array. 

So REAPER was apparently primarily a location locator, and at least one sentence in the official history describes it as having sectors. So apparently it looked down and had (maybe) four quadrants. Depending upon where a signal originated, it could localize that signal, figuring out where it was on the Earth.

How it did this stuff is beyond me. There isn't much description in the official history, and I bet that it gets into weird frequency magic, so I'd probably never understand it anyway. Presumably the satellite itself has to know its location fairly precisely in order to pinpoint something on the Earth. But how did the satellite do that? And that goes to the earlier question I posed about the Agena: how did the Agena record north/south/east/west and up and down so that it knew the location of the signals it was picking up?
Whenever an array of antennas is used, it becomes possible through various means to detect the direction of an incoming signal.  With some methods it is possible to do this without moving the antenna array itself.  Transmitted signals can also be aimed in specific directions by arrays.  Today's phased array radar is an example of the technique.  It is all black magic to most of us who are not antenna experts.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/12/2016 02:35 am
Quote
-how did the PENDULUM system work? What was its value?

Based on your article, I am wondering if it was something they did on the ground to get the radar sites to switch on. You know, hand a pilot the task of zipping over the Vietnamese country side at high speed at a set time to get the radars to switch on while the satellite was overhead.

PENDULUM was the code name for the activity of taking data collected from MULTIGROUP and later STRAWMAN satellites on the location of SA-2 emitters and putting it in the hands of people in Vietnam planning airstrikes. There is not much about it in the official history. However, I noticed that the time that it was implemented corresponded with the time when LBJ halted bombing North Vietnam, restricting airstrikes to below the 19th parallel (the border). My guess is that before LBJ did this, the USAF had a lot of assets over North Vietnam and that is how they detected the SA-2s. After the halt, they had much worse data on the SA-2 locations, so the satellites were used to provide some of that data. Probably not extremely useful, because the satellites were not overhead much. But every little bit helped.

Questions related to that include how did they do it? What was the equipment they used? How did they deal with the security requirement? How good was it in terms of accuracy?

The broader context is that it was rare to use "national" intelligence systems to support tactical battlefield requirements. So revealing PENDULUM is a surprise. I know of few other early uses of national level systems like this in the 1960s and 1970s.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/12/2016 06:14 pm
Following up on PENDULUM:

What I don't have a good handle on is how the USAF hunted for the locations of SAM sites in North Vietnam. I know that in general Wild Weasel strike aircraft operated with other aircraft, like EB-66 Destroyers, to find the SAM sites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_B-66_Destroyer

I think that the EB-66s recorded radar signals and used direction finding techniques to figure out the location of the emitters. Then this data was fed back to command centers, along with data collected from lots of other sources, like other aircraft, U-2s, and photo reconnaissance. But I don't know how it was all coordinated. I assume that there was some component of the command centers that specifically had the task of identifying North Vietnamese air defenses and SAMs in particular. And the PENDULUM information would have gone to that component, probably in a classified manner with careful "need to know." So while everybody in the SAM location and hunting component might have had secret level clearances, there might have been a couple of guys who had clearances to know about the PENDULUM data--or at least cleared to know what it was. They might have then gone into the plotting room and said "We have data from PENDULUM that shows SAMs here, here and here..." Nobody else would know what PENDULUM was, but they might have guessed--accurately or not.

I'm speculating here. I have a bunch of books on the Wild Weasels and one or more of them might go into detail on how they identified targets and tracked them in the command centers so that they could send aircraft out to hunt them. I'll just have to look for that stuff.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jester on 07/12/2016 08:55 pm
Great stuff, thanks!

but wait they flew a KW-26 ? are there images of that part of the payload?, as i've never heard of a KW-26 flying, these were typical ground units and not small....
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Arch Admiral on 07/13/2016 10:37 am
So REAPER was apparently primarily a location locator, and at least one sentence in the official history describes it as having sectors. So apparently it looked down and had (maybe) four quadrants. Depending upon where a signal originated, it could localize that signal, figuring out where it was on the Earth.

How it did this stuff is beyond me. There isn't much description in the official history, and I bet that it gets into weird frequency magic, so I'd probably never understand it anyway. Presumably the satellite itself has to know its location fairly precisely in order to pinpoint something on the Earth. But how did the satellite do that? And that goes to the earlier question I posed about the Agena: how did the Agena record north/south/east/west and up and down so that it knew the location of the signals it was picking up?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dwayne, it is clear that most of the systems on these satellites have one narrow reception beam pointing straight down. So when you hear the signal, you know that a radar is directly below the spacecraft. You get the location from orbital tracking. All the spacecraft needs is an accurate clock with time ticks recorded on the same tape as the radar signals.

REAPER seems to be different with multiple antennas. Since these are not arranged in any sensible phase relationship, probably they each point at a slightly different direction and produce a "rake" of beams across the ground track. This would give more precise locations.

This concept only works if the radar sends a significant amount of energy straight up. The standard Cosecant-squared antenna used in microwave radars has a hole in the beam at the zenith - in 1944 some USN vessels had a special up-looking radar installed to detect kamikazes diving through this hole.

But the Soviets in this period were mostly using VHF radars for early warning and these have a much broader beam in the vertical direction. In fact you can still see these huge antennas operating in the successor states today, often alongside modern narrow-band sets. Among their other virtues, they could pick up U-2s that were supposed to be flying above the microwave radars the CIA thought the Soviets were using.

In your SPACEFLIGHT article on this topic, there was a picture of a heavy ferret with rings of feed horns looking out sideways. This configuration would pick up the main horizontal beams from S-band and X-band radars.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/13/2016 03:57 pm
In your SPACEFLIGHT article on this topic, there was a picture of a heavy ferret with rings of feed horns looking out sideways. This configuration would pick up the main horizontal beams from S-band and X-band radars.

I don't remember that image. I had one artist illustration of an early Agena SIGINT (labeled as Samos Subsystem F). I had no photos of the satellite payloads. I am trying to get photos of the payloads for future articles.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/30/2016 04:16 pm
More info to be declassified on this subject soon.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 09/06/2016 06:19 pm
More info to be declassified on this subject soon.

It's probably not what you had in mind by declassification and not exactly about the 1960s, but The Intercept has published an article about Menwith Hill, a NSA base in the UK, with plenty of information on the current high-altitude ELINT satellites:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/ (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/)
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 09/06/2016 07:44 pm
More info to be declassified on this subject soon.

It's probably not what you had in mind by declassification and not exactly about the 1960s, but The Intercept has published an article about Menwith Hill, a NSA base in the UK, with plenty of information on the current high-altitude ELINT satellites:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/ (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/)
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)

Great find - this document and the article provide a strong link between PAN and the ominous NEMESIS high orbit SIGINT satellite, which was mentioned in leaked budget documents. I guess, that makes then CLIO a candidate for the NEMESIS-2 satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 09/06/2016 10:14 pm
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)

That is the more interesting of the two
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 09/06/2016 10:24 pm
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)

That is the more interesting of the two

see also https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p2-normal.gif
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 09/07/2016 12:50 am
That's a lot of redacting. Glad this hasn't just been dumped out there without some attempt to review the info.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2016 02:17 am
ORION SIGINT satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2016 02:17 am
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2016 02:17 am
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2016 02:18 am
PAN COMINT satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 09/07/2016 04:04 pm
Whoever did the redacting on these I can understand them blanking out parts of the satellite and their operational capabilities, but their names as well?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 09/07/2016 09:12 pm
There are some very unhappy people at numerous three letter agencies right now
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 09/07/2016 09:54 pm
There are some very unhappy people at numerous three letter agencies right now

In relation to this I assumed some government bod did the redacting that's what happened previously in consultation with the media company, I don't think ES does it all?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Silmfeanor on 09/07/2016 09:58 pm
Whoever did the redacting on these I can understand them blanking out parts of the satellite and their operational capabilities, but their names as well?

The blanking was most likely done by writing to the 3-letter agencies and asking them 'we're gonna publish this; what part do you _really_ want out ( even though you'd prefer to keep all of this secret) - we're gonna at least listen to your suggestions. The codename/codeword could perhaps describe the number of these satellites, perhaps the mission, the version, that sort of thing?
Operational facts like ground-resolution or operational precision could lead to deductions about the satellite specs, or technology required; even though the publication ( the intercept / Greenwald / Snowden ) is going against the 3-letter agencies, they dont publish that because they see it doesnt really serves their readers as much as it does other players on the geo-political playing field.
At least, thats the reason I can come up with for blanking out the names? Or am I totally in the wrong here?

And that big reflector does like mighty interesting...
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 09/10/2016 08:59 pm
More info to be declassified on this subject soon.

It's probably not what you had in mind by declassification and not exactly about the 1960s, but The Intercept has published an article about Menwith Hill, a NSA base in the UK, with plenty of information on the current high-altitude ELINT satellites:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/ (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/)
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)

Great find - this document and the article provide a strong link between PAN and the ominous NEMESIS high orbit SIGINT satellite, which was mentioned in leaked budget documents. I guess, that makes then CLIO a candidate for the NEMESIS-2 satellite.

Do you mean they are likely one & the same thing, because this sounds like COMINT rather than SIGINT. Orion is SIGINT.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 09/10/2016 09:32 pm
More info to be declassified on this subject soon.

It's probably not what you had in mind by declassification and not exactly about the 1960s, but The Intercept has published an article about Menwith Hill, a NSA base in the UK, with plenty of information on the current high-altitude ELINT satellites:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/ (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/06/nsa-menwith-hill-targeted-killing-surveillance/)
There are interesting link at the end of the article, including:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3089495/pages/MHS-collection-assets-p1-normal.gif)

Great find - this document and the article provide a strong link between PAN and the ominous NEMESIS high orbit SIGINT satellite, which was mentioned in leaked budget documents. I guess, that makes then CLIO a candidate for the NEMESIS-2 satellite.

Do you mean they are likely one & the same thing, because this sounds like COMINT rather than SIGINT. Orion is SIGINT.

I consider COMINT a subset of SIGINT.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/11/2016 12:51 am
I consider COMINT a subset of SIGINT.

Yes, generally SIGINT includes COMINT and ELINT. There was also a category called TELINT, for telemetry intelligence, but I don't know if that term is really used anymore.

I suspect that there is a fair amount of blur between these categories. For instance, if you were to intercept images being sent via Facebook, is that COMINT? What about communications hidden in the images? The spooks probably have lots of different subcategories.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 09/11/2016 10:42 am
I consider COMINT a subset of SIGINT.

Yes, generally SIGINT includes COMINT and ELINT. There was also a category called TELINT, for telemetry intelligence, but I don't know if that term is really used anymore.

I suspect that there is a fair amount of blur between these categories. For instance, if you were to intercept images being sent via Facebook, is that COMINT? What about communications hidden in the images? The spooks probably have lots of different subcategories.

TELINT is now called FISINT (Foreign Instrumentation Signals INTelligence) - but these areas have become indeed rather blurred, especially since most communications are now digital.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 09/12/2016 02:41 am
I consider COMINT a subset of SIGINT.

Yes, generally SIGINT includes COMINT and ELINT. There was also a category called TELINT, for telemetry intelligence, but I don't know if that term is really used anymore.

I suspect that there is a fair amount of blur between these categories. For instance, if you were to intercept images being sent via Facebook, is that COMINT? What about communications hidden in the images? The spooks probably have lots of different subcategories.

TELINT is now called FISINT (Foreign Instrumentation Signals INTelligence) - but these areas have become indeed rather blurred, especially since most communications are now digital.

No they aren't. www.au.af.mil/au/awc/space/au-18-2009/au-18_chap13.pdf (Attachment pages 174-176) 

The SIGINT arena is comprised of three sub-areas—electronic intelligence (ELINT), communications intelligence (COMINT), and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT)—which are differentiated based on the type of analysis to be performed and the nature of the emitter.

ELINT involves the collection and analysis of intercepted signals by other than the intended recipient. It involves the exploitation of signal “externals,” referring to the characteristics of the actual transmitted signal (including frequency of carriers and subcarriers, modulation, bandwidth, power level, etc.), beam footprint parameters, and emitter location and motion. A collection signal parameter
can be used to obtain a radio frequency (RF) fingerprint for each emitter/emitter platform, which can then be used to locate and rapidly identify the specific emitter or emitter type in subsequent intercepts. Generally, ELINT requires the least amount of analysis of the three SIGINT sub-areas.

COMINT involves the collection and analysis of intercepted signals used in communication systems by other than the intended recipient. Generally, the intercepted signal is demodulated, and the original data streams are extracted (voice, electronic messages, computer data, facsimile, etc.), which can then be processed by computer or analyzed by human analysts.

FISINT involves the collection and analysis of intercepted signals used in noncommunication data-transmission systems (telemetry systems, tracking/fusing/arming/command systems, beacons, certain video transmission systems, etc.). Generally, the intercepted signal is demodulated, and the original data streams are extracted. For encrypted communication systems, it may not be possible to extract the original data stream(s), but traffic analysis techniques can still be used to extract some useful intelligence data. Like COMINT, FISINT thus involves signal internals. However, unlike COMINT, FISINT can be used to determine the configuration, characteristics, and capabilities of the emitter and, more importantly, the overall system of which the emitter is a part.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Vlong on 09/21/2016 09:59 am
Very interesting. I've seen you quote that 25 year rule before, but there does seem to be some flexibility in it as little bits and pieces have started appearing about the KH-11 in recent years and that's still in use.

There have been several generations of KH-11 over the years; the original model began flying in 1976 and one could imagine is quite thoroughly obsolete by now. Besides that, the Hubble Telescope was apparently a modified KH-11 so we already have a pretty good idea of what it looks like, and after the infamous leaked photos of a Soviet shipyard in 1984, we also pretty much know its photo resolution.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Vlong on 09/21/2016 10:02 am
I would argue that understanding what optical satellites do is pretty straight forward. SIGINT is not, and the reason they are dragging feet as much as possible is telling how they work lets people understand and counter it. You kind of know if something can or can not be seen from space and if you should or could hide it ... but if you don't know something is emitting critical data, you can not mask it.

The Soviets evidently did know about the SIGNIT program because during the 80s, they switched to using landline cables for communication which could not be read by a satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/21/2016 12:33 pm
The Soviets evidently did know about the SIGNIT program because during the 80s, they switched to using landline cables for communication which could not be read by a satellite.

It's way more complicated than that. You are apparently referring to communications. But SIGINT includes detecting radar signals too.

Also, if you read my series of articles, you'll note that one of the first communications targets that the Americans went after was Soviet air traffic control, meaning the communications between military pilots and ground controllers. That could be encrypted, but it was radio.

As for using landline cables, well look up Ivy Bells...

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 09/21/2016 12:42 pm
I would argue that understanding what optical satellites do is pretty straight forward. SIGINT is not, and the reason they are dragging feet as much as possible is telling how they work lets people understand and counter it. You kind of know if something can or can not be seen from space and if you should or could hide it ... but if you don't know something is emitting critical data, you can not mask it.

The Soviets evidently did know about the SIGNIT program because during the 80s, they switched to using landline cables for communication which could not be read by a satellite.

Microwaves were still used for long distance relays.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Vlong on 09/21/2016 01:42 pm
The Soviets evidently did know about the SIGNIT program because during the 80s, they switched to using landline cables for communication which could not be read by a satellite.

It's way more complicated than that. You are apparently referring to communications. But SIGINT includes detecting radar signals too.

Also, if you read my series of articles, you'll note that one of the first communications targets that the Americans went after was Soviet air traffic control, meaning the communications between military pilots and ground controllers. That could be encrypted, but it was radio.

I was mostly referring to COMINT and yes, not everything could be converted to landline.

As for Ivy Bells, that was a Navy program and had nothing to do with space missions.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/21/2016 03:25 pm
The Soviets evidently did know about the SIGNIT program because during the 80s, they switched to using landline cables for communication which could not be read by a satellite.

It's way more complicated than that. You are apparently referring to communications. But SIGINT includes detecting radar signals too.

Also, if you read my series of articles, you'll note that one of the first communications targets that the Americans went after was Soviet air traffic control, meaning the communications between military pilots and ground controllers. That could be encrypted, but it was radio.

I was mostly referring to COMINT and yes, not everything could be converted to landline.

As for Ivy Bells, that was a Navy program and had nothing to do with space missions.

You are missing my point, so I will re-state it:

Yes, some Soviet communications switched from being transmitted to going over landlines. But my point is that there were ways to intercept those communications too. Ivy Bells is one example.

And as Jim pointed out, the Soviet microwave communications network continued to exist.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Vlong on 09/21/2016 03:44 pm
Yes, some Soviet communications switched from being transmitted to going over landlines. But my point is that there were ways to intercept those communications too. Ivy Bells is one example.

This is true, but relatively speaking, it's a lot harder to crack landline communications. For Ivy Bells, they literally had to stick probes on an underwater cable and after a while, the Soviets found out and that was the end of that. Of course you can't realistically do this on land/aerial cables at all. So it's certainly possible to crack landlines, but overall much harder which means you'd on average have more security than with over-the-air communications, although nothing is impossible with enough effort.

As for the microwave network still existing, well, that's like I said. Not everything is suitable to landline use.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/21/2016 08:19 pm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3066/1

The wizard war in orbit (part 4)
P-11, FARRAH, RAQUEL, DRACULA, and KAL-007
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, September 19, 2016

In August 1968, Soviet forces invaded their captive ally Czechoslovakia. The invasion began with an intense electronic warfare campaign against the Czech air defense network. A declassified secret US Defense Intelligence Agency report, titled “Soviet Electronic Countermeasures During Invasion of Czechoslovakia” and produced in October 1968, provided substantial detail on Soviet electronic warfare actions. It stated, “Electronic countermeasure activity was concentrated southeast and east of Prague to screen and protect Soviet air movements.” It added, “Jamming apparently was not targeted in the radio frequency range of NATO radars; the locations of chaff seeding suggests that it was not intended to screen Soviet air operations from Western observers.”

The report was stamped for no foreign distribution “except Canada/UK.” Although it is only a few pages long, it contained significant information on Soviet jamming efforts. It noted that some of the jamming might have been directed at the SA-2 surface-to-air missile fusing system—a subject of considerable interest to the American military because SA-2 missiles had been blowing American combat aircraft out of the sky in Vietnam. Other jamming might have been intended for land-based guided missile systems that could have been fired at invading Soviet forces. The electronic warfare effort was successful, the Soviet invasion took place without a hitch, and the Czechs enjoyed another two decades in the workers’ paradise.

The report does not indicate the sources of its information, but because much of the activity took place far inside Czechoslovakia, it seems likely that American signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites flying over Eastern Europe gathered much of the data. In fact, this would have been an intelligence bonanza for the United States military, because the Soviets understood best how to jam their own equipment, and monitoring what they were doing in Czechoslovakia could have provided information that the American military could use against similar weapons systems in Vietnam.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 11/01/2016 09:01 am
Marco Langbroek has published an article on Orion and PAN, based on the Intercept documents and his own observations:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1 (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Silmfeanor on 11/01/2016 11:25 am
Marco Langbroek has published an article on Orion and PAN, based on the Intercept documents and his own observations:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1 (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1)
This might be a bit off-topic from the thread title (1960s versus quite recent missions) so might perhaps be moved better to another thread.
It is an _excellent_ article. It nicely combines sleuthing, information, observation of orbital positions, but also somewhat delves into political and societal effects.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/01/2016 01:56 pm
Marco Langbroek has published an article on Orion and PAN, based on the Intercept documents and his own observations:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1 (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3095/1)
This might be a bit off-topic from the thread title (1960s versus quite recent missions) so might perhaps be moved better to another thread.
It is an _excellent_ article. It nicely combines sleuthing, information, observation of orbital positions, but also somewhat delves into political and societal effects.

You're a bit late calling for another thread if you see a number of the posts above.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/14/2017 04:38 pm
A better version of The SIGINT Satellite Story has just been released. I have not looked to see if it has fewer redactions compared to the one released a year ago. That and some other documents are here:

http://nro.gov/whatsnew.html

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 03/14/2017 06:57 pm
On a quick look, the redaction appears the same as the previous version, but the quality of the scan is a lot better.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 03/30/2017 05:56 pm
The NRO has published a new video about GRAB on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQpEAUmd4Go&feature=youtu.be
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 05/06/2017 02:13 pm
I'm trying to piece together a history of US high-altitude SIGINT, and I'm looking for sources.

For now I have found a few of Blackstar's articles on LEO systems ("The wizard war in orbit" in the Space Review), with explanation about the US needs in SIGINT (as listed in COMOR memos). I am also looking at Jeffrey T. Richelson's work, mostly "The Wizards of Langley" and his "Eavesdroppers in disguise" article. Also found "The SIGINT Satellites of Pine Gap" by Desmond Ball, which is interesting.

Anybody knows about other content on the subject?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/18/2017 09:58 pm
I'm trying to piece together a history of US high-altitude SIGINT, and I'm looking for sources.

For now I have found a few of Blackstar's articles on LEO systems ("The wizard war in orbit" in the Space Review), with explanation about the US needs in SIGINT (as listed in COMOR memos). I am also looking at Jeffrey T. Richelson's work, mostly "The Wizards of Langley" and his "Eavesdroppers in disguise" article. Also found "The SIGINT Satellites of Pine Gap" by Desmond Ball, which is interesting.

Anybody knows about other content on the subject?

I just spotted this post. You need to start with the newly redacted version of "The SIGINT Satellite Story." Also the NRO's AFTRACK collection of documents. Both were my sources for "The Wizard War in Orbit" series. There are a lot of documents available on GRAB and POPPY, although you should start with The SIGINT Satellite Story for those programs.

If you are interested in aerial SIGINT, I don't know of a single over-arching source. There are a lot of books. You'd also have to look at material produced by The Association of Old Crows. Robert Hopkins' upcoming book on the KC-135 and its variants is also going to be valuable.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/28/2017 11:46 pm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 05/29/2017 12:37 am
For those, like me, who need a better hint...

https://www.nsa.gov/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical.../telint-9-19-2016.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 05/29/2017 08:37 am
For those, like me, who need a better hint...

https://www.nsa.gov/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical.../telint-9-19-2016.pdf

The link is not working. The complete link should be
https://www.nsa.gov/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/misc/assets/files/telint-9-19-2016.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/29/2017 09:28 am
For those, like me, who need a better hint...

https://www.nsa.gov/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical.../telint-9-19-2016.pdf

The link is not working. The complete link should be
https://www.nsa.gov/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/misc/assets/files/telint-9-19-2016.pdf

Thanks. That first link goes nowhere.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 06/04/2017 05:29 pm
Rob1, a guest author at my blog, and I, wrote an article about the various types of SIGINT collection and the corresponding targets:

https://satelliteobservation.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/signal-intelligence-101-sigint-targets/ (https://satelliteobservation.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/signal-intelligence-101-sigint-targets/)

It covers COMINT against microwave networks, satellite uplinks and missile telemetry. There's also content on technical & operational ELINT against radars. It's meant to introduce the SIGINT targets for a future article on the history of the US high-altitude SIGINT program. Hopefully we did not get too much wrong!

 

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/04/2017 08:37 pm
http://astronomy.com/bonus/secret?spMailingID=29244872&spUserID=MTE2MDc2MzU0MTM3S0&spJobID=1060274092&spReportId=MTA2MDI3NDA5MgS2

I actually published some of this stuff in a couple of articles and in a paper I delivered during the 1990s. We had declassified reports from "Studies in Intelligence" that explained some of the efforts to capture Soviet planetary mission signals. There are more, and interesting, details in here.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 08/01/2017 06:32 pm
I co-wrote a second article about high-orbit SIGINT satellites:
https://satelliteobservation.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/history-of-the-us-high-altitude-sigint-system/ (https://satelliteobservation.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/history-of-the-us-high-altitude-sigint-system/)

It's a chronology and draws quite a lot from Blackstar's articles, but also from some Snowden documents. I hope it's mostly correct, but information is hard to come by, so I welcome any comments or corrections.

If you read until the end, there is a gif of the whole constellation circling the Earth, it is an impressive sight.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 08/01/2017 07:38 pm
Not to be picky, but what about WHITECLOUD and NOSS/INTRUDER satellites. Speaking of which, didn't see anything about them. They are definitely signit birds. Are you excluding programs that used MOLNIYA orbits? 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 08/01/2017 07:44 pm
Not to be picky, but what about WHITECLOUD and NOSS/INTRUDER satellites. Speaking of which, didn't see anything about them. They are definitely signit birds. Are you excluding programs that used MOLNIYA orbits? 

WHITCLOUD/PARCAE and NOSS/INTRUDER are not really high-altitude birds.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 08/01/2017 07:47 pm
Not to be picky, but what about WHITECLOUD and NOSS/INTRUDER satellites. Speaking of which, didn't see anything about them. They are definitely signit birds. Are you excluding programs that used MOLNIYA orbits?

No, it's an article about high-orbit satellites, so the  NOSS/INTRUDER are out of scope. For LEO satellites, the "Wizard War in Orbit" series is really the go-to reference I think (along with the official SIGINT history). The links to both are at the end of the article.

Regarding molnya orbits, Trumpet and Jumpseat are mentioned, there's even an illustration of what Jumpseat might have looked like.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/01/2017 07:47 pm
I think that Runway and Rainfall were code names for ground processing systems, NOT for the satellites.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 08/01/2017 07:57 pm
I think that Runway and Rainfall were code names for ground processing systems, NOT for the satellites.

In following text, RAINFALL is also interpreted as the ground station for Rhyolite.

http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 08/03/2017 05:51 pm
I think that Runway and Rainfall were code names for ground processing systems, NOT for the satellites.

In following text, RAINFALL is also interpreted as the ground station for Rhyolite.

http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf

I re-read the doc and RAINFALL seems to be the name of the whole program (ground station + satellite).
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 08/03/2017 06:47 pm
I think that Runway and Rainfall were code names for ground processing systems, NOT for the satellites.

In following text, RAINFALL is also interpreted as the ground station for Rhyolite.

http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf

I re-read the doc and RAINFALL seems to be the name of the whole program (ground station + satellite).

either way, this wording is wrong:
"RHYOLITE (unclassified codename RAINFALL
CANYON program (also known by its unclassified codename RUNWAY
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gosnold on 08/03/2017 08:08 pm
I think that Runway and Rainfall were code names for ground processing systems, NOT for the satellites.

In following text, RAINFALL is also interpreted as the ground station for Rhyolite.

http://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf

I re-read the doc and RAINFALL seems to be the name of the whole program (ground station + satellite).

either way, this wording is wrong:
"RHYOLITE (unclassified codename RAINFALL
CANYON program (also known by its unclassified codename RUNWAY

Ok. Do you see other points needing an update?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/29/2017 01:05 am
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: zubenelgenubi on 10/29/2017 02:13 am
(list here)

Wow, what a laundry list of code names!  Any idea when the memo was published or distributed?

Interesting that the redaction guidance memo contains code names that are themselves, redacted.

"Redaction Quality Control supervisor"--there's a job title for one's secret resume!
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 10/29/2017 04:08 am
So in otherwords, people researching these topics should be filing FIOA's for the list of code words the Redaction Quality Control supervisor uses... Nice job.

So Wild Bill, that must be a wild, wild story...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/29/2017 11:31 am
So in otherwords, people researching these topics should be filing FIOA's for the list of code words the Redaction Quality Control supervisor uses... Nice job.

So Wild Bill, that must be a wild, wild story...

http://thespacereview.com/article/3017/1

"After TAKI, Stanford’s engineers invented WILD BILL in spring 1961. It might have been named after Bill Harris or Bill Rambo. WILD BILL was to search for HEN HOUSE signals from the radar under construction at Sary Shagan. Nobody was sure what frequency it used other than 50 to 400 megahertz, based upon the size of the antenna and the requirement for tracking missiles and satellites.

Stanford Electronics Laboratory built WILD BILL and WILD BILL 1, covering the frequency range of 50 to 150 megahertz that signals analysts and radar experts thought would be the most probable band. WILD BILL was launched on July 7, 1961, on the back of a CORONA spacecraft and operated for two days, finding nothing. WILD BILL 1 was launched on February 27, 1962, on the aft rack of an Agena hosting another CORONA spacecraft, and operated for only two orbits, also not finding anything. ATI built later versions of WILD BILL. The company had been formed in Palo Alto by former Stanford Electronics Laboratory engineer John Grigsby. Lockheed contracted with ATI to build the follow-on versions of Stanford payloads. Multiple WILD BILL missions also flew, trying to gather HEN HOUSE signals."
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 10/30/2017 01:48 pm


It is somewhat confusing, that there are different spellings of names compared to earlier releases. Just typos?

* OPPORKNOCKITY - OPPOR-KNOCKITY
* SQUARE TWENTY - SQUARE 20
* URSULA - URSALA 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/30/2017 02:57 pm
I think those are typos. OPPORKNOCKITY is a pun ("opportunity knocks only once, opporknockity tunes only once"). One thing I got a kick out of with the AFTRACK declassification is how often these codewords were little more than inside jokes. For instance, "LONG JOHN" was named after a guy named John who worked on the program who was very tall. "NEW HAMPSHIRE" and "NEW JERSEY" both had to do with where some of the electronics were designed.

So where does "NOAH'S ARK" come from?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 10/30/2017 11:28 pm
I too would echo zubenelgenubi and ask if the original source of the posted SIGINT satellite listing be provided--whether it's a URL link to a Webpage of a US agency, or just post a PDF that includes the cover page as well as the entire page that this listing appears to be excerpted from.  Good researchers would do that.

Thanks in advance. ;)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/31/2017 11:54 pm
Further to the above list, note that both "FARRAH" and "RAQUEL" are on there: both are names apparently for versions of the P-11-type small elint satellites launched from the early 1960s into the early 1990s. Both names had leaked out decades ago, but it is still a bit surprising to see them confirmed.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3066/1

"URSULA" was declassified a few years ago. There was a proposal for a code-name "DRACULA" which would be "Direct Readout And Collection ULA" (using the "ULA" shorthand for "URSULA"). That name was vetoed.

Also on there is "GLORIA" and I'm guessing that it could have been another of these type of satellites. Maybe that was the actual name used instead of "DRACULA." There's also a "CARRIE" on there as well. It seems like they were applying female names to these satellites for awhile.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 11/03/2017 06:35 pm
I think those are typos. OPPORKNOCKITY is a pun ("opportunity knocks only once, opporknockity tunes only once"). One thing I got a kick out of with the AFTRACK declassification is how often these codewords were little more than inside jokes. For instance, "LONG JOHN" was named after a guy named John who worked on the program who was very tall. "NEW HAMPSHIRE" and "NEW JERSEY" both had to do with where some of the electronics were designed.

So where does "NOAH'S ARK" come from?

Let's try to fill in the gaps according to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#SIGINT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#SIGINT()

ARGUS (Advanced Rhyolite?)
Aquacade

Canyon

Chalet

...
... any suggestions for 2 code names between "DONKEY" and "FACADE"?

... any suggestions for a code name between "FARRAH" and "GLORIA"?


INTRUDER
Jumpseat
... plus two more code names between "HAYLOFT" and "LAMPAN"

MAGNUM or Mentor or Mercury?

Orion

...
...
... this is tricky, three SIGINT programs between "P11" and "PLICAT"

Project xxx (698BK < xxx  < 770)

Project yyy (770 < yyy  < 989)

RAVEN
... plus another code name between "RAQUEL" and "REAPER"

Rhyolite
SAMOS-F
... any suggestions for another code name between "REAPER " and "SAMPAN"?

Trumpet

... any codename after "URSALA" (it now get's tricky as the alphabetical order drops, VINO ahead of VAMPAN, and WILD BILL followed by WESTON)

...
... two more code names near the end of the alphabet
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/03/2017 07:35 pm
SAMOS-F

I don't think that's on there. For starters, it was never classified.

Also, rather notably, the Navy code names like GRAB, POPPY, DYNO, are not on that list. Why make that distinction?



Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 11/29/2017 10:42 am
...

So where does "NOAH'S ARK" come from?
Maybe "Named for Noah Tony Taussig who was in charge of the vehicle." - see footnote 1 on page 43 in the PDF (and pages 129 to 146 for the launch information on NOAH's ARC, LONG JOHN, OPPORKNOCKITY, URSALA, etc.):

http://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf (http://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf)

Document gives an overview of NSA's space activities from the mid '50s to the mid '70s, including photographs and artist impressions of some of the missions (though scan quality could have been better).

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/29/2017 05:40 pm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/30/2017 06:08 am
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/30/2017 06:45 am
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html

Next release alluded to here should be interesting as then we wade into the far more unknown waters of the seventies. Especially if they will release anything on Magnum.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/30/2017 07:47 am
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html

Next release alluded to here should be interesting as then we wade into the far more unknown waters of the seventies. Especially if they will release anything on Magnum.

I am becoming somewhat skeptical, if the MAGNUM/ORION geo SIGINT satellites were ever really named MAGNUM, as the recent declassified documents show a Subsatellite Ferret mission called MAGNUM. I had until now never found a hint on reuse of a codename.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/30/2017 11:36 am
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html

Next release alluded to here should be interesting as then we wade into the far more unknown waters of the seventies. Especially if they will release anything on Magnum.

I am becoming somewhat skeptical, if the MAGNUM/ORION geo SIGINT satellites were ever really named MAGNUM, as the recent declassified documents show a Subsatellite Ferret mission called MAGNUM. I had until now never found a hint on reuse of a codename.

It’s the payload that seems to haveplayed a part in Falkland’s war I am interested about. Though as that operated seemingly for an incredibly long time up until relatively recently maybe it will be excluded from declassification for now.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 11/30/2017 02:32 pm
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html

Next release alluded to here should be interesting as then we wade into the far more unknown waters of the seventies. Especially if they will release anything on Magnum.

There are many before that will have to be declassified, like RHYOLITE, CANYON, etc
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 11/30/2017 05:52 pm
Loads of new declassified documents:

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html

Next release alluded to here should be interesting as then we wade into the far more unknown waters of the seventies. Especially if they will release anything on Magnum.

There are many before that will have to be declassified, like RHYOLITE, CANYON, etc

Star One: also note that even for the POPPY series quite a number of facts are still classified. E.g., the final launch of the POPPY series (POPPY IX) was in December 1971, and the expected lifetime of this mission according to the "NSA in space" doc from 1975 is still "exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years" in the 2017 release (reason 3.3(b)(1) is provided, i.e. releasing the expected lifetime would "reveal information about the application of an intelligence source or method;").
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/01/2017 03:11 am
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/01/2017 03:51 am
This document is apparently missing:

235 Payload Vehicle

And this one links to the wrong document:

Operational Requirements and Technical Approach for WS-117L Visual and FERRET Subsystems

(it links to the Titan III document)

Hopefully they will repair the links.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/01/2017 04:35 am
Note that this version of STRAWMAN has four solar arrays, not three. I think this is conceptual artwork and the other images represent the operational version with only three arrays.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: koroljow on 12/01/2017 09:22 am
This document is apparently missing:

235 Payload Vehicle


try http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007rrr.pdf (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007rrr.pdf) instead of http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-0007rrr.pdf   ;D  (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-0007rrr.pdf)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 12/01/2017 01:19 pm
Star One: also note that even for the POPPY series quite a number of facts are still classified. E.g., the final launch of the POPPY series (POPPY IX) was in December 1971, and the expected lifetime of this mission according to the "NSA in space" doc from 1975 is still "exempted from automatic declassification at 25 years" in the 2017 release (reason 3.3(b)(1) is provided, i.e. releasing the expected lifetime would "reveal information about the application of an intelligence source or method;").
There was an NRL list of their satellites that gave the lifetimes.  One of the Poppy 9 satellites has "8 years" against it, rest blank.  However, the Poppy History says the programme ended September 1977.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Alter Sachse on 12/01/2017 05:08 pm
I don't know: is here the right place for this ?
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena.html
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 12/01/2017 07:17 pm
Here is the NRO Facebook post announcing the latest release now being discussed.  The world sure has changed with the once Top Secret NRO now having a Facebook page...

