NRO-MOL_2015

Introduction
xiii
President Lyndon Baines Johnson was not afraid to
embrace government programs that might bring about
significant change if successful. On 25 August 1965, he
announced the following to the American Public:
At the suggestion of Vice President
Humphrey and members of the Space
Council, as well as Defense Secretary
McNamara, I am today instructing the
Department of Defense to immediately
proceed with the development of a
Manned Orbiting Laboratory.
This program will bring us new
knowledge about what man is able to
do in space. It will enable us to
relate that ability to the defense of
America. It will develop technology
and equipment which will help advance
manned and unmanned space flights. And
it will make it possible to perform
their new and rewarding experiments
with that technology and equipment.
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL as it was
known, promised to use space for the first time as a
manned reconnaissance vantage point. If successful,
the program could dramatically change the way the
United States collected intelligence on its adversaries,
including the nation’s main foe, the Soviet Union.
Origins of National
Reconnaissance
In order to gain both tactical and strategic intelligence
on foes, nations have turned to the skies to gain a better
vantage point for collecting intelligence. The United
States developed in earnest active technical intelligence
collection programs after World War II. The early efforts
involved modification of military aircraft to fly near, and
sometimes over, the denied areas of the Soviet Union
and allied nations of the Soviets. The modified aircraft
carried camera and signals collection equipment to
capture activities in these closed areas. Unfortunately,
US adversaries could down these aircraft, and did so
on several occasions. Undeterred, the US developed
aircraft specifically for airborne reconnaissance—first the
U-2 and later the CIA’s A-12 and the Air Force’s variant,
the SR-71. Both became obsolete for reconnaissance
over the Soviet Union as Soviet air defenses improved
as was manifested by the May 1960 downing of an U-2
over the Soviet Union, piloted by Francis Gary Powers.
Since 1946, the United States defense community had
considered outer space as a vantage point for gaining
intelligence. In that year, a think tank that would become
the Rand Corporation issued a report on the feasibility of
using space for defense purposes. Rand would continue
to advocate for space based defense systems through
the 1950’s until the U.S. Air Force funded a satellite
reconnaissance development program in the mid-1950’s
known as Samos. The Samos program included both
imagery and signals collection satellite designs, but the
program faced daunting technical challenges. In the
interim, President Eisenhower approved a smaller scale
imagery satellite program and assigned responsibility
for development to the Central Intelligence Agency.
The program, known as Corona, navigated 13 failed
attempts to operate before succeeding in August 1960
with a return of the first man made object from space,
and in late August, the return of imagery from space.
Two months prior, the US also successfully launched the
Galactic Radiation and Background satellite, collecting
signals intelligence from space for the first time. These
programs demonstrated that technical intelligence could
be collected from space and opened new horizons for
intelligence collection.
Limitations of Early Space
Reconnaissance Collection
The Corona imagery satellites proved to be a reliable
means for gathering imagery of large areas of the Soviet
Union and other areas where the United States had
limited access. The imagery was essential for verifying
the strategic posture of US adversaries including the
Soviet Union’s development of strategic nuclear weapons
delivery systems including Intercontinental Ballistic
Missiles (ICBMs) and long range bombers. Gambit proved
equally reliable for gaining high resolution imagery—with
better than one foot resolution—that allowed the United
States to identify key characteristics of weaponry and
other targets. On the Sigint side of the house, Grab and
its successor program, Poppy, helped the US identify
Soviet radar coverage and other information necessary
to understand defenses of US adversaries. Together,
these and other national reconnaissance systems,
helped the United States gain far more insight into pace
and aggregate development of combat capabilities of
US adversaries than had previously been available.
These insights were key for determining the US’s own
development pace for and investment in its Cold War
national defense systems.
Despite the successes of early space reconnaissance
systems, they faced key limitations. For the imagery
systems, they often returned imagery that was obscured
by cloud cover. In common, the systems could not
quickly respond to changes in targeting, especially when
new requirements arose. Finally, as might be expected
with revolutionary technology in space, the systems
were sometimes beset by technical malfunctions. While
ground crews were able to make a number of amazing
fixes, the inaccessibility of the space vehicles on orbit
meant that many other malfunctions could not be
remedied. Despite these limitations though, the systems
still provided an extraordinary amount of information
critical for waging the Cold War.