US quietly declassifies Cold War-era ‘jumpseat’ surveillance satellites
The National Reconnaissance Office has now made public a satellite program used to spy on America’s adversaries
National Reconnaissance Office
Nearly forty years ago, the US launched a series of secret satellites designed to spy on the country’s adversaries.
Launched between March 1971 and February 1987, those satellite missions, nicknamed “jumpseats”, were declassified. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
According to the NRO, the NRO and the US Air Force developed the satellites together for the purpose of monitoring “adversary offensive and defensive weapons system development” to boost the US government’s “space intelligence portfolio”. It is unclear what exactly the Jumpseat satellites were monitoring.
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“The historical significance of the jumpseat cannot be overstated,” James Outzen, NRO director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, said in the same statement. “Its orbit provided the United States with a new vantage point for the collection of unique and important signals intelligence from space.”
National Reconnaissance Office
The first jumpseat mission was launched in 1971 from a military base near Santa Barbara, California, and provided information to the US Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, in addition to other national security bodies.
according to a december memorandum Signed off by NRO Director Christopher Scolese, the Jumpseat satellites performed “commendably”, but were decommissioned in 2006. Declassifying the missions would pose little risk to “current and future satellite systems,” he said.
More detailed information about what the satellites did may come in the future. “Following limited declassification,” Scholz wrote in the memo, “we will evaluate the program for more complete programmatic declassification as time and resources permit.”
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