Air-launch from B-58 or A-12 OXCART - 1962

[blackstar]

Hello,

Found it !

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...es-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740726

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lockheed-c-130-hercules-prototypes-variants-projects.2035/page-10#post-740695

Oh wow, cool. I found that, the B-58 Town Hall proposal, and the A-12 Blackbird proposal, at the National Archives back when they were first released (whatever date is on the document). There was also a sub-launched proposal. I wrote about the sub-launched one somewhere, and Town Hall. I didn't get around to doing the Blackbird one until after somebody else did. The C-130 one just lingered in my memory but I could not find the document. So many thanks. I'll have to write about that.

And I should put these in context with the "crisis reconnaissance" studies a few years later--SPIN-SCAN, FASTBACK, PINTO and a few others. My suspicion is that the earlier studies like the C-130 one were for covert launch. The latter ones were for crisis reconnaissance. The technology was not good for any of them.

 

[Archibald]

You are welcome !

 

[Archibald]

My suspicion is that the earlier studies like the C-130 one were for covert launch

I can see why the CIA wanted to keep a low profile when peeping at satellites. It was their usual dirty secret business, except in space.

 

[blackstar]

I can see why the CIA wanted to keep a low profile when peeping at satellites. It was their usual dirty secret business, except in space.

I don't know if the CIA actually solicited these studies. They may have been unsolicited by the contractors. And the contractors may have assumed that covert launch was important.

The problem is that the camera that would fit in a small launch vehicle was going to be low-res. It could not see much. It might be useful for detecting troop movements, but it was not going to capture an airplane or a missile that might normally be hidden from a satellite.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Now an interesting and relevant question is how much anybody in the US intelligence community considered the value of indications and warning intelligence, i.e. the kind of intelligence that might reveal major activities before they happened, such as troop deployments. But I've found very little on this during this period. It seems like for the most part by the mid-1960s the intelligence community accepted that reconnaissance satellites were going to provide excellent intelligence on strategic forces (i.e. counting ICBM silos, bombers, subs, ships, nuclear weapons facilities) and they were happy with that. Nobody pushed for more timely intelligence during this period, meaning satellites that could return their imagery within 24 hours or so. It just was not considered.

It's usually the military that is more interested in Indications and Warning intelligence, since that's essentially all about what's happening later this week. The intelligence agencies are more interested in what's happening next year or so.

(Or were historically. I think it's gotten a bit better these days)

Yes, I'm responding to my own post. I found what I was thinking of. This was a 1963 proposal for an A-12 launch of a reconnaissance satellite.

CIA And Skunk Works Secretly Planned To Turn The A-12 Spy Plane Into A Space Launch Mothership

The proposal sheds more light on decades of secretive U.S. work to realize air-launched space access capabilities.

www.thedrive.com

You can see the CORONA camera in there. It looks pretty much the same as a schematic of a KH-3 CORONA. So the performance would have been essentially the same. And that raises the same question as for all these other air-launch proposals: what's the benefit? What's the advantage over the existing systems?

It's not coming overhead at a known time.

Satellites have a known ground track and time overhead, once someone gets a radar track for a couple of orbits.

But if you can pop a satellite up from an odd angle and get it over the target on the first orbit (or even suborbital), you can get information that is usually concealed.

I don't know if the CIA actually solicited these studies. They may have been unsolicited by the contractors. And the contractors may have assumed that covert launch was important.

The problem is that the camera that would fit in a small launch vehicle was going to be low-res. It could not see much. It might be useful for detecting troop movements, but it was not going to capture an airplane or a missile that might normally be hidden from a satellite.

Again, the point is that it's not a known time for imagery. Especially for a low suborbital lob.

You could also do a side look (forget what the technical term is), turn the cameras to look closer to the horizon than straight down. This adds some camera distortion and makes for a much longer range to the area to be imaged, so it's more likely to use a good camera/satellite for side looks.

A side look from a known satellite means that you need to have everything sensitive covered at all times that said satellites can draw line of sight to you, instead of just when directly overhead.