Did Almaz make any sense?

[Spiceman]

but perhaps for some reason, such as the lower level of Soviet technology, Almaz made sense?

On the Soviet side, we just don't know that. We don't know how they used lower resolution imagery compared to higher resolution imagery. We don't know if they considered their images from the robotic system to be unsatisfying, creating a greater push for a system with cosmonauts aboard. There are some really wide open questions there, and they probably are not going to get answered, ever. But asking the questions can help shed light on what the issues probably were, and give us a better understanding of what they were doing.

Bouncing off this. We know that management of the flow of US spysats film was done part by Kodak in Rochester, part by the NRO's NPIC in downtown Washington, near the former Navy yard. Do we know about a similar process in USSR ?  who and where analyzed all the films recovered from those countless Zenits ? Did some selected pictures ended in the hands of Brezhnev or the Politburo ?
Presently trying to imagine a Soviet NPIC: a massive building where a few hundred photo interpreters handpick high-res details from rolls of Zenit film, using magnifying lenses and light tables.

[Blackstar]

Bouncing off this. We know that management of the flow of US spysats film was done part by Kodak in Rochester, part by the NRO's NPIC in downtown Washington, near the former Navy yard. Do we know about a similar process in USSR ?  who and where analyzed all the films recovered from those countless Zenits ? Did some selected pictures ended in the hands of Brezhnev or the Politburo ?
Presently trying to imagine a Soviet NPIC: a massive building where a few hundred photo interpreters handpick high-res details from rolls of Zenit film, using magnifying lenses and light tables.

I don't know of any information on how the Soviets processed and interpreted satellite imagery. I'll have to ask. The other relevant question is how was it distributed? Who got the data?

[Jim]

Against such numbers, Almaz and Dorian were doomed.

Dorian was doomed because it didn't provide any additional capabilities that were required.

There's a comment about MOL/DORIAN from Lew Allen, who later went on to run the NSA, among other things. Allen said in an interview (and I'm paraphrasing) that the primary requirement for MOL was that it fly astronauts, not that it do anything useful from an intelligence standpoint.

Much like the shuttle

[Spiceman]

Bouncing off this. We know that management of the flow of US spysats film was done part by Kodak in Rochester, part by the NRO's NPIC in downtown Washington, near the former Navy yard. Do we know about a similar process in USSR ?  who and where analyzed all the films recovered from those countless Zenits ? Did some selected pictures ended in the hands of Brezhnev or the Politburo ?
Presently trying to imagine a Soviet NPIC: a massive building where a few hundred photo interpreters handpick high-res details from rolls of Zenit film, using magnifying lenses and light tables.

I don't know of any information on how the Soviets processed and interpreted satellite imagery. I'll have to ask. The other relevant question is how was it distributed? Who got the data?

I'd be very interested. Comparison of the two spysats imagery process systems would be fascinating - picking what looked similar, and what differed.

[Blackstar]

I'd be very interested. Comparison of the two spysats imagery process systems would be fascinating - picking what looked similar, and what differed.

Well, there's even more to that, which is how was the information disseminated and to whom?

In the US, President Eisenhower was very keen that civilians (the CIA) be involved in the collection and interpretation of the data. He did not trust the military to interpret the data. He was concerned that if the military interpreted the data, they would shade it to their benefit, and he would get biased intelligence. Sending it through the CIA resulted in greater objectivity.

Now we don't know exactly how it got distributed after it came out of NPIC, but I think that's mainly because nobody has really traced that information flow. However, you could look at things like NPIC reports and other intelligence products (like the National Intelligence Estimates) and see their distribution lists. But I think it is generally safe to say that in the US, the NPIC reports came out of NPIC and then went to CIA, White House, DoD, and senior military officials. Satellite reconnaissance photographs were not regularly or directly distributed to the military until the latter 1970s and the development of Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities (TENCAP) systems.

But what was the Soviet side like? We don't really know. If the photos went to the military first, and only they sent them on to the senior leadership like Brezhnev, then the intelligence could be biased.

