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BYEMAN Coversheet
The BYEMAN Control System, or simply BYEMAN (designated BYE, or B), was a security control system put in place to protect information about the National Reconnaissance Office and its operations. History The BYEMAN Control System was put in place in 1961 by the Central Intelligence Agency. Discussions regarding BCS retirement were held as early as 2003. NRO Director Peter B. Teets spoke at a 2003 NRO Town Hall meeting, mentioning that retiring the BCS would remove barriers that prevented the NRO and U.S. Intelligence Community from working together as a team. The use of BCS was so prevalent throughout the U.S. Intelligence Community, that a handful of websites were set up to direct users through the retirement process. Origin of name An individual inside the CIA's Special Security Center chose the name from a random list of four words drawn from the CIA's codeword file. A ''byeman'' is a man who works underground; it is unknown if the individual knew the word's meaning before i ...
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BYEMAN Coversheet
The BYEMAN Control System, or simply BYEMAN (designated BYE, or B), was a security control system put in place to protect information about the National Reconnaissance Office and its operations. History The BYEMAN Control System was put in place in 1961 by the Central Intelligence Agency. Discussions regarding BCS retirement were held as early as 2003. NRO Director Peter B. Teets spoke at a 2003 NRO Town Hall meeting, mentioning that retiring the BCS would remove barriers that prevented the NRO and U.S. Intelligence Community from working together as a team. The use of BCS was so prevalent throughout the U.S. Intelligence Community, that a handful of websites were set up to direct users through the retirement process. Origin of name An individual inside the CIA's Special Security Center chose the name from a random list of four words drawn from the CIA's codeword file. A ''byeman'' is a man who works underground; it is unknown if the individual knew the word's meaning before i ...
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GRAB (satellite)
Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) was the first successful United States orbital surveillance program, comprising a series of five United States Naval Research Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory ELINT, electronic surveillance and solar astronomy satellites, launched from 1960 to 1962. Though only two of the five satellites made it into orbit, they returned a wealth of information on Soviet air defense radar capabilities as well as useful astronomical observations of the Sun. Development In 1957, the Soviet Union began deploying the S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile, controlled by Fan Song fire control radars. This development made penetration of Soviet air space by American bombers more dangerous. The United States Air Force began a program of cataloging the rough location and individual operating frequencies of these radars, using electronic reconnaissance aircraft flying off the borders of the Soviet Union. This program provided information on radars on the pe ...
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Armageddon (1998 Film)
''Armageddon'' is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film produced and directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis with Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, Keith David and Steve Buscemi. The film was a commercial success, grossing $553 million worldwide against a $140 million budget and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998. However, the film received mostly mixed reviews from critics. Plot A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis, before entering the atmosphere and bombarding New York City. NASA discovers the meteors were pushed out of the asteroid belt by a rogue comet which also jarred loose a Texas-sized asteroid that will impact Earth in 18 days, causing an extinction level event that will wi ...
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Director Of Central Intelligence
The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2005, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various US intelligence agencies (collectively known as the United States Intelligence Community, Intelligence Community from 1981 onwards). The office existed from January 1946 to April 21, 2005. After the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act it was replaced by the Director of National Intelligence, director of national intelligence (DNI) as head of the Intelligence Community and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) as head of the CIA. History The post of DCI was established by President of the United States, President Harry Truman on January 23, 1946, with Admiral Sidney Souers being the first DCI, followed by General Hoy ...
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KH-10 Dorian
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the United States Air Force (USAF) human spaceflight program in the 1960s. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites, and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. Plans for the MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions, and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft and launched with the laboratory. The MOL program was announced to the public on 10 December 1963 as an inhabited platform to demonstrate the utility of putting people in space for military missions; its reconnaissance satellite mission was a secret black project. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program, including Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., the first African-American astronaut. The prime contractor for the spacecraft was McDonnell Aircraft Corporation; ...
