The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites from the 1970s to the 21st century

Twenty HEXAGON satellites were launched from California between 1971 and 1986, with one failure. HEXAGON was a big photo-reconnaissance satellite, but often carried Program 989 subsatellites that were deployed in orbit. (credit: Peter Hunter) In 1963, the Air Force launched the first “hitchhiker” off the side of a larger satellite. This began a secretive program that lasted more than 40 years under a variety of names and designations. The satellites, about the size of a large suitcase, were festooned with antennas and spun rapidly as they orbited the Earth, sweeping their antennas over the ground and gathering radar and other signals, so-called electronic intelligence, or ELINT. They usually recorded the signals for later transmission to the ground, but occasionally directly re-transmitted them to a ground station. Satellites with names like URSALA, RAQUEL, FARRAH, GLORIA, and CARRIE have only recently been declassified, with significant information about them released only in the past two months, including the disclosure of previously secret space shuttle payloads. For the first decade, the various satellites under this program chased whatever new ELINT targets appeared and were of interest to the intelligence community. The satellites were designed to be inexpensive and simple enough to be developed in a year or less in response to new threats. Their payloads were often bespoke designs, built only once or twice before they were replaced by something else. But by the 1970s, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed the program, began to standardize the satellites and give them an operational mission supporting military forces around the world. Satellites with names like URSALA, RAQUEL, FARRAH, GLORIA, and CARRIE have only recently been declassified, with significant information about them released only in the past two months, including the disclosure of previously secret space shuttle payloads. These satellites represented a profound change in the collection of intelligence data from orbit, a change from serving relatively exclusive “national” leadership to supporting tactical forces of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They brought the wizard war of space-based electronic intelligence to the warfighter. During the 1970s and 1980s, subsatellites were deployed off the sides of large HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellites. (credit: NRO) Program 989 and Mission 7300 The first of the small satellites were colloquially called “hitchhikers,” but Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, which built them, referred to them as Program 11, or P-11 satellites, and this designation seems to have been used by officials throughout the 1960s and 1970s as generic shorthand for the small satellites, even when they had official program designations and specific names. In 1965/66, the P-11 program was redesignated P-770B, then Program 989.[1] However, as fewer individual satellites were procured over the years, it appears from available documentation that officials often referred to the individual satellites rather than the program they were part of. The Program 989 satellites continued flying even after a larger series of signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites known as Program 770 ended with the last launch in 1972.[2] By the 1970s, the intelligence community began using the TALENT-KEYHOLE designation “Mission 7300” to refer to the collection of radar signals and their geolocation data by these low Earth orbit satellites. Mission 7100 referred to the ocean surveillance mission performed by the PARCAE satellites. Mission 7200 referred to payloads hosted on other satellites, such as the AFTRACK electronic intelligence systems carried on many CORONA satellites in the 1960s.[3] By the 1980s there was increasing discussion within the intelligence community of merging both Missions 7100 and 7300 by developing new satellites incorporating both of their capabilities. During the 1960s, the satellites often lasted only a few months in orbit. Their lifetimes were often limited by their low orbits. Satellites with large antennas, such as large low-frequency spiral antennas or large flex-rib dish antennas, were dragged down by the thin atmosphere at their altitudes. It was typical for satellites to last one to four years before they burned up in the atmosphere, although MABELI was still operating when it burned up after seven years and TOP HAT II was still functioning when it burned up at six years.[4] The Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects office, located in Los Angeles, was the NRO’s West Coast organization responsible for managing Mission 7300, among other projects. Usually only referred to as SAFSP and mostly manned by Air Force officers, SAFSP sought to increase the lifetimes and capabilities of the satellites so that fewer were required to perform the missions. Improved electronics made this possible.[5] Throughout the 1960s the satellites had names like PUNDIT, SAVANT, SOUSEA, and SAMPAN that were obscure references to people working in the intelligence field, or sometimes even inside jokes or puns. The program managers (all men) were told that they needed to avoid possible hints about the satellites’ missions, and so they decided to name them after movie actresses.[6] Because the P-11s were carried into orbit alongside other, bigger, photo-reconnaissance satellites, the satellites were inevitably compromises. They were limited in size, mass, power, capability, and cost. Nevertheless, they were designed to pack as much capability into a small size as possible. They were notable for sporting several dishes around their periphery, most of which were spring-loaded to deploy using centrifugal force. Radars produce mainbeams and weaker sidelobes. The Program 989 satellites usually had the ability to detect both, and in some cases they could determine fine-grain data about the signals, enabling the development of jamming and spoofing capabilities. (credit: NRO) Radars produce main beams that radiate forward of the emitter, and side lobes that spread out to the emitter’s sides. The main beam is obviously the most powerful part of the emission, but it is focused in a specific direction and can only be intercepted if a collector such as a satellite antenna travels through the emission cone. The side lobes spread out over a much larger area but are fainter. A satellite with parabolic dishes can collect the fainter side lobes, whereas main beams can be collected in low Earth orbit without large dish antennas if the satellite travels through them. Thus, even though the Program 989/Mission 7300 satellites were not particularly large, their dish antennas provided a capability for intercepting faint, and more prolific, radar side lobes. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NRO was also launching several new classes of larger signals intelligence satellites to much higher orbits, including geosynchronous orbits. Those satellites were designed to collect Soviet microwave communications, missile and rocket telemetry, and other signals. But they were primarily restricted to northern hemisphere targets, for the satellites in highly elliptical orbits, and to eastern hemisphere targets if they were located in geosynchronous orbit over the eastern hemisphere. In other words, a signals intelligence satellite located in the eastern hemisphere to monitor communications from Moscow could not also cover targets over Central America. Program 989 low Earth orbiting satellites were still necessary for intercepting radar signals in large part because the satellites were closer to their targets and covered the entire globe from their polar orbits. The low Earth orbiting satellites also could serve new users, not just the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency and the “national” level customers of their intelligence like the White House and senior military leadership. Four URSALA satellites were launched during the 1970s. The ability of URSALA to provide data to mobile electronics vans deployed in the field made these satellites valuable for tactical users. Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities (TENCAP) became an important intelligence mission. (credit: NRO) URSALA and the dawn of TENCAP The Vietnam War played an important part in causing a redirection in the low Earth orbit signals intelligence program. In the mid to late 1960s, the NRO had launched more than a dozen P-11 satellites designed to intercept anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar signals. But by 1969, hundreds of American aircraft had been shot down by missiles over Vietnam, and for several years overhead imagery had detected a Soviet radar system deployed in the field, but no electronic intercepts had been made (the identity of this radar is still deleted from declassified documents.) In addition, the existing satellites lacked the capability to search for Ku-band emitters in the 12-to-18-gigahertz range. Finally, radar experts expected the Soviet Union to begin deploying “double-agile radars” that could simultaneously frequency hop from pulse-to-pulse and jitter in pulse repetition interval (the time between pulses) from pulse-to-pulse. A new capability would be required to detect these emerging radar threats.[7] The lack of specific knowledge about these emerging high-threat signals produced a set of requirements that could not be satisfied by a single system using the technology available at the time but led to the creation of two new satellite systems: URSALA and RAQUEL. “Back in the early 1970’s the new mission was to get data directly to the commander on the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). I had a payload with possibilities if it could be ‘trailerized.’ We decided to go for it but needed a catchy name, so we used DRACULA…Direct Readout and Collection ULA (‘ULA’ was the three-letter shorthand for the URSALA payload).” URSALA was designed to collect signals from double-agile radars in bands from 2 to 12 gigahertz. It searched radar side lobes,