United States Air Force
US Air Force

SAFSP

Pioneering Air Force Space Reconnaissance

during the Cold War

Established 1960

Secretary of the Air Force Office of Special Projects

The missions of the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Special Projects (also called SAFSP or just SP) began when Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) threatened our homeland in the Cold War era; the 1960’s through 1980’s. The US needed to know what our enemy was developing but we were prohibited From conducting aircraft overflight to gather critical intelligence. Less than three years after the first successful satellite from the US flew, SAFSP was routinely collecting intelligence with satellites. That was an era of slide rule engineering and experimentation when we were still discovering new design requirements of the space environment. These SAFSP missions were not publicly disclosed until 2011. The SAFSP Alumni Association has taken on the task of creating a monument for placement at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. It comprises recognition of the Office of Special Projects, the HEXAGON satellite, the 6594th Recovery Group that “caught” recovery containers with exposed film, and related Air Force support units. This monument commemorates the accomplishments of people who made exceptional contributions they could not divulge until now. The success of SAFSP missions was due largely to those individuals who supported these programs.

CORONA Overview

6 minutes

GAMBIT & HEXAGON Overview

10 minutes

Gambit Hexagon

HEXAGON IN FLIGHT

© Military History in a Minute

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SAFSP

Pioneering Space Reconnaissance

during the Cold War

Established 1961

Secretary of the Air Force Office of Special Projects

HEXAGON IN FLIGHT

© Military History in a Minute

Satellite Control Facility

 At a February 2025 team meeting of the SAFSP Heritage committee, the members were recalling the history of the Air Force Satellite Control Facility (AFSCF). The following are memories of that organization. The word “facility” is usually meant to mean a physical structure-but in Air Force jargon it meant an organization to confuse the abecedarians.


Don Hard summarized the beginning years of the AFSCF as follows: The AFSCF was established as an organization in 1965, when we had a building/facility called the Satellite Test Center (STC) in Sunnyvale from which early Corona and Gambit operations were conducted. The 6594th Test Wing was the predecessor to the AFSCF, headquartered at the STC from 1959 to 1965, which included the Instrumentation Squadrons at the Remote Tracking Stations (RTSs) and the 6593rd Test Squadron in Hawaii. In 1969, the staff organization that supported STC logistic operations was in Air Force Systems Command’s Space Systems Division (SSD) in Los Angeles, and was titled SSO – probably a contraction of Space Systems Operations, but I’m not sure… SSO was then headed by Colonel (later BGen) Russ Hedrick. (The DynaSoar Test Task Force Directorate was also in SSO.) Bob Wickwire and I worked in SSOCD in the Equipment Development Branch, then headed by Colonel Russ Nolte – we were responsible for providing all the necessary equipment and supplies for the STC and Remote Tracking Stations (RTSs). The SSO organization later morphed into the AFSCF about the same time the “Blue Cube”, a building/facility, was being built adjacent to the STC for the MOL/Dorian program. Then the consolidated AFSCF organization relocated up to the STC in Sunnyvale, I think when Jake Jacobsen became the Commander. So we had a confusing situation for a while wherein the Air Force Satellite Control Facility was actually an organization which moved into a facility called the Satellite Test Center… and there was yet another Air Force STC, the Space Technology Center, at Kirtland. (Some thought all of this confusion was actually deliberate.) I think many of us old-timers still called the building/facility in Sunnyvale the STC in 1985, when I was the Commander. In 1987, the STC was renamed the Consolidated Space Test Center (then both an organization and a facility), as a parallel to the Consolidated Space Operations Center at Falcon/Schriever Air Base within Air Force Space Command.

Click <HERE> to read the detailed History of the SCF from 1954 through  June 1983. It was written by MSgt Roger Jernigan, AFSCF History Office.

Col. Larry Cress

By Scott Eckert/SP-6 (1986-1992)

In 1980, I was a “mustang” 2nd Lt stationed at Space Division, Los Angeles fresh out of Officer Training School (OTS). My last enlisted assignment had been in Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Griffiss AFB, NY.