[Spiceman]

You're telling me no space historian has looked into this at russian archives, between 1992 and 2022 ?   
Make no mistake, I can readily understand why (I'm a former archivist myself).
 The real "open era" started in 1992 but  probably closed down even before the Putin era. Plus the usual hassles with archives (chaos and losses) were probably compounded by Russia being Russia, plus post-communism chaos and misery, plus the language barrier on top of that.

[Blackstar]

You're telling me no space historian has looked into this at russian archives, between 1992 and 2022 ?   
Make no mistake, I can readily understand why (I'm a former archivist myself).
 The real "open era" started in 1992 but  probably closed down even before the Putin era. Plus the usual hassles with archives (chaos and losses) were probably compounded by Russia being Russia, plus post-communism chaos and misery, plus the language barrier on top of that.

I won't say "no historian," but I don't know of any. I also think that only the political archives were opened, not the military ones.

[dondar]

You're telling me no space historian has looked into this at russian archives, between 1992 and 2022 ?   
Make no mistake, I can readily understand why (I'm a former archivist myself).
 The real "open era" started in 1992 but  probably closed down even before the Putin era. Plus the usual hassles with archives (chaos and losses) were probably compounded by Russia being Russia, plus post-communism chaos and misery, plus the language barrier on top of that.

Space was much much worse than nuclear.

I can assure you that no historians of any kind (even internal wetted industry "historians") ever actually looked into "Soviet space" archives.
There are simple basic reasons.

1. the archives don't exist in it's proper form. (significant part of the industry level archives was in Ukraine, Kazakhstan), security requirements precluded info dissemination or even copying, and that was the problem always. The Institutions and bigger firms had special officers who would travel from firm to firm collecting personal level (literally personally signed) copies.
Even much more massive aviation industry has serious difficulties with consolidating  their archives.  Kamov for example used extensively personal (illegal actually) archives, because they were better.
2. Security craze. Destruction of anything not specifically approved to keep was "obligatory". Doesn't matter hardware or paper.
3. Political/cultural issues. Russia has extreme variant of "the British disease". They like to think they invented everything. This doesn't cope well with functioning archives.

Anyway even if you can get into  what they still have you do need to learn to read between the lines, for example understand the key difference between yearly reports, "anniversary monographs" and internal experiment/project evaluations/reports. TLDR You actually need  only the later type. And that is the problem. They are mostly gone. Forever. (see item 2).

As about the performance of Almaz.

As I understand  Almaz program had 3 pillars. 1.  Korolev was busy with Moon program, 2. "match american efforts", 3. "extra money for people in space".

The second item was the key to start and move up the program, the last one was the real driver "on the ground". (i.e. people who were actually working with Almaz/Salut program were talking exclusively about this part).

The modern russians claim that the soviets did "valuable optical observations" and even radar imaging (khmm) using Almaz stations and even were sending back capsules with photos. They did tests with variable results. Not much more than that. But the program was necessary because it provided initial experience which culminated in Mir->ISS.

[Blackstar]

Asif Siddiqi could discuss Soviet-era archives, but he doesn't post here often. Soviet declassification is weird. They have produced a lot of material about what their military space systems did and acknowledge many more military spacecraft than the US does. But then there are some areas of their space history that remain largely hidden. What were their payloads on the N1 rocket, for instance? That wasn't a military program, but they haven't released that info.

He and I had a chat about this kind of stuff three years ago:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4153/1

[Spiceman]

Thank you for your answers. Geez, it's even worse than what I wrote.

As I understand  Almaz program had 3 pillars. 1.  Korolev was busy with Moon program, 2. "match american efforts", 3. "extra money for people in space".

Replace "Korolev" with "NASA" and you get most (USAF) arguments for MOL: particularly 1.  and 3.

[Blackstar]

Replace "Korolev" with "NASA" and you get most (USAF) arguments for MOL: particularly 1.  and 3.

I think it was more complicated than that. I think that the subtext--the unconscious drive--for MOL was that the Air Force wanted to have astronauts in space and was looking for a mission that justified them. I think that the more conscious justification was a series of things: astronauts could avoid cloud-covered targets, astronauts had value in pointing the telescope at high-priority targets, astronauts could fix and maintain the equipment in orbit. Over time, several of these justifications evaporated, and the justification for MOL became more and more niche.

