Howdy All,
This article from Space.com is off-topic and about 5 days
old. Nevertheless, I found a really good read and the Techies here
will probably enjoy it also. The "Space Stealth Shield" certainly is
exotic-sounding and the rocket launch "from California" would be
Edwards, I imagine. Anyway, enjoy,...
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Anatomy of a Spy Satellite
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 03 January 2005
06:45 am ET
For military and intelligence communities, outer space has become a
highground, hide-and-seek arena -- a kind of "now you see me, now you
don’t" espionage playing field.
Over the decades, spying from space has always earned super-secret
status. They are the black projects, fulfilling dark tasks and often
bankrolled by blank check.
However last month, several U.S. senators openly blew the whistle on a
mystery spy satellite program, critical of its high cost while calling
to question its utility in today’s post-9/11 world.
One lawmaker, Jay D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the vice chairman of the
Senate intelligence committee, openly criticized the program on the
floor of the U.S. Senate. He said the program "is totally unjustified
and very wasteful and dangerous to national security," adding that he
has voted to terminate the program for two years, with no success.
There is now a delicate dance underway between issues of national
security and open public scrutiny about taxpayer dollars being spent
wisely or squandered. Meanwhile, the swirl of secrecy seems to be
revolving around a top secret "stealthy" satellite project, codenamed
MISTY.
Play MISTY for me
First, there’s a little unclassified history.
The U.S. stealth satellite program at issue was first spotlighted
publicly by Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow of the National
Security Archive in Washington, D.C.
The Archive is gathering declassified U.S. documents obtained through
the Freedom of Information Act. In doing so, the Archive declares they
have become the world's largest non-governmental library of
declassified documents.
The MISTY effort was broached in Richelson’s first-rate book on the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Wizards of Langley: Inside the
CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, published in 2002 by
Westview Press in Boulder, Colorado.
Richelson described the launching of the stealth imaging satellite via
space shuttle Atlantis in 1990. He noted that MISTY’s objective was to
lessen the threat to U.S. satellites from the Soviet Union -- a nation
whose anti-satellite program was of "significant concern" to U.S.
military space officials during the early 1980s, he wrote.
But within weeks after MISTY’s shuttle deployment, both U.S. and
Soviet sources reported that the satellite malfunctioned. Richelson
explained that a spacecraft explosion "may have been a tactic to
deceive those monitoring the satellite or may have been the result of
the jettisoning of operational debris."
Whatever the case -- and to the chagrin of spysat operators -- a
network of civilian space sleuths had been monitoring a set of MISTY
maneuvers and the explosion, ostensibly part of a "disappearing act"
meant to disguise its true whereabouts.
Suppression shield
Richelson has posted on the Internet declassified documents he has
obtained that track the historical roots of the still active stealth
satellite work, dating as far back as 1963.
One document is U.S. Patent 5,345,238, issued to Teledyne Industries
of Los Angeles, California in 1994. It details a movable "satellite
signature suppression shield" -- a bit of clever technology that can
suppress the laser, radar, visible, and infrared signatures of a
satellite. The invention makes spotting or tracking a satellite a
tough-to-do proposition.
The camouflage space shield, as reviewed in the patent, takes on the
form of an inflatable balloon. It can be quickly deployed and made
rigid upon exposure to both outside and internally-created ultraviolet
radiation. This shield can be tailored to a particular spacecraft and
orbital situation. Once deployed, the cone-shaped balloon is oriented
to deflect incoming laser and microwave radar energy, sending it off
into outer space.
While an intriguing bit of high-tech handiwork, whether or not this
stealthy idea is an active ingredient of the MISTY satellite series is
not publicly known.
World changes
"We don’t know exactly what technology was used for the first couple
of MISTYs to try to ensure stealth," Richelson told SPACE.com, "so we
don’t know what’s being proposed for this generation…what difference
there is, if any."
Richelson said that new systems and new technologies could experience
difficulties that can add up to more dollars. "The question is whether
you think it’s worth it to persevere…spending the extra money to get
something worthwhile."
The world has changed considerably since the MISTY program was first
initiated, Richelson added. So too have changes in denial and
deception practices, perhaps calling to question buying additional
stealth satellites, he said, contrasted to purchasing more
conventional spy satellites.
Maybe you can attain the basic objectives in terms of uncovering what
various countries are up to with other systems, and possibly for less
cash, Richelson suggested.
"But again, that’s something that has to be assessed based on
experience," Richelson said. "People should be able to make some
assessment on a classified basis, at least as to what we’re getting
from this type of system that we wouldn’t get from the more
conventional systems, and whether that’s worth the money."
Bureaucratic stealth
According to a SPACE.com source and an analyst familiar with American
satellite reconnaissance, there are several kinds of stealth at work,
not just in space, but on the ground too: bureaucratic stealth and
operational stealth.
"The United States started to use bureaucratic stealth when it first
began the Corona reconnaissance program in the late 1950s. The very
existence of the project was a secret and for several years the U.S.
Air Force told the public that it was simply testing engineering
equipment, not launching actual reconnaissance satellites," the
source, who did not wish to be identified, noted.
"Another form of bureaucratic stealth is to use a cover story, such as
telling the world that you are launching a simple scientific satellite
when in reality the satellite contains intelligence equipment."