National Reconnaissance Office 5 hrs ·

The documents in the SIGINT Phase II release demonstrate the rich history of SIGINT in U.S. intelligence efforts and show the move from mere experimentation to a significant and relied-upon source of intelligence that has informed both tactical and strategic decisions since World War II.

http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/SIGINT_PhaseII.html
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 12/01/2017 08:21 pm
I don't know: is here the right place for this ?
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena.html


As above...

National Reconnaissance Office 6 hrs ·

While NRO has previously released records on the Agena flight control vehicle, this latest release includes almost all of the contents of the program -- demonstrating the significant role the Agena had in furthering the United States' work in developing and operating national reconnaissance satellites.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/02/2017 04:30 am
I don't know: is here the right place for this ?
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/agena.html


As above...

National Reconnaissance Office 6 hrs ·

While NRO has previously released records on the Agena flight control vehicle, this latest release includes almost all of the contents of the program -- demonstrating the significant role the Agena had in furthering the United States' work in developing and operating national reconnaissance satellites.

Those Agena documents have been publicly available for a long time. I copied all or most of them back in the 1990s at Maxwell Air Force Base. The problem with that collection is that it stops around 1967 and Agena was operational for another 20 years. It gives a really good overview of the creation and early development of the program, but leaves out later modifications and improvements.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Alter Sachse on 12/03/2017 02:22 pm
New members in the POPPY-family !
POPPY 1 29.06.1961
POPPY 2 24.01.1962

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 12/04/2017 01:33 pm
New members in the POPPY-family !
POPPY 1 29.06.1961
POPPY 2 24.01.1962
It says "Poppy II (2 Ball)".  Does this mean that there was a second Poppy payload?  The Lofti?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 12/04/2017 02:33 pm
New members in the POPPY-family !
POPPY 1 29.06.1961
POPPY 2 24.01.1962
It says "Poppy II (2 Ball)".  Does this mean that there was a second Poppy payload?  The Lofti?

I think, there are mistakes in this list concerning the Grab/Poppy launches. This list omits the fifth Grab type satellite, which was lost in a Scout launch failure (26 April 1962). Apparently two launches of the five Grab launches were re-designated Poppy.
According to "The SIGINT Satellite Story", these were the 4th and 5th launch.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 02/13/2018 08:50 pm
Mr Day’s latest article.

And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War

Quote
Early in the morning of May 9, 1972, four A-6 Intruders and six A-7 Corsairs launched off the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea steaming in the Pacific far off the coast of North Vietnam. The aircraft headed west and dove down low, keeping under five hundred feet. Underneath the planes’ wings were naval mines, barrel-shaped devices that when dropped in the water would sink to the bottom and once activated could detonate upon detecting a passing ship. But the Coral Sea only had enough nosecones for about half the large Mk-52 magnetic mines carried by the Intruders, thus the mines created a lot of drag and slowed the aircraft down, making them vulnerable.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3430/1
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: zubenelgenubi on 02/14/2018 12:16 am
Mr Day’s latest article.

And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3430/1

Another Dwayne Day article; another Babylon 5 episode reference.  8)

(This is the Season 1 episode where the two covert human operatives kidnap him and probe his mind, searching for Cmdr. Sinclair's alleged treason during the Battle of the Line.  In doing so, it partially breaks the memory block the Minbari had placed on Sinclair when they captured and tortured/interrogated him.)

Refers back to this quote from the opening tele-movie:
Quote
...and the sky was full of stars, and every star was an exploding ship — one of ours.
--Jeffrey Sinclair

And, yes, an enjoyable and informative article!
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 02/14/2018 12:27 am
Thanks for the article.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: koroljow on 03/02/2018 01:56 pm
Maybe I should rather ask this under "You Know You're A Space Geek When..."  ;D ;D ;D

I'm trying to sort out some discrepancies in the history of the SOCTOP payloads. Maybe someone of you has access to the missing link. Any help is much appreciated.
Here is the problem. I'm trying to identify all SOCTOP missions. Seems like an easy task (using the documents released by the NRO under the FOIA). But I can't get all the given details matching.

source [1] is listing 8 SOCTOP's:
1960/08/10, 1960/09/13, 1960/10/26 (failure), 1960/11/12, 1961/03/30 (failure), 1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04 (failure)
Jonathan (jcm) is numbering those payloads consecutively (1 to 8 )

source [2] mentions 10 SOCTOP's but is listing only 8:
1960/08/10, 1960/09/13, 1960/10/26 (failure), 1960/11/12, 1961/03/30 (failure), 1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04 (failure)
Gunter (Skyrocket) is numbering those payloads consecutively (1 to 8 ), too

source [3] has a list with 8 SOCTOP's:
1960/08/10 (SOCTOP I), 1960/09/13 (SOCTOP II), 1960/10/26 (SOCTOP II, failure), 1960/11/12 (SOCTOP III), 1961/03/30 (SOCTOP V, failure), 1961/06/08 (SOCTOP IV), 1961/12/22 (SOCTOP w/o number), 1962/03/07 (SOCTOP w/o number)
PROBLEMS:
-other numbering system (SOCTOP II twice, two flights of same configuration?)
-different missions for last 3 SOCTOP payloads:
1961/06/08 = Discoverer 24 instead of Discoverer 25 (but given vehicle # 1106 would be still another mission, Discoverer 23 launched 1961/04/08) -> obviously something is wrong here
1961/12/22 + 1962/03/07 = SAMOS 5 and SAMOS 6 with S.T.LOW payloads (S.T.LOW = SOCTOP?)

source [4] mentions a total of 13 SOCTOP missions:
...SOCTOP packages were flown on 10 additional CORONA missions (from mission 9010, launched on 09/13/61, to mission 9028, launched on 11/15/61) and two SAMOS missions (mission 2203, launched on 12/22/61, and mission 2204, launched on 03/07/62)...
This confirms the two SAMOS missions from [3] but mentions a new SOCTOP flown on Discoverer 35

source [5] has a list with 8 SOCTOP's and 2 S.T.LOW's (but ends in early 1962):
1960/08/10, 1960/09/13, 1960/10/26 (failure), 1960/11/12, 1961/03/30 (failure), 1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04 (failure)
+ 1961/12/22, 1962/03/07


So, how many SOCTOP launches we have to deal with? And which source is correct about on which missions the SOCTOP's where flown? If there were really ten missions, what about the missing ones? One could be Discoverer 35. The other one? Is there any information on S.T.LOW? Closely related to SOCTOP or not?
JCM, Skyrocket, Blackstar, anyone else...?

sources:
[1] http://planet4589.org/space/log/launchlog.txt (http://planet4589.org/space/log/launchlog.txt)
[2] http://space.skyrocket.de (http://space.skyrocket.de)
[3] http://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf (http://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf)
[4] http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigint/SIGINT_Satellite_Story.PDF (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/sigint/SIGINT_Satellite_Story.PDF)
[5] http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/10/2018 02:49 am
"And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War"

http://thespacereview.com/article/3430/1

I just acquired the 2012 book "A-6 Intruder Units of the Vietnam War" by Rick Morgan. Pages 75-76 refer to Operation Pocket Money, the mining of Haiphong Harbor. This book says that there were three A-6 Intruders, not four, conducting the initial raid. They led six A-7E Corsairs (pictured). All the aircraft carried mines (the Intruders carried bigger ones).

The really interesting claim in the book is that although President Nixon announced that the mines would become active after 72 hours, the mines had actually been set to become active after 48 hours. Obviously there was some kind of miscommunication. That could have been a big problem--imagine what would have happened if a Soviet freighter left Haiphong after 50 hours, the captain thinking that he still had 22 hours of safety, and detonated a mine. That would have been bad. I wonder if Nixon's announcement was amended? Alternatively, the rush to get satellite surveillance of the area could have been tied to this, trying to find out if any ships had been damaged by mines after two days.

There has to be an after-action report on this operation in Navy files somewhere. But I'm not an expert on US Navy history, and I'm not about to go on a research effort on this without having a better understanding of the topic.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 03/11/2018 01:53 pm
So, how many SOCTOP launches we have to deal with?
You're missing a reference http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf which confirms Discoverer 25, 26 and 28 (1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: koroljow on 03/11/2018 07:52 pm
So, how many SOCTOP launches we have to deal with?
You're missing a reference http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf) which confirms Discoverer 25, 26 and 28 (1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04)

No, I don't. See source [5] in my list. The question is: does this document 'confirm' anything? Other documents doesn't mention these specific launches. And that's my problem.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 03/12/2018 10:52 am
So, how many SOCTOP launches we have to deal with?
You're missing a reference http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf (http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/aftrack/1.pdf) which confirms Discoverer 25, 26 and 28 (1961/06/16, 1961/07/07 and 1961/08/04)

No, I don't. See source [5] in my list. The question is: does this document 'confirm' anything? Other documents doesn't mention these specific launches. And that's my problem.
Sorry, my fault for missing your ref [5].

I get the impression that these payloads were considered fairly minor and not always included in the detailed lists.  There is a similar problem in trying to track down all the later BIT payloads with the same purpose.  I'd be inclined to treat a positive mention as indication that a payload was carried, but not take a lack of a mention as indication that one definitely wasn't included.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Old Space Dude on 03/12/2018 02:11 pm
  I think you have got it right.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: koroljow on 03/12/2018 07:00 pm
I'd be inclined to treat a positive mention as indication that a payload was carried, but not take a lack of a mention as indication that one definitely wasn't included.
Probably the best explanation I can get. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 04/05/2018 01:10 pm
Just putting it here.  Came across this.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/24/2018 08:29 pm
"And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War"

http://thespacereview.com/article/3430/1

I just acquired the 2012 book "A-6 Intruder Units of the Vietnam War" by Rick Morgan. Pages 75-76 refer to Operation Pocket Money, the mining of Haiphong Harbor. This book says that there were three A-6 Intruders, not four, conducting the initial raid. They led six A-7E Corsairs (pictured). All the aircraft carried mines (the Intruders carried bigger ones).

The really interesting claim in the book is that although President Nixon announced that the mines would become active after 72 hours, the mines had actually been set to become active after 48 hours. Obviously there was some kind of miscommunication. That could have been a big problem--imagine what would have happened if a Soviet freighter left Haiphong after 50 hours, the captain thinking that he still had 22 hours of safety, and detonated a mine. That would have been bad. I wonder if Nixon's announcement was amended? Alternatively, the rush to get satellite surveillance of the area could have been tied to this, trying to find out if any ships had been damaged by mines after two days.

There has to be an after-action report on this operation in Navy files somewhere. But I'm not an expert on US Navy history, and I'm not about to go on a research effort on this without having a better understanding of the topic.

So I've managed to locate some additional information on this event. What I wrote above is true, with a few corrections. Apparently the timers on the mines had a standard deviation. If they were set for 72 hours, some of them could go active as soon as 58 hours and some as late as 80 hours. The Navy did not learn about this until shortly before Nixon was scheduled to give his speech, and they were rather frantic (and officials were embarrassed). They apparently amended Nixon's speech to say something like "three daylight periods" which was close enough without being exact.

But there are journal entries from senior Navy officials about how big a deal this was, and how disastrous it could be if the president gave a deadline and then a ship set sail before the deadline and got sunk by a mine.

I think that this does a lot to explain why the Navy scrambled to request that the NRO use the satellites to monitor maritime traffic in the region after the mining of the harbor--they nearly screwed up big time and they needed to make sure that everything went smoothly.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Hog on 04/25/2018 02:09 pm
"And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War"

http://thespacereview.com/article/3430/1

I just acquired the 2012 book "A-6 Intruder Units of the Vietnam War" by Rick Morgan. Pages 75-76 refer to Operation Pocket Money, the mining of Haiphong Harbor. This book says that there were three A-6 Intruders, not four, conducting the initial raid. They led six A-7E Corsairs (pictured). All the aircraft carried mines (the Intruders carried bigger ones).

The really interesting claim in the book is that although President Nixon announced that the mines would become active after 72 hours, the mines had actually been set to become active after 48 hours. Obviously there was some kind of miscommunication. That could have been a big problem--imagine what would have happened if a Soviet freighter left Haiphong after 50 hours, the captain thinking that he still had 22 hours of safety, and detonated a mine. That would have been bad. I wonder if Nixon's announcement was amended? Alternatively, the rush to get satellite surveillance of the area could have been tied to this, trying to find out if any ships had been damaged by mines after two days.

There has to be an after-action report on this operation in Navy files somewhere. But I'm not an expert on US Navy history, and I'm not about to go on a research effort on this without having a better understanding of the topic.

So I've managed to locate some additional information on this event. What I wrote above is true, with a few corrections. Apparently the timers on the mines had a standard deviation. If they were set for 72 hours, some of them could go active as soon as 58 hours and some as late as 80 hours. The Navy did not learn about this until shortly before Nixon was scheduled to give his speech, and they were rather frantic (and officials were embarrassed). They apparently amended Nixon's speech to say something like "three daylight periods" which was close enough without being exact.

But there are journal entries from senior Navy officials about how big a deal this was, and how disastrous it could be if the president gave a deadline and then a ship set sail before the deadline and got sunk by a mine.

I think that this does a lot to explain why the Navy scrambled to request that the NRO use the satellites to monitor maritime traffic in the region after the mining of the harbor--they nearly screwed up big time and they needed to make sure that everything went smoothly.
Fascinating. "Operation Pocket Change" from launching diversionary attacks, giving US guided missile cruisers free fire authority from 500ft on up with their RIM-8 Talos missiles against MiGs(2 missiles fired 1 MiG destroyed), the actual opening round of mining operations, the drowning of an Admiral and his staff in a helicopter accident, to the actual dropping of the mines, which began at 8:59 local with the flight leader radioing the carrier that all mines were in the water at 9:01am local, while concurrently President Nixon was giving his speech.  This operation had huge strategic importance.

1)Would the orbital monitoring of maritime traffic during this critical period be primarily using photo-recon assets?

2) Since the mining finally occurred in May 1972, would the recon satellites of the time only monitor/document marine traffic for later use.  There was no realtime or even neartime capability correct?

The mines apparently were recovered(mostly) during Operation End Sweep in 1973.

pic #1 A7E Corsair II from the VA22(A7s from both VA22 and 94 flew that morning)). They carried the 500Mk32 acoustic mine

pic #2 A6-A Intruder from VMA224 carried the 1000lb Mk52 magnetic mines

pic#3 EKA-3B Skywarrior also supported the 9:00am local mining Operation in the electronic countermeasures role
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Alter Sachse on 05/15/2018 08:10 am
News about P11 (and others)
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/OtherReleases.html
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/15/2018 02:58 pm
Fascinating. "Operation Pocket Change" from launching diversionary attacks, giving US guided missile cruisers free fire authority from 500ft on up with their RIM-8 Talos missiles against MiGs(2 missiles fired 1 MiG destroyed), the actual opening round of mining operations, the drowning of an Admiral and his staff in a helicopter accident, to the actual dropping of the mines, which began at 8:59 local with the flight leader radioing the carrier that all mines were in the water at 9:01am local, while concurrently President Nixon was giving his speech.  This operation had huge strategic importance.

1)Would the orbital monitoring of maritime traffic during this critical period be primarily using photo-recon assets?

2) Since the mining finally occurred in May 1972, would the recon satellites of the time only monitor/document marine traffic for later use.  There was no realtime or even neartime capability correct?

The mines apparently were recovered(mostly) during Operation End Sweep in 1973.

pic #1 A7E Corsair II from the VA22(A7s from both VA22 and 94 flew that morning)). They carried the 500Mk32 acoustic mine

pic #2 A6-A Intruder from VMA224 carried the 1000lb Mk52 magnetic mines

pic#3 EKA-3B Skywarrior also supported the 9:00am local mining Operation in the electronic countermeasures role

I did not see this earlier post.

0-Yes. It was quite an operation. I'll post some reference books. There are some first-hand accounts by the pilots. It seems like the specifics of the mining operation were planned aboard USS Coral Sea, and nobody had much experience with dropping mines from jets.

1-No. SIGINT. Read my article. Photo-recon satellites still used film. Recovery would take days. I am sure that they wanted recon images of the actual harbor. That could have included aircraft photography. I dunno about any SR-71 missions over North Vietnam in that time period. But they certainly would have wanted to know what ships were in the harbor that they were about to mine.

2-Again, read my article. The entire point of it was the use of national (i.e. strategic, not tactical) SIGINT assets for a tactical operation.

3-I need to find good (i.e. 300+ dpi) images of the mines and of the aircraft. That may require some actual foot research on my part, like a trip to NARA College Park or to the Naval Research Center at the Navy Yard. I work in Washington, so research trips like that are not that difficult. It's just that my day job gets in the way of my hobbies.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/15/2018 03:28 pm
A subject that I want to turn my attention to is the use of SIGINT satellites to gather intelligence on Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radars during the 1960s. I'm not planning on doing an exhaustive article on this subject, but there's some intriguing stuff.

This is an image that I missed that is contained in one of the SIGINT documents declassified last year. It shows a proposed modification to the MULTIGROUP satellite to add new antennas and focus on the ABM problem. I have not dug into the topic in any depth yet, but it appears that they did not build this.

More on this subject later.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 10/02/2018 08:42 pm
The non-disclosed P-801/P-226 subsatellite group similar to the P-11 series - really SIGINT?
 
 In December 1968 a new class of subsatellite appeared - which were labeled mostly as "Subsatellite Ferret Type C".  Reportedly they were focused on Soviet ABM radars and flew at a higher altitude of 1200–1400 kilometers at about 80.3 to 96.9 degrees inclination. These satellites were apparently given the designation Program 989, P-801 or P-226.
 
 A released NRO document has a chronic of all SIGINT launches, with some redacted gaps (see attachment or http://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007hhhh.pdf). Interestingly, the list contains unredacted numbers of missions by year. (Note: some satellites like the STRAWMAN and some of the P-11 series carried dual or triple mission numbers, while the quadruple POPPY satellites apparently had jointly a single mission number). I tried to match these gaps with the still classified series (CANYON, RHYOLITE, JUMPSEAT and P-801/P-226.
 
Now it became apparent, that these four redacted series consisted of more missions than the reckoning of the list allows for. While the CANYON, RHYOLITE and JUMPSEAT satellites fit in the redacted gaps and fit to the number of mission by year, the P-801/P-226 are apparently omitted from the NRO list, which is supposed to be a complete list of SIGINT satellites. (see attached table)
 
This opens up the question, what the P-801/P-226 really are, if they are not SIGINT satellites.

Speculation:
If they are not SIGINT, then perhaps a store-dump-communications mission is not too far fetched (similar as the Soviet Strela-2 satellites, which were used for transmission of messages by field agents), as the equipment for this mission would be not too different to a COMINT mission.

Any thoughts?

Edit: P-989 was the later designation of P-11, so it has been removed here
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/01/2018 04:07 pm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 12/10/2018 02:53 pm
Not sure where this goes, but spacetrack.org has started releasing orbital elements of DOD satellites that they haven't released in the past. They even confirmed on twitter that the release was intentional.

https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1070978899645845506
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 12/10/2018 02:59 pm
Just noticed StarOne started a thread on it over in General: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46946.msg0#new
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/18/2020 02:05 am
Okay, I am writing some articles about SIGINT for detecting anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radars. I will have something on JUMPSEAT in a few weeks.

I'm also working on another, relative short, article. I'm hoping somebody can help me. I have seen a document somewhere that I believe dates from late 1966. My memory is that it was a memo either by or to Director of the NRO Al Flax saying that President Johnson really wanted to nail down the ABM radar issue, and that Flax did not want LBJ to explicitly ask for a dedicated satellite, because that would cost a lot more money, but only make a marginal increase in detection capability. I think the memo even had some numbers, like cost 5 times as much but only double the current low capability.

I cannot figure out what document it was. Was it in the SIGINT Phase II release?

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA//Major-NRO-Programs-and-Projects/SIGINT-Phase-II/

Was it in the 2017 FOIA release which covers 1966 documents (2018 covers 1967, and so the 2020 release covers 1969)? I did a quick look there but did not find the document.

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/From-the-NRO-Archives/

Or was it somewhere else, like the Foreign Relations of the US documents from the State Department?

I remember it being an interesting memo, because it was essentially a US government official saying that he really did not want the president to ask for a dedicated satellite, because it would cost a lot of money and be a waste. It is entirely possible that this is what led to JUMPSEAT.

So if anybody remembers seeing this document, please let me know.

(In the interim, you'll see something else from me and a well-respected scholarly guy on Monday.)



UPDATE: I found a reference to this, but I'm not sure if it is the reference I'm thinking about. I'll post it later. If anybody comes up with anything else, I appreciate the help.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/23/2020 06:11 pm
It appears in the Butterworth history that is included as the last doc here:

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Major-NRO-Programs-and-Projects/SIGINT-Phase-II/

This one:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007llll.pdf

In fall 1965, LBJ thought that the intel on ABM systems was overstating Soviet capabilities. A year later in fall 1966 he was demanding better intel.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/29/2020 06:32 pm
I have two articles coming up in TSR. They're not big, and they are not revelatory. They are mainly intended to explore the SIGINT satellite subject a bit more, particularly the issue of detection of ABM radars. The first article is on MABELI and TIVOLI smallsats (MABELI was essentially the fourth TIVOLI satellite). The second article is on the origins of the JUMPSEAT high altitude satellite.

But I'm running into a problem with understanding this stuff. I wrote this article in 2016:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3066/1

Note the stuff on YIELD and the higher altitude smallsats. I thought at that time (2016) they were ABM. But they're not mentioned in a declassified April 1971 list of satellites collecting ABM signals. So since we know that there were other satellites that did ABM radars, that raises the question of what these satellites did if they were not doing ABM.

Here is Gunter's list, where he labels them P-801 satellites:

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/ssf-c.htm

For now I am focused on the 1968 and 1969 ones:

P-801 1 (OPS 7684)    1968-112B    12.12.1968    Va SLC-3W       Thorad-SLV2G Agena-D    with KH-4A 49
P-801 2 (OPS 2644)    1969-010B    05.02.1969    Va SLC-3W       Thorad-SLV2G Agena-D    with KH-4B 6


One thought I've had is that these were designed for agent communications relay--American James Bond sets up a dish in Moscow and beams information to a satellite flying overhead and it later gets beamed down to a ground station. Jeffrey Richelson, in one of his books, said that these were developed. I believe he said that the program name was TENNIS.

But right now I don't know what to think about them.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/29/2020 08:37 pm
Here is the document from April 1971. Although it does not say so, the US was at the time working on the ABM Treaty, so NRO was obviously being asked which of their satellites devoted the most effort to collecting ABM radar signals.

CONVOY was a dedicated ABM payload on the first two STRAWMAN large SIGINT satellites. The POPPY mission referred to here is almost certainly POPPY 8.

The TIVOLI satellites were smallsats launched off the back end of Agenas carrying reconnaissance satellites. MABELI, which stood for "Main beam TIVOLI" was launched in early 1972.

Missing from here are those 1968 and 1969 satellites that I thought were ABM-related. Obviously they're not ABM-related, because they're not here.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: leovinus on 07/29/2020 08:49 pm
Interesting stuff. While you probably know all of this, I saw these two reports
https://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf
https://www.governmentattic.org/19docs/NRO-SIGINTsatStory_1994u.pdf
with some notes on CONVOY, POPPY, MABELI in case that helps.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: darkenfast on 07/29/2020 10:10 pm
Blackstar (and others), it's now been a couple of decades since I retired from the Navy (Security Group, which included a couple of tours at Ft. Meade), and I just have to say that I am really enjoying your contributions to this discussion. 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/29/2020 10:35 pm
Blackstar (and others), it's now been a couple of decades since I retired from the Navy (Security Group, which included a couple of tours at Ft. Meade), and I just have to say that I am really enjoying your contributions to this discussion. 

I don't know if you are aware, but there is a huge amount of declassified material available on the early Navy GRAB and POPPY programs. It's scattered all over the place, but there's a lot out there. So it's possible to read about those programs up to the early 1970s. After that, classification gets in the way. POPPY is still a bit difficult to understand because what they released is somewhat scattershot and inconsistent, and there are holes in the record (some due to continued classification). But it's there.

The Air Force stuff is tougher. We have many pieces of the puzzle, but it's not always possible to see the bigger picture.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/29/2020 10:40 pm
Interesting stuff. While you probably know all of this, I saw these two reports
https://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf
https://www.governmentattic.org/19docs/NRO-SIGINTsatStory_1994u.pdf
with some notes on CONVOY, POPPY, MABELI in case that helps.

Yes, thank you. I'm attaching here a chart from one of those documents here. You can see CONVOY listed near the bottom as an ABM system.

Those histories patch a few holes in the other material that NRO has released. And for some of this stuff, like CONVOY, there are also some good primary documents. If you go to that SIGINT documents page, you can find a couple of CONVOY documents there. CONVOY was specifically added to the STRAWMAN satellites to go after ABM radar signals.

As I'm looking at this specific topic more closely, what's clear is that the ABM radars became a major intelligence focus from 1966 to the early 1970s. Then, after it was clear that the Soviets were not building a new big ABM system, there was less urgency to go after the signals. And after the two sides signed the ABM Treaty in 1972, the American focus was less on finding new ABM systems than on monitoring treaty compliance. I'm not sure how that changed the requirements, but it did.

Also, if you look at the table showing satellites that contributed to the ABM radar hunt, you'll see a blanked out spot between CONVOY 1 and THRESHER/CONVOY 2. That is almost certainly the March 1969 launch of the second TIVOLI satellite. TIVOLI was partially declassified after this document was released, and we know that TIVOLI did ABM collection (see above).


Edit: One last thing--the large Agena payloads eventually went higher up. They ended up on JUMPSEAT, a satellite derived from Hughes' TACSAT.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: leovinus on 07/30/2020 12:52 am
Interesting stuff. While you probably know all of this, I saw these two reports
https://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf
https://www.governmentattic.org/19docs/NRO-SIGINTsatStory_1994u.pdf
with some notes on CONVOY, POPPY, MABELI in case that helps.

Yes, thank you. I'm attaching here a chart from one of those documents here. You can see CONVOY listed near the bottom as an ABM system.

Welcome, and nice! You might want to dig a little deeper then at
https://www.governmentattic.org
to see whether they have other relevant NRO/NSA documents. Their search seem to work pretty well.
Looking forward to the final article.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/31/2020 02:09 pm
I think that the late Jeff Richelson was the first person to write about Aquiline, a drone that the CIA worked on in the mid-1960s. It was designed to look like a bird so that if the Soviets or Chinese spotted it, they would not think it was a plane.

Back in the 1990s when I talked to Dino Brugioni (of NPIC) about the declassified CORONA photos I asked why they had not released the Groom Lake photos. He said "There was other stuff going on at Groom besides the OXCART and U-2."


http://alert5.com/2020/07/31/cia-declassifies-project-aquiline/?fbclid=IwAR1RgVco22c1-lsEmH-i1zwBTxHaoApBHvAOj4ZdkpckfK2hlV57_xdbr80


https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/aquiline


Also:

http://alert5.com/2020/01/30/operation-heavy-tea-the-top-secret-mission-into-china-to-monitor-its-nuclear-weapons-program/
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/19/2020 04:59 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4051/1

Applied witchcraft: American communications intelligence satellites during the 1960s
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 19, 2020

During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet, monitored the battle from his command center in Pearl Harbor, picking up snippets of radio traffic from both American and Japanese forces. After hearing that American planes had spotted the Japanese carriers and started their attack, Nimitz and his officers heard nothing more from the Japanese carriers for a long period, but then intercepted a message from the Japanese force seeking the location of the American fleet. After another long silence, the Americans intercepted a coded Japanese message. The call sign on the message was Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, whose flagship was the carrier Akagi. But one of the American naval officers present had become an expert at identifying the styles of the Japanese operators who tapped out coded messages. This message was not tapped out by the Akagi’s heavy-handed warrant officer, but instead by the chief radioman in the cruiser Nagara. The Americans concluded from this small bit of evidence that the Akagi had been damaged too heavily to serve as flagship, and Nagumo had shifted his command to the cruiser. In fact, Akagi was in flames, Nagumo had barely escaped alive by climbing down a rope from the ship’s bridge, and the carrier, which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, would sink within the day.

What the Midway example demonstrated was that even when communications interceptions were limited, they could provide valuable clues. This was one of the motivating factors in the United States’ development of low Earth orbit communications intelligence (COMINT) satellites in the early 1960s. Satellites flying only a few hundred kilometers above Earth’s surface spend a short time within range of an emitter, so trying to gather up communications signals was akin to trying to listen in on a conversation between two people as you ride past on a bicycle.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operated America’s intelligence satellites starting in the early 1960s, flew many communications intelligence payloads in low Earth orbit. Some of these sought out voice communications, but others gathered up teletype and perhaps other forms of communications within the vast expanse of the Soviet Union. Even if low orbits did not provide the dwell time over the target necessary to gather up lengthy intercepts, they could, and did, provide indications of the type and amount and transmitter locations of Soviet communications, the kind of information that signals experts call “traffic analysis.” These platforms helped pave the way for the high-altitude COMINT platforms that followed late in the decade, and they most likely helped make the case that COMINT from space would be highly productive if only the satellites could fly higher to gather more signals.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Magic on 10/19/2020 06:35 pm

excellent article, please consider listing the reference sources
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/19/2020 07:42 pm

excellent article, please consider listing the reference sources

They are mostly from here:

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA//Major-NRO-Programs-and-Projects/SIGINT-Phase-II/

and here:

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA//Major-NRO-Programs-and-Projects/AFTRACK/

There's an official history here that connects together a lot of the AFTRACK stuff:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf



Other collections are here:

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Major-NRO-Programs-and-Projects/


Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/20/2020 05:00 pm
My suspicion is that the CANYON satellite may have looked something like NASA's ATS-6 satellite. CANYON is reported to have had an antenna the same size as the ATS-6 antenna. However, CANYON launched on an Atlas-Agena, and the Agena had a diameter of 5 feet. The ATS-6 went up on a Titan IIIC, which had a diameter of 10 feet.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 10/21/2020 02:45 pm
Can't wait to get a chance to read it. Thumbs up.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/28/2020 12:47 pm
A little bird pointed me at Wikipedia (always a reliable source) and the entry on the ATS-6, and it says this about the antenna:

“It weighed 182 lbs at launch and stowed into a toroidal volume (doughnut shaped) approximately 6 feet in diameter and 10 inches thick”


So it's not impossible to believe that there was also a 30-foot diameter dish that was perhaps only 4 feet in diameter and 20 inches thick that fit inside the smaller payload shroud for CANYON. (the ATS-6 payload shroud was about twice the diameter of the CANYON payload shroud.)

Also, it turns out that the ATS-6 antenna was built by Lockheed, and Lockheed built CANYON. So there's a possibility that Lockheed developed the dish technology for the earlier program and then used it for ATS-6. One could envision CANYON as looking like ATS-6 but with a smaller box. But the ATS-6 satellite was built by Fairchild, not Lockheed, and therefore we would not expect the two satellites to look the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATS-6


Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/31/2020 07:36 pm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 11/09/2020 02:46 pm
In alphabetical order no less....
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/09/2020 03:33 pm


Have satellite candidates for CARRIE, GLORIA, LORRI been identified?

ARGUS was IIRC cancelled.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/09/2020 04:46 pm

1-Have satellite candidates for CARRIE, GLORIA, LORRI been identified?

2-ARGUS was IIRC cancelled.

1-No. And I would like to figure them out.

2-Yes.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/09/2020 04:46 pm
In alphabetical order no less....

There is at least one that is not. Notice that VINO and VAMPAN are in the wrong order.

I also don't know where VORTEX or MERCURY would go on that list.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/09/2020 05:15 pm
In alphabetical order no less....

There is at least one that is not. Notice that VINO and VAMPAN are in the wrong order.

I also don't know where VORTEX or MERCURY would go on that list.

Likely the list pre-dates the VORTEX and MERCURY names. I need to look up, when this list was created.

There is also a little bit strange, that the MAGNUM name was blacked out, while this name is now known to be a P-11 mission.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/09/2020 06:16 pm
The list is from a declassification guide from a few years ago.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/10/2020 02:23 pm
There is also a little bit strange, that the MAGNUM name was blacked out, while this name is now known to be a P-11 mission.

MAGNUM was reportedly also the other name for the ORION geosynchronous satellite system. That came out in the 1990s.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/10/2020 02:38 pm
There is also a little bit strange, that the MAGNUM name was blacked out, while this name is now known to be a P-11 mission.

MAGNUM was reportedly also the other name for the ORION geosynchronous satellite system. That came out in the 1990s.

I know, that this has been reported. But i do not know of any other instances, that a BYMAN code name has been reused. This made me wonder, if the ORION GEO satellites were really originally named MAGNUM.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/10/2020 11:05 pm
There is also a little bit strange, that the MAGNUM name was blacked out, while this name is now known to be a P-11 mission.

MAGNUM was reportedly also the other name for the ORION geosynchronous satellite system. That came out in the 1990s.

I know, that this has been reported. But i do not know of any other instances, that a BYMAN code name has been reused. This made me wonder, if the ORION GEO satellites were really originally named MAGNUM.

Yes, that is a valid observation. However, I do believe that the word "ARGON" which was the codename for the KH-5 satellite, was later used in the intelligence community. I don't think it referred to another satellite, but to another program whose purpose escapes me. (Not a piece of hardware, but an interpretation effort.)

What is your source that the MAGNUM P-11 was for looking for HEN HOUSE radars? I have the NSA document, but did not see a reference to HEN HOUSE in there.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/10/2020 11:30 pm
What is your source that the MAGNUM P-11 was for looking for HEN HOUSE radars? I have the NSA document, but did not see a reference to HEN HOUSE in there.

This document mentions HEN HOUSE as target for MAGNUM (P-11)

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007hhhh.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/10/2020 11:48 pm
Thank you. I've seen that before, but I forget about what I've seen.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/11/2020 12:27 pm
I have an article coming up on the MABELI satellite. MABELI was directed at Soviet ABM radars. There was a lot of discussion starting in 1965 or so about Soviet intentions to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems. There was already an ABM complex going into place around Moscow, although US intelligence noticed that construction started and stopped and things changed, indicating problems with the development (we know now from Soviet records that this was absolutely true).

The concern at the time was that the Soviets might also be developing a nationwide ABM system. This became a bigger, louder debate in 1965 and 1966. President Lyndon Johnson was feeling heat from members of Congress to do something about the Soviet ABM system. But there was no good intelligence indicating that there was a new Soviet ABM system. So Johnson pressed on his intelligence advisors to gather more intel. What appears to have happened (records are still a bit sketchy) is that a signals intelligence advisory committee made some recommendations about new ABM detection satellites. It also appears that the head of the NRO resisted developing a new ABM signals detection satellite, because he thought that the cost would be high and the value low.

To cut to the chase--by around 1967 and certainly 1968/69 it was clear that there was no nationwide ABM system in development in the USSR. They were not showing up in satellite photos, and what was being detected just did not cohere into a real system. Plus (I think) the Moscow system was still incomplete, indicating that the Soviets had not figured out how to do it.

So, by the late 1960s, because it was clear that the Soviets were not developing a new ABM system, and because the US system was dramatically scaled back, it became possible for the two sides to discuss an ABM treaty (it's easy to ban what you don't want to build anyway).

MABELI comes in at the tail end of this, essentially after the controversy was over. I'm not quite sure why it was built and flown, except perhaps as a treaty-monitoring system.

Oh, and some other stuff was happening, but that's another story.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/11/2020 02:33 pm
A useful discussion of the limits of receiving signals.