Throughout this, the desire by the Air Force part of the NRO to fly military astronauts remained. But I think even that began to weaken. I don't think there was as much Air Force interest in 1969 in flying astronauts as there was in the early 1960s. There is no way to measure this, but the Air Force was fighting an expensive war and had those bills to pay. Plus, as MOL dragged on and on, I think people got tired of waiting for it to produce something.

There are a lot of MOL documents. Unfortunately, we don't have many interviews with people who worked on it or were in senior decision making positions. They could provide the context on why they think it was approved and then what happened over time. As one small example, a lot of people said that they were surprised by the "sudden" cancellation in 1969. But I interviewed MOL astronaut Al Crews and he said that he wasn't surprised, because he knew the improving capabilities of GAMBIT and he knew that MOL was spending a lot of money and was behind schedule.

[dondar]

Asif Siddiqi could discuss Soviet-era archives, but he doesn't post here often. Soviet declassification is weird. They have produced a lot of material about what their military space systems did and acknowledge many more military spacecraft than the US does. But then there are some areas of their space history that remain largely hidden. What were their payloads on the N1 rocket, for instance? That wasn't a military program, but they haven't released that info.

He and I had a chat about this kind of stuff three years ago:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4153/1

read the item 3. Reread it a few times, and then check what was "released".

For example widely popularized by EA RD-270 design. In the boring reality the design item blew up at the first fueled spin up casually destroying stand together with the building. (see high pressured hydrazine in action). The stand etc. was never rebuilt and the program was factually terminated on spot. Official (as "reported") program termination because... few years later is irrelevant. It is a lie.
edit: ingrlish.

[dondar]

Replace "Korolev" with "NASA" and you get most (USAF) arguments for MOL: particularly 1.  and 3.

I think it was more complicated than that. I think that the subtext--the unconscious drive--for MOL was that the Air Force wanted to have astronauts in space and was looking for a mission that justified them. I think that the more conscious justification was a series of things: astronauts could avoid cloud-covered targets, astronauts had value in pointing the telescope at high-priority targets, astronauts could fix and maintain the equipment in orbit. Over time, several of these justifications evaporated, and the justification for MOL became more and more niche.

Throughout this, the desire by the Air Force part of the NRO to fly military astronauts remained. But I think even that began to weaken. I don't think there was as much Air Force interest in 1969 in flying astronauts as there was in the early 1960s. There is no way to measure this, but the Air Force was fighting an expensive war and had those bills to pay. Plus, as MOL dragged on and on, I think people got tired of waiting for it to produce something.

There are a lot of MOL documents. Unfortunately, we don't have many interviews with people who worked on it or were in senior decision making positions. They could provide the context on why they think it was approved and then what happened over time. As one small example, a lot of people said that they were surprised by the "sudden" cancellation in 1969. But I interviewed MOL astronaut Al Crews and he said that he wasn't surprised, because he knew the improving capabilities of GAMBIT and he knew that MOL was spending a lot of money and was behind schedule.

Soviet Generals wanted small effective weapon systems "like in US". Engineers wanted people in space, Mars, Moon etc. programs (read "the future of humanity"). The leadership had to navigate extremely toxic political environment and deal with group dynamics. And yes lack of money and engineering/leadership was always a thing. USSR has non-merit based promotion system.

US had their own political mine field and their own money problems (see war in Vietnam and hardening recession since end of 60s going through 1970s till Reagan times). Because there was not so much "world economics" US couldn't rely on external investments that much which means massive inflation.
But the main problem for space industry was ever growing anti-"human in space" group which tried very hard to kill, sabotage anything "human in space" related.

[Blackstar]

Just came across this comparison of US and Soviet reconsats launched in 1973. Useful benchmark.

[Jim]

But the main problem for space industry was ever growing anti-"human in space" group which tried very hard to kill, sabotage anything "human in space" related.

That is quite the opposite.