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Quill (satellite)
Quill was an experimental United States National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) program of the 1960s, which provided the first images of Earth from space using a synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Radar-imaging spacecraft of this design were not intended to be deployed operationally, since it was known that this system's resolution, inferior to that of concurrent experimental airborne systems, would not serve that purpose. Instead, the program's predominant goal was to show whether the propagation of radar waves through a large volume of the atmosphere and ionosphere would dangerously degrade the performance of the synthetic aperture feature. A detailed description of the program has been made available on-line by NRO. Objectives Initially, the primary benefit seen to be offered by radar imaging was its capability for operating at night and also for imaging through clouds or other atmospheric obstructions which absorbed or scattered waves not only in the visible spectrum but also in th ...
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POPPY (satellite)
POPPY is the code name given to a series of U.S. intelligence satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. The POPPY satellites recorded electronic signals intelligence (ELINT) data, targeting radar installations in the Soviet Union and Soviet naval ships at sea. The POPPY program was a continuation within NRO's Program C of the Naval Research Laboratory's Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) ELINT program, also known as ''Tattletale''. The National Security Agency was given the responsibility of collecting, interpreting, and reporting the signals intercepted. The existence of the POPPY program was declassified by the NRO in September 2005, although most of the details about its capabilities and operation are still classified. The NRO revealed, though, that the POPPY satellites, like other US signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems, used the principle of signals time difference of arrival, which enables precise locating of an object. All POPPY launches orbi ...
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KH-9 Hexagon
KH-9 ( BYEMAN codename HEXAGON), commonly known as Big Bird or KeyHole-9, p.32 Big Bird was a series of photographic reconnaissance satellites launched by the United States between 1971 and 1986. Of twenty launch attempts by the National Reconnaissance Office, all but one were successful. Photographic film aboard the KH-9 was sent back to Earth in recoverable film return capsules for processing and interpretation. The highest ground resolution achieved by the main cameras of the satellite was . Another source says "images in the "better-than-one-foot" category" for the last "Gambit" missions. They are also officially known as the Broad Coverage Photo Reconnaissance satellites (Code 467), built by Lockheed Corporation for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The satellites were an important factor in determining Soviet military capabilities and in the acquisition of accurate intelligence for the formulation of U.S. national policy decisions as well as deployment of U.S. f ...
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National Reconnaissance Office
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the NSA, imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the NGA, and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the DIA. NRO is considered, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), to be one of the "big five" U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRO is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, south of the Washington Dulles International Airport. The Director of the NRO reports to both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense. The NRO's federal workforce is a hybrid o ...
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KH-7 Gambit
BYEMAN codenamed GAMBIT, the KH-7 (Air Force Program 206) was a reconnaissance satellite used by the United States from July 1963 to June 1967. Like the older CORONA system, it acquired imagery intelligence by taking photographs and returning the undeveloped film to earth. It achieved a typical ground-resolution of to . Though most of the imagery from the KH-7 satellites was declassified in 2002, details of the satellite program (and the satellite's construction) remained classified until 2011. In its summary report following the conclusion of the program, the National Reconnaissance Office concluded that the GAMBIT program was considered highly successful in that it produced the first high-resolution satellite photography, 69.4% of the images having a resolution under ; its record of successful launches, orbits, and recoveries far surpassed the records of earlier systems; and it advanced the state of the art to the point where follow-on larger systems could be developed an ...
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KH-6 Lanyard
BYEMAN codenamed LANYARD, the KH-6 was the unsuccessful first attempt to develop and deploy a very high-resolution optical reconnaissance satellite by the United States National Reconnaissance Office. Launches and launch attempts spanned the period from March to July 1963. The project was quickly put together to get imagery of a site near Leningrad suspected of having anti-ballistic missiles. The satellite carried Itek's "E-5" camera developed for the SAMOS program, which had been cancelled. The camera had a focal length of and could discern objects on the ground in size. The ground swath of the camera was . The satellite weighed , and had a single re-entry vehicle in which exposed film was returned to earth for a mid-airFederation of American ScientistFASorg: ''KH-6''/ref> aircraft recovery. The KH-6 was manufactured by Lockheed Martin and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Thor-Agena D launch vehicles. Launches * KH-6 8001 launch failed 18 March 1963NSSDC ID: P11 ...
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