Declassifying JUMPSEAT: an American pioneer in space
(nro.gov)50 points by mkmk 3 days ago
50 points by mkmk 3 days ago
Not to worry. Unlike trump, I didn't remove classified info from the SCIF and store it in my bathroom or share it with Russian dinner guests. I hold my oaths seriously.
Was this really that secret? I've known about JUMPSEAT for at least 20 years and I'm not a US citizen, nor do I have any kind of security clearance. Not sure where the information was published, maybe one of James Bamford's books, but there's nothing terribly new there apart from the USG finally acknowledging what we already knew.
Interesting point! I think a lot of the secrecy around programs like JUMPSEAT is more about official acknowledgment than actual hidden knowledge so what’s been publicly available for years suddenly becomes ‘news’ once the government confirms it. James Bamford’s work definitely made a lot of this info accessible to the public, so it makes sense that someone could know about it without clearance.
For the downvoters. See EO12333 2.4(b) & (c):
2.4 Collection Techniques...
These procedures shall not authorize:
...
(c) Physical surveillance of a United States
person in the United States by agencies
other than the FBI, except for:
(1) Physical surveillance of present or former
employees, present or former intelligence
agency contractors or their present or former
employees, or applicants for any such
employment or contracting; and
(2) Physical surveillance of a military person
employed by a nonintelligence element of a
military service.
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execu...
If you are curious what this is about. The US effectively wanted a geostationary satellite parked right over the high-latitude regions of the Soviet Union to intercept their signals.
The problem is, that geostationary satellites must orbit directly above the equator. If you try to look at northern Russia from the equator, the curvature of the Earth gets in the way.
So, the NRO used a Molniya (HEO) orbit as a clever cheat.
They launched JUMPSEAT into a stretched-out ellipse. Because of orbital mechanics, a satellite moves incredibly fast when it's close to Earth (perigee) but slows down dramatically when it's far away (apogee). It spends about 10 hours of its 12-hour orbit just loitering high above the USSR, slowly drifting across the sky, essentially emulating a geostationary satellite.
Its the other way around, the soviets were the first to use this kind of orbit and proved its usefulness, hence the name.
Declassification memo: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Documents/foia/JUMPSEAT%20Re...
“The fact that JUMPSEAT formed the foundation to follow on HEO systems”
Well that’s an interesting blurb from the declassification memo -https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Documents/foia/JUMPSEAT%20Re...
Native here: you’re correct it’s a weird sentence and turn of phrase in English.
That said, can/cannot is a flexible word in English and we could take it to mean “Anyone discussing the significance of JUMPSEAT [accurately] [should never] understate it.”
But I think he meant overstate in this case. Or maybe he hated JUMPSEAT, thought it sucked and put that right out there in the press release.
I am kind of curious: if this kind of data collection was possible then, what is it possible today to see and collect using satellites?
Feels like all the crazy satellite capabilities in spy movies are not that crazy after all.
This blows me away. I worked on systems that processed the signals from these satellites at the ground sites. At the time, these were highly classified, requiring background investigations and a polygraph to be granted access to know about these things. All our work had to be performed in a SCIF and we were forbidden to discuss our work with anyone not cleared to know. The form that we had to sign when being briefed stated that this was a lifetime commitment. I never would have believed that the NRO would declassify this system.