THE SS-8 CONTROVERSY
David S. Brandwein

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol13no3/html/v13i3a03p_0001.htm

The major effort on the part of most analysts was to examine the telemetry records to try to deduce the characteristics of this new missile. Telemetry is of course essential in such an enterprise, but it is not easy to use it to determine the size of a missile. The situation is analogous to trying to deduce information about an automobile from readings of the instrument dials on the dashboard and nothing else. Any competent engineer could determine from these readings that the vehicle was powered by an internal combustion engine and not by a reciprocating steam engine, but it would be very difficult to decide whether the engine was Volkswagen-size or Cadillac-size.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: apollo16uvc on 11/11/2020 07:05 pm
Given many documents from this era are just now being declassified and released....

It really makes you wonder what they have now.

So annoying we will have to wait an other 40-50 years to know...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/23/2020 10:51 am
Given many documents from this era are just now being declassified and released....

It really makes you wonder what they have now.

So annoying we will have to wait an other 40-50 years to know...
It seems as a general rule that the declassification around signals intelligence is always much slower than photo reconnaissance for example.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/23/2020 12:39 pm
The current issue of Quest has an article by Jim David about the 60th anniversary of the first CORONA and GRAB satellite missions.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/25/2020 02:15 am
There is also a little bit strange, that the MAGNUM name was blacked out, while this name is now known to be a P-11 mission.

MAGNUM was reportedly also the other name for the ORION geosynchronous satellite system. That came out in the 1990s.

I know, that this has been reported. But i do not know of any other instances, that a BYMAN code name has been reused. This made me wonder, if the ORION GEO satellites were really originally named MAGNUM.

Stumbled upon something that I had in an old email. It confirmed that the code name MAGNUM was in use in August 1985. It was associated with the ground system named RAINFALL.

The term ARGON was also in use as of 1988, but may not have been a satellite code name.

Confidence on these names is very high. They were real, but I don't have a lot of details on them.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/25/2020 01:55 pm
Talking about names if we had Orion satellites and then Advanced Orion. Then if as some have speculated they are now onto the next generation of these what do they call them ‘Really Advanced Orion’ or something like that?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/25/2020 05:22 pm
Talking about names if we had Orion satellites and then Advanced Orion. Then if as some have speculated they are now onto the next generation of these what do they call them ‘Really Advanced Orion’ or something like that?

A little bit insight is given by the Mission numbers, which are known from leaked documents (confirmed Mission numbers and names are in bold):

Original Magnum/Orion, which were in the continuation of the Rhyolite series: Mission 7600 series. Interestingly although the mission numbers were continuous from Rhyolite/aquacade, the Orions start again with their own Orion numbers.

Orion 1 (RIO 1, Mission 7605, USA 8 ) (ex Magnum 1)   1985-010B   24.01.1985   CCK LC-39A      Shuttle [IUS]   with Discovery F3 (STS 51-C)
Orion 2 (RIO 2, Mission 7606, USA 48) (ex Magnum 2)   1989-090B   23.11.1989   CCK LC-39B      Shuttle [IUS]   with Discovery F9 (STS 33R)

"Advanced Orion", still in the Mission 7600 series. Might in fact be still original Magnum/Orions, just moved to the Titan launch vehicle:

Orion 3 (RIO 3, Mission 7607, USA 110)         1995-022A   14.05.1995   CC LC-40      Titan-4(01)A Centaur-T   
Orion 4 (RIO 4, Mission 7608 ?, USA 139, NROL 6)   1998-029A   09.05.1998   CC LC-40      Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T   

"Advanced Orion" in the new Mission 8300 series. These are the real Advanced Orions, which join the capabilities of the Mission 7600 Orions and Mission 7500 Mercury ('Advanced Vortex').

Orion 5 (RIO 5, Mission 8301, USA 171, NROL 19)   2003-041A   09.09.2003   CC LC-40      Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T   
Orion 6 (RIO 6, Mission 8302 ?, USA 202, NROL 26)   2009-001A   18.01.2009   CC SLC-37B      Delta-4H   
Orion 7 (RIO 7, Mission 8303, USA 223, NROL 32)   2010-063A   21.11.2010   CC SLC-37B      Delta-4H   
Orion 8 (RIO 8, Mission 8304 ?, USA 237, NROL 15)   2012-034A   29.06.2012   CC SLC-37B      Delta-4H (upg.)   
Orion 9 (RIO 9, Mission 8305 ?, USA 268, NROL 37)   2016-036A   11.06.2016   CC SLC-37B      Delta-4H (upg.)   
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 11/25/2020 06:48 pm
Talking about names if we had Orion satellites and then Advanced Orion. Then if as some have speculated they are now onto the next generation of these what do they call them ‘Really Advanced Orion’ or something like that?

A little bit insight is given by the Mission numbers, which are known from leaked documents (confirmed Mission numbers and names are in bold):

Original Magnum/Orion, which were in the continuation of the Rhyolite series: Mission 7600 series. Interestingly although the mission numbers were continuous from Rhyolite/aquacade, the Orions start again with their own Orion numbers.

Orion 1 (RIO 1, Mission 7605, USA 8 ) (ex Magnum 1)1985-010B24.01.1985CCK LC-39AShuttle [IUS]with Discovery F3 (STS 51-C)
Orion 2 (RIO 2, Mission 7606, USA 48) (ex Magnum 2)1989-090B23.11.1989CCK LC-39BShuttle [IUS]with Discovery F9 (STS 33R)

"Advanced Orion", still in the Mission 7600 series. Might in fact be still original Magnum/Orions, just moved to the Titan launch vehicle:

Orion 3 (RIO 3, Mission 7607, USA 110)1995-022A14.05.1995CC LC-40Titan-4(01)A Centaur-T
Orion 4 (RIO 4, Mission 7608 ?, USA 139, NROL 6)1998-029A09.05.1998CC LC-40Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T

"Advanced Orion" in the new Mission 8300 series. These are the real Advanced Orions, which join the capabilities of the Mission 7600 Orions and Mission 7500 Mercury ('Advanced Vortex').

Orion 5 (RIO 5, Mission 8301, USA 171, NROL 19)2003-041A09.09.2003CC LC-40Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T
Orion 6 (RIO 6, Mission 8302 ?, USA 202, NROL 26)2009-001A18.01.2009CC SLC-37BDelta-4H
Orion 7 (RIO 7, Mission 8303, USA 223, NROL 32)2010-063A21.11.2010CC SLC-37BDelta-4H
Orion 8 (RIO 8, Mission 8304 ?, USA 237, NROL 15)2012-034A29.06.2012CC SLC-37BDelta-4H (upg.)
Orion 9 (RIO 9, Mission 8305 ?, USA 268, NROL 37)2016-036A11.06.2016CC SLC-37BDelta-4H (upg.)
Thank you for that. Stretching my memory but is Orion 3 the one we have the leaked diagram of thanks to a certain individual?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 11/25/2020 08:53 pm
Talking about names if we had Orion satellites and then Advanced Orion. Then if as some have speculated they are now onto the next generation of these what do they call them ‘Really Advanced Orion’ or something like that?

A little bit insight is given by the Mission numbers, which are known from leaked documents (confirmed Mission numbers and names are in bold):

Original Magnum/Orion, which were in the continuation of the Rhyolite series: Mission 7600 series. Interestingly although the mission numbers were continuous from Rhyolite/aquacade, the Orions start again with their own Orion numbers.

Orion 1 (RIO 1, Mission 7605, USA 8 ) (ex Magnum 1)1985-010B24.01.1985CCK LC-39AShuttle [IUS]with Discovery F3 (STS 51-C)
Orion 2 (RIO 2, Mission 7606, USA 48) (ex Magnum 2)1989-090B23.11.1989CCK LC-39BShuttle [IUS]with Discovery F9 (STS 33R)

"Advanced Orion", still in the Mission 7600 series. Might in fact be still original Magnum/Orions, just moved to the Titan launch vehicle:

Orion 3 (RIO 3, Mission 7607, USA 110)1995-022A14.05.1995CC LC-40Titan-4(01)A Centaur-T
Orion 4 (RIO 4, Mission 7608 ?, USA 139, NROL 6)1998-029A09.05.1998CC LC-40Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T

"Advanced Orion" in the new Mission 8300 series. These are the real Advanced Orions, which join the capabilities of the Mission 7600 Orions and Mission 7500 Mercury ('Advanced Vortex').

Orion 5 (RIO 5, Mission 8301, USA 171, NROL 19)2003-041A09.09.2003CC LC-40Titan-4(01)B Centaur-T
Orion 6 (RIO 6, Mission 8302 ?, USA 202, NROL 26)2009-001A18.01.2009CC SLC-37BDelta-4H
Orion 7 (RIO 7, Mission 8303, USA 223, NROL 32)2010-063A21.11.2010CC SLC-37BDelta-4H
Orion 8 (RIO 8, Mission 8304 ?, USA 237, NROL 15)2012-034A29.06.2012CC SLC-37BDelta-4H (upg.)
Orion 9 (RIO 9, Mission 8305 ?, USA 268, NROL 37)2016-036A11.06.2016CC SLC-37BDelta-4H (upg.)
Thank you for that. Stretching my memory but is Orion 3 the one we have the leaked diagram of thanks to a certain individual?

No, this was Orion-6.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/13/2020 05:45 pm
I have two articles coming up in TSR. They're not big, and they are not revelatory. They are mainly intended to explore the SIGINT satellite subject a bit more, particularly the issue of detection of ABM radars. The first article is on MABELI and TIVOLI smallsats (MABELI was essentially the fourth TIVOLI satellite). The second article is on the origins of the JUMPSEAT high altitude satellite.


Finally submitting the first of these, and they're more revelatory than I thought. Collectively, they explain a lot more of what the US was doing with satellite signals intelligence during the latter 1960s and into the 1970s. Searching for ABM radars became a bigger deal, and over half a dozen satellites launched starting later in the decade had ABM radar detection as a major role. (Getting an exact number is a bit tricky. Do you count a multi-satellite POPPY mission as four satellites, or only a single mission? If you count them as four satellites, then the number of satellites with ABM as a major role is more like ten.)

The first article provides a lot of the context--i.e. what were the issues and why were they concerned, and then how did the NRO respond?



Update: A major issue, starting around 1964, was what became known as the TALLINN issue. U.S. reconnaissance satellites spotted new surface-to-air missile construction at Tallinn, Estonia, and for reasons I don't quite understand, there were questions about whether this was an ABM missile. The CIA concluded relatively early on that the Tallinn site, and similar sites erected in other locations (which were also labeled as "TALLINN" sites) was a SAM and not an ABM. But some people charged that the missiles could be upgraded to ABMs. Here are pages from a 1964 report comparing the TALLINN site to other sites. (I have also attached the pdf.) I did not use this document in my article, but it gives you an idea of the issue.

The TALLINN controversy started to die down later in the decade, although there were still people arguing that the missile (then designated the SA-5 Gammon) could be upgraded. Finally, there was some real closure on this a few years later, as I mention in my article.

So while this controversy was going on--pushed by people in Congress, the media, and elsewhere, who wanted the US to build its own ABM system--the National Reconnaissance Office increased its intelligence capabilities to collect information about TALLINN and related issues. Answering this question required multiple sources of information: imagery, SIGINT, possibly HUMINT, and a lot of analysis and study. 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/14/2020 09:41 pm
Something that I don't discuss in my article, but which is a bit of a sidenote, is that initially the U.S. intelligence community labeled this missile as the SA-5 Griffon. But it turned out that this missile was canceled. So the SA-5 designation was applied to another missile (the color photo) named the Gammon. The SA-5 Gammon is what was deployed at the Tallinn, Estonia and other sites.

The SA-5 Gammon was roughly the equivalent to the U.S. Nike-Hercules. It was not an ABM, but it took a lot of effort for the U.S. intelligence community to confirm that.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 12/15/2020 02:02 am
NRO Facebook post a few days ago

POPPY was the successor to GRAB, the nation's 1st ELINT satellite. Developed by the Naval Research Lab, POPPY was designed to detect land based radar emitters and support ocean surveillance, making great contributions to the nation's security during a perilous era. 🛰️ #tbt
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/15/2020 02:08 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4091/1

Big bird, little bird: chasing Soviet anti-ballistic missile radars in the 1960s
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, December 14, 2020

The second bus-sized HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite roared off its California launch pad in January 1972. Inside of its payload shroud atop the Titan III rocket, the HEXAGON looked somewhat like a train locomotive, and tucked along one of its slab sides was a small rectangular box about the size of a suitcase. After the HEXAGON reached its proper orbit and stabilized itself, circling the Earth over its poles, the box detached, pushed off by springs. It started spinning, and then fired a small rocket motor that boosted its orbit a bit higher than the big bird that had delivered it into space. The small satellite began unfolding like an origami crane spreading out, deploying solar panels and numerous antennas, most of them pointed down at the Earth.

The satellite was named MABELI, and once its antennas were open, MABELI began hunting for radar signals.

MABELI stood for “Main beam TIVOLI.” TIVOLI had been a predecessor satellite, and it stood for “Technical Intelligence Vehicle Orbital Life Indefinite,” which only made a little bit of sense and may have been an inside joke to its designers, who often gave the satellites and their payloads irreverent names, sometimes naming them after movie stars or puns or even their coworkers. Three TIVOLI satellites had flown by 1971, and now MABELI was following on, continuing the mission of listening for signals from Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radars, a mission that had perplexed American intelligence analysts for much of the 1960s. It had been one part of an often-heated debate over whether the Soviet Union was developing an anti-ballistic missile system, and whether the United States needed one as well.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/21/2020 04:25 pm
You'll see something about JUMPSEAT later today.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/22/2020 01:50 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4096/1

From TACSAT to JUMPSEAT: Hughes and the top secret Gyrostat satellite gamble
by Dwayne A. Day and Nicholas W. Watkins
Monday, December 21, 2020

Starting in August 1968, the secretive National Reconnaissance Office began launching new intelligence satellites into much higher orbits to accomplish their missions. The first was the CANYON series of communications intelligence satellites, followed in 1970 by the first of the RHYOLITE telemetry interception satellites. In spring 1971, the NRO launched a new and enigmatic satellite named JUMPSEAT, which has remained perhaps the most mysterious of these high-orbit satellites. Each of these satellites pushed the state of the art in terms of payloads, antennas, and satellite design. But JUMPSEAT represented a concerted effort by a civil and commercial satellite designer to break into the top-secret world of satellite intelligence by leveraging a new technology and a military contract to demonstrate that it could perform the mission of both detecting signals from the ground, and spotting missile launches with an infrared telescope.

By the late 1960s, the Space Systems Division of Hughes Aircraft Company was already a dominant force in satellite communications, having developed the first geosynchronous orbit communications satellite, Syncom 2 in 1963, and its commercial successor, Intelsat I, better known as Early Bird, in 1965. In early 1969, another new Hughes technology, the Gyrostat, made its space debut. This time it was on the tactical communications satellite, or TACSAT, one of the first geostationary military comsats. The Gyrostat was a damping system which prevented satellites from inevitably spinning around their longest axis. By allowing “long and thin” satellites, the Gyrostat maximized the use of shroud space on the Titan IIIC launcher, enabling TACSAT to be nearly eight meters long and three meters in diameter. TACSAT was a spinning cylinder with a large antenna “farm” on its top, and at over half a ton in mass, and with over 200 watts of power to the UHF antenna array, it has long been known to be a pioneer and record-breaker among comsats. Newly revealed information is, however, only now showing how TACSAT gave Hughes the knowledge and skills to successfully compete for several other key military and intelligence satellite contracts over the next few years, including the JUMPSEAT signals intelligence (SIGINT) and Satellite Data System (SDS) data-relay satellites. The new information also confirms the long-rumored dual role of JUMPSEAT in carrying both signals intelligence (SIGINT) and infrared missile detection payloads, though some puzzles remain.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/22/2020 01:53 am
Did JUMPSEAT put its infrared telescope below the rotating drum, with its antenna farm above?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 12/22/2020 09:30 pm
Outstanding as usual
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/08/2021 05:28 pm
I'll have an article about POPPY 8 on Monday. It was the first mission with a goal of ocean surveillance. I'll follow that in coming weeks with something about the BIT "vulnerability payloads" and possibly something on the further development of ocean surveillance in the early 1970s.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/09/2021 04:21 pm
Unfortunately, the only image of the September 1969 launch is rather poor. That mission also carried the WESTON satellite. I've got new information on WESTON. Here's a newly-declassified image of that satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Magic on 05/09/2021 11:11 pm
Re: Weston

The RAE Tables of Earth satellites 1957-1989; page 207 for 1969-82A lists:

Octagon?
60? (kg)

0.3 long? (m)
0.9 dia? (m)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/10/2021 01:03 pm
Re: Weston

The RAE Tables of Earth satellites 1957-1989; page 207 for 1969-82A lists:

Octagon?
60? (kg)

0.3 long? (m)
0.9 dia? (m)

These deployed satellites used the P-11 (for Program 11) bus. That had to fit on the aft rack of an Agena. There was a very wide variation in what they carried on that bus. Lots of different antennas. Some were poles, some were "window shades" which was sort of a rolled up sheet with the antenna pattern printed on it, and some were dishes. I will have a future article about a number of them (we still don't have a complete picture of all of them).

In addition, Boeing developed the S3 bus that was used for some scientific missions. It may have also been used from some SIGINT missions.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/11/2021 12:25 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4174/1

Spybirds: POPPY 8 and the dawn of satellite ocean surveillance
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, May 10, 2021

At the end of September 1969, a Thor-Agena rocket roared off its launch pad in California and climbed high over the Pacific Ocean, heading south. The rocket dropped its stubby pencil-like solid booster motors not very long after lifting off and continued its arc. A few minutes later, its first stage, burning a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen, ran low on fuel and its engine shut down. The Agena upper stage separated and small motors fired, pushing it away and forcing the fuel in its tanks to settle to the rear, and in moments its Bell rocket engine ignited, pushing it faster and higher. Its bulbous nose cone separated and flew away, revealing a cluster of four shiny, egg-shaped satellites surrounding a small pointy object. Upon reaching orbital velocity the Agena’s engine shut down and the shiny satellites began to pop off, pushed away by springs. Each satellite was about the size of a toddler, and collectively they were known as POPPY 8. They were followed by several other satellites that also separated from the front of the Agena. Moments later, various small satellites were pushed off the rear of the Agena. Then came the finale: at the rear of the Agena, a box-shaped satellite the size of a fat suitcase and named WESTON rotated back on a hinge and was shoved away on springs before firing its solid rocket motor and heading to a higher orbit.

In all, ten satellites were pushed off the Agena that day. There were no rocketcams to record the deployment, and there was no reporting of the event to the press. Of the ten satellites, six were top secret, their missions unknown except to an exclusive cadre of intelligence experts possessing the proper security clearances. Today, due to declassifications by the National Reconnaissance Office, it has become apparent that this launch represented a significant turning point in the history of satellite signals intelligence, when satellites were no longer collecting data to be analyzed at a future time, but to be used in near-real-time, to support military forces. Because as soon as POPPY 8’s satellites reached orbit, they began hunting for Soviet warships on the high seas.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/11/2021 09:11 am
Thanks really informative and interesting article.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/14/2021 03:47 pm
I have a number of other articles in the works. To be honest, I always have at least 10-20 articles in draft form at any given time and some I sit on for years and others I start, finish, and publish (well, usually on The Space Review) in a week or two. In the near future I'm going to run a few articles on the following subjects:

-the BIT "vulnerability payloads" that were carried on CORONA, GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites to detect if they were being tracked by Soviet radars so that they could be attacked.
-something on the various P-11 satellites that were flown in the 1960s and 1970s (based upon newly-declassified information)
-something on CANYON and its relationship to another LEO satellite
-a follow-on to this POPPY article that goes into the further development of ocean surveillance, including space radar
-something about a NASA Mars mission and a LEGO spacecraft
-maybe a book review or two, or three

Those are just the immediate future ones. I've got a bunch of other things that I really need to get around to finishing and publishing.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: limen4 on 05/14/2021 06:00 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4174/1

Spybirds: POPPY 8 and the dawn of satellite ocean surveillance
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, May 10, 2021


Blackstar, a very interesting article. Looking forward for more information about P-11.
Maybe not the right place for my question. You refer to this source: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/from-sea-stars.html
In Table 5 (APL Environmental Research Satellites during the 1960s) a satellite named PAPA 765 , launched 22 May 1965, is listed. A sub-satellite during the Fire 2 test?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 05/14/2021 08:01 pm
a satellite named PAPA 765 , launched 22 May 1965, is listed. A sub-satellite during the Fire 2 test?

There were no launches that day
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: limen4 on 05/15/2021 10:01 am
a satellite named PAPA 765 , launched 22 May 1965, is listed. A sub-satellite during the Fire 2 test?

There were no launches that day
I think the term "satellite" is misleading.On 22 May a Atlas D - Antares 2 was launched from CC station for the Fire 2 reentry test. Maybe PAPA 765 remained attached to the Antares. DNA as sponsor and Ionospheric as mission indicate that PAPA 765 was no signal intelligence payload. But nowhere I can find any link to the payload, even in the APL summary.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 05/15/2021 10:35 am
Maybe not the right place for my question. You refer to this source: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/from-sea-stars.html
In Table 5 (APL Environmental Research Satellites during the 1960s) a satellite named PAPA 765 , launched 22 May 1965, is listed. A sub-satellite during the Fire 2 test?

I have also wondered about this PAPA 765 satellite. As there were no orbital launches on this day, it might be a suborbital payload instead of a satellite (which would have flown with FIRE 2 on an Atlas-D Antares on the given date) or there is a typo in the date (likely, as there are other wrong launch dates in the table [TRAAC, ANNA 1B, 5E-1, GEOS 1]).

However, i have not found any other references to PAPA 765 so far.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/15/2021 03:32 pm
Meanwhile, back on the subject...

Been working on the ocean surveillance article (follow-on to this week's POPPY 8 article).

There's still not a lot of new data on the satellite side, but I've been able to assemble a fuller picture of what was going on. If you look at the info released about POPPY, you see that a lot of the technology and techniques proven with the POPPY satellites made their way into the PARCAE satellites, such as the microthrusters for station-keeping, the multi-satellite constellations, etc. There was a problem with one of the POPPY missions where it ended up on its side, so they used gravity boom stabilization on PARCAE. Things like that.

What is particularly interesting to me is how POPPY was really designed to feed to fixed ground stations, but then PARCAE was eventually adapted to feed to deployed platforms (ships and aircraft, possibly even subs). How they did that is unclear, but if you start to think about it, that must have been a significant undertaking. I don't know how it changed the satellites (different transmitters?), but it meant that the Navy had to develop and deploy a lot of antennas, sticking them on everything. We still don't know how many POPPY ground stations there were, but once PARCAE was adapted to provide data directly to the fleet, the Navy had to produce hundreds of receiving antennas.

Something I need to figure out is what antennas were added to Navy ships in this time period to get the data.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 05/17/2021 12:20 pm

What is particularly interesting to me is how POPPY was really designed to feed to fixed ground stations, but then PARCAE was eventually adapted to feed to deployed platforms (ships and aircraft, possibly even subs). How they did that is unclear, but if you start to think about it, that must have been a significant undertaking. I don't know how it changed the satellites (different transmitters?), but it meant that the Navy had to develop and deploy a lot of antennas, sticking them on everything. We still don't know how many POPPY ground stations there were, but once PARCAE was adapted to provide data directly to the fleet, the Navy had to produce hundreds of receiving antennas.

Something I need to figure out is what antennas were added to Navy ships in this time period to get the data.

Really?  Because that would require some computational work either on the spacecraft or on the ship. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvvt.19?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2021 01:23 pm

What is particularly interesting to me is how POPPY was really designed to feed to fixed ground stations, but then PARCAE was eventually adapted to feed to deployed platforms (ships and aircraft, possibly even subs). How they did that is unclear, but if you start to think about it, that must have been a significant undertaking. I don't know how it changed the satellites (different transmitters?), but it meant that the Navy had to develop and deploy a lot of antennas, sticking them on everything. We still don't know how many POPPY ground stations there were, but once PARCAE was adapted to provide data directly to the fleet, the Navy had to produce hundreds of receiving antennas.

Something I need to figure out is what antennas were added to Navy ships in this time period to get the data.

Really?  Because that would require some computational work either on the spacecraft or on the ship. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvvt.19?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Yes. That is an issue I am trying to understand. POPPY was a "bent pipe" design that sent the data straight down in real time. Did PARCAE follow that approach? (Probably.) But where was the processing done?

Right now I only have rather broad-brush, generic information. But it's all rather fascinating. Keep in mind that until this point, SIGINT was "national" intelligence, meaning it went to high-level analysts at fixed locations with high security. It was intended to help senior decision makers and did not have to be immediate. Starting with this system in the 1970s and really by the 1980s, the goal was to get the data directly to the targeting systems on deployed platforms (ships, subs and aircraft). It was even bypassing the analysts and going right into a targeting system that might be manned by an enlisted sailor. That's a big change.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 05/17/2021 04:07 pm

What is particularly interesting to me is how POPPY was really designed to feed to fixed ground stations, but then PARCAE was eventually adapted to feed to deployed platforms (ships and aircraft, possibly even subs). How they did that is unclear, but if you start to think about it, that must have been a significant undertaking. I don't know how it changed the satellites (different transmitters?), but it meant that the Navy had to develop and deploy a lot of antennas, sticking them on everything. We still don't know how many POPPY ground stations there were, but once PARCAE was adapted to provide data directly to the fleet, the Navy had to produce hundreds of receiving antennas.

Something I need to figure out is what antennas were added to Navy ships in this time period to get the data.

Really?  Because that would require some computational work either on the spacecraft or on the ship. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvvt.19?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Yes. That is an issue I am trying to understand. POPPY was a "bent pipe" design that sent the data straight down in real time. Did PARCAE follow that approach? (Probably.) But where was the processing done?

Right now I only have rather broad-brush, generic information. But it's all rather fascinating. Keep in mind that until this point, SIGINT was "national" intelligence, meaning it went to high-level analysts at fixed locations with high security. It was intended to help senior decision makers and did not have to be immediate. Starting with this system in the 1970s and really by the 1980s, the goal was to get the data directly to the targeting systems on deployed platforms (ships, subs and aircraft). It was even bypassing the analysts and going right into a targeting system that might be manned by an enlisted sailor. That's a big change.


Reading what I attached looks like still bent pipe
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2021 04:17 pm

Reading what I attached looks like still bent pipe

That's my assumption. But was the processing done on the platform (ship?) or was it done on a ground station and then the targeting data was sent out to the platform via comsat?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/17/2021 08:29 pm
When somebody (me) writes about this stuff, there are so many different ways to approach it. One approach is to focus on the spacecraft and how and why they were developed. I like that stuff. Another approach is how the data was used--for instance, who used the photos from imagery satellites and how? Who used the signals intelligence data and how did they do that? That aspect is important too.

There's another big picture way to look at this as well, which is the overall culture of the organizations that developed and used the data. So in this case, the NRO and the NSA and the Navy (but with regards to other SIGINT data, also the Air Force).

There was an interesting cultural shift that had to take place with the ocean surveillance mission. Prior to that, the SIGINT data went to the NSA and the Air Force. They processed it and they figured out where the Soviet radars were, how they worked, how to avoid them, how to jam them, etc. Ocean surveillance then added in the Navy, and the data went to Navy centers where they used it to plot out Soviet ship locations. So some Navy intelligence center could then send out a transmission to US Navy ships at sea and say "There is a Soviet destroyer near this location, and a Soviet task force near this other location, and we think there is a Soviet sub in this general area."

Not that different than the previous users, really. The NSA and USAF figured out radar locations, but they were mostly fixed radars. SA-2 missile sites, for instance, didn't move around a lot. The Navy, however, was looking for targets that were always moving, and that required more updates and faster response times. A lot quicker turnaround and a lot of work. But still, the data is going to a center, it's going to some shore location that has a bunch of people who can look at maps and look at other data (like reports from maritime patrol aircraft) and figure out the overall threat picture.

Once they went to the "sensor-to-shooter" approach that must have rankled a lot of people. Now they're pushing data that has not been carefully analyzed straight to a computer system on a ship, and manned by somebody who may not have a lot of training. It may be that a 20-year-old sailor is sitting there looking at a computer screen and trying to make sense of the data. And his CO may be demanding immediate updates. That's a big cultural shift, and it would be interesting to learn if there were people who were opposed to it. Maybe people who said "You cannot trust this kind of top secret data to a 20-year-old kid on a destroyer..."

There have been other times when the culture had to shift. One that I think would be interesting to dig into is the shift from film-based reconnaissance systems (CORONA, HEXAGON, GAMBIT) to the KENNEN electro-optical near-real-time imagery system. That resulted in the creation of the Priority Exploitation Group (PEG) at the National Photographic Interpretation Center. In that case, they were now taking data that was only minutes to hours old and deciding what was important enough to push up the chain of command. For instance "We saw X happen, and the Secretary of Defense needs to know about it now."
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 05/18/2021 08:29 am
When somebody (me) writes about this stuff, there are so many different ways to approach it. One approach is to focus on the spacecraft and how and why they were developed. I like that stuff. Another approach is how the data was used--for instance, who used the photos from imagery satellites and how? Who used the signals intelligence data and how did they do that? That aspect is important too.

There's another big picture way to look at this as well, which is the overall culture of the organizations that developed and used the data. So in this case, the NRO and the NSA and the Navy (but with regards to other SIGINT data, also the Air Force).

There was an interesting cultural shift that had to take place with the ocean surveillance mission. Prior to that, the SIGINT data went to the NSA and the Air Force. They processed it and they figured out where the Soviet radars were, how they worked, how to avoid them, how to jam them, etc. Ocean surveillance then added in the Navy, and the data went to Navy centers where they used it to plot out Soviet ship locations. So some Navy intelligence center could then send out a transmission to US Navy ships at sea and say "There is a Soviet destroyer near this location, and a Soviet task force near this other location, and we think there is a Soviet sub in this general area."

Not that different than the previous users, really. The NSA and USAF figured out radar locations, but they were mostly fixed radars. SA-2 missile sites, for instance, didn't move around a lot. The Navy, however, was looking for targets that were always moving, and that required more updates and faster response times. A lot quicker turnaround and a lot of work. But still, the data is going to a center, it's going to some shore location that has a bunch of people who can look at maps and look at other data (like reports from maritime patrol aircraft) and figure out the overall threat picture.

Once they went to the "sensor-to-shooter" approach that must have rankled a lot of people. Now they're pushing data that has not been carefully analyzed straight to a computer system on a ship, and manned by somebody who may not have a lot of training. It may be that a 20-year-old sailor is sitting there looking at a computer screen and trying to make sense of the data. And his CO may be demanding immediate updates. That's a big cultural shift, and it would be interesting to learn if there were people who were opposed to it. Maybe people who said "You cannot trust this kind of top secret data to a 20-year-old kid on a destroyer..."

There have been other times when the culture had to shift. One that I think would be interesting to dig into is the shift from film-based reconnaissance systems (CORONA, HEXAGON, GAMBIT) to the KENNEN electro-optical near-real-time imagery system. That resulted in the creation of the Priority Exploitation Group (PEG) at the National Photographic Interpretation Center. In that case, they were now taking data that was only minutes to hours old and deciding what was important enough to push up the chain of command. For instance "We saw X happen, and the Secretary of Defense needs to know about it now."
That must have been an overwhelming amount of data so they must have needed to employ a lot of people to sort through it when they went over to real time imagery. I guess these days they use a lot of machine learning to sort the imagery into what is and isn’t important before even a human eye sees much of it.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/21/2021 01:40 am
I have a number of other articles in the works. To be honest, I always have at least 10-20 articles in draft form at any given time and some I sit on for years and others I start, finish, and publish (well, usually on The Space Review) in a week or two. In the near future I'm going to run a few articles on the following subjects:

-the BIT "vulnerability payloads" that were carried on CORONA, GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites to detect if they were being tracked by Soviet radars so that they could be attacked.
-something on the various P-11 satellites that were flown in the 1960s and 1970s (based upon newly-declassified information)
-something on CANYON and its relationship to another LEO satellite
-a follow-on to this POPPY article that goes into the further development of ocean surveillance, including space radar
-something about a NASA Mars mission and a LEGO spacecraft
-maybe a book review or two, or three

Those are just the immediate future ones. I've got a bunch of other things that I really need to get around to finishing and publishing.


Updating my earlier post.

Regarding my POPPY follow-on article, that's now relatively lengthy. Thanks to Jim's JSTOR link (up-thread), plus this one:

https://ndisc.nd.edu/assets/330880/jss_cwas_naval_intel_roots_of_reagan_maritime_strategy.pdf

I don't have a lot to say about the PARCAE satellites themselves (you'll note that the above link barely mentions "satellties"), but I do have a lot more about how they were used and fitted into the overall ocean surveillance mission. Based upon those sources, it looks like starting in the 1970s and into the early 1980s, that PARCAE data came down to dedicated ground stations, was then sent to the regional intelligence centers, and then was distributed to the ships at sea. Eventually they developed a requirement that the data had to reach the users in two minutes or less, but it's unclear when this happened. I think, based upon some information in the book "From the Sea to the Stars," that it was not until the 1990s that the satellite data went directly to the deployed forces (ships and aircraft). Before that, I think it went through various ground stations and then out through GEO comsats.

My article about the P-11 satellites is shaping up. I'm only going to provide a snapshot of the overall history of the program (which ran from 1963 to at least the late 1980s, but may have continued into the 1990s). However, that SNAPSHOT is going to provide detailed information on the following satellites:

ARROYO
VAMPAN/LAMPAN
TIVOLI
TOP HAT
SAVANT
TRIPOS/SOUSEA
MABELI

And maybe a couple of others. I don't know the total number of P-11 satellites off the top of my head (30?), but I'll be able to discuss maybe 25%-30% of them. One thing that I'm learning is that even satellites in the same series were not identical. TIVOLI I and II were apparently nearly identical, but TIVOLI III had a different antenna configuration and some other equipment, although the same overall mission. SAVANT II was upgraded compared to SAVANT I, and so on. I am not particularly interested in the signals intelligence subject, but nobody writes about it, and I've got some good information.

To the list above you can also add some other articles I have in the works:

-the STRAWMAN satellites
-something about the F-15 ASAT
-something about the 2008 satellite shootdown
-one or two other intelligence-related articles

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/29/2021 11:13 am
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4204/1

Shipkillers: from satellite to shooter at sea
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, June 28, 2021


In late summer 1973, a US reconnaissance satellite photographed a large warship under construction at Leningrad Shipyard Ordzhonikid 189 on the Baltic. The warship had a distinctive bottom plate and was obviously one of the largest vessels ever built by the Soviet Union. The CIA soon designated it as Baltic Combatant #1, or BALCOM 1 for short. Throughout the 1970s satellites continued to fly overhead as the warship took shape, photographing the shipyard as workers installed a nuclear reactor and large diagonal silos for launching massive cruise missiles.[1] Eventually the ship was named Kirov and arrived in Northern Fleet waters in early October 1980. Late that year, the ship was conducting cruise missile and surface-to-air missile firings. By that time, a second Kirov was under construction and preparing for launch in 1981.[2]

The Kirov was equipped with 20 large SS-N-19 cruise missiles. The NATO code name for this missile was “Shipwreck.” Even before the Kirov was launched, the US Navy soon began looking for ways of killing the massive cruiser before it could launch its Shipwreck missiles at American aircraft carriers. The Kirov, like most large Soviet warships, was covered in antennas. When any of them turned on, some of their emissions traveled out into space, and American satellites could intercept them.

