The Air Force and NRO have been hacking at this project for nearly 50 years now. Ups and Downs of Space Radars By Jeffrey T. Richelson NRO photo Technicians work on a radar-imaging Lacrosse satellite. hen David D. Brad- model for testing. It was the first of those military formations, and industrial in- burn entered the US two flying systems that was propelled stallations. In truth, its target area was Army Air Corps in into orbit that December. highly restricted. It was allowed to W1946, his branch had only the faintest The concept of space radar was “paint” targets only in Ohio, Illinois, acquaintance with missiles and space- simple: The satellite transmits powerful Indiana, and Far West states—not the craft. Bradburn could not have foreseen radar waves toward Earth. They bounce Soviet Union. that, on Dec. 21, 1964, he would be at off the target and return to a receiver Vandenberg AFB, Calif., overseeing on the satellite, which captures an the launch of a highly specialized spy electronic image of the target. satellite—but he was. Radar waves penetrate cloud cover, USAF photo Bradburn had flown fighters and had and do not rely on the visible light por- racked up 50 B-26 combat missions in tion of the electromagnetic spectrum. the Korean War. In December 1960, how- For these reasons, radar imagers, unlike ever, he moved to the Air Force Office of photographic spy satellites, can provide Special Projects. Shortly afterward, he imagery of any target in any weather was selected to be program manager of at any time. a classified satellite program. Less than To Bradburn and others in the Air a year later, the Kennedy Administration Force, this looked to be a particu- created the National Reconnaissance larly promising technique for detecting Office, and Bradburn became part of nighttime Soviet military exercises and it, and so did his program. nuclear missile movements. Bradburn’s satellite was given the Like photoreconnaissance satellites, designation Quill. Quill was a radar Quill returned images by ejecting a pay- imager, an early part of what was, and load capsule, which was then snatched still is, an extraordinarily challenging out of the air by a specially modified US space radar effort. The program C-130. The Quill images did not have yielded a total of three models—two very high resolution, but analysts still Maj. Gen. David Bradburn, a space flightworthy spacecraft and a bench could clearly identify cities, airfields, radar pioneer. AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2009 67 Quill’s operational life was not long—only about a month—but that was still longer than was the case NASA image for most of the new reconnaissance satellites. On Jan. 11, 1965, its mis- sion ended and the satellite burned up in the atmosphere upon re-entry. That event marked not only the end of that particular satellite but also of the whole space radar program—for a while, anyway. What killed Quill was fear that the existence of a US reconnaissance satel- lite that transmitted such signals would spur the Soviets to interfere with those satellites—and also threaten the NRO’s passive photographic satellites. Even so, that was not the end of the matter. The concept of space-based radar kept bobbing back to the surface. Bradburn, in fact, spent more than 20 years helping develop radar and satellite systems for the Air Force before finally retiring as a major general in 1976. (He died in October 2008.) The Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office, in turn, have been hard at work develop- ing promising but difficult space radar systems. Work on classified programs continues to this day. The Greater Washington, D.C., area shown in an image taken by a space radar. One Soviet launches of radar-based of the benefits of space radar is that it can penetrate clouds. ocean-reconnaissance satellites in the 1960s may have spurred the US to again aged by the NRO. Officials believed to the Air Force Office of Special consider developing a radar imaging that a Quill follow-on with 10-foot Projects. system, specifically a side-looking, syn- resolution would meet requirements Bush’s successor as DCI, Adm. thetic aperture radar, which allowed an for oceanic surveillance and indicators Stansfield Turner, recalls that during image to be constructed from multiple and warnings. his tenure, the CIA proposed an alterna- reflections off a target. It was the NRO Advanced Strategic tive—adding a radar imaging capability On Jan. 20, 1970, the NRO hosted SLR System that was to be tested on to future KH-11 electro-optical satel- a meeting to discuss plans for testing Cuban targets. lites, the first of which was launched a side-looking SAR. The Defense in December 1976. Intelligence Agency believed North Looking At Cuba Turner characterized the proposal as Korea, with an abundance of ground In April 1971, under a program des- “an ingenious solution” to the problem targets, would be the best place on ignated