In 1984, I was selected to attend the USAF Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) MSEE program for 18 months. When I left Los Angeles for Ohio my (future) wife and step-daughter stayed behind and I had hoped to return to LA when I graduated. As graduation neared, the assignment process began.

Unfortunately, upon graduation my assignment was to SAC HQ, Offutt AFB, NE. My fellow students, who had a lot more experience than I in the assignment process, told me I was NEVER getting out of that assignment. I informed my “fiancé” that I wouldn’t be returning to LA for my next assignment.

Fortunately, she was friends with Col. Larry Cress, who I believe was a SPO Director at the time. She told him of my situation and Larry took it from there.

I was soon contacted by SAFSP to set up an interview, but afterwards I was still unsure what I was getting myself into. All they said was to keep taking communication and signal processing classes. A few weeks later, I received a new set of orders to SAFSP in Los Angeles.

When I told my fellow classmates about the new orders, they couldn’t believe that I had somehow managed to get my assignment changed. They told me this SAFSP group must really have some pull, since NOBODY got out of a SAC assignment! Well, Larry Cress came through for me and I was on my way to SAFSP in Dec 1985.

One of the first SAFSP “projects” I was offered was TDY to VAFB picking up debris on the beach.

I married Kathi (from the Aerospace Federal Credit Union) in 1987. Thanks Larry!

 

SP Security

    Working on an SAFSP program required a high level of individual security discipline beyond simply top-secret protection of facts within a project. We had to disavow the very existence of those programs we supported daily. Even after gaining access to a program like HEXAGON we were only exposed to facts needed to do the job and that determination was made by others through a formal “introduction”. The name of the program and associated facts could only be discussed in designated SCIF areas with all those present being appropriately briefed, and the facts being discussed could not be revealed outside of those strict secure conditions. The program name became the trigger phrase concerning the facts that followed.
     Sometimes that became a problem in normal life. Once while deeply engaged in operational activities I was having dinner with the family and, since I couldn’t discuss my work, I asked my daughter what she learned in school that day. She responded, “The teacher told us all about HEXAGON!” (She was only talking about geometry, not satellites.) One of the more difficult security skills we had to learn is not to gag when you hear a statement like that outside of the work environment. Now, 50 years later after the declassification of the program in 2011 it still takes some discipline to discuss a program while protecting what remains protected under classification rules.

Air Conditioning

The CDC 3800 (Control Data Corp) was a state-of-the-art computer in the 1970’s and one of the few capable of creating the critical instructions required to operate our photo-reconnaissance satellites. Although it filled a large room and had eight banks of transistor-based processors, each the size of a home refrigerator, it had less computing power than the average home PC. It generated an enormous amount of heat that had to be cooled with dedicated air conditioners to prevent a shut-down. Several were housed in the Blue Cube, which was 100-feet tall but with only four floors. The extra space was reserved for cabling and cooling. The STC command generation (CG) team ran punch card input programs that took about 20-minutes for each pass, creating precise sequences of functions for the satellite camera and subsystems. The operations tempo was critical to prepare these instructions for each of the 16 station passes each day. Every 90-minutes the team was getting ready for a pass over a tracking station.

 

One day the air conditioner shut down in the middle of a computer run with no time to recover the program on another computer. The CG team opened all the processor cabinet doors and waved cardboard sheets to keep it from overheating until the end of the run. Then the computer’s thermostat shut down with seconds to spare. Few were aware that the importance of the targets taken that day was to the credit of a quick-thinking team and the program’s greatest “fans.”

The Bread Truck

When I first joined SAFSP, I was assigned to SP-10. One of our missions was to model the performance of current and future systems to perform analytic studies. As a by-product of that modeling and simulation activity, there evolved a cottage industry providing current and future intelligence products. These were sent to major theater military exercises around the world so they could train with representative overhead intelligence products.

