RECONNAISSANCE

Satellites

Articles

C - E

 

Campbell, Duncan. "Hiding from the Spies in the Sky." The Guardian, 4 Jun. 1998. [http://www.guardian.co.uk]

Over five years ago, retired CIA analyst Allen Thomson "wrote a detailed study showing how the US strategy of depending on a few, expensive satellites for reconnaissance was flawed.... Thomson warned that 'the presumption that reconnaissance satellites can operate covertly is obsolete'.... 'Tracking US reconnaissance satellites can provide valuable support to a hostile country's concealment and deception programmes,' says Thomson, echoing his words of five years ago." The Indian nuclear tests have "spectacularly vindicated" his warning.

Chien, Philip. "High Spies." Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1996, 47-51.

Clark, Evert. "Satellite Spying Cited by [President] Johnson." New York Times, 17 Mar. 1967, 13.

This is an early report acknowledging the use by the United States of monitoring satellites.

Corddry, Charles. "Piggy-Back Satellites Hailed As Big Space Gain for U.S." Washington Post, 23 Jun. 1960. [Bamford2]

Covault, Craig.

1. "Advanced KH-11 Broadens U.S. Recon Capability." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 6 Jan. 1997, 24-25.

2. "Atlantis Radar Satellite Payload Opens New Reconnaissance Era." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 12 Dec. 1988, 26-28.

3. "Cooperative Recon Gains Momentum." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 9 Oct. 1995, 28-29.

Officials from the United States, Russia, Europe, and Japan are discussing the possibility of combining the capabilities of classified reconnaissance spacecraft "for broader international utilization in crisis monitoring and peacekeeping operations."

4. "Eavesdropping Satellite Parked Over Crisis Zone." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 May 1998, 30.

5. "Military Space Capabilities Expanding, but Excess Secrecy Limits Progress." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 Apr. 1989, 18- 19.

6. "Recon Satellites Lead Allied Intelligence Effort." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 4 Feb. 1991, 25-26.

U.S. reconnaissance satellite imaging is "the allied forces' primary source of information for bomb damage assessment and attack mission planning" in the Gulf War. The author also reviews the number and kinds of imaging spacecraft involved in this reconnaissance effort.

7. "Secret NRO Recons Eye Iraqi Threat." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 16 Sep. 2002. [http://www.aviationnow.com]

"[S]ix secret National Reconnaissance Office high-resolution imaging satellites ... are maintaining an almost hourly watch on specific Iraqi facilities. Three Advanced KH-11s with optical and infrared sensors are teamed with three Lacrosse imaging radar spacecraft with night/all-weather capabilities to search for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development, along with missile production.

"But some of these spacecraft are growing old, and a critical new KH-11 replacement satellite that was to have been launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., in December 2001 has now been delayed nearly 1.5 years by problems. It is now not planned to launch any earlier than May 2003."

8. "Titan Explosion Destroys Secret 'Mercury' Sigint." Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 Aug. 1998, 28.

9. "USAF, NASA Discuss Shuttle Use for Satellite Maintenance." Aviation Week and Space Technology, 17 Dec. 1984, 14-16.

Cushman, Jack. "Space Shuttle Explosion Throws Military Programs into Disarray." Defense Week, 3 Feb. 1986, 2-4. [Petersen]

Data: Magazine of Military RDT&E Management. Editors. "Reconnaissance and Surveillance." 12 (Apr. 1967): 11-63. [Petersen]

Data: Magazine of Military RDT&E Management. Editors. "Reconnaissance and Surveillance." 11, no. 4 (1967): 6-10. [Petersen]

Day, Dwayne A. "CORONA: A View Through the KEYHOLE." Intelligence Watch Report Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1995): 17-21.

This article concerns the declassification on 24 Feb. 1995 of CORONA, ARGON, and LANYARD satellite programs and release of additional photographs at a 23-24 May 1995 symposium. Includes five photographs, but the quality of reproduction limits their usefulness in this form.

Day, Dwayne A. "A Failed Phoenix: The KH-6 LANYARD Reconnaissance Satellite." Spaceflight 39, no. 5 (May 1997): 170-174.

Day, Dwayne A. "Ferrets Above: American Signals Intelligence Satellites during the 1960s." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 449-467.

"Throughout the 1960s, signals intelligence satellites were designed, developed, and operated by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force, working within the framework of the National Reconnaissance Office."

Day, Dwayne A. "Listening from Above: The First Signals Intelligence Satellite." Spaceflight 41, no. 8 (Aug. 1999): 339-346.

Day, Dwayne A. "A LOOK AT . . . Spy Satellites & Hollywood." Washington Post, 2 Jul. 2000, B3. "It's Only a Movie." Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 10 Jul. 2000, 23.

This is a fun article that I hope many people read and learned what satellites can and cannot do -- most notably, they cannot violate the laws of physics.

Defense Science Board/Air Force Scientific Advisory Board Joint Task Force. Acquisition of National Security Space Programs. Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, May 2003.

Text of the Report of the Joint Task Force is available at: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/dsb.pdf.

Steven Aftergood, "Military Space Programs in Disarray," Secrecy News (from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy), 5 Sep. 2003, notes that the DSB/AFSCB report finds that there are "systemic problems" in the U.S. military and national security space programs. This includes the conclusion that "the next generation spy satellite program, known as the Future Imagery Architecture, is 'technically flawed' ... and 'not executable.'"

Diamond, John M. "Problems and Prospects in U.S. Imagery Intelligence." National Security Studies Quarterly, Spring 1997.

The discussion is of U.S. space-based imagery intelligence.

Diamond, John M. "Re-examining Problems and Prospects in U.S. Imagery Intelligence." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 14, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 1-24.

The focus here is on space-based imagery intelligence. The discussion flows out of five "key points" identified by the author:

"1. The U.S. space imagery community has yet to clearly lay out a path forward that id unanimously supported within the intelligence community and by congressional overseers.

"2. The current space imagery intelligence architecture has yet to demonstrate an ability to contribute decisively in one of the nation's most important national security areas: terrorism and weapons proliferation.

"3. The primary mission of imagery intelligence is trending away from the national strategic mission of the Cold War and toward a real-time battlefield information role....

"4. Despite a major transformation of the major national security challenges facing the United States, the imagery intelligence system in use today is essentially the same as that used during the Cold War.

"5. Among sophisticated adversaries, development of the skills involved in denying and deceiving observation from space appears to be outpacing advancement in satellite intelligence collection."

Diamond, John. "U.S. Verifies Arms Reduction with Espionage Photos: Old Pictures Help Locate Secure Sites for Storage of Nuclear Warheads." Detroit News, 17 Feb. 1999. [http:// detnews.com] Associated Press. "Declassified Spy Photos Studied." 16 Feb. 1999. [http:// www.ap.org]

Report on a symposium about the declassified photographs from CIA's Corona program, held 16 February 1999 at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. The report errs in stating that Corona "was developed by rocket scientists pressing to find a replacement for U-2 spy planes after the downing of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 in 1960"; the program was well advanced by May 1960.

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