National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
When the United States needs eyes and ears in critical places where no human can reach – be it over the most rugged terrain or through the most hostile territory – it turns to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The NRO is the U.S. Government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites. Whether creating the latest innovations in satellite technology, contracting with the most cost-efficient industrial supplier, conducting rigorous launch schedules, or providing the highest-quality products to protect the Nation and its citizens.
From our inception in 1961 to our declassification to the public in 1992, the NRO has worked tirelessly to provide the best reconnaissance support possible to the Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DoD). NRO is unwavering in its dedication to fulfilling the vision: Supra Et Ultra: Above and Beyond.
The National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) systems are critical to National Security, U.S. policy makers, and war fighters. These systems provide the foundation for global situational awareness, and address the nation's toughest intelligence challenges. Frequently, NRO systems are the only collectors able to access critical areas of interest, and data from overhead sensors provides unique information and perspectives not available from other sources.
The NRO's key customers and mission partners include: policy makers, the Armed Services, the Intelligence Community, Departments of State, Justice and Treasury, and civil agencies. All of them depend on the unique capabilities NRO systems provide:
Together with other Defense Department satellites, the NRO systems play a crucial role in providing global communications, precision navigation, early warning of missile launches and potential military aggression, signals intelligence, and near real-time imagery to U.S. forces to support the war on terrorism and other continuing operations.
NRO satellites also support civil customers in response to disaster relief and environmental research. Scientists created a global environment database using NRO imagery to help predict climate change, assess crop production, map habitats of endangered species, track oil spills, and study wetlands. NRO data also forms the basis for products that help depict and assess the devastation in areas affected by natural disasters.
The NRO's innovation also inspired technology in everyday life with contributions to medical imaging, global communications, high-definition television, cellular phones, the global positioning system (GPS), and much more.
With its vigilance from above, the NRO gives America's policymakers, intelligence analysts, warfighters and homeland security specialists the critical information they need to keep America safe, secure, and free.
The history of the National Reconnaissance Office is a story of how opportunity, necessity, and determination converged to produce an intelligence organization unlike any that had come before. In the late 1950s, rocket and sensor technologies were just reaching a level of maturity so that, if pushed to the limit, they could assist the United States in facing the most challenging national security problem of the age: how to analyze Soviet military forces and avert a potential nuclear war.
After providing the hard data that made it possible to understand and deter the Soviet Union, NRO systems later became the primary means that made possible the arms control agreements that defused U.S.–Soviet tensions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NRO systems became ever more integrated into U.S. military capabilities, playing a critical role in the Gulf War, peacekeeping operations, and most recently, global operations against terrorists.
In retrospect, it seems remarkable that even as the United States was achieving its goal of putting a man on the moon, there was an equally ambitious and technologically challenging American space program proceeding along a parallel path—but in strictest secrecy. Indeed, it was not until 1978 that a President acknowledged the basic fact that the United States carried out reconnaissance from space, and not until 1992 that the government acknowledged the NRO’s existence.
Until recently, it would have been impossible to publish an official, authoritative, unclassified history of the NRO. The fact that we can tell the history of this second space program today shows how much the NRO has evolved. Originally the NRO and its mission were totally unacknowledged, first to protect the source and method; and second, in deference to the sensitivity that some countries might have to U.S. satellites orbiting over their territory. Today we take such activities for granted, and the NRO and its mission can be much more open, and focus its measures for secrecy on those areas in which the organization is developing technologies that exceed the public’s imagination and the expectations of our adversaries.
In thinking about how far the NRO has come in the past fifty years, the challenge for the reader is to imagine how this national resource can continue to support U.S. security by testing the limits of technology in an era in which the American public expect greater openness and in which space operations have become commonplace.
The NRO can trace its heritage to World War II, when U.S. forces used aircraft to collect imagery and signals intelligence to plan military operations against Germany and Japan. As the Cold War heated up, U.S. officials discovered that overhead reconnaissance was one of the few options available to discover basic facts about the military and industrial capabilities of the new opponent the nation faced, the Soviet Union.
Nearly twenty years after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, one of the final chapters of World War II history opened when acting CIA Director, Gen Charles Cabell established the National Reconnaissance Office by concurring with Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric’s 6 September 1961 memorandum. The ghosts of Pearl Harbor loomed large indeed as teams of extraordinary scientists developed high-altitude and satellite technology, hoping to assure that the United States would never again face a devastating, surprise attack.
Three forces molded the subsequent chapters in the National Reconnaissance Office’s history: brilliant scientists and engineers, stunning reconnaissance technology, and hard intelligence challenges. In his brief history of the National Reconnaissance Office, Bruce Berkowitz presents unclassified glimpses of the scientists and engineers, reconnaissance technologies, and intelligence issues that drove the development of the National Reconnaissance Office and its efforts to defend the nation during the last fifty years of air and space advances.
A highly talented group of individuals with diverse backgrounds played important roles in the establishment of the National Reconnaissance Office. These individuals include Dr. James Killian, science advisor to President Eisenhower and President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who provided critical support for national reconnaissance systems. Dr. Edwin “Din” Land, inventor of instant photography and President of the Polaroid Corporation, who became an influential advocate for the use of new technology to solve intelligence puzzles. Dr. Richard Bissell, the talented Marshall Plan administrator, applied those management skills to develop two early successful reconnaissance programs—the U-2 high-altitude spy plane and the nation’s first photoreconnaissance satellite—Corona. Dr. Joseph Charyk, who would later lead one of the nation’s largest commercial satellite companies, provided early and essential leadership for the nation’s first overhead reconnaissance organization.
Space is a harsh environment and space technology must persist in that environment. Consequently, scientists and engineers developed new materials: film, lenses, antennas, and other components to survive in space. The U-2, the nation’s first high-altitude aircraft; Grab, the first signals intelligence system; and Corona, the first photoreconnaissance system, exemplify technology’s successful response to these challenges. For these systems, existing technology was reshaped to operate in space. Technological breakthroughs allowed the United States to gather signals and photograph adversaries from high altitudes and the far reaches of space. Early efforts brought disappointment as often as success, but as technology matured, overhead reconnaissance proved to be a reliable asset in the defense of the nation.