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'Big Birds' declassified

Hey! Neat. They allways said the KEYHOLES were about the size of a bus. Be damn if it doesn't look like a bus. Been watching military space craft for years, and the KH's were a distinctive target- highly inclined polar orbits and huge size makes 'em very bright in the northern latitudes. The little X-37B spaceplane is the fun one to watch now, though its mission is a bit of a question mark, the AF has been flying the bag off it this year. Some speculation that its been flying 'Prompt Global Strike' dem-val projects, or sneaking peeks at the PLAAF platform/station- which is cetainly an ALMAZ type military platform/FOBS platform.
Nice link. Thanks for the HU!
 
Having worked with national-level imagery systems for a number of years, it's still a little unsettling for me to see terms like "KH-9", "KEYHOLE" and "National Reconnaissance Office" in the open press, not to mention this display of the older systems at Udvar-Hazy. Back in the day if you were "read in" to satellite imagery programs you couldn't even use these terms in conversation outside a secure area. The NRO was an ultra-top-secret operation, now they're out in the open and showing off their old stuff. :icon_lol:
 
I always thought the film recovery method was quite amazing. Remember "Ice Station Zebra"?:mixedsmi:
 
Skyhook seemed to get used for alot of stuff-film capsules, Firebee's, M-11 film packs, let alone Fulton recovery system. On that subject, are any of the HC/MC-130's still fitted for aerial recovery?
The really weird thing back in the day was that the systems, names of systems, and capabilities of overhead recce was tightly classified; as noted, deep black 15 levels past Q, but then the DOD would have artists make drawings and paintings of recce imagery and publish it in the annual threat assesment- notably the stuff derived from obliques of warships under construction, or rail mobile ICBM trains. It did not leave much to the imagination about capabilities.
 
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