The emergence of the Kirov was just the latest development in what US intelligence analysts had assessed as an increasingly powerful and capable Soviet Navy. Up until the mid-1960s, the Soviet Navy had primarily stayed relatively close to the motherland. But by the middle of that decade, Soviet vessels began traveling farther and operating longer in the world’s oceans. In August 1969, the US intelligence community, and the request of the Chief of Naval Operations, formally added a new mission for its fleet of top-secret satellites: ocean surveillance.[3] That mission was based upon experience gained from the POPPY 7 mission, launched in 1967 and used to track Soviet warships in the Mediterranean. POPPY was different than other American low-altitude signals intelligence satellites because it did not record the signals it intercepted but relayed them directly to a ground station—a so-called “bent pipe” system. This meant that the data relayed from the satellites was current, a vital requirement for locating moving ships. Ground stations were in the territories of American allies on the periphery of the Soviet Union, such as Turkey. Many of the POPPY ground stations were also conveniently situated near large bodies of water, meaning that when over the Soviet Union POPPY satellites could gather signals from the ground, and when over the water they could gather signals from ships, relaying them to the same ground stations.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/28/2021 05:21 pm
Next Monday I will have a big article in The Space Review about the P-11 signals intelligence satellite. It includes substantial new information (including illustrations) on a number of the satellites. In this attached table, the satellites that I discuss in detail are colored red (so SAVANT, WESTON, ARROYO, etc.). (Light blue are failures.)

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 07/31/2021 01:54 pm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/03/2021 01:25 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4225/1

Little Wizards: Signals intelligence satellites during the Cold War
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, August 2, 2021

In the early 1960s, somebody at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company—it is not clear who—came up with the idea of putting a small satellite on the back end of an Agena spacecraft and popping it off when the Agena reached orbit. The Agena served as a second stage and also provided stability, power, and communications for numerous military and intelligence payloads, making it both a rocket stage and a spacecraft. There was extra room near the Agena’s engine, and somebody realized that a small satellite could be placed there, getting a free ride to orbit. The deployed satellite could even have a small solid rocket motor that could propel it to a higher orbit.

The initial proposal was for a circular-shaped satellite that would have been about the size of a large pizza (although thicker), but this was quickly refined into a squat, pyramidal box about the size of a fat suitcase. There was enough room on the long sides of the box to carry electronics, and clever engineers found ways to fold multiple antennas along the top, bottom, and sides. The project was named Program 11, and the satellites soon were known as P-11s.

Over the course of three decades, around two-thirds of the 44 satellites were launched off the backs of various Agenas and slightly less than a third were launched off HEXAGON reconnaissance spacecraft, with a few launched by other means. Most of the P-11s were on top secret missions to gather intelligence about radar and communications systems in the Soviet Union. Due to recent declassifications by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that managed America’s intelligence gathering satellites, it is now possible to describe the missions and equipment of many of these P-11 satellites, which performed electronic wizardry in the murky recesses of the Cold War, and probably beyond.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 08/21/2021 06:30 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4225/1

Little Wizards: Signals intelligence satellites during the Cold War
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, August 2, 2021

In the early 1960s, somebody at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company—it is not clear who—came up with the idea of putting a small satellite on the back end of an Agena spacecraft and popping it off when the Agena reached orbit. The Agena served as a second stage and also provided stability, power, and communications for numerous military and intelligence payloads, making it both a rocket stage and a spacecraft. There was extra room near the Agena’s engine, and somebody realized that a small satellite could be placed there, getting a free ride to orbit. The deployed satellite could even have a small solid rocket motor that could propel it to a higher orbit.

The initial proposal was for a circular-shaped satellite that would have been about the size of a large pizza (although thicker), but this was quickly refined into a squat, pyramidal box about the size of a fat suitcase. There was enough room on the long sides of the box to carry electronics, and clever engineers found ways to fold multiple antennas along the top, bottom, and sides. The project was named Program 11, and the satellites soon were known as P-11s.

Over the course of three decades, around two-thirds of the 44 satellites were launched off the backs of various Agenas and slightly less than a third were launched off HEXAGON reconnaissance spacecraft, with a few launched by other means. Most of the P-11s were on top secret missions to gather intelligence about radar and communications systems in the Soviet Union. Due to recent declassifications by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that managed America’s intelligence gathering satellites, it is now possible to describe the missions and equipment of many of these P-11 satellites, which performed electronic wizardry in the murky recesses of the Cold War, and probably beyond.

NRO's 2021Q1 FOIA release includes SIGINT docs on LAMPAN, SAMPAN, SAVANT, STRAWMAN/THRESHER/REAPER, TIVOLI, TRIPOS/SOUSEA, WESTON, etc.

Focus seems to be on frequencies and signal types, i.e. info already nicely summarised in Dwayne's article.

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/)
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 08/21/2021 10:37 am
I’ll cross post this here as the article has a long section on the difficulties of declassifying programs.

Quote
“It is absolutely a true problem,” Gen. DT Thompson, deputy Space Force commander, responded to a question about over-classification during a July 28 Mitchell Institute event. “I wish we owned our own destiny in that regard, but we don’t — it’s part of a broader activity and we just have to work through that. What I will say is, I think we’re on the verge of a couple of significant steps.”

The Transparency Dilemma

In fact, Thompson’s comments represented only one of several comments, quietly dropped in speeches or interviews, from top military space officials pushing for declassification of high-end systems, following several years of a steadily intensifying drumbeat on the issue. A who’s-who list of top officers, DoD civilian leaders, and key members of Congress have for years been arguing that over-classification is harming the ability to convey the growing threat of foreign counterspace to lawmakers, the public and allied/partner nations — as well as the ability to cooperate with industry and foreign partners to mitigate those threats.

And it goes on from here. Part of the argument goes how do you deter others if they don’t know certain capabilities are possessed by you.

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/08/pentagon-posed-to-unveil-classified-space-weapon/
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/21/2021 01:30 pm
And it goes on from here. Part of the argument goes how do you deter others if they don’t know certain capabilities are possessed by you.

Everybody who owns a doomsday weapon has experienced this problem.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/21/2021 01:32 pm
Focus seems to be on frequencies and signal types, i.e. info already nicely summarised in Dwayne's article.


Those are the documents that I used for the article. I've had them awhile, it just took a lot of effort to go through them and incorporate them into an article.

I've got a couple more things in the works that will be follow-ons to that. One is going to be a kind of bits and pieces article that includes some other info I've gathered. It won't be particularly revelatory, but I didn't want to leave some stuff just lying around.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 08/21/2021 04:56 pm
And it goes on from here. Part of the argument goes how do you deter others if they don’t know certain capabilities are possessed by you.

Everybody who owns a doomsday weapon has experienced this problem.
The most interesting part to me was hearing how long running this debate over declassification in general seems to have been. It also feels like the system itself is weighted against the people trying to change it.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 08/22/2021 04:05 pm
NRO's 2021Q1 FOIA release includes SIGINT docs on LAMPAN, SAMPAN, SAVANT, STRAWMAN/THRESHER/REAPER, TIVOLI, TRIPOS/SOUSEA, WESTON, etc.

Focus seems to be on frequencies and signal types, i.e. info already nicely summarised in Dwayne's article.

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/)

Release also includes this, which I don't recognise.  Any ideas?

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00120_C05131552.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/23/2021 05:17 pm
It doesn't seem to match STEX or GeoLITE closely, but I have a few questions i) do people think all the pictures are of the same satellite; ii) are the solar cells on the walls of the spacecraft or are those stowed panels, and iii) is the cylindrical object at the "bottom" of spacecraft a camera ?

One possibility might be something with a family resemblance to MSTI 2
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sat/spectrum_sa200s.htm
and MSTI 3
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/msti-3.htm ?

[Edit: uploaded the file as a hedge against future NRO reorganisation]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 08/23/2021 05:32 pm
NRO's 2021Q1 FOIA release includes SIGINT docs on LAMPAN, SAMPAN, SAVANT, STRAWMAN/THRESHER/REAPER, TIVOLI, TRIPOS/SOUSEA, WESTON, etc.

Focus seems to be on frequencies and signal types, i.e. info already nicely summarised in Dwayne's article.

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/)

Release also includes this, which I don't recognise.  Any ideas?

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00120_C05131552.pdf

Doesn't look like a spacecraft to me.  Too much is missing.  Looks like an instrument.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 08/23/2021 05:49 pm
NRO's 2021Q1 FOIA release includes SIGINT docs on LAMPAN, SAMPAN, SAVANT, STRAWMAN/THRESHER/REAPER, TIVOLI, TRIPOS/SOUSEA, WESTON, etc.

Focus seems to be on frequencies and signal types, i.e. info already nicely summarised in Dwayne's article.

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/FOIA-For-All-Other-Public-Releases/FOIA-For-All-Releases-FY21/)

Release also includes this, which I don't recognise.  Any ideas?

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00120_C05131552.pdf

It is the RPP (Rapid Pathfinder Program) satellite, successfully launched on the NROL-66 mission in February 2011 on a Minotaur-1 booster from Vandenberg AFB.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/rpp.htm
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: gwiz on 08/24/2021 10:37 am
It is the RPP (Rapid Pathfinder Program) satellite, successfully launched on the NROL-66 mission in February 2011 on a Minotaur-1 booster from Vandenberg AFB.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/rpp.htm
Thanks, Gunter.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/24/2021 10:30 pm
I used one of those images in 2011:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1927/1

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/25/2021 02:41 am
And while we're at it, look at 0:34:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV-KOaNim8k

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 08/25/2021 11:11 am
And while we're at it, look at 0:34:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV-KOaNim8k

There are several interesting parts:

At 0:10 we see four small sats being integrated with a Minotaur IV payload shroud in the background. These must be the NROL-129 payloads (USA 305 - 308)

The satellite shown at 0:34 appears to me different to the NROL-129 payloads - i am not sure.

At 0:39 we see an animation of the satellite shown on 0:34. (same patch antennas, etc.) Also a second one appears in the background.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/06/2021 12:41 pm
Tuesday I'll have a new article on TSR concerning the P-11 signals intelligence satellites. Some of it is a revisit of my previous article on this, and adding a bit of new information on the last missions.

There were four PUNDIT satellites launched from 1963-1965, but only three made it to orbit. It's still not entirely clear what their mission was.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: dondar on 09/06/2021 05:18 pm
Tuesday I'll have a new article on TSR concerning the P-11 signals intelligence satellites. Some of it is a revisit of my previous article on this, and adding a bit of new information on the last missions.

There were four PUNDIT satellites launched from 1963-1965, but only three made it to orbit. It's still not entirely clear what their mission was.
1 min of google foo and 1h of dragging through acronyms with confirmations in googles...so take it for what it worth.

I believe this "little pdf" contains sufficient info.
https://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf

It seems to be that PUNDIT was the program to study an application of already developed by Air-force encryption hardware KG-400B for P-11 program. Basically Hayloft but without recording.
Actually acronym PUNDIT is self explanatory  already. The Americans had never learned proper naming techniques :D.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/06/2021 05:45 pm
Tuesday I'll have a new article on TSR concerning the P-11 signals intelligence satellites. Some of it is a revisit of my previous article on this, and adding a bit of new information on the last missions.

There were four PUNDIT satellites launched from 1963-1965, but only three made it to orbit. It's still not entirely clear what their mission was.
1 min of google foo and 1h of dragging through acronyms with confirmations in googles...so take it for what it worth.

I believe this "little pdf" contains sufficient info.
https://www.governmentattic.org/26docs/NSAinSpaceViaNRO_1975.pdf

It seems to be that PUNDIT was the program to study an application of already developed by Air-force encryption hardware KG-400B for P-11 program. Basically Hayloft but without recording.
Actually acronym PUNDIT is self explanatory  already. The Americans had never learned proper naming techniques :D.

Thus PUNDITs suceeded GRAPE JUICE and VINO as telemetry intercept satellites, and like VINO were equipped with KG-400 "communication security" encryption devices for the data download?  Download rates from orbit of 200 KB (kilo baud) in 1963?  Wow! (though probably this was analog, not digital data 8)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/06/2021 06:34 pm
It seems to be that PUNDIT was the program to study an application of already developed by Air-force encryption hardware KG-400B for P-11 program. Basically Hayloft but without recording.

That explains what it was equipped with, not what its targets were.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: dondar on 09/06/2021 07:58 pm
It seems to be that PUNDIT was the program to study an application of already developed by Air-force encryption hardware KG-400B for P-11 program. Basically Hayloft but without recording.

That explains what it was equipped with, not what its targets were.
PUNDIT was the program name.
I see the program development as two tests and two functional launchers with P-11s ones per year.

Indeed PUNDIT's description is blacked out here, so it is possible they were launching something aside, but it is also possible the report contained names or specific dates of other not directly related programs. Quirks of declassification.
Relevant quote from the description of Hayloft program

Quote
Both capabilities were provided, thus
you SIVET, SHOVE IT, and PUNDIT home.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/06/2021 08:59 pm
PUNDIT was the program name.
I see the program development as two tests and two functional launchers with P-11s ones per year.

Indeed PUNDIT's description is blacked out here, so it is possible they were launching something aside, but it is also possible the report contained names or specific dates of other not directly related programs. Quirks of declassification.
Relevant quote from the description of Hayloft program

Uh, yes, I know that. (I'm not exactly ignorant in these matters.)

What's deleted is the mission. That's one of the remaining blurry aspects of this program.

Otherwise, I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/06/2021 10:37 pm
The Air Force has also evolved a System of electronic intercept satellites (698BK and PUNDIT) from the SAMOS program technology, and these have been helpful in establishing the Soviet radar-order-of-battle for SlOP planning.
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf)

How would one establish the Soviet "radar-order-of-battle"? Listening in (SIGINT or COMINT?) to their war games?

P.S.: apparently establishing an "order of battle" involves "locating specific (...) targets and determining the operational patterns of the systems".
https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/technology/elint.pdf (https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/technology/elint.pdf)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2021 12:01 am
The Air Force has also evolved a System of electronic intercept satellites (698BK and PUNDIT) from the SAMOS program technology, and these have been helpful in establishing the Soviet radar-order-of-battle for SlOP planning.

I think that PUNDIT is used generically there to stand in for the P-11 program. They probably just picked the most recent P-11 launch as an example. That's one of the problems with following this stuff--people were somewhat sloppy in how they applied the names.

UPDATE: Yeah, that's pretty much it. The document was written in May 1965 and a PUNDIT had launched in April 1965. It's worth nothing that most of the early classified P-11 satellites were PUNDITs (the only exception was NOAH'S ARK), and they only really started getting different names after this, so it was a reasonable assumption by the writer of that document that the overall P-11 program was going to be called PUNDIT. It was until it suddenly wasn't.


How would one establish the Soviet "radar-order-of-battle"? Listening in (SIGINT or COMINT?) to their war games?

P.S.: apparently establishing an "order of battle" involves "locating specific (...) targets and determining the operational patterns of the systems".

So one way to do it would be to determine which radars were associated with which other radars (and communications systems). So as a theoretical example, suppose after detecting a bunch of radars (from their emissions and in satellite photos) they start to notice that Type A search radars are usually in the same general location as four Type C fire control radars. When they see this pattern in numerous places, they can assume that the Type As and the Type Cs are connected somehow. And then the next time they spot a Type A somewhere, they know they can look for four Type Cs in that area as well. And some types of emitters are only going to be associated with commanders, whereas other emitters are associated with lower-level officers.

That's what happened with looking for medium range ballistic missiles after the Cuban Missile Crisis. They had high-resolution photos of the weapons locations and they could identify other pieces of equipment like generators and communications trucks. Then, when they spotted the same weapon in a lower-resolution satellite photo, they could figure out what the other blurry blobs were because they had seen them in better photos in Cuba.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2021 01:37 am


https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf)

By the way, that document you linked to is worth reading for its own sake. It was written at a time when the CIA and the NRO were fighting over the future of satellite reconnaissance. That document was written by the CIA, and of course it advocates for either a strong CIA presence in national reconnaissance or total control of national reconnaissance. It's worth seeing their point of view, which certainly presents a distorted picture, but not an unreasonable one. Here are the last two pages of the document.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2021 01:56 am
NRO has released a new podcast associated with their 60th anniversary:

https://soundcloud.com/user-553105389/sitting-down-with-the-center-for-the-study-of-national-reconnaissance

At the 19-minute mark they say that the NRO is publishing a book with 60 key innovations and 60 key innovators.

Lightweight optics, CCDs, space firsts (like first manmade object recovered from space), management techniques.

Innovators and contractors.

Originally had larger plans for the celebration. Will have a new logo. Some HQ-based museum exhibits that will "eventually" be shared with the public. Wanted to focus on serving the people who work for the NRO.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/07/2021 06:38 am
The Air Force has also evolved a System of electronic intercept satellites (698BK and PUNDIT) from the SAMOS program technology, and these have been helpful in establishing the Soviet radar-order-of-battle for SlOP planning.

I think that PUNDIT is used generically there to stand in for the P-11 program. They probably just picked the most recent P-11 launch as an example. That's one of the problems with following this stuff--people were somewhat sloppy in how they applied the names.

UPDATE: Yeah, that's pretty much it. The document was written in May 1965 and a PUNDIT had launched in April 1965. It's worth nothing that most of the early classified P-11 satellites were PUNDITs (the only exception was NOAH'S ARK), and they only really started getting different names after this, so it was a reasonable assumption by the writer of that document that the overall P-11 program was going to be called PUNDIT. It was until it suddenly wasn't.

<snip>
PUNDIT's encryption device for download might hint at RTTY COMINT intercepts: In another area of the COMINT scene, Wayne Burnett of HRB-Singer at State College, Pennsylvania, came up with a concept to intercept, encode, and record a radio teletype (RTTY) channel of the Soviet (...) point-to-point VHF multichannel communications signal. It was necessary to encrypt this COMINT information on the down-link to safeguard it from Soviet knowledge. This was accomplished by use of NSA-furnished encryption equipment, utilized during readout to US tracking stations.
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf)
(page 13 in the PDF, page number 131 in "The SIGINT Satellite Story")

Another angle is the history of Sylvania EDL as the contractor for the PUNDIT payload. In addition to the STOPPER / BIT receivers, later on EDL was also involved in DONKEY.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Defense_Laboratories

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/07/2021 09:11 am


https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/092818/F-2018-00090_C05111349.pdf)

By the way, that document you linked to is worth reading for its own sake. It was written at a time when the CIA and the NRO were fighting over the future of satellite reconnaissance. That document was written by the CIA, and of course it advocates for either a strong CIA presence in national reconnaissance or total control of national reconnaissance. It's worth seeing their point of view, which certainly presents a distorted picture, but not an unreasonable one. Here are the last two pages of the document.

Interestingly the document was apparently written by Wheelon himself (see top of first page, and Richelson, "Wizards of Langley", pp. 118-119). I was struck by the flashes of the famous acerbic wit, and by the reminder of his physics heritage when he talks about "working on the right problems". But if it was Wheelon, with his access, one might assume he was either using name PUNDIT simply as a relevant example, or that  Program A weren't telling him everything that they were doing on P-11/Program 989. I'd normally assume the former but as you'll both know this was the height of the Space Reconnaissance Wars and Program B had a few initiatives of their own.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/07/2021 12:58 pm
Interestingly the document was apparently written by Wheelon himself (see top of first page, and Richelson, "Wizards of Langley", pp. 118-119). I was struck by the flashes of the famous acerbic wit, and by the reminder of his physics heritage when he talks about "working on the right problems". But if it was Wheelon, with his access, one might assume he was either using name PUNDIT simply as a relevant example, or that  Program A weren't telling him everything that they were doing on P-11/Program 989. I'd normally assume the former but as you'll both know this was the height of the Space Reconnaissance Wars and Program B had a few initiatives of their own.

I didn't pay close attention to it, but you may be right. I do know that the document was released on the CREST archive in the 1990s. I gave it to Richelson back then, although that version had more stuff deleted. The battle about the NRO back then was really between the NRO director, who wanted to run it like a military organization essentially led by the Air Force, and Wheelon at CIA (with the backing of his superiors). Wheelon believed that CIA had a legitimate role in collecting "national level" intelligence. But Wheelon also did not have a positive view of the Air Force's work in strategic reconnaissance. People at CIA could point to CIA successes like the U-2 and CORONA (which they conveniently forgot had started as an Air Force satellite and included mostly Air Force personnel) and Air Force failures like the multiple SAMOS programs, and believe that the Air Force just was not very good at it. There were some fierce battles over this stuff, and both sides were starting projects without telling the other what they were doing.

One of the biggest disputes remains one of the least-known: the RHYOLITE telemetry interception satellite. Wheelon started this in 1963 or so, and NRO did not find out about it until months after CIA began working on it. And they were not happy.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: dondar on 09/07/2021 08:08 pm
PUNDIT was the program name.
I see the program development as two tests and two functional launchers with P-11s ones per year.

Indeed PUNDIT's description is blacked out here, so it is possible they were launching something aside, but it is also possible the report contained names or specific dates of other not directly related programs. Quirks of declassification.
Relevant quote from the description of Hayloft program

Uh, yes, I know that. (I'm not exactly ignorant in these matters.)

What's deleted is the mission. That's one of the remaining blurry aspects of this program.

Otherwise, I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
That you are missing the structure of the program. Pundit was part of something bigger and it was the beginning of something.
Anyway if to return to the quote from the description of 989 (Hayloft) program.
SIVET, SHOVE IT, and PUNDIT home.
The acronyms form: Acquisition, processing, delivery. Pundit is the last piece. A part of 989.

Little sats didn't transmit to the ground, they used repeaters, they needed repeaters.
And because US could, they used repeaters with scrambling capabilities. "encryption devices" in SIGINT world mean also (re)transmitters with scrambling capabilities.
KG400 was developed by HRB Sincler and was essential payload of all Pundit sats. The program was later evolved into 989 program , which added capability to record info on new Hayloft sat (KW-26 device) and later re-transmit it in quick bursts (20Mbt) when needed.
The data-rates are rates of transmission. Not digital processing per se.

What mean Hayloft in English language? What mean pundit in English language???....Simple questions which will help immensely to understand the programs.

P.S. I am looking about HRB Sincler. What a company.... They gave US VLF tech beside other things.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/08/2021 02:41 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4239/1

Wizards redux: revisiting the P-11 signals intelligence satellites
by Dwayne A. Day
Tuesday, September 7, 2021

September 2021 is the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). For the 50th anniversary, the NRO declassified two major Cold War era photo-reconnaissance satellites named HEXAGON and GAMBIT. Will the NRO do something similar this time? Those who follow the NRO’s history have heard rumors that they might declassify the KH-11 KENNEN near-real-time reconnaissance satellite that first flew in 1976, although that might be a bit of wishful thinking. (See “Intersections in real time: the decision to build the KH-11 KENNEN reconnaissance satellite,” The Space Review, September 9, 2019.) One small step the NRO could take is to finish the declassification of the P-11 signals intelligence satellites that were built and launched from 1963 to 1992.

Starting in 2015, the NRO began declassifying several of its signals intelligence satellite programs in a series of phases. The first phase involved a program known as AFTRACK that placed signals detection payloads on the aft racks of Agena spacecraft launched into low Earth orbit from the late 1950s to 1964. AFTRACK was virtually unknown until the NRO released dozens of documents on the program. It was the space example of a “quick reaction capability” for radar and electronics that the Air Force had developed since the Korean War. The next step, which the NRO referred to as “phase two,” was the 2017 declassification of a series of 16 large satellites known by numerous names and the overarching designation of Program 770. These satellites were launched into low Earth orbit between 1960 and 1972. They carried several payloads and had multiple missions, but a primary mission was the detection and location of air defense radars within the Soviet Union to aid American strategic bomber crews. (See “The wizard war in orbit,” The Space Review, June 20, 2016, Part 1, 2, 3, and 4; “And the sky full of stars: American signals intelligence satellites and the Vietnam War,” The Space Review, February 12, 2018.)

At the time of the phase two declassification, the NRO indicated that phase three of their signals intelligence declassification effort would take place by 2018 and that it would involve the P-11 satellites that essentially took over the duties of the AFTRACK program, flying similar payloads but for many months rather than the few days for AFTRACK. The first P-11 satellites were launched in 1963, and the last in 1992, although the overall program name changed several times, and the satellite configurations changed as well. The NRO also began releasing information on the P-11 satellites themselves, usually in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Initially this included photographs as well as the names and general mission descriptions of many of the satellites. But by late 2020, in response to a FOIA request, the NRO released significant technical details on approximately a quarter of the P-11 programs. Clearly the NRO has determined that much information on the P-11s is releasable, it simply has not yet been released. (See “Little Wizards: Signals intelligence satellites during the Cold War,” The Space Review, August 2, 2021.)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/11/2021 04:42 pm
Was the primary motivation behind "Project Echo" a follow-up/supplement of Moon bounce ELINT, as is hinted in the attached slide from a presentation by Steve Blank?
https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons (https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons)

I found two cursory references to Project Echo in NRO documents:

Administration officials, legislators, and military spokesmen concerned about a response to the Soviet "space threat" typically emphasized the major programs, including Samos, and depreciated such "irrelevant" programs as Discoverer, Explorer, Echo, and Pioneer because they had no evident military utility. Most really believed that to be true.
(A HISTORY OF SATELLITE RECONNAISSANCE, Volume I, page 115)


See, we - Pierce, who got the Draper Prize a couple of months ago in Washington, and a fellow named Clarke, who's the science fiction man from Ceylon, had the idea of a communication satellite. But the first one was Echo and that provoked some intelligence interest, as well, you see. The Navy people had got radio reflections from the moon and we had a telescope at Greenbank, which we also worked with. And they were very serious about that and they intended to intercept SIGINT reflections from the moon much more extensively than we thought really would be useful.
(NRO History, An interview with William O. Baker, page 33)
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/010418/F-2017-00149.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/010418/F-2017-00149.pdf)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/11/2021 05:00 pm
Was the primary motivation behind "Project Echo" a follow-up/supplement of Moon bounce ELINT, as is hinted in the attached slide from a presentation by Steve Blank?
https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons (https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons) ]


Now you point it out it's intriguing, but it's worth noting that Moonbounce itself seems to have continued into mid 60s at least

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon11.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon14.pdf

and to have worked well, so obvious question is what the satellite would have added-a calibration target ?

Both links via  Moonbounce section here:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/

Edit: Reading more carefully I see the second one (N C Gerson, SIGINT in space, Studies in Intelligence, 1984 (?)) bears on your point. It mentions NSA interest in late 50s in artificial passive orbital relays for Moonbounce-like SIGINT, though Echo is not named, and in needles like West Ford, which is named but  not stated to have  actually been used this way in the unredacted article. They are discussed as part of a broader set of reflectors both natural and artificial.

And thanks for pointing out Baker interview, looks useful.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/12/2021 05:30 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4239/1

From the recent TSR article:

"The last of the P-11 satellites were launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Three satellites designated FARRAH were launched on Titan II rockets, one each in 1988, 1989, and 1992. According to a person who worked on them, these satellites were disk-shaped as opposed to the earlier rectangular pyramid shape of the P-11s. The change in shape was possible because the satellites were designed for launch from the Space Shuttle, not the side of a HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite. The decision to switch to the shuttle occurred in the early 1980s, when the HEXAGON was destined for retirement. Switching to the shuttle required major changes to address shuttle safety demands. One of those requirements apparently resulted in the loss of the second satellite.

NASA safety requirements dictated that the satellites had to be inactive while in the shuttle’s payload bay. The satellites therefore operated on a timer that turned them on at a point after their release. The first Titan II launch in 1988 went off without a hitch. But when the second satellite was ejected off its launch vehicle in 1989, something went wrong with the timer. It never turned on and so it never fired its rocket engine. It soon burned up in the atmosphere. According to the person who worked on it, ground controllers tried to jolt it into action by sending a huge amount of energy up to the satellite from a ground transmitter, but to no avail.

The person who was involved in the satellite program explained that a post-mishap investigation uncovered a rather simple explanation for the problem. “They f----- up,” he said: the timer had never been properly modified for the change from the shuttle to the Titan II. The problem should have occurred on the first Titan II launch, but a change in the launch conditions—possibly a launch hold—had resulted in it turning on after deployment. They fixed the problem for the third and final launch."

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/20/2021 03:58 pm
Was the primary motivation behind "Project Echo" a follow-up/supplement of Moon bounce ELINT, as is hinted in the attached slide from a presentation by Steve Blank?
https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons (https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons) ]


Now you point it out it's intriguing, but it's worth noting that Moonbounce itself seems to have continued into mid 60s at least

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon11.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon14.pdf

and to have worked well, so obvious question is what the satellite would have added-a calibration target ?

Both links via  Moonbounce section here:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/

Edit: Reading more carefully I see the second one (N C Gerson, SIGINT in space, Studies in Intelligence, 1984 (?)) bears on your point. It mentions NSA interest in late 50s in artificial passive orbital relays for Moonbounce-like SIGINT, though Echo is not named, and in needles like West Ford, which is named but  not stated to have  actually been used this way in the unredacted article. They are discussed as part of a broader set of reflectors both natural and artificial.

And thanks for pointing out Baker interview, looks useful.

I did not reply to this at the time because my memory was and remains hazy on this, but there was a fair amount of interest in passive SIGINT collection in the 1950s. They could get signals reflected off the Moon and even the upper atmosphere. And it would not surprise me if they looked into balloons as passive reflectors too. But once satellites started flying they were clearly superior because the signals they collected were much stronger (none of that horrible inverse square law nonsense to deal with--well, less of it to deal with). There was a big dish proposed for West Virginia, the Arecibo facility, and others that all had some slice of this effort. But that all faded by 1960.


Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/20/2021 04:19 pm
Was the primary motivation behind "Project Echo" a follow-up/supplement of Moon bounce ELINT, as is hinted in the attached slide from a presentation by Steve Blank?
https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons (https://www.slideshare.net/sblank/secret-history-of-silicon-valley-rev-4-dec-09/90-Project_Echo_1960_ELINT_Balloons) ]


Now you point it out it's intriguing, but it's worth noting that Moonbounce itself seems to have continued into mid 60s at least

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon11.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/docs/EBB-Moon14.pdf

and to have worked well, so obvious question is what the satellite would have added-a calibration target ?

Both links via  Moonbounce section here:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/

Edit: Reading more carefully I see the second one (N C Gerson, SIGINT in space, Studies in Intelligence, 1984 (?)) bears on your point. It mentions NSA interest in late 50s in artificial passive orbital relays for Moonbounce-like SIGINT, though Echo is not named, and in needles like West Ford, which is named but  not stated to have  actually been used this way in the unredacted article. They are discussed as part of a broader set of reflectors both natural and artificial.

And thanks for pointing out Baker interview, looks useful.

I did not reply to this at the time because my memory was and remains hazy on this, but there was a fair amount of interest in passive SIGINT collection in the 1950s. They could get signals reflected off the Moon and even the upper atmosphere. And it would not surprise me if they looked into balloons as passive reflectors too. But once satellites started flying they were clearly superior because the signals they collected were much stronger (none of that horrible inverse square law nonsense to deal with--well, less of it to deal with). There was a big dish proposed for West Virginia, the Arecibo facility, and others that all had some slice of this effort. But that all faded by 1960.

some of it persisted to mid 60s, see attached from first of the docs I mentioned
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/20/2021 08:46 pm
It sorta makes sense that it was the Hen House signal they were interested in. For one thing, that was an ABM radar that was aimed very high up, as opposed to an air search radar that is focused inside the atmosphere. For another thing, Hen House was a tough signal to crack (as were other ABM radars) because the radar was rarely turned on, so it was only caught by chance. Again, if you think about an air search radar (like the kind of radar that would be at an airport), it's going to be operating continuously, so easier to detect. The ABM radar was really only going to be turned on when they were testing it. So using multiple platforms to detect it is logical.

That said, I'm still surprised they were doing this by the mid-1960s.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/20/2021 11:02 pm
This thread has just prompted me to go back to work on one of my draft articles. When I wrote that really big article on the P-11 satellites...

https://thespacereview.com/article/4225/1

...my plan had been to write a follow-up article about the STRAWMAN satellites that used an Agena in low Earth orbit. There were five STRAWMAN satellites planned, but only four launched. (It is unclear if the fifth one was completed and then scrapped, or was only components when it was canceled and then scrapped.)

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/strawman.htm

I have some detailed information on the STRAWMAN satellites and so I want to write an article around that. There's still stuff we don't know about STRAWMAN, but I want to better identify what that is. STRAWMAN's missions obviously migrated to high-altitude satellites. JUMPSEAT took over these missions, and that's really fascinating when you think that these low-altitude satellites were replaced by satellites much farther out. Of course, the benefit of going farther out was that the satellite spent a lot more time over the target gathering signals.

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do on the STRAWMAN article, but I might as well get started.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/21/2021 09:27 am
It sorta makes sense that it was the Hen House signal they were interested in. For one thing, that was an ABM radar that was aimed very high up, as opposed to an air search radar that is focused inside the atmosphere. For another thing, Hen House was a tough signal to crack (as were other ABM radars) because the radar was rarely turned on, so it was only caught by chance. Again, if you think about an air search radar (like the kind of radar that would be at an airport), it's going to be operating continuously, so easier to detect. The ABM radar was really only going to be turned on when they were testing it. So using multiple platforms to detect it is logical.

That said, I'm still surprised they were doing this by the mid-1960s.

I was very surprised to be reminded of that. Though I suspect its also a fine example of what Herb York meant when he said something like "the first thing that young people learn about WW2 is that we won ... this was the last thing we found out".

A couple of things seem to  have aided in the ABM moonbounce task i) the power of the radar and ii) the fact the Russians helpfully used the moon as a practice target ...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/22/2021 02:46 pm
I've written a number of articles about signals intelligence and the focus on the Soviet ABM radars during the 1960s. By 1966, this became a much more important task and the NRO threw more resources at it (launching more P-11 satellites, for instance). They knew about the Hen House radars from an early point--maybe 1960? I'm trying to remember if Hen House showed up on the U-2 overflights. Figuring out the Hen House signal was an important goal in the first half of the 1960s.

The intelligence collection effort on Soviet ABMs was a priority, but from a historical view it is still hard to understand what the US intelligence community found and decided. The key question was whether Soviet ABMs were a threat to American ICBMs. By the late 1960s the answer was clearly "no." But how did they get to that answer? At least part of it was gained through satellite photography, because the Soviets would start building an ABM site and then slow down and stop for awhile. That was an indication that they were experiencing problems. It's easier to answer the question of whether they are a threat when they actually stop deployment--no weapons means no threat. But the signals intelligence part of this was much more esoteric, and a lot of it remains classified. So we know that they collected a lot and determined that there was no ABM threat and that allowed the US to sign the ABM Treaty. But we still don't have a good idea of the steps along the way to that conclusion.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/22/2021 04:05 pm
I've written a number of articles about signals intelligence and the focus on the Soviet ABM radars during the 1960s. By 1966, this became a much more important task and the NRO threw more resources at it (launching more P-11 satellites, for instance). They knew about the Hen House radars from an early point--maybe 1960? I'm trying to remember if Hen House showed up on the U-2 overflights. Figuring out the Hen House signal was an important goal in the first half of the 1960s.

The intelligence collection effort on Soviet ABMs was a priority, but from a historical view it is still hard to understand what the US intelligence community found and decided. The key question was whether Soviet ABMs were a threat to American ICBMs. By the late 1960s the answer was clearly "no." But how did they get to that answer? At least part of it was gained through satellite photography, because the Soviets would start building an ABM site and then slow down and stop for awhile. That was an indication that they were experiencing problems. It's easier to answer the question of whether they are a threat when they actually stop deployment--no weapons means no threat. But the signals intelligence part of this was much more esoteric, and a lot of it remains classified. So we know that they collected a lot and determined that there was no ABM threat and that allowed the US to sign the ABM Treaty. But we still don't have a good idea of the steps along the way to that conclusion.