Starting around 1960, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force both began to
look at ways of achieving operational stealth -- that is, actually
hiding the satellites themselves.
Cold war sneak peeks
A number of ideas were fostered decades ago in U.S. military and
intelligence circles centered on snagging cold war-class sneak peeks
at an enemy using satellites.
"Because Soviet satellite tracking systems were so primitive, they
thought that the best way to achieve this was to perform a covert
satellite launch. They considered various options, from launching the
satellite from a submarine to carrying the rocket underneath or inside
an aircraft like a C-130 and launching it over the ocean," the source
noted.
But these plans never went very far for a number of reasons.
"For starters, they could not put a powerful enough camera inside a
rocket small enough to be carried by an airplane. In addition, for a
good part of the 1960s, the people looking at satellite photographs
found no indications that the Soviets were actually trying to hide
their activities," the source explained.
"If the Russians had realized just how much American satellites could
see, they would have taken more care to hide from them. For instance,
the CIA was able to determine how strong Soviet intercontinental
ballistic missile silos were because they could watch them under
construction and determine the thickness of their walls."
Zirconic security compartment
It appears that the first attempt to hide a satellite from radar and
optical sensors occurred in the mid-1970s with an experimental
military satellite. But it was not until the 1980s that this effort
was dramatically increased.
The Reagan administration poured a huge amount of money into satellite
reconnaissance, including a stealth satellite program. They created a
special security compartment called "Zirconic" that was extremely
secret.
"Only someone who had a ‘Zirconic clearance’ was allowed to know about
the existence of the stealth satellite program. The specific
technology was given the code name ‘Nebula’", the analyst said.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) initiated a number of stealth
satellite programs during the 1980s. The NRO manages the nation’s spy
satellite programs. The most notable of these was dubbed MISTY, a
non-acronym but apparently a photoreconnaissance satellite for
snapping pictures.
"It was designed to be invisible to radar and optical tracking from
the ground, but its photos were not as good as the big, non-stealthy
reconnaissance satellites, like the Keyhole 11 and its successors.
MISTY was launched from the space shuttle in 1990 in an unconventional
way…it was rolled out over the side," the source recounted.
Another stealthy satellite was launched in 1999 atop a Titan 4 rocket
launched from California. Once again the amateur satellite trackers
followed it, although after awhile they began to suspect that they
were actually following a decoy and that the satellite itself was in a
different orbit.
Billion dollar bills as fuel
It appears that American stealth satellites take on the look of a kind
of ‘magic bullet’ within the intelligence arsenal. They are not as
versatile as regular intelligence satellites.
"So the stealth satellite is used to take pictures when the adversary
thinks that there are no satellites overhead. Presumably there are
only a few instances where this is useful -- after all, lots of
activities and objects cannot be hidden," the source said. "And the
technology is apparently extremely expensive."
And that breathtaking price tag has helped spur the current
controversy into the open -- whether or not oodles of money should be
spent to achieve what some experts consider very little result.
"It is also probably true that the recent spate of military space cost
overruns has made everybody wary," the analyst continued. Among those
climbing in price tag are the Space Based Infrared Satellite Systems
project (SBIRS), the Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications
satellite, along with a new class of reconnaissance satellites, both
optical and radar, called the Future Imagery Architecture.
"So the military space people have burned up all their credibility on
Capitol Hill, using billion dollar bills as fuel," the source
concluded.
Policy choices
The current flap over MISTY "stems more from the Bush administration's
obsession with secrecy and oppressing dissent regarding its
programmatic, budgetary, policy choices," said Theresa Hitchens, Vice
President of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C.
"They do this by trying to intimidate those willing to speak out in
public than about the satellite itself," she said.
Are there are any lessons to be learned from the issue?
If there are, Hitchens added, "it is that space programs are
expensive, and it is important to carefully weigh the benefits of any
program versus the costs…as well as against alternatives for
accomplishing the same mission."
Enormous boondoggles
"I think this episode suggests that secrecy is sometimes used not to
protect national security, but to line someone's pockets," said Steven
Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American
Scientists (FAS) in Washington, D.C. He directs the FAS Project on
Government Secrecy which works to reduce the scope of government
secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and
to promote reform of official secrecy practices.
"Even though the Senate Intelligence Committee has twice concluded
that the program is not justified on the merits, it remains fully
funded," Aftergood told SPACE.com.
The reason why, Aftergood explained, is because congressional
appropriators are free to spend the money without being held
accountable for their actions.
"There is a certain inequity built into the multi-billion dollar
intelligence appropriations process. Industry lobbyists holding
security clearances are free to advocate for their preferred programs.
But critics or skeptics are not even permitted to know what is at
issue. So it is not surprising that there will be enormous boondoggles
from time to time," Aftergood said.
But given the "outing" of MISTY into the public forum, has national
security been compromised?
"I doubt it," Aftergood responded. "Other than its extravagant cost,
very little concrete new information about the program has entered the
public domain."
If there is a policy lesson to be derived from all of this, Aftergood
concluded, "I think it is that the integrity of the intelligence
oversight process has to be strengthened. Among other things, that
means reducing unnecessary budget secrecy, and curtailing industry
advocacy on classified programs."
End of Article
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Original URL:
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/mystery_monday_050103.html
------------ Andrew