This history of SAFSP is dedicated to all those men and women who fought the Cold War, in silence - from above. No organization is better at gathering overhead intelligence than the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Today's NRO grew out of 3 organizations: AF, CIA, and Navy. The AF office for satellite reconnaissance was called the Secretary of Air Force's Office of Special Projects [SAFSP]. This monograph describes the birth of Air Force satellite reconnaissance. When SAFSP was created in response to Presidential recognition of a national imperative, 4 tenets captured the sense of urgency: direct access to national leadership, covert management/operations, highest national priority, and rapid procurement. In addition, 3 management principles led to SAFSP's success over 30+ years of providing reconnaissance intelligence: strong dedication to mission, empowerment at all levels, and reporting by exception.

For nearly five decades, some of the United States military's most secretive operations were conducted out of a collection of nondescript buildings at the intersection of State Route 237 and Mathilda Avenue in Sunnyvale, California. The installation was known by a variety of names in its early years: Satellite Test Center, Air Force Satellite Control Facility, the "Blue Cube," and Sunnyvale Air Force Station. In July 1986, the facility was renamed Onizuka Air Force Base after Col. Ellison S. Onizuka, the first Asian American astronaut, who was killed during the space shuttle Challenger accident. The location was selected due to its proximity to Lockheed Missiles and Space Company's Sunnyvale facilities and supported early satellite reconnaissance programs such as Corona, Gambit, and Hexagon. As the nation's nucleus for satellite command and control, workers at Onizuka Air Force Base directed efforts for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), US military, and NASA's space shuttle program until the closure of the base in 2010.

West Point graduates played a central role in developing U.S. military air and space power from the earliest days of mechanized flight through the establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947, and continuing through the Persian Gulf War. These graduates served at a time when the world's greatest wave of technological advancement occurred: in aviation, nuclear weapons, rocketry, ICBMs, computers, satellite systems in inner space and man in outer space. This history traces the advancement of weapons and space technology that became the hallmark of the U.S. Air Force, and the pivotal role that West Point graduates played in integrating them into a wide variety of Air Force systems and programs. Many became aircraft commanders, test pilots, astronauts and, later in their careers, general officers who helped shape and implement technologies still in use today.

The United States developed the Gambit and Hexagon imagery satellite systems in the 1960's to improve the nation's means for peering over the iron curtain that separated western democracies from East European and Asian communist countries. The programs were declassified in September of 2011, after which redacted documents and histories were released to the public, including the two contained in this volume. --Summarized from Preface.

Contains papers presented at the Air Force Historical Foundation Symposium, held at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on September 21-22, 1995. Topics addressed are: Pt. 1, The Formative Years, 1945-1961; Pt. 2, Mission Development and Exploitation Since 1961; and Pt. 3, Military Space Today and Tomorrow. Includes notes, abbreviations & acronyms, an index, and photographs.

Overview: Provides a history of the Corona Satellite photo reconnaissance Program. It was a joint Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force program in the 1960s. It was then highly classified.