It was indeed a  U2 that saw it, though the way they first heard the signal a couple of years later remains one of my favourite Cold War stories:

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/23/2021 10:19 pm
Looking at this document:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00024_C05131521.pdf

It states:

"These digitized parameters are stored in the memory of a Core Storage Unit (CSU), and read out on command during a tracking station pass."

There were no solid state recorders at the time, so what would a "Core Storage Unit" be in 1968?

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 09/23/2021 11:15 pm
Looking at this document:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00024_C05131521.pdf

It states:

"These digitized parameters are stored in the memory of a Core Storage Unit (CSU), and read out on command during a tracking station pass."

There were no solid state recorders at the time, so what would a "Core Storage Unit" be in 1968?


Early RAM like on the Apollo Computer?

The CSU and DSU are not even included in the block diagram
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: John Santos on 09/24/2021 12:48 am
Looking at this document:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/062221/F-2020-00024_C05131521.pdf

It states:

"These digitized parameters are stored in the memory of a Core Storage Unit (CSU), and read out on command during a tracking station pass."

There were no solid state recorders at the time, so what would a "Core Storage Unit" be in 1968?


Early RAM like on the Apollo Computer?

The CSU and DSU are not even included in the block diagram
AKA Magnetic core memory.  Arrays of tiny donut shaped magnets with 3 wires through each one.  One wire across a horizontal row, one wire along a vertical column, and one wire running diagonally (e.g. through the core in row 1, column 1, then through the core in row 2, column 2, and so on.  A second diagonal wire would run through row 1, column 2, then through row 2, column 3, and after the 2nd to last row, would then loop back to the last row, column 1.  And so on, forming a mesh of cores and wires.  The number of columns determined the word size.  Many such arrays, along with the necessary addressing and refresh logic, could be consolidated onto a single memory card.

The wires had to cross each other and pass through the cores in the right direction and orientation, or the currents would cancel and it wouldn't work.  The companies that manufactured core memory would hire experienced knitters, usually elderly women, to run the wires.  By modern standards, exceedingly slow, expensive and labor intensive, but by the standards of the 1960s, almost magical.  Core memory had a cycle time of about 1 microsecond!  You could read out a million words of memory and process it in a second, which was amazingly fast.  It was much cheaper and faster and had much lower power requirements than any competing technology (until CMOS semiconductors.)

My first work computer (a DEC PDP-11) in 1975 had, IIRC, 96K 16-bit (plus parity) words of core.  A year or two later, we replaced the memory with 128K words of very early Intel solid-state memory, which was faster, cheaper and used much less power.

Core memory was static; the little cores (one per bit) would remember their magnetic state indefinitely, but read-out was destructive, so the memory had to include write-back circuitry that would immediately restore each bit after reading it out.  Static (semiconductor) RAM did not require this, but on the other hand, if it lost power, the bits would all decay back to zero very quickly.  (That's still why you need a button battery on the motherboard of a PC... the configuration will quickly reset without it.)

The Apollo navigation computers (I think there was one in the CM as well as the famous one in the LM) had  (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer)) 2K 15-bit words of core.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/24/2021 04:40 pm
There is a new release of Chapters 4 and 5 of "The SIGINT Satellite Story" with less redactions than previously.

Part of NRO's 60th Anniversary release at
https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/)
(just 2 docs thus far)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/24/2021 05:59 pm
There is a new release of Chapters 4 and 5 of "The SIGINT Satellite Story" with less redactions than previously.

Part of NRO's 60th Anniversary release at
https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/)
(just 2 docs thus far)

"Just" two, but as one is history of Kennan and other has much more clarity on P-11 etc I'm not complaining ;-). Thanks for posting.
 
Particularly taken by this one:

[Edit: I see you already posted this on KENNEN thread, sorry, but it's a great pic to see at last.]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/24/2021 06:29 pm
There is a new release of Chapters 4 and 5 of "The SIGINT Satellite Story" with less redactions than previously.

A number of months back I filed a mandatory declassification review (MDR) request for the entire SIGINT Satellite Story. I wondered if they would release more publicly before they even responded to my MDR. Some of that stuff had been overtaken by events--they had released documents, so clearly they could release more of that history.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/24/2021 06:50 pm
Finally got an answer to the Program 989 question.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/24/2021 07:20 pm
Finally got an answer to the Program 989 question.

And to the question of what P-11's first mission was (Starfish)  and who sponsored it (ARPA)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/25/2021 03:38 am
It's nice to finally have the origins of the P-11 story. And the history also mentions FARRAH. Filling in a lot of missing details.

Most people would say "meh" about the P-11. But the launches happened for nearly three decades, with several dozen satellites. It was a long-running program and it's possible that one of the satellites is still in operation today.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/25/2021 11:30 pm
Reading through the P-11 section of the SIGINT Satellite Story, it confirms a bunch of things that I wrote about, but not all of them. For instance, in my "Little Wizards" article I noted that the design lifetime for the satellites was 9 months. But it appears that many of them lasted quite a bit longer than that.

There's also a bunch of stuff about PUNDIT going after telemetry from Soviet rockets and missiles, on the pad and then during early ascent. It notes that US intercept stations on the periphery of the Soviet Union (Turkey, Iran) could not get this crucial early data and they apparently only got data later in the flight, which was less useful. So a satellite made sense, but the P-11s were not overhead for very long. Obviously this helped inspire RHYOLITE, but what we did not have before now is information on just how much they tried to do from LEO before RHYOLITE came along in the 1970s. Alas, apparently Soviet telemetry was in the same frequency bands as TV stations in Europe, and these swamped out the signals. That was a big worry for the RHYOLITE, but they were able to demonstrate that RHYOLITE's big antenna could separate out the signals.

The P-11s increased in mass over the years, but there's only limited discussion of the actual hardware. For instance, while the mass increased, did the basic dimensions of the satellites change (other than adding on solar panels and antennas)?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Redclaws on 09/26/2021 12:10 am
Just want to say - as an observer without the chops to read the actual docs - that this and the KH-11 discussion have been absolutely fascinating to follow along with.  Very exciting to see this stuff dissected.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/26/2021 12:28 am
There's a mention in the history that a number of the P-11s could not really collect "content," meaning that they could not collect the information in the signals coming up from the ground. This was due both to their limited time over the emitters (think about getting a few second of a conversation as opposed to minutes of it or hours) and because there was a lot of other interference. What the satellites were good at, however, was mapping out the communications systems. In other words, figuring out that transmitter A talked to transmitter B and so on. This then enabled the later high-altitude satellites like CANYON and RHYOLITE to perform their missions much more effectively. Several P-11 satellites, for instance, contributed directly to the CANYON system's operations.

Another interesting thing that the history mentions is that for some of these missions it could take forever to process the data. One mission collected data for 11 days and it took TWO YEARS to process it. Another mission (DONKEY) collected data for five months and it also took two years to process it. I think that was partly because teasing the information out of the data required a lot of work--so less like reading a dictionary than unraveling a big knotted ball of string.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/26/2021 08:08 am
There's a mention in the history that a number of the P-11s could not really collect "content," meaning that they could not collect the information in the signals coming up from the ground. This was due both to their limited time over the emitters (think about getting a few second of a conversation as opposed to minutes of it or hours) and because there was a lot of other interference. What the satellites were good at, however, was mapping out the communications systems. In other words, figuring out that transmitter A talked to transmitter B and so on. This then enabled the later high-altitude satellites like CANYON and RHYOLITE to perform their missions much more effectively. Several P-11 satellites, for instance, contributed directly to the CANYON system's operations.

Another interesting thing that the history mentions is that for some of these missions it could take forever to process the data. One mission collected data for 11 days and it took TWO YEARS to process it. Another mission (DONKEY) collected data for five months and it also took two years to process it. I think that was partly because teasing the information out of the data required a lot of work--so less like reading a dictionary than unraveling a big knotted ball of string.

One number that I think tells you something  about the problem imho is the ratio of the frequencies of the signals being analysed (gigahertz in the case of microwaves) to the clock speed of the best computers of the day. Even in the late 80s my first work PC was a few MHz iirc, though obviously the state of the art was faster.  [Edit: I should of course say digital computers. One thing theme that recurs throughout the SIGINT and EOI histories is the interplay of analogue and digital throughout the 60s and 70s.]

Conversely it's fascinating to me how unexpected or nonintuitive science allowed things to be done like Moon Bounce. One reason why this worked, according to the histories, is because the moon was a much better reflector at radio wavelengths than expected.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/26/2021 08:56 am
There's a mention in the history that a number of the P-11s could not really collect "content," meaning that they could not collect the information in the signals coming up from the ground. This was due both to their limited time over the emitters (think about getting a few second of a conversation as opposed to minutes of it or hours) and because there was a lot of other interference. What the satellites were good at, however, was mapping out the communications systems. In other words, figuring out that transmitter A talked to transmitter B and so on. 

There's a nice declassified NSA article on this from 1958 https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/tech-journals/net-reconstruction.pdf

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/26/2021 09:15 am


There's also a bunch of stuff about PUNDIT going after telemetry from Soviet rockets and missiles, on the pad and then during early ascent. It notes that US intercept stations on the periphery of the Soviet Union (Turkey, Iran) could not get this crucial early data and they apparently only got data later in the flight, which was less useful. So a satellite made sense, but the P-11s were not overhead for very long. Obviously this helped inspire RHYOLITE, but what we did not have before now is information on just how much they tried to do from LEO before RHYOLITE came along in the 1970s. Alas, apparently Soviet telemetry was in the same frequency bands as TV stations in Europe, and these swamped out the signals. That was a big worry for the RHYOLITE, but they were able to demonstrate that RHYOLITE's big antenna could separate out the signals.

 

As you know, RHYOLITE is the best documented by far  of the 3 high altitude SIGINT programmes, and I find the superb digest of the available info by the late Des Ball and collegues veryuseful: https://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf

One thing the new information shows is that the demonstration I think you are referring to, i.e. the 1964 study by Perry commissioned by Wheelon was bracketed by the first and last PUNDIT launches, in 1963 and 1965 ( as per your list here https://thespacereview.com/article/4225/1). So if the problem  was revealed by the first, the study was informed by this, and at least some questions could be answered by #4. 

[Edit: perhaps unsurprisngly, the later Savant P-11s  had payloads built by Perry's ESL]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/26/2021 09:53 pm
I have now read the P-11 section of "The SIGINT Satellite Story." There's so much to read in those two chapters that this is as far as I've done this weekend. I have not re-read the AFTRACK part (first half of chapter 5) or the Program 770 stuff in Chapter 4 (that's next on my agenda).

There's a lot to digest on the P-11 stuff. They have deleted almost everything about the specific radars detected. That's a shame and also seems rather unwarranted, because a lot of those ABM radars went out of service decades ago. And some of that information has been released elsewhere, including by NRO. For instance, they released a document on WESTON that indicates what signals it went after, but that info is deleted in this history. (I guess that somebody could probably FOIA that info in the history now, using the released WESTON document as evidence.)

I'll put this all in a future article someday, but at the moment I have no plans to write and publish anything more on the P-11s. A few things off the top of my head:

-by the 1970s, they were getting up to 5-6 years out of some of these satellites, much more than the 9-month design lifetimes in the latter 1960s.

-the FARRAH system is described as the only Program 989 (P-11) satellite capable of operating in both the northern and southern hemispheres. And then something is deleted afterwards. I'm very certain that this refers to its use during the Falklands War. That is a subject that I'm particularly interested in.

-despite the fact that they deleted most of the targets in the text, note that under the accomplishments section it mentions that in 1963 they were detecting telemetry from Soviet spacecraft with the satellites. Anybody want to figure out which P-11 and what Soviet mission?

-some interesting stuff on ARROYO. I really wish we had some more on the telint stuff.

-there's a lot more on the 1966 Davis Committee that established the ABM task. I wonder how much the Davis report could be declassified now?

-it strikes me that the hunt for the ABM radars was such a big deal that there might be a separate classified history article entirely on that.

-they mention the ABM/SAM radar hunt. It is not clear if this refers to the SA-5 SAM system, which was initially suspected of being an ABM, then suspected of dual-use or at least possibly being upgraded to ABM use. They delete any mention of the SA-5, which is annoying, because we have portions of that subject declassified in numerous other documents.

I don't know anything about radars or emitters, so all the discussion of "pencil beams" and the like is lost on me. I don't know what they're referring to when the history discusses the advances in those antennas and what they could detect. But I was suddenly hit by a big question while reading this, and I'm smacking myself for not thinking about this before: the Program 770 satellites, which were stuck on the front end of an Agena, were 3-axis stabilized. They pointed down. So their antennas were pointing in one location the entire time (unless they pointed the antenna elsewhere). The P-11s were constantly spinning. I assumed that the P-11s spun solely for stability. But I now wonder if spinning the antennas provided capability that pointed antennas could not provide. After all, they kept spinning these satellites right up until the end of the program. Why didn't they pick 3-axis stabilization later in the program? Is there an advantage to a spinning antenna?

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/26/2021 11:09 pm
I have now read the STRAWMAN section of "The SIGINT Satellite Story." After I wrote my long article on the P-11 satellites a few months ago:

https://thespacereview.com/article/4225/1

I had planned on writing an article about some odds and ends concerning the P-11s, which I did here:

https://thespacereview.com/article/4239/1

And then I planned on writing an article about STRAWMAN. Fortunately, this newly re-released chapter 4 provides a lot of new information, including the origins of the STRAWMAN name. Here is the 2016 release:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/sigint/SIGINT_Satellite_Story.PDF

Here is the 2021 release:

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/HISTORICALLY%20SIGNIFICANT%20DOCs/NRO%2060th%20Anniversary%20Docs/SC-2021-00003_C05134315.pdf

You'll see that if back in 2016 they had only released one more line from the document, we would have known how STRAWMAN got its name: "Because it was subject to quick revision if necessary, the new configuration was called STRAWMAN."
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/27/2021 09:26 am
I don't know anything about radars or emitters, so all the discussion of "pencil beams" and the like is lost on me. I don't know what they're referring to when the history discusses the advances in those antennas and what they could detect. But I was suddenly hit by a big question while reading this, and I'm smacking myself for not thinking about this before: the Program 770 satellites, which were stuck on the front end of an Agena, were 3-axis stabilized. They pointed down. So their antennas were pointing in one location the entire time (unless they pointed the antenna elsewhere). The P-11s were constantly spinning. I assumed that the P-11s spun solely for stability. But I now wonder if spinning the antennas provided capability that pointed antennas could not provide. After all, they kept spinning these satellites right up until the end of the program. Why didn't they pick 3-axis stabilization later in the program? Is there an advantage to a spinning antenna?

As you know I'm a physicist, but certainly not an RF expert so I'll be happy to be corrected, but to me pencil beam just means tightly focused beam and so for transmission requires a parabolic dish, or a microwave lens such as those seen on DSCS 3. For reception as in this case it would seem to require a dish ?

The most useful parts of the document seem to be the first one below where they state that "the first P-11s had essentially non directional antennas" and  the second extract where they explicitly say that ARROYO in 1971 was the first [P-11] vehicle with the electrical axis of its parabolic DF antenna parallel to the spin axis of the vehicle".  So in the pre-1971 cases where the spin axis and the pencil beam if present were not aligned you would indeed be sweeping the beam, and in the case where the antenna was  of some other type you would exploit the spin in different ways. My favourite of these so far is this great graphic from the VAMPAN 7325 mission description in 1968 showing the sine function that results from the spacecraft rotation and how it is used.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/29/2021 12:25 pm
I've been going through the P-11 section and will post some of my findings here. There's a lot more discussion of chasing after ABM radars, although it is impossible to determine what each ABM satellite actually discovered due to all the deletions.

Here's something on ABM radars:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB60/abm022.pdf

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/30/2021 10:21 am
There is a new release of Chapters 4 and 5 of "The SIGINT Satellite Story" with less redactions than previously.

Part of NRO's 60th Anniversary release at
https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/)
(just 2 docs thus far)

[edited as I'd got first sentence backwards.] Just a quick note to say beware that even now some bits that were unredacted in previous version(s) of these chapters can be redacted again here. One is an example that I think you quoted in a previous post, the discussion of HRB Singer and encryption on page 131 "... In an other area of the COMINT ...intercept encode and record", the next few 3 or so lines are redacted, whereas they weren't in the version released as part of the AFTRACK documents. This happens of course but it tends to take me by surprise.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/02/2021 04:41 pm
I have now read the P-11 section of "The SIGINT Satellite Story." 

[...]

-there's a lot more on the 1966 Davis Committee that established the ABM task. I wonder how much the Davis report could be declassified now?

-it strikes me that the hunt for the ABM radars was such a big deal that there might be a separate classified history article entirely on that.

-they mention the ABM/SAM radar hunt. It is not clear if this refers to the SA-5 SAM system, which was initially suspected of being an ABM, then suspected of dual-use or at least possibly being upgraded to ABM use. They delete any mention of the SA-5, which is annoying, because we have portions of that subject declassified in numerous other documents.

[...]


One thing I'd forgotten, and which reminds me of how "joined-up" all this decision making would be to those few in the know, was this remark about the ZOSTER and the possible relevance of SA-5 to ASAT rather than ABM.  Pages 37-8 of attached pdf from latest EOI batch.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/03/2021 01:46 pm
I have started reading the official history of the KH-11. There is no explanation of where the code-name ZOSTER came from. However, the history deletes the sources/footnotes, and it is possible that one of them explains the name.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Magic on 10/05/2021 08:05 pm
http://alert5.com/2020/01/30/operation-heavy-tea-the-top-secret-mission-into-china-to-monitor-its-nuclear-weapons-program/
[/quote]
----------------
Found this item while reading:
“Retractable antennas were supposed to transmit the collected data, possibly to a ‘T’ series satellite,,,”
p. 100
The black bats : CIA spy flights over China from Taiwan, 1951-1969
Author: Chris Pocock
Publisher: Atglen, PA : Schiffer Military History, [2010]

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/09/2021 09:10 pm
My next TSR article is on "vulnerability payloads" used to detect if reconnaissance satellites were being tracked from the ground. It is mostly about the BIT payloads included first in CORONA satellites, then in GAMBIT and later HEXAGON satellites.

They seem to have been added to GAMBIT starting in December 1967 (GAMBIT-3's tenth mission). However, for some odd reason they don't seem to have been added to all GAMBIT missions. And it does not seem like a BIT payload was included in the January 1969 GAMBIT launch. The NRO became concerned when the Soviet Union launched a mission the next day that appeared to have a very similar orbit. They thought that the Soviet spacecraft was stalking the GAMBIT. In reality, the Soviet satellite was a Zenit-4M reconnaissance spacecraft, not an ASAT.

Here is a screenshot from "The NSA in Space," which has the only listing of BIT missions that I know of. The part for late 1968-early 1969 is deleted, but if that GAMBIT mission had included a BIT payload, it could have been shown in that part of the table. So I'm assuming that the GAMBIT mission did not have a BIT payload onboard.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/10/2021 01:05 am
There is a new release of Chapters 4 and 5 of "The SIGINT Satellite Story" with less redactions than previously.

Part of NRO's 60th Anniversary release at
https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/ (https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/Historically-Significant-Documents/)
(just 2 docs thus far)

[edited as I'd got first sentence backwards.] Just a quick note to say beware that even now some bits that were unredacted in previous version(s) of these chapters can be redacted again here. One is an example that I think you quoted in a previous post, the discussion of HRB Singer and encryption on page 131 "... In an other area of the COMINT ...intercept encode and record", the next few 3 or so lines are redacted, whereas they weren't in the version released as part of the AFTRACK documents. This happens of course but it tends to take me by surprise.

I took extensive notes on chapters 4 and 5 back when they were originally released (with most of the P-11 stuff deleted). I'm now going back through the previously released sections to see if there is anything new. Sometimes the deletions in the AFTRACK part are rather dumb. For instance, there's mention that several of the systems were designed to detect HEN HOUSE radar signals, then a discussion about how the payloads failed to detect deleted signals from facilities detected at Sary Shagan in U-2 and CORONA photos--in other words, HEN HOUSE radars. That's like writing a sentence "They were designed to detect HEN HOUSE radars but did not detect signals from the XXX XXXXX radars."

I also got a kick out of the sentence that said that the TAKI payload was named after the deleted radar system it was supposed to detect--er, I bet that was TALL KING, huh?

I'm glad to finally have this, but it's clear that they still over-redacted. And I really wish they had produced a better copy.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/10/2021 10:47 pm
My next TSR article will be on the BIT payloads and satellite vulnerability.

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/CAL-Records/Cabinet2/DrawerC/2%20C%200054.pdf

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/CAL-Records/Cabinet1/DrawerD/1%20D%200018.pdf

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/ForAll/101917/F-2016-00047a.pdf

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/11/2021 10:18 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4261/1

Lollipops and ASATs
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 11, 2021

Although most of the secret satellites launched by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the 1960s have now been declassified, there are very few photos of the completed spacecraft preparing for launch. Except for a few photos of early CORONA satellites being readied for launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base, there is almost nothing else, even though we would expect at least a few to have been released by now. The reason may be due to systems that the CIA and NRO added to the satellites to protect them from anti-satellite attack. The CIA was worried about possible attack on reconnaissance satellites from the beginning, and some information on early “vulnerability payloads” has been declassified, but there are also hints that as the Soviet ASAT threat grew, so did efforts to protect American reconnaissance satellites that would have been their obvious targets.

From SOCTOP to STOPPER
Discoverer 13 was the first successful recovery of a satellite capsule from orbit. When the small reentry vehicle was grabbed out of the air by an Air Force C-119 “Flying Boxcar” in August 1960, the successful mission came at the end of a long string of failures. Although Discoverer was a cover story for the top secret and covert CORONA reconnaissance satellite program, Discoverer 13 did not carry a camera and therefore its success was widely publicized, both for propaganda and to emphasize the cover story that the satellite was not developed for military purposes. But Discoverer 13 did carry a piece of top secret equipment, a small signals intelligence payload named SOCTOP mounted near its engine, and SOCTOP provided some alarming data: on nearly every orbit over the Soviet Union, SOCTOP reported that the satellite was being tracked by radar. This meant that the Soviet Union had far more space tracking radars than United States intelligence agencies believed. This was important. This was dangerous.

It was also wrong.

It turned out, upon closer analysis of the data, that SOCTOP was reporting American radars that were tracking the spacecraft when it returned its telemetry.[1] SOCTOP’s designers were embarrassed, but the requirement that led to SOCTOP’s inclusion on Discoverer 13 was valid. Those in charge of the CORONA reconnaissance program wanted to make sure that the Soviet Union was not tracking or trying to interfere with the satellites. Soon they initiated programs to better protect them.

Part of the impetus for creating SOCTOP was the proliferation of new and unknown Soviet radar systems. The big HEN HOUSE radars that had appeared in U-2 spyplane and satellite photos were potentially capable of tracking satellites in orbit. But there were also unknown antennas showing up on Soviet trawlers and tracking ships, and intelligence analysts were concerned that these could be directed at American satellites.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 10/11/2021 11:45 pm
ALE-47 counter measure dispensers with probable M-206 flares and RR-170/180 chaff...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/12/2021 03:58 pm
One of the documents I used in my recent article on detecting Soviet tracking of US satellites. This is a 1998 article about US efforts to counter Soviet ASAT attacks on CORONA and other reconnaissance satellites. I edited this edition of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/18/2021 06:16 am
Re earlier discussions of ABM radars

I've written a number of articles about signals intelligence and the focus on the Soviet ABM radars during the 1960s. By 1966, this became a much more important task and the NRO threw more resources at it (launching more P-11 satellites, for instance). They knew about the Hen House radars from an early point--maybe 1960? I'm trying to remember if Hen House showed up on the U-2 overflights. Figuring out the Hen House signal was an important goal in the first half of the 1960s.

The intelligence collection effort on Soviet ABMs was a priority, but from a historical view it is still hard to understand what the US intelligence community found and decided. The key question was whether Soviet ABMs were a threat to American ICBMs. By the late 1960s the answer was clearly "no." But how did they get to that answer? At least part of it was gained through satellite photography, because the Soviets would start building an ABM site and then slow down and stop for awhile. That was an indication that they were experiencing problems. It's easier to answer the question of whether they are a threat when they actually stop deployment--no weapons means no threat. But the signals intelligence part of this was much more esoteric, and a lot of it remains classified. So we know that they collected a lot and determined that there was no ABM threat and that allowed the US to sign the ABM Treaty. But we still don't have a good idea of the steps along the way to that conclusion.


and Moonbounce

It sorta makes sense that it was the Hen House signal they were interested in. For one thing, that was an ABM radar that was aimed very high up, as opposed to an air search radar that is focused inside the atmosphere. For another thing, Hen House was a tough signal to crack (as were other ABM radars) because the radar was rarely turned on, so it was only caught by chance. Again, if you think about an air search radar (like the kind of radar that would be at an airport), it's going to be operating continuously, so easier to detect. The ABM radar was really only going to be turned on when they were testing it. So using multiple platforms to detect it is logical.

That said, I'm still surprised they were doing this by the mid-1960s.

I was very surprised to be reminded of that.  <snip>

A couple of things seem to  have aided in the ABM moonbounce task i) the power of the radar and ii) the fact the Russians helpfully used the moon as a practice target ...

I came across a screengrab I'd saved excerpting remarks by Wheelon  at the Roadrunners site: https://www.roadrunnersinternationale.com/wheelon.html
see below which adds a little to the understanding of how useful  Moonbounce  was, at least for for non-ABM radars, in the early 60s.

Among several other interesting comments he said that  Moonbounce was used to accurately locate all the Tall King anti-aircraft radars.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/18/2021 02:00 pm
I don't know how the Tall King radars were deployed in the Soviet Union, but I think that a lot of them were located near the periphery where they could be intercepted by USAF aircraft. Tall King was an air surveillance radar, essentially like the big rotating fences that we used to see at airports. So a lot of them would have been around the edges of Soviet territory and could be plotted. Finding the ones in the vast interior was the harder part.

The AFTRACK payloads, which operated from 1960-1964 on the back ends of Agenas, also included the TAKI payload for detecting Tall King radars. In declassified US documents, Soviet radars are often spelled in all caps, like HEN HOUSE and TALL KING, hence TAKI.

I assume that Moonbounce left out a lot of information, so getting Tall King signals with a satellite was important for developing countermeasures.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/18/2021 02:49 pm
I don't know how the Tall King radars were deployed in the Soviet Union, but I think that a lot of them were located near the periphery where they could be intercepted by USAF aircraft. Tall King was an air surveillance radar, essentially like the big rotating fences that we used to see at airports. So a lot of them would have been around the edges of Soviet territory and could be plotted. Finding the ones in the vast interior was the harder part.

The AFTRACK payloads, which operated from 1960-1964 on the back ends of Agenas, also included the TAKI payload for detecting Tall King radars. In declassified US documents, Soviet radars are often spelled in all caps, like HEN HOUSE and TALL KING, hence TAKI.

I assume that Moonbounce left out a lot of information, so getting Tall King signals with a satellite was important for developing countermeasures.

One would think so. Interesting, however, that he explicitly mentions i) role of Moonbounce in locating them, and ii) the flights along border in getting the technical details, and iii) how sigint satellites would be used nowadays, but does not mention the role of satellites in early 60s ...

[Edit #3: Good discussions of moonbounce, Quality Elint and PALLADIUM-of course from the CIA pov-in The Wizards of Langley pages 46-51 and 89-92. I'll summarise when I have time.

One thing that strikes me is the tradeoff between i) a small antenna moving fast near the target, with a balky tape recorder and very limited onboard electronics, and ii) a weak signal, reflected off the moon, but received with a 160 foot dish say, and  state of the art ground based electronics attached to it, with which you could do all sorts of cunning things such as 1 bit autocorrelation, and which stays in view for what might be quite a while, geometry permitting.  Note the answer given in the clip below at about 1:30 to the question "is the moon a better satellite than Echo 1" ....

As an aside, was fascinated to see that moonbounce is still used by radio amateurs, e.g. https://vu2nsb.com/amateur-satellite-radio/eme-moonbounce-communication/
and also enjoyed this clip (undated, but refers to the "recent" flight of  Gagarin at about 3:00):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlNoDWqoF6A  ]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 11/11/2021 11:44 am
Bumping this thread because of a bit of serendipity from the moonbase thread.

@leovinus posted  there about one of the excellent National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book series,
No. 479,  dated  July 20, 2014

    Soldiers, Spies and the Moon: Secret U.S. and Soviet Plans from the 1950s and 1960s

    Declassified Documents Reflect the Covert Side of Lunar Programs

    Posting Marks 45th Anniversary of First Human on the Moon

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/


This was where I'd seen the two Moonbounce SIGINT docs I mentioned in a reply to @hoku's original post, but there was a third I'd forgotten about. It was a short excerpt (attached) from a fascinating history of the US Navy in Space, and mentioned how the moon served as an operational comsat for roughly half the 60s, and that  Burt Edelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_Edelson  learned part of his trade on this unique satellite.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/12/2021 03:41 am
Here is something that I obtained back in the 1990s. I cannot remember if I got it from William Troetschel himself, or if I got it from Jack Herther or Frank Buzard. I probably got it from Herther. He and Troetschel were two of the original Air Force "Space Cadets" who were among the first USAF officers to work on space programs in the mid-1950s. They were very interested in space, and fellow officers at Wright-Pat in Ohio used to jokingly call them "space cadets," and they adopted the term with pride. They were led by Bill King, who ran the WS-117L and later the Samos program. Troetschel wrote about many different aspects of the WS-117L and later Samos programs, including signals intelligence and radar satellites.

It has been awhile since I read this, so I need to read it again. I helped Herther get his memoir published (along with at least one other). I don't believe that I helped Troetschel publish this. It should be a public document. I should try and track down any heirs and see if I can get their permission to publish this as an article.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Whisper-stream on 11/12/2021 02:18 pm
It's no surprise that the early Air Force space cadre embraced the term "space cadet" as there was a popular television show called "Tom Corbett: Space Cadet" that ran from 1950 to 1955. It starred Frankie Thomas, Al Markim, and Jan Merlin (my father!) as intrepid Solar Guard cadets adventuring throughout the solar system.

Hey, now that we have a Space Force there may be some real space cadets.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 01/16/2022 09:19 am
Bumping this thread because of a bit of serendipity from the moonbase thread.

@leovinus posted  there about one of the excellent National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book series,
No. 479,  dated  July 20, 2014

    Soldiers, Spies and the Moon: Secret U.S. and Soviet Plans from the 1950s and 1960s

    Declassified Documents Reflect the Covert Side of Lunar Programs

    Posting Marks 45th Anniversary of First Human on the Moon

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB479/


This was where I'd seen the two Moonbounce SIGINT docs I mentioned in a reply to @hoku's original post, but there was a third I'd forgotten about. It was a short excerpt (attached) from a fascinating history of the US Navy in Space, and mentioned how the moon served as an operational comsat for roughly half the 60s, and that  Burt Edelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_Edelson  learned part of his trade on this unique satellite.

Bumping this time because of something found via the Advent thread, a fascinating vignette of the early 50s interest in moonbounce in the UK, in an excellent NASA book chapter by UCL's Jon Agar. https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4217/ch3.htm

I was particularly struck by his account of an exhibit at the Festival of Britain:

At the festival's center was the Dome of Discovery, designed around a "narrative." Viewers were told a story of "creditable British exploration, invention and industrial capacity."46 As the highlight to the story, there stood a "radio telescope . . . operated from the Dome of Discovery, with its 'dish' aerial mounted on the top of the Shot Tower. This was beamed on the Moon and visitors could see on a cathode ray tube signals being transmitted there and their reflection back about two and a half seconds later."47 The visiting public, of which there were millions, carried away associations between radio telescopes and public prestige as early as 1951.

A second instance of the use of the Moon to demonstrate radio telescopes can be found in the planned opening ceremony of the 250-foot Jodrell Bank radio telescope. As it neared completion, Sir Charles Renold, chair of the telescope's Site Committee, wrote that once the instrument was in suitable "condition"--that is, "capable of being rotated by power" and receiving radio signals--then a "dramatic and impressive" public display of [27] the efficacy of the telescope should be performed.48 Sir Ben Lockspeiser of the DSIR and Sir John Stopford, who was vice-chancellor of Manchester University, judged that the Duke of Edinburgh would be a suitably symbolic person to perform the opening ceremony.49 Lovell suggested a possible display: "[O]n pressing the button . . . the telescope [would] sweep over one or more of the remote radio sources in the depths of the universe. The resulting signal could be displayed on a number of pen-recording instruments, and these could be used to initiate a local series of events such as the unfurling of flags."50 "Even better" than a remote, invisible radio source, Lovell suggested, was a "radar demonstration" using the visible Moon--a "target likely to create an impression."51

In any event, Sputnik provided a demonstration that the telescope worked--and without an opening ceremony. However, radar echoes from the Moon were shown again in public at the Reith Lectures. The BBC's annual Reith Lectures embodied the principles of its celebrant, the corporation's stern patriarch and defender of elite culture, Lord Reith. From the first lecture, given by Bertrand Russell, an invitation was offered each year to an authoritative public figure "to undertake some study or original research on a given subject and to give listeners the results in a series of broadcasts."52 Lovell was invited, only months after Sputnik, to be the Reith lecturer of 1958.  To bring the capabilities of the instrument to its listening audience, in the lecture named "Astronomy and the State," Lovell played the recordings of voices relayed via the Moon.


[...]
 
Quote
    I'm sorry the echo was so weak, but that's not really important. After all, our transmitter had only a thousandth of the power of some of the transmitters which are broadcasting my voice now. The important point is that the voice when received back from the Moon is perfectly intelligible and that the telescope was working on wavelengths which could never be disturbed by atmospheric or ionospheric conditions. Well the result of that investigation is a free gift of the radio astronomer, to all the commercial and military organizations who will no doubt use it in future.55

 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/18/2022 03:28 pm
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4316/1


Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War
by Dwayne Day
Monday, January 17, 2022

Atop a mountain in northeast Iran there sit several buildings and some satellite dishes. What they are doing is not clear, but the Iranians have improved the site and added equipment over the past 15 years, indicating that it is active and probably serves as a post for Iran to intercept signals from American and other satellites. That site is notable for another reason: it used to be a CIA facility known as TACKSMAN. TACKSMAN was established in the late 1950s by the CIA to monitor Soviet missile launches from their Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan, the same location where Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin launched into space. It was an important Cold War missile telemetry interception cite. CIA officials sometimes had a knack for applying winking codenames to their projects, and this facility was a classic case, because “tacksman” is a Scottish term for somebody who paid rent to his landlord, usually a clan chief. The United States certainly paid the Shah of Iran for the use of land at his hunting palace, in return for the opportunity to hunt Soviet missiles and rockets.

Now information has come to light on the origin of the TACKSMAN facility as well as other Cold War era projects to gather the faint signals of Soviet missiles and spacecraft as they rose above distant horizons. Throughout the Cold War, the United States operated numerous ground stations around the world as well as aircraft and satellites for collecting these signals, then referred to as telemetry. New information was recently declassified in a two-part official history of American telemetry intelligence collection over 50 years. Combined with other declassified information on American collection systems, it is now possible to put more pieces of the puzzle together and understand this obscure aspect of Cold War intelligence gathering
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/19/2022 02:29 am
In the article I mention the EB-47(TT) "Tell Two" aircraft that were used to intercept Soviet missile telemetry. Somebody sent me a photo of one of the Tell Two aircraft. I don't quite understand this. According to the history, the Tell Two aircraft only had antennas down one side, which meant that they had to be flying in a direction where the antennas were facing the launch site during a launch and if they were at the end of their track and turned around, they would lose the signal. However, in this photo, there are antennas on both sides of the aircraft. So I don't know if this is a late version of that aircraft where they fixed the problem, or if there's more to the story.

But it sure is funky, huh?

