While attending the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) week-long
Diamond Jubilee Celebration, Washington, DC, Mr. Keith Hall,
Director, National Reconnaissance office, and Rear Admiral Lowell
E. Jacoby, USN, Director of Naval Intelligence, announced the
declassification of the United States' first reconnaissance satellite
system, the Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) satellite
system. GRAB was proposed, developed, built, and operated by
the Naval Research Laboratory.
The following announcement is
an approved declassification action directed by the Director
of Central Intelligence in keeping with Executive Order 12958.
A U.S. Navy electronic
intelligence (ELINT) satellite system became operational in July
1960 and was operated until August 1962. The heretofore classified
mission was to obtain information on Soviet air defense radars
that could not be observed by Air Force and Navy ferret aircraft
flying ELINT missions along accessible borders in Europe and
the western Pacific.
The ELINT satellite system was
proposed by the Naval Research Laboratory in the spring of 1958.
In parallel with exploratory development by NRL, the Office of
Naval Intelligence obtained endorsements for Project Tattletale
from elements of the executive and legislative branches. With
positive recommendations from State, Defense, and CIA, President
Eisenhower approved full development on 24 August 1959. By then,
the project had been placed under a tight security control system
with access limited to fewer than 200 officials in the Washington
DC area. Development and interagency coordination proceeded as
the GRAB (Galactic Radiation and Background) experiment.
After NRL completed development
of the GRAB satellite and a network of overseas ground collection
sites, a first launch was approved by Eisenhower on 5 May 1960,
just four days after a CIA U-2 aircraft was lost on a reconnaissance
mission over Soviet territory. The GRAB satellite got a free
ride into space on 22 June 1960 with Navy's third Transit navigation
satellite. GRAB carried two electronic payloads, the classified
ELINT package and instrumentation to measure solar radiation.
The SolRad experiment was publicly disclosed in Department of
Defense press releases on this and subsequent launches. Four
more launches were attempted, and one was successful on 29 June
1961.
The Director of Naval Intelligence
exercised overall control. Data recorded on magnetic tape was
couriered back to the NRL, then evaluated, duplicated, and forwarded
to the NSA at the Army's Fort Meade, Maryland, and the Strategic
Air Command (SAC) at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska,
for analysis and processing. SAC's processing was aimed at defining
the characteristics and location of air defense equipment to
support building the SIOP (single integrated operations plan),
a responsibility of the Joint Strategic Targeting Staff at Offutt
AFB. In searching the tapes for new and unusual signals, NSA
found that the Soviets were already operating a radar that supported
a capability to destroy ballistic missiles. Secretary of Defense
Robert S. McNamara formally established the NRO on 14 June 1962
by a top secret directive, and the GRAB technology was then transferred
to the NRO.
NRL has a 75-year history in
science and technology development. NRL pioneered naval research
into space, from atmospheric probes with captured V-2 rockets,
through the direction of the Vanguard project -- America's first
satellite program, to such projects as the Global Positioning
System and more recently the Clementine mission. NRL produced
the first satellite communication system by using the moon as
a reflector and receiving the returned signal on the Earth's
largest parabolic antenna; this was a first step toward artificial
satellite communications. Since the late 1950's, Laboratory scientists
have designed, built and launched more than 80 satellites. The
GRAB space program announcement is indicative of the many contributions
of NRL's scientists and engineers in support of the Navy's and
National interests.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is the Navy's full-spectrum corporate laboratory, conducting a broadly based multidisciplinary program of scientific research and advanced technological development. The Laboratory, with a total complement of nearly 2,500 personnel, is located in southwest Washington, D.C., with other major sites at the Stennis Space Center, Miss., and Monterey, Calif. NRL has served the Navy and the nation for over 85 years and continues to meet the complex technological challenges of today's world. For more information, visit the NRL homepage or join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
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