Senior Lance, U-2Rs equipped of cloud cover, because “if a target which to focus. with side-looking radar began flying were obscured temporarily, the satel- However, the National Photographic along the coast of Cuba to verify the lite could switch quickly from optical Interpretation Center had an alterna- value of radar imagery on targets in pictures to radar ones and be sure of tive—Cuba. NPIC preferred the island Cuba. getting something.” Turner recom- because it had many and varied targets The declassified record is silent con- mended setting aside funds to procure accessible to side-looking radar, the cerning the NRO’s pursuit of radar im- radar-augmented KH-11s. US had a large database of information agery satellites during the remainder of He also recalls that Defense Secre- about Cuban targets, and the US could the Nixon and Ford Administrations. tary Harold Brown “immediately saw test the radar’s powers of “change de- One problem that did not go away was the benefits of this combined optical- tection” by obtaining around-the-clock, the cloud cover over the Soviet Union radar satellite” and agreed it should be all-weather coverage. and Eastern Europe. As one defense developed by the CIA. Cuba was selected as the best test tar- official of that era put it, “The weather Turner was therefore confident that get for a new radar imaging system. in the Soviet Union is crappy all the President Jimmy Carter would ap- Later that year, NPIC hosted an- time.” Obtaining a satellite photo of a prove the program. But what “I did other meeting to discuss side-looking target could take years. not foresee,” Turner has written, “was satellite radar imagery. There were During his tenure as director of the pressure that would beset Harold two projects to be discussed—the central intelligence in 1976-77, George from below.” QU [Quill] Follow-on SLR Project H. W. Bush approved a radar satellite “Below” in this case meant the De- and the Advanced Strategic SLR Sys- program designated Indigo, and as- fense Department and the Air Force, tem—both of which were being man- signed responsibility for the program which convinced Brown to support 68 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2009 vent imminent program cancellation, McAnally worked funding issues, and streamlined business management.” Onyx was ready to go in 1988, but its launch vehicle, the space shuttle, was not. The shuttle was still grounded Sandia National Laboratory image after the 1986 Challenger disaster. After a successful shuttle mission in September 1988, NASA scheduled a Dec. 1 launch for Atlantis to deliver Onyx to orbit. The launch site was to be Cape Ca- naveral, Fla., due to problems with the shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. But launching a reconnaissance satellite from the Cape posed one sig- nificant constraint. To avoid overflying populated areas on launch, the maximum inclination that could be attained was 57 degrees. With that inclination, radar coverage would stop 100 miles north of Moscow. Therefore excluded from Onyx cov- A high resolution airborne synthetic aperture radar image of the Pentagon, Arlington, Va. erage would be the naval facilities In the 1970s, earlier airborne radar imagers gathered intelligence on targets in Cuba. around the Kola Peninsula, six ICBM sites, and the satellite launch facility a separate, Air Force-led, radar-only overruns and developmental prob- at Plesetsk. system. lems, but ultimately added a vital High-altitude wind caused NASA When the two put their cases before new dimension to US intelligence officials to postpone the Dec. 1 Carter, “Harold deftly out-argued me, re- capabilities. Goldwater also pointed launch—the loss of the Challenger futing the points on which we had agreed to the success of the 26th Tactical Re- crew was still fresh in NASA’s mind, just hours before,” Turner said. Brown connaissance Wing, which flew RF-4s and each Onyx was a several hundred said the CIA approach placed too many out of Zweibrucken AB, Germany, and million dollar investment. eggs in one basket—a failure in space or transmitted real-time radar imagery of The next day, at 9:30 a.m., two a launch failure would deprive the US targets along the German border. minutes before the launch window of both sensors simultaneously. Lacrosse’s contribution to the na- for the day closed, Atlantis lifted off. Furthermore, two sensors on the tion’s security, he argued, could be On the seventh orbit, the payload was same satellite couldn’t be in two places immense, was worth the cost, and released into space. at once. A radar-only satellite would “could work to prevent war.” From a safe distance, Atlantis in- mean that while a KH-11 photographed structed the two solar panels attached a target in China, a radar satellite might Enter the Onyx to the central body of the satellite to be thousands of miles away, imaging Boland agreed to one year’s funding, unfold—and they failed to respond.