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 01/22/2022 10:31 am
In the article I mention the EB-47(TT) "Tell Two" aircraft that were used to intercept Soviet missile telemetry. Somebody sent me a photo of one of the Tell Two aircraft. I don't quite understand this. According to the history, the Tell Two aircraft only had antennas down one side, which meant that they had to be flying in a direction where the antennas were facing the launch site during a launch and if they were at the end of their track and turned around, they would lose the signal. However, in this photo, there are antennas on both sides of the aircraft. So I don't know if this is a late version of that aircraft where they fixed the problem, or if there's more to the story.

But it sure is funky, huh?
According to Bob Archer, "Super Snoopers":
QRC-68: sensors mounted on either side of the nose (Hallicrafters, 1955)
later replaced by
QRC-159: single dipole antenna  (Hallicrafters, 1961)

http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/jetds/qrc.html (http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/jetds/qrc.html)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/22/2022 04:42 pm
As a follow-up to my TELINT article, you're going to see some more about this soon:

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 01/22/2022 05:38 pm
My good friend and colleague Peter Pesavento has posted a response to Dwayne Day's most recent article posting on the space review.  Because it is in the interest of all readers to know the facts, I am posting the response in its entirety here.  I will also be providing some follow-up comments by Peter as well.

"....

I would like to make some statements/corrections here on Dwayne's current presentation.
First of all, the scamlogic history that Dwayne has provided some excerpts from was directly possible because of me. I had requested the two-part scamlogic history back 12 or 13 years ago (yes, there are 2 parts) from NSA, having gone through the grind of request and appeal at the several levels one has to do when using MDR (Mandatory Declassification Review, via Executive Order 13526), and then the final appeal to ISCAP back 12 years ago. ISCAP finally earlier this year (in about August, I think) finalized its release to me. So I am the reason that the history appears in the public forum. Secondly, the page from the NORAD Weekly Intelligence Review is not courtesy of the NSA, and Dwayne should know better than post erroneous citations. It is courtesy of ISCAP--and courtesy of me, as I was the researcher/scholar responsible for getting them into the declassification sequencing to begin with. The WIR document series origin came from the AFHRA to be precise. That entire assemblage of WIRs that appear on ISCAP's webpage have appeared in the public realm directly due to my efforts. (These were appealed originally back in 2009 to ISCAP, and it took many years until 2014 I believe to get those into my hands.) Next time, Dwayne, you should inquire how the documents got on ISCAP's declassification page, and engage in due diligence, and then acknowledge whom the person was that was instrumental in getting the materials released. Make the effort, dude.
I am telling spacereview's readers these key facts so you can accurately know. And that also includes spacereview's chief editor as well. Note well.

I should also comment on ISCAP's lack of professionalism on when things get released to the general public. It used to be that they gave the requestor/appellant 24 months to work with the materials before posting them to the Web. Now, there are short-sighted bureaucrats/apparatchiks at the ISCAP/NARA franchise who think 4 or 5 months is sufficient. To produce a scholarly paper that gets published takes much, much longer than 4 or 5 months to get into print.

And then people like Dwayne Day come along, and without engaging in what I think should be appropriate efforts to find out how the stuff appeared, and then credit the people who do the actual scholarly heavy lifting, posts materials on the Web as if he has got to the south pole first (a metaphorical allusion)--and spaceview's readership are none the wiser.

But now all of you are the wiser. And yes, I do have proof of my statements, as I have the original ISCAP release letters and "Final Decision" documents as well.

..."

In a conversation that I had with Peter this week, he told me that to correct/rectify the issues he noticed in Dwayne's piece published on spacereview this week, the following should be done.  Near the beginning of the article, Dwayne should accurately address the origin of the release of the NSA scamlogic history document that the article is featuring excerpts from. 

"The document appears on ISCAP's declassified documents webpage, and was declassified by ISCAP at the request of researcher Peter Pesavento."

The second major correction should be with the image credit of the NORAD Weekly Intelligence Review page, it should not be stating "NSA" (because it isn't an NSA series), but rather one of these two credits:  "AFHRA via ISCAP" or "Pesavento via AFHRA/ISCAP." 

The NSA had nothing to do with the release of the NORAD Weekly Intelligence Review series.  Why Dwayne makes that claim in the picture credit only he knows.  But it is wrong.

These suggested corrections would provide the accuracy that is lacking currently in Dwayne's article.   In many published papers, the vast majority of scholars credit the person or persons who uncovered the quoted document from which new information is told.  And they do so professionally, and gladly.

Peter told me that he will be watching carefully to see if the space review chief editor and Dwayne make the effort at making these necessary corrections in the nearest future to the Web-published piece.  And if Dwayne wishes to put together an additional article on either Part 1 or Part 2 of the scamlogic history, he has to make the disclosure that Peter Pesavento was the person that made the disclosure/declassification happen in regards to "The Foreign Missile and Space Telemetry Collection Story--The First 50 Years.  Part One: The 1950s and 1960s" if he again engages in extensive excerpting of the said document.

Peter also authorized me to post as attachments the following two documents that are directly sourced to ISCAP that concern the NSA scamlogic history series on the "Foreign Missile and Space Telemetry Collection Story."  One is the cover letter announcing the release of the two-part NSA document history to Peter, and the other is ISCAP's "Decision Notification" document that provides more details about the final determination. 

These two pieces of ISCAP correspondence prove that Peter was the person that made the effort to get the NSA documents declassified, and that means if Dwayne is interested in accurate scholarship, he will make the rectifying acknowledgements necessary in his article that currently appeared this week, and any others upcoming that may talk to Part 1 or Part 2 of the NSA history in any extensive detail.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 06:25 pm

"The document appears on ISCAP's declassified documents webpage, and was declassified by ISCAP at the request of researcher Peter Pesavento."


There is no basis to acknowledge the FOIA requestor.

Where is it in the Chicago Manual of Style?

There is no requirement for anybody to inquire or acknowledge how items appear on an FOIA site.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 01/22/2022 09:48 pm
Sorry Jim, you got it wrong.

It's not a FOIA.  It's an MDR (Mandatory Declassification Review).  Not the same thing.

And yes, in scholarship endeavors, most everyone cites and states where the documents come from, and who has found them.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 01/22/2022 09:49 pm
My good friend and colleague Peter Pesavento has posted a response to Dwayne Day's most recent article posting on the space review.  Because it is in the interest of all readers to know the facts, I am posting the response in its entirety here.  I will also be providing some follow-up comments by Peter as well.
<snip>
Dear Peter and FSM,

we are all very grateful to you (and everyone else) who puts in efforts to get documents on space history declassified via FOIA!

For the declassified page from a report on Soviet space activities, I might have been the "culprit" by posting a few WIR excerpts on the forum a while ago - see https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26950.msg2319810#msg2319810 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26950.msg2319810#msg2319810)

The issue of the originating agency raises an interesting question. Most likely the communication between the Soviet recon satellites and their ground station(s) was intercepted by an NSA/CIA listening post. If you have any additional insights on this, and on the actual decoding process of the signals, please let us know!

I guess that we are all looking forward to your scholars articles and/or books on this and related topics! Keep up the good work, and thanks a lot!
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 01/22/2022 09:57 pm
Thanks Hoku, I will tell Peter of your posting.

But again, it's not FOIA that was used.  It was MDR.  FOIA and MDR are two different methods (very much separated in time, space, and law) to obtain classified materials that get declassification processed.

That also goes for the NORAD Weekly Intelligence Review materials.  Those were also MDR-processed cases.

No FOIA involved.

But I should add that Dwayne does indeed have a PhD in history, if I am not mistaken.

So he does know the protocols to follow, and understands the necessity of providing the provenance of where things come from.  If he didn't know the provenance, now he does, and he is obligated to make the corrections. 

And from where I stand, Peter's requests are fairly straightforward and easy to engage the corrections requested. 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 10:01 pm
Sorry Jim, you got it wrong.

It's not a FOIA.  It's an MDR (Mandatory Declassification Review).  Not the same thing.

And yes, in scholarship endeavors, most everyone cites and states where the documents come from, and who has found them.


A distinction without a difference.  They both bring documents out to open public sites and where it is first come first serve.

In scholarship endeavors, the source is always cited.  But no, most everyone does not state who found them nor is there a standard to do so.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 10:05 pm

And from where I stand, Peter's requests are fairly straightforward and easy to engage the corrections requested.

“From where you stand”?   That is funny, because you occupy the same space.  Just stop the facade..

 And more so, stop the whining
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 10:14 pm

So he does know the protocols to follow, and understands the necessity of providing the provenance of where things come from.  If he didn't know the provenance, now he does, and he is obligated to make the corrections. 


Show us where such protocols are documented.  Specifically, on acknowledging who made an FOIA or MDR request.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 01/22/2022 10:18 pm
Jim,

I am not going to go mud wrestling with you.  I consider your behavior very troll-like.  There are numerous cases of proof that can be found if one wants to look and find them.

But I will give you an example or two.

See the attached URL link, and view how the requested citation is written.

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/260536.pdf?v=702cbf058426e009b2ed89230ea4756e

It is not only customary among scholars to provide provenance, most journals will not publish a paper unless such provenance is provided.

An excellent example on spacereview of a person who does understand the provenance and citation issues is Bart Hendrickx.  His work is above reproach.

Peter Pesavento's own published work in JBIS as well as Space Chronicle journals talks about the usage of, and citation of, ISCAP-sourced MDR documentation. 

--Soviet space programme: CIA documents reveal new historical information.  Spaceflight 35(7):224-27, 1993.

--Declassified American documents show a broad and in-depth interest in Soviet space activities.  J Brit Interplanetary Soc 56(5/6): 175-91, 2003.

--The Role of Human Intelligence in the USA’s 1960s efforts to understand Soviet space activities.  J Brit Interplanetary Soc 60:460-62, 2007.

--Lifting the veil: What US intelligence knew in the 1960s about the Soviet space program. Space Chronicle 60(JBIS Supplement 2): 49-87, 2007.

--Lifting the Veil, Part 2. Further Declassification Disclosures Reveal What US Intelligence Knew about the Soviet Space Program During the Space Race.
First segment: Space Chronicle 70 (JBIS Supplement 2): 56-73, 2017.
Second segment:  Space Chronicle 70 (JBIS Supplement 3): 101-118, 2017.
Third segment:  Space Chronicle 71 (JBIS Supplement 2): 50-90, 2018.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 01/22/2022 10:29 pm
In the article I mention the EB-47(TT) "Tell Two" aircraft that were used to intercept Soviet missile telemetry. Somebody sent me a photo of one of the Tell Two aircraft. I don't quite understand this. According to the history, the Tell Two aircraft only had antennas down one side, which meant that they had to be flying in a direction where the antennas were facing the launch site during a launch and if they were at the end of their track and turned around, they would lose the signal. However, in this photo, there are antennas on both sides of the aircraft. So I don't know if this is a late version of that aircraft where they fixed the problem, or if there's more to the story.

But it sure is funky, huh?
According to Bob Archer, "Super Snoopers":
QRC-68: sensors mounted on either side of the nose (Hallicrafters, 1955)
later replaced by
QRC-159: single dipole antenna  (Hallicrafters, 1961)

http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/jetds/qrc.html (http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/jetds/qrc.html)
Taking about "Quick Reaction Capability" (QRC) equipment - attached is a picture of the receiver end of the QRC-259, which was used from the 1970s to the 1990s both airborne and at ground sites - looks quite complex!

More equipment pictures can be found in NSA's "ELINT at NSA" brochure
https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/technology/elint.pdf (https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/about/scamlogic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/technology/elint.pdf)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 10:38 pm
Jim,

I am not going to go mud wrestling with you.  I consider your behavior very troll-like.  There are numerous cases of proof that can be found if one wants to look and find them.

But I will give you an example.

See the attached URL link, and view how the requested citation is written.

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/260536.pdf?v=702cbf058426e009b2ed89230ea4756e


It is not only customary among scholars to provide provenance, most journals will not publish a paper unless such provenance is provided.

An excellent example on spacereview of a person who does understand the provenance and citation issues is Bart Hendrickx.  His work is above reproach.

Just because some people do to doesn’t mean it is standard or requirement.


Your example is not the same thing.

The “provenance” requirement  is who wrote or published the material.  Not who did the FOIA or MDR request.

Your example, people did work on the actual source material


Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Flying Spaghetti Monster on 01/22/2022 10:58 pm
I consider Jim = Dwayne Day.

Jim/Dwayne, the example I have used where Asif was part of the team that helped to translate the Gagarin documents is proof that people do expect provenance to happen, even if they themselves did not originate/author the document in question.

If Asif can do it, as well as expect others to also do that when they cite his handiwork, so can you, Dwayne.

You can even look at all the documents that get posted on The National Security Archive.  They make great effort to provide provenance of where all the declassified documents come from, and who (yes, the researcher) made the effort to get those documents declassified.  See here the URL link to the NSA:  https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/. 

Scholarship is universal.  Just because Dwayne has neglected to do the right thing....well that reflects more on Dwayne than on anyone else.  Just do the right thing--make the corrections requested. 

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 11:24 pm
I consider Jim = Dwayne Day.


I am not Dwayne Day.   And others will attest to that.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 11:29 pm

the example I have used where Asif was part of the team that helped to translate the Gagarin documents is proof that people do expect provenance to happen, even if they themselves did not originate/author the document in question.

Asif manipulated and changes the document.  You did no such thing.  All you did was file a form and doing no more than a librarian requesting a book from the stacks

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Redclaws on 01/22/2022 11:43 pm
There is a term, “folie de grandeur”.  One of the patterns is generalized insult and degradation directed generally (eg, the agency staff as well as the author).  The insults are petty and the complaints just as much so.  There is a constant tone of injury and complaint.  Various complaints are aired, but it’s clear the true fault is insufficient regard for the magnificence of the person involved.

Yuck.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/22/2022 11:46 pm
If Asif can do it, as well as expect others to also do that when they cite his handiwork, so can you, Dwayne.

You can even look at all the documents that get posted on The National Security Archive.  They make great effort to provide provenance of where all the declassified documents come from, and who (yes, the researcher) made the effort to get those documents declassified.  See here the URL link to the NSA:  https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/. 


Here is where you are wrong. GWU is hosting those documents (nsarchive) and must show where they got them.  That is not true when using the actual source such as the National Archives website,   https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2012-001-doc-1-part-3.pdf.  There is no need to provide anymore information or why the document is now available.  There is no rule or scholarship to state who filed some paperwork.   You have no claim to it.   Anybody is free to use the document.  Nobody has to say where they got it from. 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/23/2022 01:22 am
My good friend and colleague Peter Pesavento has posted a response to Dwayne Day's most recent article posting on the space review……

I see no such response on The Space Review article
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/23/2022 02:03 am
Jim,
 I consider your behavior very troll-like

I find yours very petty.  Especially listing your own articles as proof.  How small can you be?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/24/2022 01:12 pm
Here's an interesting little event. In summer 1975, a Soviet reentry vehicle blew up right near an American ship gathering intelligence on the missile test. They actually gathered pieces of the reentry vehicle from the deck.

This was the Vandenberg, sister ship to the Arnold.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/24/2022 01:17 pm
Here's an interesting little event. In summer 1975, a Soviet reentry vehicle blew up right near an American ship gathering intelligence on the missile test. They actually gathered pieces of the reentry vehicle from the deck.


Easier than fishing it out of the water
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: libra on 01/24/2022 03:20 pm
There is a term, “folie de grandeur”.  One of the patterns is generalized insult and degradation directed generally (eg, the agency staff as well as the author).  The insults are petty and the complaints just as much so.  There is a constant tone of injury and complaint.  Various complaints are aired, but it’s clear the true fault is insufficient regard for the magnificence of the person involved.

Yuck.

"La folie des grandeurs" indeed - which stands for "megalomania". As in this truly hilarious French comedy I highly recommend (De Funčs at his best, and Yves Montand in a joyful role - for once !)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusions_of_Grandeur_(film)

What the heck has happened to this thread, I have no idea.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/24/2022 04:21 pm
What the heck has happened to this thread, I have no idea.

The way to improve any thread is to add content.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/25/2022 12:15 am
I helped Mike with this:


https://thespacereview.com/article/4318/1

Cold War Pony Express in the western Pacific
by Mike Beuster
Monday, January 24, 2022

Recently, The Space Review ran an article about Cold War collection of telemetry from Soviet missiles and satellites. This was done at ground stations in remote places like an Alaskan island, as well as at sea, on both big and small ships equipped with multiple antennas (see “Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War,” The Space Review, January 17, 2022.) During the Cold War, I was one of the relatively few members of the United States Air Force who spent a significant amount of time at sea performing this mission. As a USAF Security Service Electronic Intelligence Operations Operator/Analyst, I earned my sea legs on the USNS General H.H. Arnold during the final months of my Air Force enlistment. The Arnold was a modified World War II-era troop transport, originally named the General R.E. Callan, that in the early 1960s had been equipped to track American ballistic missiles during tests and renamed for the founding general of the Air Force. But the ship was soon pressed into additional duties.

In the spring of 1974, after leaving Shemya Island, Alaska, where I had been assigned to the ANDERS signals intelligence listening facility, I had requested re-assignment back to Fort Meade to the USAFSS 6970th Air Base Group. But I was unaware that another unit was also supporting NSA from Fort Meade, I was assigned to OL EB, 6948 Security Squadron (Mobile), Fort Meade, Maryland. Thinking nothing of the change in my orders, I was biding my time as a telemetry signals analyst in the National Security Agency’s W17 group.

I came to work one day and noticed a silhouette of a ship next to my name on the work status board. I said, “What’s this?!” They said, “You’re going on Project Pony Express; here’s your orders.” I said, “But I’m supposed to get out in January 1975.” The ship was the USNS Arnold, not the ground stations I was used too, and I would be out at sea. I was told not to worry, that I could get off the ARNOLD in Japan before the second part of the trip.

The orders were for 90 days, and later they were amended/extended to 170+ days, which was past my January 1975 separation date. (Could they do that? Yes!) I went to the Arnold in August 1974. The trip to Oakland, California from Fort Meade, Maryland is a blur. I stopped by San Diego to say goodbye to the family. My dad was a 22-year World War II Navy veteran and had told me before enlisting, “Don’t go into the Navy, you will spend all your time at sea.”

Although designed as a “missile range instrumentation ship,” in the 1960s the Arnold had been put into additional service monitoring Soviet missile tests. I was part of a USAFSS special team on board the Arnold that performed Soviet ICBM telemetry and electronic intelligence (telemetry and radar) collection.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/26/2022 11:52 pm
This is tangential to the subject, but still important. Aviation History has a cover story about this 1969 incident, when North Korean fighter jets shot down a US Navy signals intelligence aircraft. This event apparently played an important role in pushing more missions to satellites, which didn't have people who could be killed onboard.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/30/2022 04:48 pm
I mentioned this earlier. Just an additional note.

In my article on TELINT, I noted that the declassified history referenced a 1990 article by Robert Hopkins on the "Tell Two" aircraft. The amusing thing is that the history deleted the words "Tell Two" from the magazine reference, while keeping the rest of the reference. So it's not that hard to actually locate the original article. I should have a copy of that article in a few days. If there's interesting info in there, I may write a follow-up to the TELINT article. I'll also have to contact Hopkins. I talked to him several times in the 1990s and he was a nice guy. He used to fly COBRA BALL missions tracking Soviet missile reentries. I think that back in the 1990s I explained some satellite stuff to him--to the extent that I understood it.



Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/02/2022 06:15 pm
So here's something interesting. See if you can spot the difference.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/02/2022 06:21 pm
Okay, so what was the P-113 payload?

Something that has struck me the more I've dug into satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s (see what I did there?) is that there was a big push starting around 1965 to gather ABM signals. They added a lot of payloads and flew some of the P-11 satellites and so on.

It seems like they had largely cracked the code on that issue by the late 1960s. They had determined that the Soviet ABM program was not going to achieve breakout success. But they still needed to monitor it through the 1970s.

So it's possible that P-113 was another ABM-related payload. I seem to remember--and have to check my notes--that something about the STRAWMAN was deleted in one of the documents or histories. It carried a deleted payload. This P-113 may have been that payload.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 02/04/2022 06:52 pm
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?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/04/2022 08:13 pm
I'm confused (with all the SIGINT codewords and program names/numbers).   ;)

I think that was by design.


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?


STRAWMAN 1
    THRESHER 1
    REAPER 1
    CONVOY 1

STRAWMAN 2
    THRESHER 2
    REAPER 2
    CONVOY 2

STRAWMAN 3
    THRESHER 3
    REAPER 3

STRAWMAN 4
    THRESHER 4
    REAPER 4
    HARVESTER

STRAWMAN 5
    THRESHER 5
    REAPER 5



The image I posted is apparently STRAWMAN 4. HARVESTER, REAPER, and THRESHER are all identified (note that the HARVESTER payload and antenna are called out separately). Then there's that P-113 payload. So what was that? I don't know yet.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 02/04/2022 09:35 pm
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.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/04/2022 09:48 pm
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.

Yeah, and that's also not where you would mount a detachable payload. You would not want anything up near the antennas like that.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/05/2022 12:16 am
Got the Tell Two article. It does not include the photo I posted earlier of the plane with the larger antennas near the nose. I'm going to have to contact the author and ask him what he knows.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 02/05/2022 07:17 am
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.

Yeah, and that's also not where you would mount a detachable payload. You would not want anything up near the antennas like that.

The only things that strike me about it are

i) it seems to have about 6 circuit boards in two sets of three,

ii) it has a round object on its left side as seen in the diagram, which might be a very small horn or maybe some sort of diagnostic connector for ground support equipment,

and

iii) it has a lot of apparently empty space in its middle ?

My guess would be some sort of experimental signal processing module involving a newish tech of that moment. Microprocessors, solid state memory, etc ??
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 02/05/2022 07:56 am
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?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 02/05/2022 09:07 am
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?

and also sits between the (microwave lens?) antennas on the downward looking face of REAPER and the electronics of HARVESTER. Strongly suggests it is doing some cross-correlation or other analysis on these two inputs before they get to HARVESTER ? ...

[Edit: which could be digital domain, or perhaps more likely, analogue domain.

Anything from the 1958 book  https://archive.org/details/principlesapplic0000bend/page/n5/mode/2up   by TRW's Julius Bendat https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/julius-bendat-obituary?id=8730921 ,

to the  1971 sequel https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118032428 co-written with TRW colleague Allan  G. Piersol,

could perhaps be seen as a minimum set of possibilities, plus whatever was going on under wraps.

And the things I thought were circuit boards could be heat sinks, or reflectors, etc ... and the empty space with gold walls could be a cavity, etc ...

Another three pipe problem ...]

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/19/2022 12:53 pm
I found my photos of the P-11 satellite hanging in the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

There are six photos here, but one is an OV satellite (ignore that one). I will provide better scans later and replace this poor quality image.

This satellite was identified as a "Lockheed Research Satellite" and hung in the museum until (I think) the mid-2000s. Then it disappeared and I have no idea where it went. I don't know if it is still in storage at the museum or if they gave it away. I assume that this is either a mockup or a science version of the P-11. The P-11 was used as the basic bus to carry up to two signals intelligence payloads.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/21/2022 11:40 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4335/1

Front line on the TELINT Cold War
The Tell Two missions collecting rocket and satellite telemetry during the 1960s

by Dwayne Day
Monday, February 21, 2022

In March 1965, Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk, exiting his Voskhod spacecraft for twelve minutes to achieve a historic first. Far below Voskhod 2, a specially equipped United States Air Force B-47 aircraft was gathering signals from his craft, using its antennas and electronic equipment to collect and record the telemetry the spacecraft was sending to a Soviet ground station. The aircraft was part of the highly secretive “Tell Two” program. Now, due to the diligent work of a retired military pilot and historian, Tell Two is becoming less mysterious.

During the Cold War, the United States used a wide array of systems and methods to collect telemetry signals from Soviet missiles and spacecraft. These included ground stations, satellites, ships, and aircraft (see “Stealing secrets from the ether: missile and satellite telemetry interception during the Cold War,” The Space Review, January 17, 2022.) According to a recently declassified history of 2004 telemetry intelligence collection by National Security Agency historian Richard L. Bernard, the EB-47E(TT) Stratojets played a role in intercepting telemetry from Soviet rocket launches, particularly the crucial first stage phase of flight which provided the most important data on the rocket’s performance.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 02/24/2022 08:53 pm
New releases by NSA.  A lot to go through...

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-04/cyber-brief-nsas-scamlog
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/26/2022 02:13 pm
The Boeing S3 was similar to the Lockheed P-11. But it does not appear that the S3 was used for signals intelligence missions. I am curious to know more about why the Air Force commissioned the S3. Was it supposed to compete with the P-11?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/09/2022 01:19 am
Some interesting stuff in here. It's an essay and 28 documents about the use of the U-2 and other aircraft to gather signals intelligence during the Cold War.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence-nuclear-vault/2022-03-08/cia-u-2-collection-signals-intelligence-1956?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=8c683efc-f04f-4f22-b5ad-094c1ae888ce

There is some mention of rocket telemetry interception using aircraft, a subject that I've recently written about.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/09/2022 01:40 am
So here's a great example, a 1959 document about a joint mission involving a U-2 and an RB-47 aircraft. They flew at different altitudes and the U-2 at higher altitude was able to intercept signals from a Soviet missile test 80 seconds after liftoff. The RB-47 at a lower altitude was able to intercept signals from the second stage. The U-2 had an automatic system, which was limited in capability. The RB-47 had operators who could search for more signals. They were complementary.

To me the one big surprise is that the NSA provided six hours warning that a launch was about to happen, which enabled the aircraft to take off and be in position to collect the signals. I never thought they had so much warning time. Maybe that was unusual, but it's still a lot of time.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/10/2022 04:23 pm
To me the one big surprise is that the NSA provided six hours warning that a launch was about to happen, which enabled the aircraft to take off and be in position to collect the signals. I never thought they had so much warning time. Maybe that was unusual, but it's still a lot of time.

Following up on this, a U-2 expert pointed out to me that the U-2 pilot had to do pre-breathing before a flight, and that took a couple of hours. So presumably it was common to have at least several hours warning before a U-2 flight so that the pilot could get ready, then launch to the operating location. (I suspect that they had a prime pilot and backup pilot get ready.)

I also heard from a B-47 pilot who recounted an early telemetry intercept, probably in the early months of 1959. He said that they obtained pre-engine burnout telemetry from an early ICBM. He said that the techs evaluating the data were very happy with what they got, even though it was only about ten seconds of data. It was new data.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/05/2022 05:29 pm
I did an interview for a podcast about this subject.

https://www.armadainternational.com/2022/04/cold-war-space-sigint-electronic-warfare-podcast/

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 04/11/2022 01:41 pm
I have received an old Lockheed brochure on the P-11 program.

Lockheed P-11 - Orbital Launched Satellite - 15 Feb 1964

I have photographed it (unfortunately my scanner did not work correctly anymore) and made a PDF.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/11/2022 03:52 pm
That's a great find. I have long assumed that the satellite bus was unclassified, but considering that almost all the payloads were classified, very little unclassified information was released. For many years a satellite was displayed at the National Museum of the United States Air Force labeled "Lockheed Research Satellite." I assumed that there had to be unclassified documentation devoted to that piece of hardware. Unfortunately, that satellite was removed years ago and I don't know where it is. Maybe in storage at the museum.

My next Space Review article (appearing this evening) adds a little more information about the end of this program. There was a satellite named FARRAH launched in 1982. Some in the intelligence community wanted a second satellite, but the Office of Management and Budget opposed it. OMB lost that argument and a second FARRAH was launched in 1984. There was also a late 1970s proposal to merge the P-989 program with the Navy's ocean surveillance satellite program. That proposal was rejected at that time, but adopted a few years later. We're getting dribs and drabs of information about the end of this program, but still not a complete picture.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/11/2022 04:48 pm
A few comments:

Interesting that they divulge some information from some classified missions. This has often been a problem for companies that want to sell hardware for unclassified missions but their experience is classified. I think that was a problem for Perkin-Elmer when they wanted to sell their S3 stellar index camera for other uses--it had only flown on the HEXAGON, and they could not provide an unclassified list of flight experience.

Note that the growth potential shows it carrying a big dish antenna. They eventually did this.

And finally we have some dimensions for the spacecraft. I think that up until now we were mostly guessing.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: edzieba on 04/11/2022 06:14 pm
In overall dimensions and power delivery (300Wh/orbit vs. 280Wh/orbit ) - and in general function as a stage and bus to host a customer payload handling power, data, and RCS - P-11 is remarkably close to the contemporary LEO Photon from Rocketlab.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/11/2022 06:52 pm
Despite having a proven satellite, and the ability to put payloads in various orbits (assuming that the initial Agena orbit was compatible), Lockheed never sold any of these to other customers like NASA or DARPA or NOAA. I imagine there were a number of reasons for that, but the most basic explanation was probably that the satellite just wasn't big enough.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: jcm on 04/11/2022 07:11 pm
In overall dimensions and power delivery (300Wh/orbit vs. 280Wh/orbit ) - and in general function as a stage and bus to host a customer payload handling power, data, and RCS - P-11 is remarkably close to the contemporary LEO Photon from Rocketlab.


I'll note that this appears conclusive that "P-11" is a Lockheed model number, and not e.g. a USAF Program number
as we had originally thought. Which explains why it remained called 'P-11' through all the Program 989 etc changes
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/11/2022 07:26 pm
In overall dimensions and power delivery (300Wh/orbit vs. 280Wh/orbit ) - and in general function as a stage and bus to host a customer payload handling power, data, and RCS - P-11 is remarkably close to the contemporary LEO Photon from Rocketlab.


I'll note that this appears conclusive that "P-11" is a Lockheed model number, and not e.g. a USAF Program number
as we had originally thought. Which explains why it remained called 'P-11' through all the Program 989 etc changes

We do have official documents that referred to it as P-11. So the government types were rather loose with their designations.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/11/2022 11:59 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4366/1

Red and black: The secretive National Reconnaissance Office finally faces the budgeteers
by Dwayne Day
Monday, April 11, 2022

When it was created in the early 1960s, the National Reconnaissance Office was so secretive that even its name was classified. There was no nameplate on its door in the Pentagon, and those who worked for it would never mention the acronym “NRO” outside of secure rooms that had been swept for eavesdropping devices. The NRO was officially a DoD agency located within the US Air Force and consisting of Air Force, CIA, and Navy components, each of which managed the development of satellite programs using money from a central budget.

This secretive existence also required special bureaucratic arrangements. One of these arrangements was that as long as the NRO’s budget stayed below a billion dollars—for comparison, NASA’s budget peaked at over $5 billion in 1965 and declined to a bit over $3 billion by the end of that decade—the budget would be approved by Congress with no oversight or questioning. The NRO budget stayed below that magic number throughout the 1960s, in part via some clever accounting: launch vehicle costs, launch site infrastructure, and some other major program costs like satellite tracking and control, were all charged to the Air Force, not the NRO. In contrast, NASA had to pay for most of these things in its own budget.

But at some point in the early 1970s, the NRO’s budget started to cross that magic number and it began to gain scrutiny, including from the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A newly declassified interview with one of the legendary leaders of the NRO sheds new light on how the NRO came to resent this scrutiny after spending so many years hidden in the shadows. It also reveals how this NRO leader viewed the office’s relationship with other members of the intelligence community during that time.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 04/12/2022 01:20 am
Do you have the names of the others in the photo?

When was the photo?  Nobody has space badges.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/12/2022 02:07 am
Do you have the names of the others in the photo?

When was the photo?  Nobody has space badges.

The photo is from the NRO Staff history. You can find the link in the second last paragraph of my article. I have attached the image.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 04/12/2022 12:57 pm

The photo is from the NRO Staff history. You can find the link in the second last paragraph of my article. I have attached the image.

Sorry, I missed that. 

During my short Air Force, I worked for many of staff Directors or members. It seemed that in addition rotational assignments at SAFSP (LA) and AFSCF (Sunnyvale), some (Cromer, Hard, Lindsay, etc) had leadership roles at LAAFB (SAMSO/SD/SSD/SMC) in the organizations that procured launch vehicles for the USAF.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/12/2022 01:39 pm
In overall dimensions and power delivery (300Wh/orbit vs. 280Wh/orbit ) - and in general function as a stage and bus to host a customer payload handling power, data, and RCS - P-11 is remarkably close to the contemporary LEO Photon from Rocketlab.

It's also somewhat similar to LOSAT from the 1980s:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2700/1

LOSAT did not have that propulsion system, however. But a brochure for that satellite listed it as a "definite option," which is an odd way to put it. I talked to somebody involved with LOSAT and asked why they never sold any more of them, and the bottom line was that the satellite was too small. I figure that was the same problem with Lockheed trying to sell P-11's to other users. I think they fit a niche for signals intelligence--cheap, able to ride-share--and that niche didn't work for any other customers. I could imagine a NASA customer saying "I don't need two payloads in polar orbit, I need three payloads in a low-inclination orbit." Or it could have provided the right capability, but there were no Atlas-Agena or Thor-Agena launches going to the needed orbit, so the customers looked elsewhere.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 04/12/2022 01:46 pm

The photo is from the NRO Staff history. You can find the link in the second last paragraph of my article. I have attached the image.

Sorry, I missed that. 

During my short Air Force, I worked for many of staff Directors or members. It seemed that in addition rotational assignments at SAFSP (LA) and AFSCF (Sunnyvale), some (Cromer, Hard, Lindsay, etc) had leadership roles at LAAFB (SAMSO/SD/SSD/SMC) in the organizations that procured launch vehicles for the USAF.

Take a look at that NRO Staff history (which has a terrible name). The history goes into some of the issues that they considered over the years, although many of the discussions are obtuse due to continued classification (like: "They considered a new system at this time..." without saying what that system might do.). The value for me was that the history added more details to the story Hill told about merging the low-altitude SIGINT systems in the late 1970s. Hill said that CIA wanted it and DoD was opposed, but the history indicates that the NRO director was also opposed. No other details than that, however.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/02/2022 07:56 pm
I wasn't quite sure where to drop this, but NRO has released some new documents from 1971, and at least one deals with SIGINT:

https://www.nro.gov/FOIA/From-the-NRO-Archives/

Update: I added the new files to this post.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/06/2022 01:45 pm
There are a bunch of things happening now concerning the history of satellite signals intelligence during the 1960s and into the 1970s. I'll be writing about that in coming months. Some tidbits:

-there is new info on POPPY and the development of ocean surveillance. I haven't gotten into this deeply yet, but there is info about how it was difficult to make the transition, at least from a bureaucratic standpoint. The reason was that POPPY (and SIGINT) was used for national intelligence collection purposes. The powers that be considered ocean surveillance to be a tactical mission serving the Navy's needs, not national-level needs. So the Naval Research Laboratory had to make the case that it was a national-level issue. At least part of this was that knowing where and how the Soviet Navy was deployed provided indications of what the Soviet Union was doing. Were they mobilizing for war? Where were their ballistic missile submarines? Part of the technical issue was that processing SIGINT satellites in the 1960s often took weeks to months, so they had to get that processing time down dramatically to track ships.

-I have some new info on the P-11 satellite program, such as how the program was managed, how they operated, what happened with individual satellites and lifetimes and so on. I can now provide a fuller picture of the entire program, including its transition to shuttle (and then off the shuttle). There are also a bunch of interesting little tidbits as well. For instance, a lot of the satellites were devoted to the Soviet anti-ballistic missile system. There was this big push in the latter 1960s to figure out if the ABM system was a threat. The more they looked at it, the more they realized that the Soviets were not making a lot of progress. For example, they noticed that one of the HEN HOUSE radars used for detecting and tracking ballistic missiles did not operate on Sunday. That meant that it was not operational. Another one had shifted its operating mode after awhile, which indicated that they were still figuring out how to use it. In addition, I have some new information on how systems were used to map out the Soviet communications networks so that they could later be intercepted.

