US secretly declassifies Chilly Conflict-era ‘bounce seat’ surveillance satellites
The Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace has declassified a satellite tv for pc program used to spy on America’s adversaries.
nationwide reconnaissance bureau
About 40 years in the past, the US launched a collection of secret satellites designed to spy on the nation’s enemies.
These satellite tv for pc missions, launched between March 1971 and February 1987, had been nicknamed “bounce seats” and had been declassified. national reconnaissance bureau (NRO).
The NRO and the U.S. Air Drive collectively developed the satellite tv for pc to boost the U.S. authorities’s “house intelligence portfolio” for the aim of monitoring “the event of adversarial offensive and defensive weapons methods,” the NRO stated. It’s unclear what precisely the JUMPSEAT satellite tv for pc was monitoring.
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“The historic significance of JUMPSEAT can’t be underestimated,” James Outzen, director of the NRO Nationwide Reconnaissance Analysis Heart, stated in the identical assertion. “The orbit supplied the US with a brand new vantage level for accumulating distinctive and vital indicators data from house.”
nationwide reconnaissance bureau
The primary JUMPSEAT mission launched in 1971 from a navy base close to Santa Barbara, California, and supplied data to nationwide safety businesses, together with the U.S. Division of Protection and the Nationwide Safety Company.
In line with December memo The JUMPSEAT satellite tv for pc carried out “excellently” however was decommissioned in 2006, based on an announcement signed by NRO Director Christopher Scoles. He stated declassification of the mission would pose little threat to “present and future satellite tv for pc methods.”
Extra detailed details about what the satellite tv for pc did could also be obtainable sooner or later. “Following restricted declassification, we’ll consider this system for extra full programmatic declassification as time and sources allow,” Scoleys wrote within the memo.
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