We had a Lt Col who traveled to Korea, SAC Headquarters, Hurlburt Field and Europe for major exercises throughout the year. The simulations ran on the CDC 3800 computers in Sunnyvale. The products had to be transmitted around the world via whatever comms technology existed in the early 80’s. The SIGINT was fed to Army systems at the sites, but the notional simulated IMINT output was received by a non-descript blue Air Force panel truck which was jury-rigged with various radios, printers and what-have-you to produce representative products. This panel truck was affectionately known as the “Bread Truck.”

During one going-away party held for a departing SP-10 hero, he was presented with a toy van emblazoned with “Rainbow Bread” logos all over it. As a result of that event, my wife spent the next 10 years believing that SP-10 was in the business of making bread trucks.

My apologies to all the alumni who know the real details better than me and for mangling the descriptions of how this magic was really implemented.

-Scott Rounce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY - A date to remember

The first CORONA to return a bucket with actionable film was caught August 19, 1960 by the crew of Capt. Harold Mitchell. The 6593d Test Squadron (Special) received the Mackay Trophy. It is administered by the National Aeronautic Assn and has been awarded yearly since 1912, by the Air Force for the most meritorious flight of the year by a USAF person, persons, or organization.

After 13 failures , the Corona program images were grainy and of limited utility, but quality–and intelligence value–improved rapidly. Within a few months, CIA photo interpreters had dispelled both the missile gap and the bomber gap. 

General Bruce A. Carlson USAF (Ret.)

May 2024

Dear Friends,

Thanks for the good thing you are doing. The finest minds since the Manhattan Project all put their heads together to amke this magic work for over 6 decades. I hope you know that all of the full-scale engineering models of our earliest spacecrafts are at the museum in Dayton.

As the 17th Director of the NRO I first offered them to the Smithsonian. However, they were going to put them to storage. So, I made a deal with my good friend Jack Hudson, Lt Gen, USAF (Ret.) who was running the AF Museum and he found a great place for them.

Hope this little bit helps.

Warmest Regards,
Bruce

Debbie Reed

By Col Joe Parks head of SP-12

Barbara Reed was a long time SP-12 contributor that was a joy to work with. When it came time for her to get a step increase, I put in the paperwork to SP-5, probably had to wake them up to do that!! We waited, nothing happened, I checked with SP-5 numerous times, they blamed it on the Base Air Force Personnel Office. Before I was in SP, I was an Auditor at the Base and knew the people in Personnel. So, I walked over, it was lunch time and found Barbara’s paperwork in an in-box, took it to one of the people there who told me that the gal in SP said, “No Rush”! We cleared that up in a heartbeat and it was approved while I was there. The Lt Col who ran SP-5 got pissed that I went around him, came into my office and started ragging on me. I asked him what his date of rank was. I outranked him, so I told him to pound sand. He then went into Col Parrish’s office and complained. What a great guy Parrish was. Anyway, Parrish called me in, told me never to do that again, but as I was leaving, said. “I would have done the same thing.” Got to love that generation.

Joe 

Ronald Reagan

Speech by RONALD REAGAN for the
25th Anniversary of Project CORONA

“I’m sure that if President Eisenhower were here today to see what you have achieved from the programs begun as a result of his decisions, he would express a hearty well done!”

America is safer for your work, and I congratulate each of you· for so fully earning the gratitude of your countrymen by your
remarkable achievements during a long period of continuing peril.

The Dead Rev

In the mid-1970’s, HEXAGON Command Generation prepared commands to be sent to the tracking stations for upload during a pass. There were 6 stations. Once a night, the satellite would make a revolution out of sight of a station. Ergo, a “dead rev.” During this 90-minute span, the four junior officer team was free to do whatever they wanted. Read manuals, practice Black Jack, do their MBA homework, or best: go to play on the racquetball courts or take a sauna. Later, the dead rev was filled when Oakhanger, UK was added.