For that P-11 subject, I'm still in information gathering mode. I have some info, but am going to be getting more in the next few weeks. So I'm building up the picture and don't have all the pieces yet.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/09/2022 01:55 am
It's going to take me awhile to publish (maybe by the end of the year), but I've got some new articles about the Program 989 (P-11) satellites as well as STRAWMAN in the works. Both are based upon substantial new information that I've obtained. I now have a pretty complete picture of STRAWMAN, and it is much more interesting than I thought. I'm able to answer a number of questions like did they build the fifth STRAWMAN? (yes, but they did not do full testing of it) What was it capable of? Why was it not flown? What were the original goals of the program and how were they achieved? What were the special missions that it was used for? What were the special unknown instruments that it carried? And so on.

As for P-989, I've now talked to somebody who ran the program. There's some interesting stuff to tell about that, including how the program evolved (let's just say that the last P-989 satellites were MUCH heavier than the early ones).

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 09/09/2022 05:30 pm
<snip>. There's some interesting stuff to tell about that, including how the program evolved (let's just say that the last P-989 satellites were MUCH heavier than the early ones).
Was there every any multi-generation satellite program with the subsequent generation loosing mass ("weight")?  ;)
"Natural selection" seems to favor larger optics, larger antennae, and additional fuel. Maybe FIA-Optical was the exception, but it turned into an evolutionary dead-end...

Looking forward to the STRAWMAN story!
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/09/2022 05:56 pm

Was there every any multi-generation satellite program with the subsequent generation loosing mass ("weight")?  ;)


When the final satellites weigh 13 times the original satellites, it's rather unusual.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 09/09/2022 08:50 pm
Though, it never flew, the optical part of Boeings FIA failed KH-11 replacement was supposed to fly on an smaller Atlas V and not a Delta Heavy... But I'm off topic and Lockheed had to restart the KH-11 line.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/11/2022 04:47 pm
<snip>. There's some interesting stuff to tell about that, including how the program evolved (let's just say that the last P-989 satellites were MUCH heavier than the early ones).
Was there every any multi-generation satellite program with the subsequent generation loosing mass ("weight")?  ;)
"Natural selection" seems to favor larger optics, larger antennae, and additional fuel. Maybe FIA-Optical was the exception, but it turned into an evolutionary dead-end...

Looking forward to the STRAWMAN story!

Are the latest in the JUMPSEAT/TRUMPET/... etc series thought to be getting heavier ?

[Edit: Also-and I realise they may not be directly comparable as what was once the 989 task is supposed to have merged with what was PARCAE's-but do we know anything about how the masses of the individual NOSS-type satellites have evolved as the cluster sizes have changed ? ]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 09/29/2022 08:44 am
Interesting development from the NRO

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=406371968347833&set=a.164921892492843

National Reconnaissance Office Release #11-22
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 28, 2022
Office of Public Affairs
703-808-1198, [email protected]
NRO Announces Commercial Radio Frequency Study Contract Awards

CHANTILLY, Va. – The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) today announced the award of six study contracts for commercial radio frequency (RF) remote sensing. Companies receiving awards under NRO’s Strategic Commercial Enhancement’s (SCE) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework include Aurora Insight, HawkEye 360, Kleos Space, PredaSAR, Spire Global, and Umbra Lab.
“Since the 2019 award of an integration study contract for commercial RF, we’ve seen increasing demand for this data source from across the user community,” said Dr. Chris Scolese, director of the NRO. “Today’s awards are another great example of NRO’s efforts to innovate on all fronts, as we continue to work with our partners in government and the commercial sector to find new ways to build capability, agility, capacity, speed, and resilience into everything we do.”

This new BAA focus area will help the NRO better understand the capabilities of multiple commercial RF providers to address new intelligence challenges. This is the second focus area awarded under the NRO’s new SCE BAA framework, designed to streamline the assessment and operationalization of emerging commercial capabilities. The SCE BAA Framework and first focus area for commercial radar were released in October 2021, followed by awards in January 2022 to five commercial radar providers. Similar to the commercial radar focus area, the RF focus area was open to both U.S. and foreign-owned U.S. commercial RF providers.
The unclassified, shareable nature of commercial remote sensing data, including RF, makes it a valuable source for situational awareness and intelligence sharing among U.S. allies and partners.

“As evidenced by the quality and quantity of commercial data flowing to our partners and allies, commercial remote sensing is a mainstay not only for security and intelligence applications but also for helping to manage humanitarian crises,” emphasized Pete Muend, director of NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office. “Since the early days of Ukraine crisis, NRO’s commercial data providers have been collecting electro-optical and radar imagery as well as commercial RF data over the region.”

The BAA and its first two focus areas build on the success of NRO’s earlier studies and operational contracts, and create additional opportunities to expand NRO’s commitment to the rapid acquisition and integration of commercial space-based data.
###

The NRO is the leader in developing, acquiring, launching, and operating the nation’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellites to secure and expand America’s advantage in space. We are building a diversified and resilient architecture of spacecraft and ground systems designed to meet the challenges of a changing space environment by accelerating innovation and leveraging strategic partnerships, backed by a diverse and highly skilled workforce. At NRO, we See It, Hear It, Sense It so our nation’s warfighters and policymakers have decision advantage amid increasing global competition.
Learn more at NRO.gov.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 09/29/2022 11:48 am
Yeah, first commercial SAR and now this. These commercial companies are now moving into areas that used to be exclusively government intelligence collection fields.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/29/2022 05:45 pm
Yeah, first commercial SAR and now this. These commercial companies are now moving into areas that used to be exclusively government intelligence collection fields.

Also intriguing partnerships between companies e.g. Hawkeye with Windward AI https://windward.ai/

[H/T to article on (paywalled) market intelligence etc site The Blind Spot:    https://the-blindspot.com/spotlight-on-mass-market-satellite-access/

a couple of quotes to give the flavour, their site is a newish venture so I don't want to excerpt too much:

Quote
Towards the higher end of the spectrum, Airbus Intelligence, which recently secured an extension on its contract to provide the British Royal Navy with satellite-based maritime surveillance services, manufactures and operates its own proprietary Pleiades Neo satellite constellation.

This constellation of optical satellites is composed of four identical platforms that use two orbital planes, enabling Pleiades two location revisits per day. Their expensive data capture, visualisation, and analysis services are presented relatively raw. The Royal Navy analysts then have the ability to conduct their own layer of analysis on Pleiades’ imagery and sensor data.

Other key players, meanwhile, are explicitly specialised for commercial intelligence purposes, such as geospatial insure-tech firm McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS), which partnered with Lloyds in 2021. These developed the Global Earth Observer (GEO) platform together with the European Space Agency for the insurance industry.

Understanding that most commercial clients prefer their data digested, McKenzie’s platform offers Lloyds clients “real-time analysis of global perils, including storms, wildfires and flooding (…) assessing damage to insured infrastructure and businesses”. However, MIS also operates at least three MIS-branded satellites directly. These offer mission-specific goals to more specialised clients (for a pretty penny of course).

More broadly, there is also a proliferation of smaller and more specialised satellite data analytics firms. For instance, HawkEye360 uses Radio Frequency (RF) signal location data gathered by their three small satellites, “Cluster3”, which allows clients to determine the accurate location of a given radio frequency.

This RF intelligence has enabled the firm to produce evidence which claimed that many Chinese-owned fishing ships were disabling their GPS-based Automatic Identification System (AIS), commonly known as transponders, to conduct ‘dark’ fishing in the protected Galapagos waters.

and

Quote
Are you worried your prospective partner, who your friends nickname Shifty Gerrard, is exaggerating the speed of mineral extraction in his Zambian mine? Worry not, Shifty Gerrard now has the means to recruit a company like Airbus Intelligence to calculate the volume of his mine’s extracted material – to the kilogram – based on visual imagery.

Data sourced in these ways is more prevalent than you would expect, even in the world of finance. Indeed, counting vehicles parked outside store parking lots can be used to gauge estimates of sales figures. Realising this, Associate Professor Panos Patatoukas, together with the Fisher Center for Business Analytics, collected 4.8mn images of parking lots at 67,000 individual stores across the United States. They concluded that “the informational advantage yields 4 per cent to 5 per cent in the three days around quarterly earnings announcements”. Even from as early as 2016, Orbital Insight, a satellite imagery procurer, counts seventy hedge funds amongst their clientele.

Then there are the satellite data middlemen. They harvest and treat primary data from satellite companies to make it viable for use in the commercial landscape or mass market. These are cropping up faster than scam-fund meltdowns. For instance, Israeli intelligence and AI data analysis company, Windward, has partnered with HawkEye360 to provide maritime intelligence solutions to the global maritime industry.


]


Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/01/2022 03:21 pm
Okay, so what was the P-113 payload?

Something that has struck me the more I've dug into satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s (see what I did there?) is that there was a big push starting around 1965 to gather ABM signals. They added a lot of payloads and flew some of the P-11 satellites and so on.

It seems like they had largely cracked the code on that issue by the late 1960s. They had determined that the Soviet ABM program was not going to achieve breakout success. But they still needed to monitor it through the 1970s.

So it's possible that P-113 was another ABM-related payload. I seem to remember--and have to check my notes--that something about the STRAWMAN was deleted in one of the documents or histories. It carried a deleted payload. This P-113 may have been that payload.

Not to be a tease, but in the coming year I'll write more on STRAWMAN, including this payload. I now have a lot more info on STRAWMAN, including from one of the payload program managers (he was responsible for the REAPER payload). Surprisingly, the fifth satellite was a bit less capable than the previous one. Don't know why. Probably they integrated new stuff into the earlier vehicle and they already knew they were unlikely to fly the last one unless they had a launch failure.

There's also some interesting new info on how STRAWMAN was used. It became more of an operational, near-real-time satellite than earlier versions. In other words, it was used to report on events as they happened, not simply gather information to later be used by B-52 crews and so on.

STRAWMAN was a transitional program. It became really capable, and the satellites lived longer than planned. But there were already plans to go to much higher orbits, so the last STRAWMAN was not needed.

Also, I'm doing more on P989. And some other things.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/05/2022 07:35 am
Interested in this fairly recent video from NRO about SIGINT. Not so much for what it says as fact it exists at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9b_3kYVh4&t=3s

and I must admit I liked the Bluetooth analogy, because, as Sheldon has told us, everything is better with Bluetooth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KXoBcQER_0
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/05/2022 12:50 pm
Interested in this fairly recent video from NRO about SIGINT. Not so much for what it says as fact it exists at all:

You gotta admire the military's love affair with jargon, huh? And if you pause your words... Assess... Understand... Integrate... you make it seem like you're saying something important when you're actually saying nothing at all.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Hog on 10/05/2022 02:52 pm
Interested in this fairly recent video from NRO about SIGINT. Not so much for what it says as fact it exists at all:

What is the purpose of such videos?  I have a feeling that the target audience may be the "enemy".
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/05/2022 10:20 pm
Interested in this fairly recent video from NRO about SIGINT. Not so much for what it says as fact it exists at all:

What is the purpose of such videos?  I have a feeling that the target audience may be the "enemy".

I would guess that the target audience includes new hires, and families of employees. They do produce some videos that are a bit more specific. But they are so general and bland with this stuff that it really seems pointless. Based entirely on declassified information they could produce videos that are much more informative. They just choose not to do so.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/09/2022 08:35 am
NRO has released a new podcast associated with their 60th anniversary:

https://soundcloud.com/user-553105389/sitting-down-with-the-center-for-the-study-of-national-reconnaissance

At the 19-minute mark they say that the NRO is publishing a book with 60 key innovations and 60 key innovators.

Lightweight optics, CCDs, space firsts (like first manmade object recovered from space), management techniques.

Innovators and contractors.


Has this book appeared yet ?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 10/09/2022 02:53 pm
NRO has released a new podcast associated with their 60th anniversary:

https://soundcloud.com/user-553105389/sitting-down-with-the-center-for-the-study-of-national-reconnaissance

At the 19-minute mark they say that the NRO is publishing a book with 60 key innovations and 60 key innovators.

Lightweight optics, CCDs, space firsts (like first manmade object recovered from space), management techniques.

Innovators and contractors.


Has this book appeared yet ?
Didn't find it on their web site. There is a page on "Pioneers" and "Leaders". I would guess at least some overlap with their list of 60 "key innovators":
https://www.nro.gov/History-and-Studies/Center-for-the-Study-of-National-Reconnaissance/Leaders-Pioneers-and-Artifacts/ (https://www.nro.gov/History-and-Studies/Center-for-the-Study-of-National-Reconnaissance/Leaders-Pioneers-and-Artifacts/)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/09/2022 09:42 pm
NRO has released a new podcast associated with their 60th anniversary:

https://soundcloud.com/user-553105389/sitting-down-with-the-center-for-the-study-of-national-reconnaissance

At the 19-minute mark they say that the NRO is publishing a book with 60 key innovations and 60 key innovators.

Lightweight optics, CCDs, space firsts (like first manmade object recovered from space), management techniques.

Innovators and contractors.


Has this book appeared yet ?
Didn't find it on their web site. There is a page on "Pioneers" and "Leaders". I would guess at least some overlap with their list of 60 "key innovators":
https://www.nro.gov/History-and-Studies/Center-for-the-Study-of-National-Reconnaissance/Leaders-Pioneers-and-Artifacts/ (https://www.nro.gov/History-and-Studies/Center-for-the-Study-of-National-Reconnaissance/Leaders-Pioneers-and-Artifacts/)

Thanks hoku. I think the bullet points in this video are the 60 key innovations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGJ88Z-RXPw

[Edit: When I've some spare time I'll list them.]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/10/2022 01:51 pm
The Air Force has also evolved a System of electronic intercept satellites (698BK and PUNDIT) from the SAMOS program technology, and these have been helpful in establishing the Soviet radar-order-of-battle for SlOP planning.

UPDATE: Yeah, that's pretty much it. The document was written in May 1965 and a PUNDIT had launched in April 1965. It's worth nothing that most of the early classified P-11 satellites were PUNDITs (the only exception was NOAH'S ARK), and they only really started getting different names after this, so it was a reasonable assumption by the writer of that document that the overall P-11 program was going to be called PUNDIT. It was until it suddenly wasn't.

<snip>
PUNDIT's encryption device for download might hint at RTTY COMINT intercepts: In another area of the COMINT scene, Wayne Burnett of HRB-Singer at State College, Pennsylvania, came up with a concept to intercept, encode, and record a radio teletype (RTTY) channel of the Soviet (...) point-to-point VHF multichannel communications signal. It was necessary to encrypt this COMINT information on the down-link to safeguard it from Soviet knowledge. This was accomplished by use of NSA-furnished encryption equipment, utilized during readout to US tracking stations.
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf)
(page 13 in the PDF, page number 131 in "The SIGINT Satellite Story")



I know that Blackstar's research has clarified that PUNDIT was  doing TELINT but, wondering if we ever got to the bottom of whether (and if so, why) PUNDIT encrypted its take ? And was it unusual among P-11s in doing so ?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 10/11/2022 01:20 pm
I think the bullet points in this video are the 60 key innovations:

<snip>

Interested to see this pic, wondering which one(s) of the Keyhole/IMINT threads should I post it to ?
Might be a 72" diameter mirror (assuming that the light-colored element on the right is a reflecting mirror)? There is of course also still the mysterious Bush 41th library exhibit...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/11/2022 04:38 pm
Interested to see this pic, wondering which one(s) of the Keyhole/IMINT threads should I post it to ?

Maybe we can try to keep this thread more or less on topic?

Sorry, I'll move it to your KH-11 thread. I was genuinely unsure whether I should be asking about it there, or one of the MOL ones, or wherever. [Edit: now done.]

While I'm here can I check if CANYON-related stuff is appropriate for this thread or should I start one, or is there a good one that should be revived ?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 10/11/2022 05:02 pm
While I'm here can I check if CANYON-related stuff is appropriate for this thread or should I start one, or is there a good one that should be revived ?

CANYON is perfectly on topic in this thread.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 10/11/2022 11:02 pm
CANYON is on topic for this thread. But a dedicated thread would also make sense.

And thinking about it a bit more, it would make sense to have a dedicated thread for high-altitude SIGINT systems in general.

I absolutely do agree.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/12/2022 05:59 am
CANYON is on topic for this thread. But a dedicated thread would also make sense.

And thinking about it a bit more, it would make sense to have a dedicated thread for high-altitude SIGINT systems in general.

I absolutely do agree.

Thanks both-when it won't be a distraction from my pending deadlines I'll start one.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 10/17/2022 03:20 pm
And thinking about it a bit more, it would make sense to have a dedicated thread for high-altitude SIGINT systems in general.
I absolutely do agree.
Thanks both-when it won't be a distraction from my pending deadlines I'll start one.

Actually I'll start two, one on high altitude SIGINT and one on the interaction between NRO and comsat industry in late 60s. Will allow me to organise a couple of writing projects, former with Blackstar.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 10/22/2022 07:30 pm
https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-bidens-executive-order-signals-intelligence

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 11/06/2022 07:42 am
The Air Force has also evolved a System of electronic intercept satellites (698BK and PUNDIT) from the SAMOS program technology, and these have been helpful in establishing the Soviet radar-order-of-battle for SlOP planning.

UPDATE: Yeah, that's pretty much it. The document was written in May 1965 and a PUNDIT had launched in April 1965. It's worth nothing that most of the early classified P-11 satellites were PUNDITs (the only exception was NOAH'S ARK), and they only really started getting different names after this, so it was a reasonable assumption by the writer of that document that the overall P-11 program was going to be called PUNDIT. It was until it suddenly wasn't.

<snip>
PUNDIT's encryption device for download might hint at RTTY COMINT intercepts: In another area of the COMINT scene, Wayne Burnett of HRB-Singer at State College, Pennsylvania, came up with a concept to intercept, encode, and record a radio teletype (RTTY) channel of the Soviet (...) point-to-point VHF multichannel communications signal. It was necessary to encrypt this COMINT information on the down-link to safeguard it from Soviet knowledge. This was accomplished by use of NSA-furnished encryption equipment, utilized during readout to US tracking stations.
https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf (https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/aftrack/56.pdf)
(page 13 in the PDF, page number 131 in "The SIGINT Satellite Story")



I know that Blackstar's research has clarified that PUNDIT was  doing TELINT but, wondering if we ever got to the bottom of whether (and if so, why) PUNDIT encrypted its take ? And was it unusual among P-11s in doing so ?

Looking at the above more closely I see that the page in the SIGINT Satelite Story that Hoku was referring to is about the Agena-hosted GRAPE JUICE and not a P-11 like PUNDIT.

But did we have a reference saying PUNDIT (a P-11) was encrypting its take ?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 11/08/2022 02:01 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 7, 2022

In May 1982, the Royal Air Force developed a rather ballsy plan: launch two Buccaneer strike aircraft from Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fly them 5,000 kilometers in the dark, refueling multiple times, and then approach the Argentine coast. They would launch anti-ship missiles at the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo in Argentine territorial waters, sinking it or at least damaging it enough to remove it from Argentina’s ongoing effort to defend the Falkland Islands that they had seized from the United Kingdom in April. The Buccaneers would have received intelligence on the location of the Veinticinco de Mayo from a Royal Air Force Nimrod long-range patrol aircraft. The Nimrod crew would obtain an estimated search area from “collateral intelligence,” according to a declassified Royal Air Force document, which also stated that “It cannot be overstressed that location and identification by a third party is essential to the completion of the task successfully."

The proposed RAF mission was secret until it was uncovered by Chris Gibson, who wrote about it in a recent issue of The Aviation Historian. The “third party” source is not identified in the RAF records, but information declassified in the United States in 2022 by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at the request of this author indicates that the British may have been anticipating receiving targeting information from a top-secret American intelligence satellite named FARRAH.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 11/16/2022 05:07 am
And while we're at it, look at 0:34:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV-KOaNim8k

There are several interesting parts:

At 0:10 we see four small sats being integrated with a Minotaur IV payload shroud in the background. These must be the NROL-129 payloads (USA 305 - 308)

The satellite shown at 0:34 appears to me different to the NROL-129 payloads - i am not sure.

At 0:39 we see an animation of the satellite shown on 0:34. (same patch antennas, etc.) Also a second one appears in the background.

Interested to be reminded, by this item about the new French CERES satellites , of how useful a small satellite can be for some SIGINT missions even today.

https://www.armadainternational.com/2019/07/french-flare-for-space-sigint/

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 01/03/2023 08:46 pm
https://www.governmentattic.org (https://www.governmentattic.org) has placed a series of semi-annual histories of the Air / Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) online, covering the period June 1951 to June 1960.

In addition to details on ELINT receivers, recording and analysis equipment, and "Space Vehicle Data Research" (analysis of Sputnik III, Sputnik IV, and Lunik II transmissions are quoted as examples), the histories cover a variety of other intelligence areas and topics, as well as the "Unidentified Areal Phenomena Program"  ;)

The histories also mention that more detailed ELINT/SIGINT reports were published in a series of ATIC Radiation Reviews. Attached are two histories covering July 1957 to June 1958, i.e. the period of the Sputnik 1 launch, and the reaction, which includes a new emphasis on Soviet space flight technologies.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/04/2023 02:26 am
I'm now working on a few new articles on this subject. One of them deals with the use of signals intelligence satellites to support tactical Army units in the 1970s and 1980s. Those satellites like URSULA and FARRAH were feeding data to Army units in Europe and elsewhere. I've got some new info that has not been published before, but I also have some good leads that I want to pursue before going public with this.

In addition, I have info about improvements in the processing time for some signals to essentially make the satellites into near-real-time intelligence collectors. I've previously written about PENDULUM and TACTFUL, but it turns out that there were a bunch more efforts like that.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 01/04/2023 11:44 am
https://www.governmentattic.org (https://www.governmentattic.org) has placed a series of semi-annual histories of the Air / Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) online, covering the period June 1951 to June 1960.

In addition to details on ELINT receivers, recording and analysis equipment, and "Space Vehicle Data Research" (analysis of Sputnik III, Sputnik IV, and Lunik II transmissions are quoted as examples), the histories cover a variety of other intelligence areas and topics, as well as the "Unidentified Areal Phenomena Program"  ;)

The histories also mention that more detailed ELINT/SIGINT reports were published in a series of ATIC Radiation Reviews. Attached are two histories covering July 1957 to June 1958, i.e. the period of the Sputnik 1 launch, and the reaction, which includes a new emphasis on Soviet space flight technologies.

Thanks. I look forward to reading these, with gems like:

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 01/04/2023 09:36 pm
https://www.governmentattic.org (https://www.governmentattic.org) has placed a series of semi-annual histories of the Air / Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) online, covering the period June 1951 to June 1960.
<snip>

Thanks. I look forward to reading these, with gems like:
I was also surprised by the "aggressive" stance the Navy apparently took on the USSR in early 1958, but then one has to consider that the Navy was running "Project Vanguard", and that they were the ones really put on the spot by the successful launch of Sputnik 1 (and then - to add insult to injury - were "defeated" by the Army in launching the first US satellite).

The 01Jan-30June1952 history introduces the term "summer scientists", which I hadn't noticed before in this context, as "(...) a group of American scientists (...) who are sent overseas, on a contract basis, for the purpose of collecting technical intelligence information".
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/07/2023 10:14 pm
Something I'm working on--ITEP/TUT.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Jim on 01/08/2023 12:32 am
Something I'm working on--ITEP/TUT.

good book
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/08/2023 03:16 pm
Something I'm working on--ITEP/TUT.

good book

I think so. Slight downside is that it came out several years ago and there are a number of things where they talk abstractly that we could now know more about. For instance, there's that discussion of ITEP that I posted above, but it never mentions where the data came from. That information is now known. That's what I'm going to be writing about.

There are probably a bunch of places with that book where you could go through with a pencil and write in the name of the program that they refer to because that information has now been declassified.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/16/2023 10:07 pm
https://www.armadainternational.com/2023/01/farrah-in-the-falklands-electronic-warfare-podcast-24/

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/16/2023 10:12 pm
I have been doing more research on the Program 989 satellites during the 1970s and later. I can now answer at least part of the question of what these satellites were doing in the 1980s and 1990s--they were providing ELINT data to US Army field units in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere. More in the coming weeks.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 01/17/2023 10:50 pm
I have been doing more research on the Program 989 satellites during the 1970s and later. I can now answer at least part of the question of what these satellites were doing in the 1980s and 1990s--they were providing ELINT data to US Army field units in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere. More in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure it's safe to say the US Army was the only recipient... 

https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/constant_source.htm
https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/trap.htm

"Constant Source provides graphical display of secret level multi-source Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) threat data. Tactical users including wing and air intelligence squadrons - currently over 130 ground systems are deployed. Source information arrives from the Navy's Tactical Receive Equipment and Related Applications (TRAP) and the Tactical Data Information Exchange System - Broadcast (TADIX-B) including data from national systems. "

Constant Source suites were standard issue for Air Force Fighter/Bomber Squadrons in the 90's.  And a huge pain to pack on deployment pallets...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 01/18/2023 12:52 pm
I have been doing more research on the Program 989 satellites during the 1970s and later. I can now answer at least part of the question of what these satellites were doing in the 1980s and 1990s--they were providing ELINT data to US Army field units in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere. More in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure it's safe to say the US Army was the only recipient... 


I did not use the word "only."

I thought about amending the post, and should have, to include primary.  Looking forward to seeing what you're working on BTW. 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/18/2023 01:56 pm
I have been doing more research on the Program 989 satellites during the 1970s and later. I can now answer at least part of the question of what these satellites were doing in the 1980s and 1990s--they were providing ELINT data to US Army field units in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere. More in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure it's safe to say the US Army was the only recipient... 


I did not use the word "only."

I thought about amending the post, and should have, to include primary.  Looking forward to seeing what you're working on BTW. 

What I have is mostly Army. But Army was also out ahead of USAF on this. Rather ironic when you consider that USAF had a component in NRO.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 01/18/2023 03:00 pm
I have been doing more research on the Program 989 satellites during the 1970s and later. I can now answer at least part of the question of what these satellites were doing in the 1980s and 1990s--they were providing ELINT data to US Army field units in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere. More in the coming weeks.

I'm not sure it's safe to say the US Army was the only recipient... 


I did not use the word "only."

I thought about amending the post, and should have, to include primary.  Looking forward to seeing what you're working on BTW. 

What I have is mostly Army. But Army was also out ahead of USAF on this. Rather ironic when you consider that USAF had a component in NRO.
  Thanks for the response.  I look forward to seeing how the Army used the data since it uses for Air Force/Navy flying units seem more obvious...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 01/18/2023 05:54 pm
I look forward to seeing how the Army used the data since it uses for Air Force/Navy flying units seem more obvious...

I'm hoping to get that information too. But one thing that I've discovered is that ELINT data was of value to the Army in part because it indicated what was going on on the battlefield. As an example, Soviet armored forces had SAM defense units that accompanied them on the battlefield. So if a satellite detected a Soviet mobile SAM system, that meant that it was protecting a Soviet army unit. Track that SAM system as it moved across Europe during an invasion and it would provide an indication of where the armored forces were.

At the time (1980s) a major concern was a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe through the Fulda Gap between East and West Germany. Movement of mobile radar units would be a possible indication of where the forces were and were going.

I also have information indicating that the Army was spending a lot more on this stuff than USAF was. And people I've talked to have said the same thing.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 02/26/2023 09:16 pm
Maybe slight off topic but relevant, I think.  The importance of satellite SIGINT intel for N Korea isn't the same as the Soviet Union or China due to geography but an interesting look at the incident and the disastrous results that continued into the 1980s due to the Walker family spy ring. 

United States scamlogic History, Special Series Crisis Collection Volume 7, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations, Robert E. Newton, Center For scamlogic History, National Security Agency (NSA), 1992
Requested date: 02 February 2022
Release date: 03 February 2023
Posted date: 27-February-2023

Edit:  Just noticed this

A previously released version of this NSA monograph with
more redactions (released 09-14-2012) is and has been
hosted on the National Security Archive (NSA) website
here.

https://www.governmentattic.org/48docs/NSAcaptPuebloSIGINT1992.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 02/27/2023 06:22 pm
United States scamlogic History, Special Series Crisis Collection Volume 7, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations, Robert E. Newton, Center For scamlogic History, National Security Agency (NSA), 1992
Requested date: 02 February 2022
Release date: 03 February 2023
Posted date: 27-February-2023

Edit:  Just noticed this

A previously released version of this NSA monograph with
more redactions (released 09-14-2012) is and has been
hosted on the National Security Archive (NSA) website
here.

https://www.governmentattic.org/48docs/NSAcaptPuebloSIGINT1992.pdf

I did a quick skim of this and it's really fascinating. It's much more blunt and interesting than you would expect from an official history. I assume that many of the details have been public for years, but there are all kinds of great tidbits, like the fact that the Navy tended to put any available sailor on these ships, rather than carefully selecting and training them. The result was that a lot of the crew was not committed to or trained in the mission. So when the ship was seized, they didn't go all out to destroy the classified equipment and documents. They had not conducted any disposal drills to throw classified materials over the side.

There's lots of other stuff like that. I saw mention that the NSA protested the decision to discontinue the naval SIGINT collection mission, but they were overruled.

I don't know if any of this mission transitioned to satellites. I think one problem was that there was only so much that satellites could do even if they were capable of doing it. So ground stations or aerial collection was still needed.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 02/27/2023 06:46 pm
United States scamlogic History, Special Series Crisis Collection Volume 7, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations, Robert E. Newton, Center For scamlogic History, National Security Agency (NSA), 1992
Requested date: 02 February 2022
Release date: 03 February 2023
Posted date: 27-February-2023

Edit:  Just noticed this

A previously released version of this NSA monograph with
more redactions (released 09-14-2012) is and has been
hosted on the National Security Archive (NSA) website
here.

https://www.governmentattic.org/48docs/NSAcaptPuebloSIGINT1992.pdf

I did a quick skim of this and it's really fascinating. It's much more blunt and interesting than you would expect from an official history. I assume that many of the details have been public for years, but there are all kinds of great tidbits, like the fact that the Navy tended to put any available sailor on these ships, rather than carefully selecting and training them. The result was that a lot of the crew was not committed to or trained in the mission. So when the ship was seized, they didn't go all out to destroy the classified equipment and documents. They had not conducted any disposal drills to throw classified materials over the side.

There's lots of other stuff like that. I saw mention that the NSA protested the decision to discontinue the naval SIGINT collection mission, but they were overruled.

I don't know if any of this mission transitioned to satellites. I think one problem was that there was only so much that satellites could do even if they were capable of doing it. So ground stations or aerial collection was still needed.

As Targeteer notes it's also a striking example of what happens when more than one compartment fails at once, i.e. the compounding effect of having the concurrent Walker spy ring.
 
One wonders what the others in the history series covered-I think I saw one about a spy plane shootdown in the 50s if memory serves.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: kevin-rf on 02/27/2023 10:08 pm
That is a long document, some serious late night reading. I do wonder what inventive solutions they came up with to makeup for the loss of naval SIGINT. Satellites may only be one part, submarines? Other methods?

Looks like the Chinese for SIGINT have gone the route of steerable balloons. I do wonder if it is they lack the satellites, or just the sheer cost of a satellite compared to a balloon.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 02/27/2023 11:05 pm
That is a long document, some serious late night reading. I do wonder what inventive solutions they came up with to makeup for the loss of naval SIGINT. Satellites may only be one part, submarines? Other methods?
<snip>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signals_intelligence_operational_platforms_by_nation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signals_intelligence_operational_platforms_by_nation) gives an overview on the sea, air, and satellite platforms used by various nations.

There is also "SPOOK RIDER: SUBMARINE DIRECT SUPPORT", written by Dan Gibson, a retired US Navy Cryp-to-logist, who gives a (fictional) account on how subs were "hunting" for Soviet radar and communication signals.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 02/28/2023 02:05 am
Tragically, the Navy learned nothing about having unnecessary materials on a collection platform or having realistic emergency destruction plans. See the EP-3 incident...  https://theintercept.com/2017/04/10/snowden-documents-reveal-scope-of-secrets-exposed-to-china-in-2001-spy-plane-incident/ "the crew never underwent emergency destruction drills"
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: alexw on 02/28/2023 02:18 am
https://thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 7, 2022

Dwayne,
     One small correction to your interesting article: "The submarine HMS Challenger sank the Belgrano on May 1, 1982." ARA Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror.
         -Alex



Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 03/02/2023 05:20 pm
Maybe slight off topic but relevant, I think.  The importance of satellite SIGINT intel for N Korea isn't the same as the Soviet Union or China due to geography but an interesting look at the incident and the disastrous results that continued into the 1980s due to the Walker family spy ring. 

United States scamlogic History, Special Series Crisis Collection Volume 7, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations, Robert E. Newton, Center For scamlogic History, National Security Agency (NSA), 1992
Requested date: 02 February 2022
Release date: 03 February 2023
Posted date: 27-February-2023

Edit:  Just noticed this

A previously released version of this NSA monograph with
more redactions (released 09-14-2012) is and has been
hosted on the National Security Archive (NSA) website
here.


https://www.governmentattic.org/48docs/NSAcaptPuebloSIGINT1992.pdf

Thanks v much for posting this but a quick pedantic note, as far as I know governmentattic.org is a different venture to the National Security Archive https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ and both have a lot to offer. Latter has a new post on Jupiter and Cuba that  may interest many here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-vault/2023-02-16/jupiter-missiles-and-endgame-cuban

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/02/2023 07:51 pm
Thanks v much for posting this but a quick pedantic note, as far as I know governmentattic.org is a different venture to the National Security Archive https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ and both have a lot to offer. Latter has a new post on Jupiter and Cuba that  may interest many here: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-vault/2023-02-16/jupiter-missiles-and-endgame-cuban

That is true. I know little about governmentattic.org. However, the National Security Archive is located at The George Washington University and they have many collections of declassified documents. I occasionally worked for them in the 1990s.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/03/2023 11:26 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 7, 2022

Dwayne,
     One small correction to your interesting article: "The submarine HMS Challenger sank the Belgrano on May 1, 1982." ARA Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror.
         -Alex


Thanks, it's fixed. I actually knew that (and got it right in my 2022 article), but suffered a weird magnetic anomaly between my brain and my typing fingers that resulted in a goof.

Here's a picture of HMS Conqueror now.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 03/04/2023 02:59 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, November 7, 2022

Dwayne,
     One small correction to your interesting article: "The submarine HMS Challenger sank the Belgrano on May 1, 1982." ARA Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror.
         -Alex


Thanks, it's fixed. I actually knew that (and got it right in my 2022 article), but suffered a weird magnetic anomaly between my brain and my typing fingers that resulted in a goof.

Here's a picture of HMS Conqueror now.

The choice of those names by the Brits show true humility and lack of arrogance...
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Targeteer on 03/06/2023 03:00 am
Another release on Government Attic.  Lots of interesting details on SE Asia SIGINT operations during the 60's and early 70's.  There are several references in biographies to individuals working on the "(redacted) European satellite..." program.

This bio is awesome "MIKE HRICIK, B6/B2... He returned in time to be tasked with the duties of "Senior dirty old man of B6", duties he has not yet relinquished"...  (P 172)

https://www.governmentattic.org/48docs/NSAdragonSeedsNewsletters_1972-1974.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 03/07/2023 06:00 am
Another release on Government Attic.  Lots of interesting details on SE Asia SIGINT operations during the 60's and early 70's. 


A remarkable doc indeed. Thanks for posting.

Quote
There are several references in biographies to individuals working on the "(redacted) European satellite..." program.

That seems to be one person, Jane (Betty) Dunn, first grab.

There's also a ref to Soviet satellite, second grab, Nugent bio.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 03/07/2023 04:24 pm
I'm not sure that satellite means orbiting spacecraft. I think that "Soviet Satellite" may mean peripheral nations, like Warsaw Pact countries.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 03/08/2023 07:37 am
So what would peripheral nations be in "European Satellite" case ?

I agree in the cold war discourse Soviet Satellite countries often meant those that were politically aligned, and after all Sputnik was often translated as "fellow traveller" in western media, but would, say, Cuba be under that heading at NSA ?

[Edit: While pondering possible meanings it's also worth noting that there were ground based interceptions of satellite comms going on in 60s, and some were in Europe eg GCHQ Bude*  https://www.gchq.gov.uk/section/locations/bude and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ_Bude; but there were no European comsats per se until Symphonie in mid 70s iirc.]

* Bude is shown on back cover of offical history of GCHQ by Ferris, caption is "By the lates 70s the receiving dish at GCHQ's Bude station was intercepting more traffic than all other GCHQ intercept sites combined".
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/09/2023 04:54 pm
https://thespacereview.com/article/4580/1

Stonehouse: Deep space listening in the high desert
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, May 8, 2023

During the Cold War it became common for the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) to establish listening posts around the world to listen in on the communications of America’s adversaries. When the Soviet Union began launching satellites into space, the NSA sought to intercept their signals, building antennas that pointed up rather than across a border. These stations had to be located in spots where they were most likely to intercept signals coming down from Soviet missiles, rockets, and satellites, and one of the most specialized and unique of these stations was designated STONEHOUSE.

STONEHOUSE was established at Asmara in Ethiopia in 1965, becoming the first site specifically built for the interception of space signals. It was a “deep space” intercept site and played a key role in collecting signals from Soviet spacecraft, including lunar and Venus missions, until it ceased operating in the mid-1970s. STONEHOUSE’s existence was acknowledged by the Department of Defense even before the complex was finished, but information about it has been relatively sparse. The National Security Agency has declassified information on STONEHOUSE in several documents, and over time increasing information on what was collected at the site has also been declassified.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 05/09/2023 04:56 pm
Some more photos.

The winding road up to the facility was dotted with wooden crosses where Italians racing their cars along the road in the 1930s had met their doom.

One problem with the road was that there were bridges that were too low for the equipment to pass under. So they had to lift some of it over the bridges to get to the construction site.

The photos of burning things show how the NSA sought to burn documents and also equipment as they hastily abandoned the STONEHOUSE facility in early 1975 as the Ethiopian civil war raged closer to the facility.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 05/17/2023 08:05 am
The title of this thread is "Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s" and yet for some odd reason over half of the posts here seem to be about synthetic aperture radar.

Reading through the early days of this fascinating thread I had been reminded of Blackstar's wry observation above, and so was interested to come across a recent item (last Sep) about how SAR antennae can double as passive SIGINT receivers:

https://spacenews.com/nro-signs-agreements-with-six-commercial-providers-of-space-based-rf-data/

Has a nice pic of an example from Umbra Lab  https://umbra.space/:

[Edit: historical significance might for example include US Navy's early ambitions for a radar sat that would presumably have also had some passive SIGINT capability ? This didn't happen at the time-I know someone has written about it at TSR.]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 06/03/2023 04:54 am
Cross posting from CORONA thread as I am beginning to feel a bit more relaxed about our talking about some historical details of SIGINT-the series of declassifications discussed above and in RHYOLITE thread, and the emergence of the commerical LEO space SIGINT industry seem to have moved the goalposts.

I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor.
When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there
- Semipalatisnk
- Baikonur
- Sary Shagan
Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979...

The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.


The two systems that the CIA was trying to push in the 1960s were gathering telemetry signals from missile tests, and some kind of photographic system. The former makes a lot of sense (with caveats) because the satellites were over the missile sites for such short periods of time that the chance of catching a test as it was happening was really small. I believe that in one of my SIGINT articles I quoted a document about that probability. It was so low that it's surprising that they even tried doing it. It's also surprising that at least a few times it worked. My suspicion is that in the cases that it worked the Soviets may have been sending the signals from the rocket while it was still on the pad and were leaving it on for long periods of time.

<snip>

But they were trying to gather intelligence any way possible, and balloons could possibly close some of the gaps left by satellites.

I share your surprise that intercepting telemetry from LEO ever worked, but not your surprise that they tried. Perry and Wheelon were in some sense staking their credibility on RHYOLITE and it is documented (e.g National Security Archive briefing books) that there was substantial pushback from people like McMillan, who was clearly imho not simply the empire builder/bureaucrat he is sometimes portrayed as but was also ex-Bell Labs and an expert in information theory. Unless in situ measurements  in space were available from LEO in the early sixties then the modelling of what RHYOLITE could do would be dependent purely on what could be seen from Turkey etc. There is also some evidence of an iterative process with these TELINT P-11s, I posted a bit about this and will add link when I find it. [Edit: see https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2294079#msg2294079 and grab below from https://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/PG-SIGINT-Satellites.pdf]

PS I am thinking not just of the characteristics of the signal, but of the all-important noise background.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 06/03/2023 05:36 am
On subject of mapping RF background,

PS I am thinking not just of the characteristics of the signal, but of the all-important noise background.

and as an illustration of the way the world has changed, a recent MATLAB news story: "PocketQube Satellite Scans the Atmosphere for Electrosmog Pollution"  discussed a pico satellite from Hungary that is has been mapping "electrosmog" in the digital TV part of the spectrum:

Quote
Józsa pointed out that the space environment near our planet is quite noisy. The BME team aimed to use their PocketQube satellite for measuring the electromagnetic waste that escapes Earth, focusing on the 430–860 MHz range typically used by digital TV stations. Called electrosmog, this cacophony can interfere with communications across devices, prompting large companies to develop more and more powerful technologies that, in turn, consume greater amounts of energy.

Electrosmog isn’t a life-threatening problem, Józsa clarified. But the group in Hungary is shedding light on the issue’s seriousness, especially for global broadcasting corporations. SMOG-P contained equipment to measure electrosmog and transmit that data back to Earth so engineers could analyze the frequencies emitted.

“The telecommunications industry doesn’t have the largest slice of the electrical consumption cake, but telecommunication suffers from the excessively noisy world,” Józsa said. “It’s a complicated topic, though, because by just decreasing power consumption, you lose information transmission capabilities. The way forward is advanced antenna design.”

From P-11 to picosat in 60 years .. ;-) [Edit: as an aside, one thing that struck me was that there seemed to be much less such electrosmog in the US. Would this be because cable was adopted so early that the kind of digital  TV found in Europe e.g. the Freeview system in UK, has never caught on ?]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 06/03/2023 11:35 am
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.

A cluster of 4 posts about a trio of satellites ;-);-) [Edit: Seriously though I am curious as to how the existence of commercial "clones" (or relatives) of 60s and 70s SIGINT missions but with modern electronics, in this case Hawkeye 360 https://www.he360.com/, may affect the declassification process. For all I know things like Umbra may already have done so.]
Title: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/03/2023 02:15 pm
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.

A cluster of 4 posts about a trio of satellites ;-);-) [Edit: Seriously though I am curious as to how the existence of commercial "clones" (or relatives) of 60s and 70s SIGINT missions but with modern electronics, in this case Hawkeye 360 https://www.he360.com/, may affect the declassification process. For all I know things like Umbra may already have done so.]
I think the same thing could be applied to the declassification of SAR satellites like Lacrosse, considering the proliferation of commercial satellites in this class.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 06/03/2023 02:36 pm
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.

A cluster of 4 posts about a trio of satellites ;-);-) [Edit: Seriously though I am curious as to how the existence of commercial "clones" (or relatives) of 60s and 70s SIGINT missions but with modern electronics, in this case Hawkeye 360 https://www.he360.com/, may affect the declassification process. For all I know things like Umbra may already have done so.]
I think the same thing could be applied to the declassification of SAR satellites like Lacrosse, considering the proliferation of commercial satellites in this class.

That's what I meant by Umbra in this context, see https://spacenews.com/umbra-antenna-patent/ for another interesting example of how open they are being.

PS you've accidentally got 4 copies of same NOSS post ... could you delete 3 please ? Happens to us all, I know.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/03/2023 06:19 pm
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.

A cluster of 4 posts about a trio of satellites ;-);-) [Edit: Seriously though I am curious as to how the existence of commercial "clones" (or relatives) of 60s and 70s SIGINT missions but with modern electronics, in this case Hawkeye 360 https://www.he360.com/, may affect the declassification process. For all I know things like Umbra may already have done so.]
I think the same thing could be applied to the declassification of SAR satellites like Lacrosse, considering the proliferation of commercial satellites in this class.

That's what I meant by Umbra in this context, see https://spacenews.com/umbra-antenna-patent/ for another interesting example of how open they are being.

PS you've accidentally got 4 copies of same NOSS post ... could you delete 3 please ? Happens to us all, I know.
I am using Tapatalk and it’s only showing the one post?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: zubenelgenubi on 06/03/2023 06:38 pm
Moderator: The 3 "duplicate" posts are deleted.

Ooops 😬. Two moderators deleting posts simultaneously.  All 4 posts are gone.  Sorry.  😞
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: zubenelgenubi on 06/03/2023 06:44 pm
Re-creating Star One's post--his post is "my" response below.
Cross posting from CORONA thread as I am beginning to feel a bit more relaxed about our talking about some historical details of SIGINT-the series of declassifications discussed above and in RHYOLITE thread, and the emergence of the commerical LEO space SIGINT industry seem to have moved the goalposts.

I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor.
When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there
- Semipalatisnk
- Baikonur
- Sary Shagan
Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979...

The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.


The two systems that the CIA was trying to push in the 1960s were gathering telemetry signals from missile tests, and some kind of photographic system. The former makes a lot of sense (with caveats) because the satellites were over the missile sites for such short periods of time that the chance of catching a test as it was happening was really small. I believe that in one of my SIGINT articles I quoted a document about that probability. It was so low that it's surprising that they even tried doing it. It's also surprising that at least a few times it worked. My suspicion is that in the cases that it worked the Soviets may have been sending the signals from the rocket while it was still on the pad and were leaving it on for long periods of time.

<snip>

But they were trying to gather intelligence any way possible, and balloons could possibly close some of the gaps left by satellites.

I share your surprise that intercepting telemetry from LEO ever worked, but not your surprise that they tried. Perry and Wheelon were in some sense staking their credibility on RHYOLITE and it is documented (e.g National Security Archive briefing books) that there was substantial pushback from people like McMillan, who was clearly imho not simply the empire builder/bureaucrat he is sometimes portrayed as but was also ex-Bell Labs and an expert in information theory. Unless in situ measurements  in space were available from LEO in the early sixties then the modelling of what RHYOLITE could do would be dependent purely on what could be seen from Turkey etc. There is also some evidence of an iterative process with these TELINT P-11s, I posted a bit about this and will add link when I find it. [Edit: see https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2294079#msg2294079 and grab below]

PS I am thinking not just of the characteristics of the signal, but of the all-important noise background.
Star One:
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 06/05/2023 04:44 am
Re-creating Star One's post--his post is "my" response below.

Star One:
Still wondering if we’ll see anything declassified from the first generation proper of NOSS as we’ve had the programs before it declassified to varying degrees.

Thanks Zuben ;-) or shoud I call you Zube ;-);-)

And re StarOne's comment, as a teen in the mid 70s I used to write off to the US for the big manilla envelopes that often took months to arrive, loaded with goodies from NASA . I'm clearly not alone in this, Prof Brian Cox for example is seen at the start of a documentary about JPL visiting the place clutching his battered and treasured envelope full of Voyager pics.

Anyway, eventually I'd worn out my welcome at NASA and graduated to the main contractor companies, and a few other places like SAMSO who were surprisingly forthcoming. I  became particularly obsessed with the rocket building companies, but I can't now recall what posessed me to write to General Dynamics about the Atlas F and related Atlas boosters, upper stages, and shrouds, specifically mentioning NOSS. Their reply was remarkably kind, but as you'd expect not too explicit ... a rather nice postcard of a YF16 in its red white and blue paint scheme, and a message like "the information you require is not available-thank you for your interest in GD" ;-) I have it somewhere still.

So I'm following the NOSS/PARCAE saga with particular interest ;-)
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/13/2023 02:40 pm
I will probably start a new thread titled "Satellite signals intelligence in the 1970s and beyond" in the history section. I have an upcoming article about the P989 satellites and their use by the US Army for tactical forces, part of the early years of Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities, or TENCAP.

Putting the finishing touches on it now.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/13/2023 04:38 pm
Has there been much further info declassified around signals intelligence and the Falklands War in the last couple of years. Knowing the UK government policy this is far more likely to come from the US end of things than the UK.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Star One on 06/13/2023 06:06 pm
Has there been much further info declassified around signals intelligence and the Falklands War in the last couple of years. Knowing the UK government policy this is far more likely to come from the US end of things than the UK.

I've not seen anything more recent than these two articles:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4375/1
Thanks for the clarification. I read these two at the time of publishing.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/13/2023 06:51 pm
Has there been much further info declassified around signals intelligence and the Falklands War in the last couple of years. Knowing the UK government policy this is far more likely to come from the US end of things than the UK.

I've not seen anything more recent than these two articles:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4479/1

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4375/1
Thanks for the clarification. I read these two at the time of publishing.

That's all there is. I revisit that subject every time I get some new bit of information. Somebody who was in the NRO told me that US satellite data was used in the targeting of the Belgrano. However, his memory may be faulty, so I am careful in what I have written about that. I have nothing definitive.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 06/13/2023 06:53 pm
This is new.

Although it is not specifically about satellite SIGINT, it is related. Gathering SIGINT on the SA-2 surface-to-air missile was a major goal of the military and intelligence services in the late 1950s and into the 1960s.

Issue is attached, and the link is here:

https://www.afhistory.org/journal-of-the-air-force-historical-foundation-summer-2023-issue/

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/03/2023 07:11 am
Cross-posting this snip from my post to MOL thread because of the Bill Perry angle. Lew Allen appears to be talking about Perry taking over CIA's bid for a mission, and then the bid losing. This sounds very much from context like it would be a bid to do COMINT as well as the TELINT mission that Program B's RHYOLITE already had, i.e. a losing bid for what eventually became the Program A-led CANYON ? Would presumably have been in about mid-66ish ?


<snip>
 there's an interesting memo from Lew Allen (as he goes from SAFSP to NRO HQ I think) that you may well find indicative/useful, see attched, and last grab, of its first page, it's https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/NROStaffRecords/442.PDF
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/05/2023 02:37 pm
I may have got wrong end of the stick in my post above, and I am pretty sure I was wrong about dates:

Lew Allen appears to be talking about [Bill] Perry taking over CIA's bid for a mission, and then the bid losing. This sounds very much from context like it would be a bid to do COMINT as well as the TELINT mission that Program B's RHYOLITE already had, i.e. a losing bid for what eventually became the Program A-led CANYON ? Would presumably have been in about mid-66ish ?

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/NROStaffRecords/442.PDF

I'm looking at the two draft chapters of Butterworth's "The U.S. Signal Intelligence Satellite Enterprise" (2003) that have been released,

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007llll.pdf

and attached, in which there is a (relatively) lightly redacted account of the origins of RHYOLITE. He says that RHYOLITE did not receive a final go ahead until August 1966, after a complicated review process that  involved interactions between the new DNRO, Flax, the new DIRNSA, Carter, and a panel chaired by James C Fletcher and appointed by Flax that reported in very early 1966 according to Butterworth. One result of this process appears to be simplification of the payload of RHYOLITE to just its primary telemetry mission (fourth grab below). So another possibility is that the Lew Allen memo is talking about a secondary, COMINT, hosted payload  on TRW's RHYOLITE , proposed, designed and built by Perry's ESL, that was dropped after the Fletcher review of Dec 65-Jan 66, and by the time of Flax's briefing to ExCom in April '66, rather than a separate satellite.

Hopefully we'll hear more, one of these days. Some of the RHYOLITE story was in  Richelson's books I think, notably the Wizards of Langley and a monograph that was put out via the National Security Archive site, however if memory serves it is actually the period before this, the "Wheelon-McMillan wars" that is the best documented, and this later  era, as Flax, Carter and others start to pick up the pieces, has more to be clarified.

Butterworth specifically stated in a footnote that some of the chronology in Bradburn et al's history is wrong on this, though this is of no great importance yet to us as the latter is sill largely redacted on this topic including the  Chapters 6-8  that must include RH, CANYON and JUMPSEAT. [Edit: As far as I can see, apart from the odd newish doc the Butterworth history is the main newish info that was not already summarised in the Nautilus Institute report that I linked to in the RHYOLITE thread.]

As an aside it is fascinating to see what Fletcher did before his University of Utah role:

https://snaccooperative.org/view/24183810

Quote
[He] received a B.A. in physics from Columbia University in 1940. He served as a research physicist with the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance, and in 1941 became a special research associate at the Cruf Laboratory of Harvard University. He went to Princeton University in 1942 as a teaching fellow and later was an instructor and research physicist.

Under an Eastman Kodak fellowship, Dr. Fletcher received his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1948 from the California Institute of Technology. He joined Hughes Aircraft Company as director of the Theory and Analysis Laboratory in the Electronics Division.

In 1954, Dr. Fletcher joined the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation as an Associate Director and soon became Director of Electronics in the Guided Missile Research Division, later to become Space Technology Laboratories, with responsibility for all United States ICBM's. In July 1958 Dr. Fletcher organized the Space Electronics Corporation with his associate Frank W. Lehan. Space Electronics Corporation merged with the spacecraft division of Aerojet in 1961 to form the Space General Corporation of which Dr. Fletcher was the first president. He later became Chairman of the Boardof Space General and Systems Vice President of the Aerojet General Corporation, where he served until becoming the eighth president of the University of Utah in 1964
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/07/2023 05:00 pm
Butterworth specifically stated in a footnote that some of the chronology in Bradburn et al's history is wrong on this, though this is of no great importance yet to us as the latter is sill largely redacted on this topic including the  Chapters 6-8  that must include RH, CANYON and JUMPSEAT. [Edit: As far as I can see, apart from the odd newish doc the Butterworth history is the main newish info that was not already summarised in the Nautilus Institute report that I linked to in the RHYOLITE thread.]


Should clarify that the Bradburn history you refer to is "The SIGINT Satellite Story."

That does not totally surprise me. With the other IMINT histories, my only real problem with them is what they left out. In some cases, I thought that they overlooked important parts of the story. But what's important to me, decades later, vs. what they thought was important at the time, is debatable. But with The SIGINT Satellite Story I thought that they didn't always do a good job explaining what was on the page. What did some of the satellites do and why was it important? It is still difficult to understand the differences between POPPY and the P989 satellites and why that mattered. I don't remember any good explanation of that in the declassified material.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/07/2023 05:58 pm
Butterworth specifically stated in a footnote that some of the chronology in Bradburn et al's history is wrong on this, though this is of no great importance yet to us as the latter is sill largely redacted on this topic including the  Chapters 6-8  that must include RH, CANYON and JUMPSEAT. [Edit: As far as I can see, apart from the odd newish doc the Butterworth history is the main newish info that was not already summarised in the Nautilus Institute report that I linked to in the RHYOLITE thread.]


Should clarify that the Bradburn history you refer to is "The SIGINT Satellite Story."

Yes. https://www.nro.gov/foia-home/foia-sigint-satellite-story/# is its home but link doesn't seem to be working ? You linked to some useful versions here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2294230#msg2294230

Quote

That does not totally surprise me. With the other IMINT histories, my only real problem with them is what they left out. In some cases, I thought that they overlooked important parts of the story. But what's important to me, decades later, vs. what they thought was important at the time, is debatable. But with The SIGINT Satellite Story I thought that they didn't always do a good job explaining what was on the page. What did some of the satellites do and why was it important? It is still difficult to understand the differences between POPPY and the P989 satellites and why that mattered. I don't remember any good explanation of that in the declassified material.

Not sure that's all Bradburn et al's fault, I honestly think that even if we ever see the whole story up to say, mid 70s, the SIGINT story is going to be much more complicated than IMINT-and Bradburn it has my all time favourite pic (first grab).

But I find their pics and captions  of POPPY and 989  are worth a thousand words, and emphasise what may have been the key difference, that POPPY was real time (grabs 2 and 3, from various versions of Bradburn).
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/07/2023 08:57 pm

But I find their pics and captions  of POPPY and 989  are worth a thousand words, and emphasise what may have been the key difference, that POPPY was real time (grabs 2 and 3, from various versions of Bradburn).

Yeah, but they covered different frequencies and targets, and it is still unclear just how that sorted out.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/08/2023 09:00 am

But I find their pics and captions  of POPPY and 989  are worth a thousand words, and emphasise what may have been the key difference, that POPPY was real time (grabs 2 and 3, from various versions of Bradburn).

Yeah, but they covered different frequencies and targets, and it is still unclear just how that sorted out.

I think I must have thought URSULA was shown over the dark side of the earth ;-) Not sure if they've redacted anything in those discs or whether the info just isn't there in the schematics. [Edit: Rereading your post more slowly I realise that it was the satellites, not the NRO's censors, who had "covered ... frequencies and targets". I apologise to anyone who has been scratching their heads ;-)]

But I think the main point imho is that POPPY's real time abilities were unique, and helped justify its existence through mid 70s-see end of the SIGINT Story where it's role in the mix in 1975 is described in a rather heavily redacted intro to the conclusing chapter. [Edit: I should have looked harder, the latest 2022 release has rather more detail, especially on 989. I think it does illuminate (pun very much intended) the different jobs that POPPY and 989 did. See second grab.]



Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/09/2023 08:35 am
I don't know how the Tall King radars were deployed in the Soviet Union, but I think that a lot of them were located near the periphery where they could be intercepted by USAF aircraft. Tall King was an air surveillance radar, essentially like the big rotating fences that we used to see at airports. So a lot of them would have been around the edges of Soviet territory and could be plotted. Finding the ones in the vast interior was the harder part.

The AFTRACK payloads, which operated from 1960-1964 on the back ends of Agenas, also included the TAKI payload for detecting Tall King radars. In declassified US documents, Soviet radars are often spelled in all caps, like HEN HOUSE and TALL KING, hence TAKI.

I assume that Moonbounce left out a lot of information, so getting Tall King signals with a satellite was important for developing countermeasures.

One would think so. Interesting, however, that he explicitly mentions i) role of Moonbounce in locating them, and ii) the flights along border in getting the technical details, and iii) how sigint satellites would be used nowadays, but does not mention the role of satellites in early 60s ...

[Edit #3: Good discussions of moonbounce, Quality Elint and PALLADIUM-of course from the CIA pov-in The Wizards of Langley pages 46-51 and 89-92. I'll summarise when I have time.]

I fear I'm not going to get round to doing this  summary, but in case anyone hasn't seen it "The Wizards of Langley" is currently on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/wizardsoflangley0000rich/mode/2up
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/12/2023 05:22 am
As this post is mainly related to CANYON failures I've moved it here.

Actually, now I look at the redacted the list of "failures and anomalies" at https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007iiii.pdf and attached, from July 68  to about 73 I find myself wondering

a) what are the two redacted Catastrophic failures betweeen Feb 71 and May 72 ? I assume one is the failed Atlas-Agena CANYON launch of December 1971 ?

and b) what is the redacted Severe Mission Impact that occurs before 1970 ? I assume it has to be first CANYON's in orbit failure-but I'd have thought from the descriptions we had of it (e.g. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4051/1; Jeff Richelson's Air Force Magazine article; and Matthew Aid's book) that it should have been in the "Catastrophic" list. My understanding was that this was fairly prompt after launch-and on checking I see that we have a   declassified doc that says "a few days" for what in context must be CANYON (source is the last stocktaking memo from DNRO McLucas in 1972 at https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/foia/declass/GAMHEX/HEXAGON/9.PDF and attached). Maybe the explanation is that a few days allowed them to demonstrate enough of the concept that it didn't count as Catastrophic, this is consistent with McLucas' wording "the [redacted] collector had demonstrated the feasibility of intercepting [redacted] from space". --- see second and third grabs.

 
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Skyrocket on 08/12/2023 10:00 am
As this post is mainly related to CANYON failures I've moved it here.

Actually, now I look at the redacted the list of "failures and anomalies" at https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007iiii.pdf and attached, from July 68  to about 73 I find myself wondering

a) what are the two redacted Catastrophic failures betweeen Feb 71 and May 72 ? I assume one is the failed Atlas-Agena CANYON launch of iirc 1971 ?

The other is likely the JUMPSEAT 2 failure of February 1972


and b) what is the redacted Severe Mission Impact that occurs before 1970 ? I assume it has to be first CANYON's in orbit failure-but I'd have thought from the descriptions we had of it (e.g. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4051/1; Jeff Richelson's Air Force Magazine article; and Matthew Aid's book) that it should have been in the "Catastrophic" list. My understanding was that this was fairly prompt after launch-and on checking I see that we have a recently declassified doc that says "a few days" for what in context must be CANYON (I'll find the source for this and post doc asap). Maybe the explanation is that a few days allowed them to demonstrate enough of the concept that it didn't count as Catastrophic ?
I agree - this should be CANYON 1.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/12/2023 02:08 pm
We still don't know anything about the P-801 satellites, do we?
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/12/2023 02:39 pm
We still don't know anything about the P-801 satellites, do we?

Last thing I saw was this from Skyrocket https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26820.msg2330132#msg2330132, to which I replied with all that I'd seen on BIRDBOOK etc: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26820.msg2330690#msg2330690
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/13/2023 10:40 am
As this post is mainly related to CANYON failures I've moved it here.

Actually, now I look at the redacted the list of "failures and anomalies" at https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/sigintphaseii/SC-2017-00007iiii.pdf and attached, from July 68  to about 73 I find myself wondering

a) what are the two redacted Catastrophic failures betweeen Feb 71 and May 72 ? I assume one is the failed Atlas-Agena CANYON launch of iirc 1971 ?

The other is likely the JUMPSEAT 2 failure of February 1972


and b) what is the redacted Severe Mission Impact that occurs before 1970 ? I assume it has to be first CANYON's in orbit failure-but I'd have thought from the descriptions we had of it (e.g. https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4051/1; Jeff Richelson's Air Force Magazine article; and Matthew Aid's book) that it should have been in the "Catastrophic" list. My understanding was that this was fairly prompt after launch-and on checking I see that we have a recently declassified doc that says "a few days" for what in context must be CANYON (I'll find the source for this and post doc asap). Maybe the explanation is that a few days allowed them to demonstrate enough of the concept that it didn't count as Catastrophic ?
I agree - this should be CANYON 1.

Thanks, and thanks for reminding me that JUMPSEAT 2 was a failure-this had been what enabled me to clinch the presence of a working IR sensor on JUMPSEAT 1 (see DSP thread), all of a month or two ago (my memory is not what it was ;-)).
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/13/2023 05:55 pm
What was the  70s "ensemble" that replaced WS-117L derived Agenas ?

One puzzle in that final chapter of Bradburn et al (first grab) is the "ensemble" that they say  "replaced ... the original WS-117 low orbiters" [i.e. the Agena-based 770 series]. By ensemble, do they mean

a) JUMPSEAT (reportedly the most literal replacement for 770, but in HEO rather than LEO) + the new CANYON and RHYOLITE in geosync and geostationary orbits respectively, as for example in second grab, from McLucas' last stocktaking memo [both grabs from docs uploaded not far upthread on this page].

or

b) JUMPSEAT working with sub satellites   [Edit:  The 5th edition of Richelson's US Intelligence community https://archive.org/details/usintelligenceco0000rich/page/218/mode/1up?q=jumpseat&view=theater  talks about JUMPSEAT working with the 989 (i.e. P-11) satellites (third grab). The last (7th) edition, published in 2016 repeats this statement.]

or what ?

I tend to believe a) is more likely, because that ensemble would probably have the 3 new/improved capabilities ascribed to it, i.e. i) faster return of information (RHYOLITE's descendents were described in  leaked documents published by The Intercept in about 2013 as real-time); better  geolocation (described by same source as being done nowadays by at least two types of satellte-whether this was GEO and HEO or GEO and LEO was debated inconclusively on this site a few years ago) and iii) making reports almost in real time, which to me sounds like a plausible result of the improved ground based processing at one or more of the MGS locations also mentioned in the McLucas stocktaking memo (fourth grab).
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 08/29/2023 09:30 pm
NRO has posted a 1966 LMSC feasibility analysis of a (geo-) "Synchronous P-11", which contains quite a few technical details on the general layout and operations of such a system, including the limiting signal strength for intercepted signals at various frequencies.

The synchronous P-11 features a 20 ft diameter intercept antenna, encrypted direct data downlink via a 60 inch diameter antenna to a ground station located either on the Philippines or in Australia, solar arrays with independent drive units on long booms sticking out behind either side of the intercept antenna, batteries to cover solar eclipses, etc., plus consumables for station keeping over a 1 year mission lifetime, all packaged into an on-orbit mass of only 350 lb (~160 kg).

They were proposing 3 missions covering different frequency ranges, but also proposing options combining one or two of the missions by adding additional receivers (which of course would have also increased the mass and power budgets).
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 08/29/2023 10:44 pm
NRO has posted a 1966 LMSC feasibility analysis of a (geo-) "Synchronous P-11", which contains quite a few technical details on the general layout and operations of such a system, including the limiting signal strength for intercepted signals at various frequencies.


I talked to my source about this document a few months ago. He said that it never got implemented and said that it was not feasible given the size of the platform. I need to follow up with him at some point.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/30/2023 06:26 am
NRO has posted a 1966 LMSC feasibility analysis of a (geo-) "Synchronous P-11", which contains quite a few technical details on the general layout and operations of such a system, including the limiting signal strength for intercepted signals at various frequencies.


I talked to my source about this document a few months ago. He said that it never got implemented and said that it was not feasible given the size of the platform. I need to follow up with him at some point.

Even though apparently not pursued it helps to explain how LMSC could build a CANYON, allegedly with a 30 foot dish, that was small enough to fit in a relatively standard Atlas Agena shroud when they came to do it.

A fascinating doc all round.

Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 08/30/2023 06:30 am
NRO has posted a 1966 LMSC feasibility analysis of a (geo-) "Synchronous P-11", which contains quite a few technical details on the general layout and operations of such a system, including the limiting signal strength for intercepted signals at various frequencies.


I talked to my source about this document a few months ago. He said that it never got implemented and said that it was not feasible given the size of the platform. I need to follow up with him at some point.
The study underlines that LMSC realised by the mid 1960s that time was running out for P-11s in LEO (as you wrote in one of your Spacereview articles), and that the SIGINT interest shifted to long-term / continuous monitoring and instant downlink. Technology apparently had (almost?) advanced sufficiently to construct light-weight deployable structures like large "unfurlable" antennas, and compact electronics packages.

Still, getting all of this into a package with an "ascent profile" not much larger than the standard P-11 with its 35" x 35" x 12" volume looks very challenging.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 08/30/2023 08:42 am
NRO has posted a 1966 LMSC feasibility analysis of a (geo-) "Synchronous P-11", which contains quite a few technical details on the general layout and operations of such a system, including the limiting signal strength for intercepted signals at various frequencies.


I talked to my source about this document a few months ago. He said that it never got implemented and said that it was not feasible given the size of the platform. I need to follow up with him at some point.
The study underlines that LMSC realised by the mid 1960s that time was running out for P-11s in LEO (as you wrote in one of your Spacereview articles), and that the SIGINT interest shifted to long-term / continuous monitoring and instant downlink. Technology apparently had (almost?) advanced sufficiently to construct light-weight deployable structures like large "unfurlable" antennas, and compact electronics packages.

 

It also seems highly likely that LMSC might by early 66 already know something about the ongoing review process for RHYOLITE, especially the Fletcher panel, if RH had gone out to tender outside the TRW/EDL axis. RH did not get a final go-ahead until Aug 66 apparently, and may have had aspirations that were wider than TELINT.   See https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2511718#msg2511718

As an aside I remain surprised by how much is now out there about RHYOLITE, though this new geo P-11 doc seems to be landmark in the declassification of GEO SIGINT more generally.

Butterworth's SIGINT history chapters have a heavily redacted section that appears to describe discussions between Lockheed, NSA and Program A in about this time frame, leading eventually to CANYON.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Thresher-Reaper on 08/30/2023 12:19 pm
Hi Y'all, just discovered this forum and WOW! I thought I was the only one interested in early SIGINT satellites.  I have some catching up to do.  Hopefully I'll be able to contribute to this discussion.  If anyone is in the DC area maybe we can meet over beers.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 09/08/2023 03:13 pm
Cannot now remember which prior thread the NRO's touring display cabinet figured in, but here it is on YouTube with GRAB and POPPY among others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5eug941ApA&t=224s
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: hoku on 12/04/2023 12:09 pm
Yet another partially un-redacted iteration of "UNITED STATES CRIPTOLOGIC HISTORY/American Criptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989"  is out. This one has been FOIAed by John Greenewald. "Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960-1972" includes a brief section on "The P-11 Payloads".

Attached is the TOC and the relevant section. Have fun with filling in the blanks ;-)
(for comparison, the previously released version is attached as well)

https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/nsa/MDR-113301.pdf
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/04/2023 12:54 pm
Still some ridiculous deletions. P-11 and P-989 have been declassified for years (P-11 was never classified), and NRO released info on the types of targets. Of course it is possible that this was being declassified many years ago, before the NRO declassified their stuff, and so it reflects the older security redactions. But I suspect it is really just one hand of the bureaucracy unaware of what the other hand is doing.

That said, even if it was perfectly intact, it would not tell us anything that we don't already know. There's not enough text there to contain useful details.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 12/04/2023 05:02 pm
Looks like the sections on RUNWAY (i.e. CANYON) and RAINFALL (i.e. RHYOLITE) are a little bit less redacted than the last versions I saw:
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: Blackstar on 12/04/2023 06:32 pm
Those are interesting finds. I'll have to think about them and maybe summarize a bit here, but one thing it indicates is that apparently the COMINT mission for RHYOLITE was suggested right from the start, not after it was flying. Maybe it only was incorporated into a later satellite, but the potential for doing COMINT was recognized from the beginning.

Also amusing to see the rivalries. As some of my other research on the low altitude satellites has indicated, there were always tensions with NSA. It seems like other agencies did not like NSA and didn't trust them.
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 12/04/2023 09:05 pm
Those are interesting finds. I'll have to think about them and maybe summarize a bit here, but one thing it indicates is that apparently the COMINT mission for RHYOLITE was suggested right from the start, not after it was flying. Maybe it only was incorporated into a later satellite, but the potential for doing COMINT was recognized from the beginning.

Also amusing to see the rivalries. As some of my other research on the low altitude satellites has indicated, there were always tensions with NSA. It seems like other agencies did not like NSA and didn't trust them.

Not all new, just a bit clearer in latest versions, but definitely an interesting story. [Edit: Though I see that the names RUNWAY and RAINFALL did not appear in the earliest releases, and the material about latter on page 409 was completely redacted, see e.g. 2007 version at https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/nsa/cold_war_ii.pdf . There has been at least one intermediate version.]

Have a look at the pages I posted from Butterworth as well https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40314.msg2511718#msg2511718
as taken together with the Johnson history they do I think indeed show COMINT as being part of the RHYOLITE story, though it’s admittedly not ultra clear yet.

[Edit: And see also the 1970 Lew Allen memo https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/NROStaffRecords/442.PDF   in a previous post of mine, reposted below, that refers to Perry and what appears to be a failed bid to do what sounds like the COMINT mission, how all this joins up remains unclear for the moment.]
Title: Re: Satellite signals intelligence in the 1960s
Post by: LittleBird on 03/17/2024 10:02 am
Interesting to see this symposium. No sats yet as far as I can see, but some interesting stuff on ground based antennae such as the famous Wullenweber https://onthesquid.com/2013/05/the-elephant-cage-antenna/ used at Chicksands among other sites. Perhaps early SIGINT sats might feature in a future such event ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBg0hMOqCTQ&t=1714s